Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 (Act 1 Analysis) + Jake's PAX East Report

[00:00:09] Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to another episode of the Pre-Order Bonus Podcast. I'm one of your hosts Cameron Warren and I'm joined as always by the pixel professor Jacob Price. It's May 15th, 2025. We're back to talk about video games. Not a lot of news in the past week. I feel like we didn't.

[00:00:35] Did you see this? This is Hot Off The Press. Hot Off The Press. Jake, what do you got? What was it? Jade Raymond has left her studio, Haven Studios? Ah, yes. Yes. I did hear that. Jade Raymond, famed art director, game... What's she famous for?

[00:01:03] Jade Raymond, uh, some Ubisoft things, right? I'll be totally honest. I'm not like... Let's see. Best known for creating the Assassin's Creed and Watchdog franchises. Yeah, there we go. That's right. And then she worked at Amazon and then she jumped around. Amazon flopped. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. She's kind of like the Amy Hennig situation. Yeah, it's... Which that also got delayed as well. Yeah, the Hydra?

[00:01:28] The Hydra game. Dude, what is going on? I mean, we've talked about this at length. We don't need to talk about it all that much. But, uh... I think that Hydra game is not coming until, like, 2027, to be honest with you. Like, I just... I... That... I mean, they showed that trailer. I was like, ooh, boy. This thing is gonna take a little while to cook, if I had to guess. Did they show us a cutscene? Or... Have we seen any gameplay from that Hydra game?

[00:01:58] It was a very, very high-fidelity cutscene. That's right. That's it. It looked cool, right? Like, it looked really good. That's what I remember. Yeah, it looks like a cool idea. It looks like it should have incredible graphics, but it looks extremely ambitious. So... Yeah. Not saying that you should not have ambition anymore. GTA also got delayed. Since the last time we talked, I think. No, no. Did we talk about that? We talked about that. Sorry. We talked about that.

[00:02:27] I was like, it's still coming in May, right? May 2016. We had a long conversation about GTA 6. Yes. Yeah. But, Jake, most importantly, little to my knowledge, ladies and gentlemen, I just... I didn't even know that this was happening, okay? Jake and I just happened to do a video game podcast together. Of course, Jake is much more online than I am.

[00:02:54] He's in the circles of people that you need to know to have the correct invitations. Ladies and gentlemen, Jake went to PAX East without his costs. Listen. Listen. We... No, no, no, no, no, no. No, it's okay. Yeah. It's okay. You know, we just do a gaming podcast together. That's all. I just told Cameron to suck it, loser. And then I took... I was on the next plane to Boston. That's exactly what happened.

[00:03:22] There's a secret cabal of podcast bros. And I have not been invited to it yet. No, I'm just joking. Jake, I want to hear the full breakdown. Oh, no. What's your... I want to hear the PAX East report from ChippedUp18. This is our first official video game convention report on the show. Jake, break it down for us. What do you got?

[00:03:46] As the less attractive, not bred for public facing member of this group. That is definitely not true. Just to be clear. Man, listen, PAX East was a ton of fun. It was so much fun. You know, one thing that really stood out to me, I would say, about PAX East is you just... The amount of nerds in one room. And I mean this complimentary. I mean this complimentary. Okay? Okay, okay.

[00:04:16] Yeah, yeah, yeah. Not like Cheeto Dusted Mountain Dew. No, no, no, no, no. No, just like... Was there Cheeto Dusted Mountain Dew, though? Uh, let's see. In my time there, I didn't see a single bag of Cheetos or a single can of... Wait, no. I saw Mountain Dew. I take that back. Didn't see any Cheetos. I mean, that's more of like... That's more of an E3 thing. Right? Like old school E3 thing. That's not... Hey, PAX is classy, right? Yeah, PAX is... Yeah, yeah, yeah. That tracks. Okay. That tracks. No, what I mean by that is like...

[00:04:46] It's a super inclusive space. It's... Everybody is there to have a good time, to meet up with folks, to play and chat video games in every single capacity. And so I've been to a lot of different like conferences, academic conferences just in my career. And those can get pretty stuffy and full of ego pretty quickly. But what I really loved about PAX is that you have like the show floor where everybody's just mingling and having a good time.

[00:05:14] And then you have rooms where different panels are being held. And those panels would range from like fairly like highbrow, what I'm used to in academia, you know. And then just people talking about just like collections of oral histories about different games or people just being talking about games in a retrospective way. They had... I was shocked and to my delight, you know, to kind of see rooms that were dedicated like,

[00:05:43] hey, this is a handheld gaming space where if you just want to bring out your handheld and sit and chat and play, like this is a room for you. They had, which I didn't get to explore as much as I want just because dad and Eric, because Cameron and I are both dad gamers. They had a family lounge, dude, where they just had a... Oh. They just had a ton of like monitors and consoles set up where it's like, hey, bring the kids and do some gaming in here. That's awesome. Honestly... And a great way to spread disease, but awesome nonetheless.

[00:06:11] I mean, folks, this was a great... Absolutely. Absolutely. Going there with gloves and a mask on, right? Lots of hand sanitizer. Lots of hand sanitizer. But they just had like rooms and spaces for every person under the sun. Lots of really cool cosplayers. I will never do a cosplay. If I had... Let me take that back. If I had to do cosplay, it would be something like, I'm Alan Wake, you know?

