Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 developer Sandfall underestimated just how much players would engage with the game’s various sidequests and optional content, and as a result of this extra grinding would find the final boss fight a tad underwhelming.
As we all know by now, Clair Obscur became quite a sensation following its release last year. The first game from Sandfall, many weren’t sure exactly what to expect on its debut, but before long many were deeply invested in its world and characters. In fact, players were so invested in Clair Obscur, they completed a lot of optional side content and dungeons, leveling up their characters in the process.
This meant, though, that by the time it came to the final showdown (don’t worry, I won’t spoil it here), a lot of players were actually a lot stronger than Sandfall anticipated, and so the fight itself was a little too easy.
“The only thing I regret is not making it clearer that if you want the intended difficulty for the boss, you have to go beat it now,” Clair Obscur’s lead game designer Michel Nohra said in a recent interview with Edge magazine (via Games Radar
Nohra added: “Often, people don’t want to finish the game, so they do all the side content before finishing it, because once the story is over, you’re usually less motivated to do the side content. And that’s something I underestimated, which made people that wanted a challenging end boss fight feel a bit disappointed.
“I don’t regret doing it the way we did it, but [we could have] had more explanation about your choice [in Act 3].”
Clair Obscur’s lead programmer Tom Guillermin believes a lot of this was due to Sandfall’s “humility”, as no one at the studio really expected the game to become quite such a success.
“We weren’t sure if our game was going to be that good,” Guillermin said. “And if it’s not, people may just want to see the story, and go directly to the end of the story. So it was a surprise for us [that] people were doing every single thing there is to do in the game before going to the final dungeon.”
Closing, Guillermin said of course the team was “happy about that”, however Sandfall just “didn’t see it coming”.
Towards the end of last year, the success of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 was publicly acknowledged once again by French President Emmanuel Macron, who said its Game of the Year win was a source of “great pride for Montpellier and for France”.
Last month, developer Sandfall Interactive announced Clair Obscur: Expedition 33’s previously teased expansion was available for all players. While of course a welcome addition for the many fans out there, this expansion and its bosses have – perhaps slightly ironically now – proven tricky for some.
For more, I recently spoke with actor Maxence Cazorla – who performed the physical side of things for Clair Obscur’s Gustave, Renoir and Verso, and voiced Esquie – about his work on Expedition 33, and what the game has meant to him personally.