While developer Sandfall Interactive finally announced a release date for its upcoming RPG Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, the studio CEO and creative director on the game Guillaume Broche also revealed some more details about the title in an interview on Xbox Wire.
Broche talks about wanting Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 to feel like a real game rather than just being something that looks pretty. Because of this, characters in the game all play differently, and players also have the choice to make use of their unique mechanics and skill trees to figure out their own playing style.
“We didn’t want the game to just be a pretty face,” said Broche. “We wanted it to be like a game that feels like a real game. So every character has their own playstyle and you can really play them in a lot of different ways – but they also feel very different from each other, and they all have their unique mechanics and their unique skill tree.”
Broche also spoke about some of the game’s character customisation and playstyle, which was also showcased during the recent Developer_Direct. Broche explained that players will end up changing the equipment on their characters quite often, and all the Lumina that players accumulate will ultimately allow them to pull of interesting combos and crazy builds.
The example used was that of character Lune, whose core gameplay mechanic revolves around accumulating a resource called Stain by using skills. This resource can then be used in fights to empower her abilities, but players will still have plenty of choice in how they use the Stain and buff up Lune’s capabilities.
“So what’s very cool is that, when you play through the game, you will change your equipment a lot and you will get more and more Lumina and at the end of the game you have a full list of passives that you can either activate or deactivate, and this allows some crazy build opportunities,” he explained. “This is where we really make some crazy combos, and this is where we expect players to really break the game – and we hope they break the game, because it’s made for that!”
Speaking about the game’s mix of real-time elements with turn-based combat, Broche also spoke about some of the design decisions taken with the game, such as the fact that players can’t simply rely on parrying all enemy attacks, and that dodging will also be an incredibly important mechanic to master, especially on harder difficulties.
“So you’re not supposed to parry everything, of course, that would be far too hard,” explained Broche. “So we have difficulty options in the game, and depending on the difficulty options the parry window and dodge window will be bigger or smaller… if you are playing in Hard mode, and you don’t dodge at least 50% of the attacks, you will have some trouble. If you are in Normal, it’s a bit more [forgiving] than that, and if you are in Easy… if you build your characters correctly, at least, you will go by without having to be a master dodger.”
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is slated for release on April 24, and will be coming to PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X/S.