[00:06:40] Because I don't have the mental fortitude or, you know, seamster skills to do anything else. But it's super impressive to see people walking around. Dude, the craziest thing I saw was somebody did a Totoro Mandalorian mashup thing. And it was... Wow. It was a sight to behold, man. I can't even... I can't even imagine that. Dude, it was... I don't think I could actually describe it. Like, if you asked me to draw it, I don't think I could do it.

[00:07:11] But like, just a really cool space where people can just go and do things. They have these signs posted everywhere that's like, hey, PAX is an inclusive space for everybody of different abilities and LGBTQ community. And just like, everybody, we're here to have games. Let's do that. And I loved that. And so, I mean that with a lot of love. Just like, it was great to see so many nerds in one space. Just to kind of geek over things that they really enjoy.

[00:07:38] And to be able to talk about video games and play video games in really any capacity. I thought that was super cool. That was very cool. My favorite part, obviously, was just going out on the floor and seeing a bunch of indie games. I actually got a chance to... So, a long, long time ago, Cameron, in the Game Maker series, do you remember we interviewed Liam who did Cursed to Golf, right? Yes. So, I got to meet him. Oh, very cool.

[00:08:06] And it was super cool just to kind of go out there. They, that studio's got a new game called Tanuki Pond Summer, which is like a tanuki raccoon on a bike delivering things. Which... That is... Sounds very interesting. I mean, it was actually one of the hottest games, I would say. Was it really? It was one of the hottest games by far at PAX. That's awesome. But I got to meet Liam in chat for a second.

[00:08:33] And that was like a ton of fun to be like, oh, hey, you know, how's it going? Very cool. You don't know who I am and we haven't talked in years, but I liked Cursed to Golf and here we're checking out your new game. So, making some of those connections was really nice just with different people and different devs that we had met or we had talked to in some capacity and different podcasters too. It was a lot of fun. I got really lucky in that I was in Boston when it was dry.

[00:09:01] Apparently, Thursday and Friday was just dumping buckets. But I was there Saturday and Sunday when the weather cleared up. Did not get any really good Boston food though. That is honestly my biggest regret. Is there really good Boston food? I shouldn't say that. I just... All of our Bostonian listeners just left. No... So, you didn't go to Applebee's? I'm just... I'm sorry. I just... We didn't... I didn't go to Cheers.

[00:09:31] So... Oh, yeah, yeah. There we go. I'm assuming the Boston Cream Donut is pretty good in Boston and I didn't even think to get one. That's actually a really good question. What's like the Boston food? What's like the Boston food? Because I've been to Boston for work several times and that's never been brought up. Like, Philly's got a cheesesteak. New York's got pizza. Yeah. Iconic foods in Boston on the Boston subreddit.

[00:10:01] Plain hot dogs. Pastrami sandwiches. Interesting. Pastrami. Okay. Okay. I can dig that. Yeah, yeah. People here are saying lobster roll, but I associate that with further north. Gotcha. Like Maine, right? Well, sorry. That's besides the point. I got sidetracked. That is very cool. That's very cool. Super glad that you got to go do that and give the official pre-order bonus podcast report.

[00:10:28] Jake, but you're going to have to name what is your game of the show, Paxies, that you were able to play. Ooh, that is a super good question. My game of the show, my game of the show, out of the ones I got to play. Man, I would say I have a few. I really, really liked Altered Alma. This is a Metroidvania that's coming out.

[00:10:58] I thought it was super cool. It played really well. Altered Alma. Yes. Takes place in Neo Barcelona. So, cyberpunk Spanish. Cyberpunk Spain. Really? Another favorite of mine was a game called Compensation Not Guaranteed. This plays a lot like Papers, Please, but you are appropriating lands for the new government that you work for.

[00:11:27] And you have to determine whether or not people actually own the lands that they're trying to get money off of because the government is buying these properties from people. It's going to be a freaking wild ride, that one. Really? Oh, yeah. Because I'm looking at these screenshots and it doesn't look like a wild ride. Well, I mean, it's Papers, Please, right? Like, you look at a screenshot of Papers, Please, you're not going to bug out that much. Jake. So, sorry. Name those two again.

[00:11:56] That was Compensation Not Guaranteed. Altered Alma. Altered Alma. Go wish list those. Jake's Period of Bonus Podcast Game of the Show for PAX East. Jake, let me ask you about a couple games. Okay. Okay. Was Buy Sweet Carol at PAX East? I'm curious. Buy Sweet Carol?

[00:12:25] Do you know what that is? I don't. So, if you don't know what that is, it is a Disney animation style survival horror indie game. Is this Alice in Wonderland with a tattoo? Kind of? It looks like a Disney animated film, but it's like horror. And it's a video game. Oh! I did see this. I did not. Was that at the show?

[00:12:55] Wait, was it at the show? Other things. Maybe it was. I don't know. And then the other one, I feel like it might have been, is Constance. Oh, Constance, dude. Constance is going to be a killer, man. Was that at the show? It was there. Was that like a... Okay. So, it was part of the publisher's booth. So, for that one, they had six games loaded on machines. And when you waited in line, you sat down and you kind of picked which one of the six games you wanted to try. Yeah.

[00:13:25] Constance, that demo is on Steam. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm looking at that right now. Dude, Constance is going to be amazing. This is like the Celeste Hollow Knight spiritual successor. Yeah. Since, since, uh, Silksong is actually never coming out. Was Silksong there? Silksong was not there. There were no museums near the convention center to put an 18-minute... There was no Australian museum. Yeah.

[00:13:55] If there was an Australian museum nearby, it could have been there. But no. No, I bring those up because those are, uh, indie titles that have been in various showcases that I have on my Steam wishlist. And I'm always curious of like new, very interesting indie titles that, um, I have my eye on. Yeah, Constance I think is going to be a big winner. I'll have to look into By Sweet Carol. What a, what an interesting name for a game. By Sweet Carol, yes.

[00:14:24] If you're, just go check out, dude, I saw it and I was like, this is like a 90s coded Disney animated film survival horror indie game. It's crazy. It's actually kind of wild. It's Bloodborne meets Beauty and the Beast, right? Think like Anastasia meets... Ooh, Anastasia is a good one. Yeah. Meets, uh, Cuphead meets...

[00:14:53] Meets, uh, The Dark Crystal. No. Meets the dark... Now that, dude, that is the trifecta of something. Think like Snow White meets Bloodborne. Meets Disney animated film. Yeah, this... Which is Snow White. This has massive Bloodborne vibes. Yeah. It's not quite... I mean, if it were more Bayou, it would have Princess and the Frog vibes.

[00:15:21] Princess and the Frog, yeah. Yep. Oh my gosh. I'm watching a trailer right now. This looks a little... It's kind of crazy, right? You've not seen this? Maybe I haven't. This was at, uh, I feel like it was an ID and Xbox showcase or... Some indie show. I can't remember which one. PC game. I probably watched this and was like, you know what? I'm gonna get scared playing this. I was just so taken aback by... That nobody's... Kind of stolen that Disney animation style. Right?

[00:15:51] Because it's like Cuphead did it with the 1920s animated style aesthetic, right? Like old Mickey Mouse cartoons. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. This game's kind of taken like that 90s, like Disney Lion King, Snow White, like that era, right? Like and make it into a video game, which is just... That's like a cool concept. Anyway. Yeah. Yeah. Definitely on my wishlist now. Yeah. It looks crazy.

[00:16:22] Well, I don't have much to talk about from news on my front. We got the PAX East report. I think what we can do... So a little bit of a weird episode, but we want to take advantage because, Jake, there's a game that's been out for a little while and some people are calling it... Some people are calling it a pivotal moment in the games industry.

[00:16:49] They're saying that this game is going to change everything. And that game is Claire Obscure Expedition 33. Nice French. Or as we call it in the Peer Order Bonus Podcast, and thanks to nod to Matt Fresh from the hard drive. Final French-y. Final French-y, man. So what we're going to do on this episode, because we're going to get together with one

[00:17:18] of our podcast friends who is a JRPG stan and do like a full episode, but we wanted to kind of jump on the hype and do a little bit of a chat about Act 1 of Claire Obscure Expedition 33. So with that, Jake, give me your impressions of this game. Is this a turning point? Is this going to change the games industry forever?

[00:17:46] I mean, when people say that, I almost wonder if they know what they're saying or why they're saying that, because it's a nice little snippet, a nice little catchphrase. And it sounds good. And it makes you sound smart to say something like that. Okay. Maybe I'm coming off as a little too mean. But when people are saying that about this game, I want you to tell me why. I want you to tell me exactly why. And your answer cannot be one of the following.

[00:18:15] It cannot be it is saving JRPGs. It cannot be it's reinventing turn-based combat. Okay. Those cannot be your responses because based on what I've seen and played, it's doing cool iterations on those things. But I just do not believe that JRPGs or turn-based combat needed to be saved. And therefore, we have a savior here in Claire Obscure Expedition 33.

[00:18:45] I think it will shift the landscape. I do agree with the sentiment, but I guess my rationale is entirely different. I just think that it is reinvigorating this AA space that desperately needs more attention and more funding. And there's been people have been talking way too much at length about like how this game has been funded. I say, listen, dude, I don't care how big or small your studio is.

[00:19:12] If you're getting a ton of funding, let's not knock them. Let's just hope they deliver a good product with all that funding. And I think that they have here like Sandfall Interactive has delivered an amazing product. So yeah, I think in terms of like what it's doing for the industry has so much less to do with the genre and the style that are a part of this game and much more with funding in the AA space. Stepping off Soapbox.

[00:19:41] Yeah, it's interesting that it's very interesting, right? Because there's so much hyperbole going on around this game that it's hard to decipher what's the real conversation here. Obviously, it's doing very well. Sold 2 million copies. Yeah. Right? So it's a critical hit, right? Like there's no way. There's no two bits around that.

[00:20:09] Although GTA 5 is once again the number one most selling game over the last three months. So the merry-go-go-go keeps going around, man. It's like these games are like blips, right? They're like blips on this giant map called GTA 5 Fortnite and Roblox. And let me just by the way, we're not paying nearly enough attention to Roblox as a society

[00:20:37] just to like drop that in there. We have, it's like an international emergency and no one is talking about it. Okay? Game industry pundits. Like we got to be talking about Roblox more because it is a poison on our children. A multi-billion dollar infectious disease. Nice, dude. Dude, here's the thing about Roblox.

[00:21:06] Every clip I've seen from Roblox, it looks awful. Like, and I think that's why people like probably at our sphere and our level of content creation and the way that we talk about games that we don't talk about Roblox because dude, it looks like the most bland thing out there, right? Like am I, am I totally misreading what this game is? Like, so we get a little bit hoity-toity. We get a little hoity-toity. It's like we, we don't respect it. We don't respect it.

[00:21:35] We don't give it the respect it deserves, but let me tell you. Let me tell you. Anyway, sorry. That's a side note. Just talking. Good, because I had a follow-up there. So I'm glad we're going to cut that conversation right there. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sorry. We don't need to talk about Roblox, but yeah. So this game sold 2 million copies. The big narrative that's going around is look at what a team of 30 developers did. How come AAA developers can't do this? Yeah. Okay.

[00:22:02] That's the conversation that's happening around Claire Expedition 33. Let me address a couple things on that. One, yes, it was a team of full-time 30 developers, but hundreds of contractors. Yeah. Right? So like literally would have been impossible to deliver this game, right? With just 30 people. Now, still impressive. I'm not taking anything away from the achievement. Still very impressive.

[00:22:31] But like people see that 30 full-time developers number and that kind of gets blown out of proportion. But yeah, dude, you know, it's a pretty incredible story, right? This is a team of like they've got a few experienced people, but largely kind of new, just super passionate people that came together and just made this holy, unique thing inspired by, you know, French culture. And it's obviously a French studio.

[00:23:00] It's inspired by Final Fantasy games and like turn-based gaming and just made something like super unique that just hit the market and just went viral for some reason. And honestly, let me, I'll just say this, like this is a well-made game, but I don't really understand why it's gone as viral as it has. I can't really put my finger on that. It's kind of interesting because I feel like there's been really quality titles.

[00:23:28] Maybe I can't, maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I just, I couldn't name them. So that's a bad, and I probably need to stop and think about this. Like for when we have our full episode on it, I need to go and really think about like, are there games like this that have come out that got ignored? Right. Right. You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah. And maybe there aren't. And I just, because I can't sit here and think about it in the moment, but it does make me wonder. And that's not to take anything from the quality of this title. I think there's like a huge amount of passion here, huge amount of quality. And it, yeah, it broke through the noise.

[00:23:58] So I think for that, that reason and the fact that it happens to look quite good. Yeah. And then it's got, you know, it's got these like twist on turn-based combat where they add, you know, dodging and, and, and pairing.

[00:24:19] Basically, basically the big hook is with the combat is it's turn-based combat with, um, with dodging and pairing. Right. Right. Which sounds super simple on its face, but actually adds like a ton to it. It's like an evolution of turn-based combat. That's really quite good. Yeah. Uh, and interesting. Yeah. Like who'd have thought? He just like take one thing from here and one thing from here and then you combine them together.

[00:24:48] And I'm, I'm kind of all over the map, but, uh, yeah, this is just me giving kind of initial reactions to, to Claire Expedition 33, which is what, which we're doing on, on, on this show. But Jake, where, where, where, where's your head at on this? Um, I'm glad that you brought up the studio size thing. I mean, I think at this point the discourse is tired again about like studio game sizes.

[00:25:13] I think we just need to collectively acknowledge and just, I don't know, everybody please know and remember the following. Pretty much every single video game that comes out, it doesn't matter if it's a quote unquote solo dev effort or not, has contractors at some point in development.

[00:25:35] You know, it's like 90, it's gotta be in this, this is guessing, but like 90, 95, 99% of all games have contractors at some stage of development. Right. And this can be as simple as contracting a localization team to get your game into different languages. Right. Or having a distribution and marketing deal with a publisher. Right.

[00:25:57] Like to, to seriously 100% the entire effort of making and then distributing and marketing a video game. Dude, I cannot think of a single example in which that is the case. I mean, I'm sure there, there are examples of it. They're all in itch.io and they're extremely tiny. Right. And this is not meant to be a knock on that. Like, I love that there's this amazing culture of like really small scale solo dev games on itch.io. Right.

[00:26:26] But rarely, if ever, do those games actually, you know, make it through the noise to borrow the expression that Cameron's using here. And so I think, honestly, we need to celebrate both sides of that. We need to celebrate that there is a core full-time team of 30 or so devs that were with Claire Obscure Expedition 33, like from beginning to end.

[00:26:49] You know, or roughly, maybe that number fluctuated a little bit beginning to end, but that you had this core team from beginning to end. That needs to be celebrated and it needs to be examined that it was about 30 people that were able to do that. But simultaneously, these are not mutually exclusive. We can also recognize that that same core group of people needed to contract like hundreds of people to get the game across the finish line.

[00:27:16] And it's kind of silly to me that I think that people are trying to pit these things against each other when the reality is it's just that's just how games are made. And that's so I don't know why this is a discourse. To be totally honest with you, it's like, dude, can we... So Rock Paper Shotgun posted an article about it. I just found it. And there's 500 to 600 people who worked on it altogether. Right. There you go. Pretty normal. Right. That sounds right. Yeah.

[00:27:46] For what they achieve for this game. And honestly, you look at like GTA 6. You tell me it was just a few thousand people that are putting that game together. Exactly. Yeah, dude. It's way more than that. And it's like, I don't even know how many employees Rockstar has, but... Thousands, I'm sure. Because you have teams of 50 people working on one system for something like GTA, right? Yeah. Yeah.

[00:28:11] Like you've got a 30, 40 person team just for the combat and a 40 person team just for like the music production and vehicles and like anyway. Yeah. Yeah. No, I... There's this narrative out there.

[00:28:23] But I think the thing that's not lost in this conversation is this idea that there's this idea out in the gaming, the gamer sphere that the quality is not up to par with the amount of money and the amount of time and the amount of like effort and investment that's being put in. It's like, well, how come this studio can do this? Right. Yeah. But this other studio can't. And honestly, like, I don't know if I agree with that.

[00:28:50] I agree that there is this like, the stars aligned for this game where a lot of things lined up really well. Mm-hmm. And it's passion and it's like commitment to craft, but it's also a little bit of luck. Yeah. Like, and that goes for any game, right? Yeah.

[00:29:11] It's like things come together in such a way that they achieve this super interesting output that a lot of people just seem to really like. I'll say for me, like graphically, I do think it does look good, but you know, and I don't want to mean come off like so negative on this game because this is such a great game. And it's like, it does so many things super well and I'm, I'm so incredibly excited that this exists.

[00:29:42] I think I just, I have this tendency to be like, Hey, everybody calm down. Um, but no, no, I, maybe everybody should not calm down because like we want things like this to exist. And so I shouldn't like poo poo it. I just, you know, just putting things in perspective, right?

[00:29:59] Like triple A games are still super cool and you can definitely see the difference in quality between like a triple A, like, you know, everybody hated star Wars outlaws, but dude, put star Wars outlaws in this game next to each other. From a graphics perspective, star Wars outlaws is ridiculous looking from a graphic standpoint. Like it's just, it's sheer insanity.

[00:30:23] Like you can tell, you can see the 2,500 developers that worked on that from a graphic standpoint, but anyway, sorry, I had to go, you know, we, we gotta go, we gotta call out the, the rage bait online, but, um, let's talk about the actual game. Yeah. I'll start by commenting on the things that I really like. Let's hear it.

[00:30:51] Uh, I love turn-based combat. So I already liked turn-based combat and then they added here and it's, it's really quite, it's like honestly pretty simple, right? It's a dodge and a parry. Yeah. But the parry is like a little bit different than other games because a lot of other games, the parry is it's, um, it's predicting when you're going to get hit is when you hit the parry button.

[00:31:18] And in this game, you actually have to parry like when the hit lands. Yes. And so there's this like very subtle, um, tactile feel with the parry in this game. Yeah. That I don't know what, dude, it, it, it kind of elevates it a little bit. It elevates it like the, it, it takes it beyond just a simple, like, Oh, we're going to add parry to the combat.

[00:31:46] And it kind of makes it just like a little bit juicier in a way that it takes all kind of the, all this turn-based stuff and like deck build, they have elements of like deck building here. They have elements of, you know, stacking abilities and kind of your typical turn-based, like, you know, pick different skills and, and combine them with certain weapons. And then there's like skill attributes and stuff like that. All that stuff is here for all like the turn-based min maxers, but just that little like parry situation.

[00:32:15] And then, and then the thing that I really like about it is the fact that they make it really crucial to actually do well in the combat. Like when you're fighting bosses, there's no way around it. Like you have to parry and or dodge. I think I've seen that there are builds where you can just avoid that completely and you can also change the difficulty, which is also credit to the game. But yeah, dude, that, that's just little piece really like elevated the combat for me.

[00:32:43] The turn-based stuff, even if it was just that alone would have been awesome. Yeah. But then that little element kind of changed the game for me. I agree with you. I think that the turn-based without dodges and parries is super cool. I mean, every character, every party member has like their own system, right? It's a lot to juggle, right? It's a lot. It is a lot to juggle because you're thinking, you have to think about your players individually.

[00:33:08] I feel like at least the way that I've been playing it, I think about them individually much more than I do team composition. Or maybe a better way of phrasing it is like first and foremost is what are my party members doing individually? And then secondary, okay, how do I make them work together? Because they, so for example, and folks, remember we're only talking act one here. Okay. So for example, Maelle, who can turn into a DPS powerhouse? We require some setup in order to get that done.

[00:33:38] Maelle is like my favorite character. She just rips people. Dude, she, yeah. To, so in the beginning of the game, in order to activate her most powerful stance, so she is a fencer and she uses a rapier as her weapon of choice. She has different stances. She has stanceless, offensive stance, defensive stance, and then virtuoso stance. Virtuoso stance does 200% her normal attack damage.

[00:34:04] And at the beginning of the game, you can essentially only activate this if you hit a target that has the burn condition on them. Right. And Maelle does have an ability that you can get early on that does inflict burn status on players or on enemies. And so she can set it up herself. And so that's one way of thinking about her individually, right? It's like, okay, I want her to do massive damage. I need her to be in virtuoso stance. Therefore, I need somebody, I need an enemy to be burned first.

[00:34:35] Or you can plan it in such a way that somebody else causes a burn on the character. Then she procs virtuoso stance. And then her following attack is going to be super powerful. Right. So it's just, there are so many moving parts in this game. And, but that, that sort of, there's a little bit of a disconnect, right? If I want to set up a burned enemy for Maelle to absolutely dunk on, then I really have to think about what the individual skills of my next teammate is

[00:35:01] and how it makes, how I can make it make sense for her to set up a burn when she's an entirely different character. I'm thinking specifically of Lunay, right? Lunay has an ability, multiple abilities that can set up burn, but she functions entirely differently. She doesn't use stances. She uses something called stains that get, that are essentially elemental charges that build up based on what type of, attack you're using.

[00:35:28] And what's crazy to me about Claire Obscure Expedition 33 is that they literally could have had a really fun turn-based game and everybody uses the stance system. But they're... 100%. They went really hard on the combat stuff, dude. They went really hard on the combat. But no, it's only one player. It's only one teammate that uses the stance system. Yeah. And then now we have the stain system with Lunay,

[00:35:55] and it is absolutely different in how you maximize how you play her. It's crazy. And then you have Gustav, you have Sael, right? These are all Act 1 characters. And the way that they operate is entirely different from each other. So the biggest strategic leap that I have to do logically is think, okay, how do I make Gustav set up somebody else while also having him be set up so he can do this powerful thing? It is way more to juggle.

[00:36:24] What's crazy to me, and this is what I'm struggling to articulate, is I don't know how they make all this information digestible, dude. I don't even know how I know how I'm making all these systems work together. I'll be honest. I think for me, it's too much. And I've actually reached a place. I have just finished Act 1, and I'm a little bit into Act 2. I've reached a place where I'm ready to notch the difficulty down and just play the game. And just kind of like... Because I kind of don't want to think about it anymore.

[00:36:55] It's a lot to think about. Because to your point, they went so hard here, right? Because you've got multiple characters who each have their own ways of attacking, who each have their own ability trees. They all have stats. They all have weapons that have like Elden Ring style stat bonuses based on your stat distribution. And they get different weapons that do different types of damage that change from weapon to weapon. And then on top of that, you have all these passive skills.

[00:37:24] And you have a certain number of points that you can attribute to these passive things. And then on top of that, you have parrying, dodging, jumping, and you have to memorize like boss patterns during these fights because you'll get wrecked. Yeah. If you don't do that. So it's like this multi-layered, super detailed tiered thingy that you have to do in a combat, which to its credit, I think is what people really freaking love about the game.

[00:37:53] And so it's this situation where, for me, they probably went a little bit too hard, but there's settings to alleviate that. There absolutely are. And honestly, thank goodness that there are because it's interesting. So I haven't switched the difficulty. I'm playing on the recommended difficulty, just whatever normal is. But people that I've talked to who are playing through the game, they say that you still have to dodge and parry at lower tiers.

[00:38:22] Like that in the windows don't necessarily get that much bigger, just if you switch the difficulty. But just, you're just punished less for missing something. Like if you don't get a, if you don't get a parry, you know, that's, you just kind of dust it off and then you come back at it when it's your turn again. I'll tell you my, I mean, yeah, combat. Then, I mean, this combat is quite impressive. Just very detailed, very fleshed out, so much variety.

[00:38:53] It seems like Jake, and I think when people say like, how come this small studio was able to do this and like big studios can't, is because, because, I think the argument that people really have is there is a major scoping issue in the video game industry. Right? A massive scoping issue where too many teams are trying to do too many things at once and I think that this team

[00:39:23] did a pretty good job of identifying like, here's like the five things that we're going to do super well and we're going to just go hard on and we're going to eliminate everything else and we're just not going to worry about it. We're not going to have a system for X, Y, and Z. We're just going to do combat, you know, music and story and then here's like a little bit of super light, almost old school style world elements where you can kind of run out around the world and it's very similar

[00:39:53] to like an old school like Final Fantasy IX where you just have an overworld map and you're kind of running into stuff and so that minimizes the amount of scope, right? They don't have to think about systems and for all these different things, right? There's no villagers. There's no like crafting system. Like think about, you think about this game like you really break down what are the elements that are here? It's really, there's a ton of depth for what's there

[00:40:21] but it's not super wide in my opinion. And I think that was how they were able to deliver it and it's also not an insanely long game. It's like 30 hours and so, which is still pretty long for me but this is a really excellent, excellently scoped video game. Yeah. And I think that that's the thing that's missing from a lot of and I'll give you a counter example just to illustrate my point.

[00:40:52] Banisher's Ghosts of New Eden. Oh, interesting. Okay. That is a game that I think had so much potential, right? Looked really good. Super interesting storyline. Like a great hook in the beginning but I feel like just tried to do too much. It just tried to do too many things at once with, out the focus that I think it needed, right? It's trying to do like God of War style combat, exploration, you know, semi-open world.

[00:41:21] There's like some Metroidvania elements there. There's this whole like detective dialogue tree in there. There's all these different things and I ended up like bouncing off that game because it's also way too freaking long. It's huge. Like it is just endlessly huge and so you have, I think, a scoping challenge and I think the game that this game got, I think the thing that this game got right more than probably any game that I can think of in recent memory of this size is it is really,

[00:41:51] really well scoped. Yeah. And I think that that changed everything. So this is often, I think, one of the hallmarks of indie games and part of the reason why I love them is that they tend to be really tightly packaged in the way that you're describing. Like I played a game about digging a hole which was like a kind of a flavor of the month. I still need to play that one. Unicorn hit, right? And do the game is about digging a hole and optimizing how you dig a hole. Like that is 90% of that game

[00:42:21] and it's done in a really satisfying way. You know? And so I agree with you. I think really having a tightly packaged game and really going deep on what you know you're good at and what you want to be good in the game. I think that I totally agree with you. And I would say that like another example to bring up is South of Midnight which I think by all accounts everybody really loves the art direction, the story, but people are pretty cold on the combat. Yeah. But,

[00:42:51] dude, they made it so that you can skip combat encounters. And so I think having that flexibility like I've talked to a few people who are like, oh, you can turn off combat at South of Midnight. I'm definitely finishing that game now because you just saved, I don't know, three or four hours of something that people aren't enjoying and they can just get to the good stuff, right? Kind of makes you wonder maybe they shouldn't have had combat. I mean, that is a whole other conversation but it does make you wonder why did they allow

[00:43:20] that option to be there? I think another reason why Claire Obscure Expedition 33 is allowed or is able to be as successful as it was is because there's just less red tape, right? And this is something that the director has said in many interviews is that I think the one big phrase that I saw that was in a headline was like, this game would have taken 25 years to make it Ubisoft because this is a former Ubisoft employee that's the director and listen,

[00:43:49] you know Ubisoft if Claire Obscure Expedition 33 I mean, with the success that it has of course they wish it was a Ubisoft game because it's a super successful game, right? People love it. It's a critical darling and you know, it's pretty much paved a path for Sandfall Interactive to move forward, right? But this is the flip side of the conversation that Cameron and I have all the time about whether or not these AAA studios

[00:44:18] want to make or take risks and make games like Claire Obscure Expedition 33 and the answer is simply that they are not willing to take that kind of a risk, right? The risks are just so much smaller scale whereas you have a startup, a young pup that's brave and brash and going to take on the world with their brand new game, dude, you need it to be an extremely risky game otherwise people won't pay attention to it and so I think it worked

[00:44:46] for Sandfall Interactive and Claire Obscure Expedition 33 1 because the game was super high quality but it's just like, okay, let's just make this game the way that us, this core studio thinks that it should be and kind of going back just briefly to that conversation, this is why I think it's important to point out that you had about 30 full-time students or not students, 30 full-time developers working on this game beginning to end because they were able to have a strong cohesive vision

[00:45:16] so that they could contract people and say, hey, we just need you to do this part of this game. Yeah, 100%. Yeah. No, I mean, this is, obviously, I think some things came together here that are super special and that resulted in a special product. All right, can every AA studio replicate this? I think I lean a little bit towards Jake that this is a bit of lightning in a bottle, unfortunately,

[00:45:46] I think. I mean, I'm inclined to agree and this is why I hope, this is why I love seeing this game because, and this is why at the beginning of the episode I said, it's reinvigorating the space and hopefully drawing a lot more funding to this space. Yeah. But this is an inherently risky space to fund because it's not change. You're not throwing pennies at some indie devs to get something out, right? It's going to cost a little bit more money and it might hurt.

[00:46:16] There's no cushion to fall back onto if it doesn't do well. And so, I'm with you. I do see the lightning in a bottle a little bit with this game. The stars did align. But man, it's, how do you manufacture that star alignment for other games like this? That's the golden question, right? Yeah, I don't think it can be. I think it's, it's, you know, Sven's speech from Game Awards last year, right? This game is like the epitome of that speech. Yeah. You know, it really is like,

[00:46:45] it's a group of super passionate people that came together and were able to execute on a vision and deliver something like completely with, you know, frictionless creativity, right? Not frictionless in terms of like that there wasn't problems and it wasn't a challenge to make. Like, I'm sure there was incredible, I'm sure it was incredibly challenging. Like, I can't even imagine how challenging it was. But frictionless in their ability

[00:47:14] to say like, no, we want to make this thing because this is what we want to make because it's what excites us. Right? And the fact that it turned out to be a financial success is great. It's also apples to oranges, right? Because 2 million in sales in the first week is great, is amazing for a game like this, but sucks for like a triple A title. Yeah. You know, so it's a little bit apples to oranges, but that's okay. Right? Like this is, I think this is fantastic.

[00:47:43] It's also on Game Pass. Another win for Game Pass, Jake. Huge win. Game Pass having a banner year, man. Yep. This is off topic, but I think this might be Game Pass' best year ever if it keeps up. Absolutely. Right? Yeah. And it's not over. I mean, who knows? Who knows? Who knows what else we're getting? Yeah. The dominoes have fallen. Like that whole conversation that we've, we've every, you know, about Xbox, like having the

[00:48:13] lineup. They've got the lineup now. It's here. It's here. Right? The dominoes are absolutely falling. Yeah. Yeah. I'm with you. Yeah. I mean, that I think you bring up this, this apples to oranges thing. This is a great thing to keep in mind. And this is a, another reason why these triple A games are not being risky. They know that a lot of people like crafting. They know that a lot of people like open world that they want. And honestly, these game companies

[00:48:42] want you to spend more time in their games and worlds, especially if they have microtransactions, because the more time you spend in the game, the higher the likelihood that you purchase something in addition to the game. Right? And so it's, it's a win for them to have you play a 60 to 90 hour open world RPG. Like it's, it's, that's a good thing for them. Right? Um, but yeah, this very much falls, follows like this older model of games that we're just not seeing in triple A, which is let's just

[00:49:12] release one super quality product and just hope that the raw unit number sale is really high. Right? That's, that's what they're looking for. That's what they're not looking for in triple A games, but double A and indie, they definitely, that's their, still their, their primary funding financial model. It's just raw unit sales, not microtransactions. Meanwhile, Jake, in Q1 of 2025, Roblox generated $1 billion. Sorry,

[00:49:42] I had to bring up Roblox. Not Roblox, dude. I shouldn't even bring up like Monopoly Go. Dude, that is, that blows my mind. Didn't even hear about that mobile game until it was like this game made 5 billion in three weeks or something, which is, yeah, the profit margin is actually not that high because I think they spend like a billion on marketing, but anyway, probably, yeah. Yeah. And the last thing

[00:50:10] I will say personally, not a, I really liked the story and like the plot, super interesting hook world jury still out for me, man. I'm the, the like enemies that are all sort of supernatural dream worldy creatures. They all kind of look weirdo with the exception of, you know,

[00:50:40] I won't spoil anything. So I kind of just did whoops. Exception of one thing. All right. Other things. Sorry. Yeah. And then like, you're going around and like, you know, it's kind of this world map of this island that you're on that you've, you don't really know how you got, like, you know that you went there on an expedition, but you don't really understand like the geography of it.

[00:51:09] And then like these sort of dream worldy Parisian buildings that are just randomly populated. And it's this kind of gray haze over everything. I don't, I, I'm in the minority on this fully understand this. I brought this up on our, um, about episode, uh, uh, in the beginning, but yeah, I don't, yeah, I don't know. Just for me personally, I just, that's not that part because all the other stuff is there and it's great. I just, I,

[00:51:38] I don't know. I, I'm going to Paris next week, so maybe I'll change my mind. You'll get there and you'll be like, Oh yeah, this, this makes sense. I get this. This is why Claire obscure expedition 33 looks the way that it does. Everything's fragmented and nothing makes sense here. Yeah. I understand there's like this, is it existential Jake? Uh, I'm, we're still getting there. I mean, yes, but not like Frank. It could be right. It could be based on act

[00:52:08] one, but we don't know. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, for me, let's see. I think it is probably like my top in my top three favorite games of the year so far, to be honest, like it's really high, definitely top 10, definitely top five could potentially be top three. I'm pretty far into act two right now. And so obviously I want to beat the game and see what's going on. Um, yeah, I'm, I'm loving it. I love the combat. The voice acting is awesome. I love the characterization.

[00:52:39] Voice acting is so good, dude. my L right. Uh, I knew this, but this is the voice actors shadow heart in Walters gate three. Oh yeah, dude. Incredible. Huge fan. Huge fan. So, um, yeah, I mean so much of this, like you said, uh, the combat and the story and characters, right? That was a huge focus and they just, I think nailed every single aspect of that. That's the other thing, dude. How do they get the money for these voice actors?

[00:53:08] This is a great question. This is a powerhouse. This is a triple a cast. I mean, they knew where to spend their money. I think. Yeah. Yeah. Does this goes back to the scoping conversation? They were like, we want top tier voice actors and they got them. They got them. Absolutely. And they did. They're doing great. Right. Andy circus. Yeah, dude. Daredevil. Uh, Charlie, Charlie Cox, shadow heart, the chick from Baldur's gate three. Who's incredible.

[00:53:38] Like so good. And then, you know, everyone else too. Yeah. Honestly. Yeah. I think it's amazing. My, let's see my one hang up with this game. My one major hang up, I guess with this game is hot. Hot take. Dude. The optional content is just, I think the difficulty scoped way too high. Like I tried to go do like, this is a game that I don't want to mainline, but I feel like I keep getting pushed back

[00:54:06] to the main quest because all of these optional areas are like danger. I'll find this world boss. It just like wipes me hard in just a single hit. Like it's a team wipe. And I'm just like, I don't know, man, I don't want to sit here and practice my perfect dodges. And then eventually my parries. So I can take down a world boss. And this is what really kills me is, um, a lot of times the incentives for optional content is, uh, different skins. And listen, I get it.

[00:54:35] The classic like French mariner with the baguette, like dude, it's super funny. I like it, but I don't want to go scour the world hunting for dozens and dozens of, uh, skins. That's not good for me. Those, those aren't doing it for me either. Nope. So I do feel like, I mean the, the encounters themselves are pretty cool, but to your point, like some of them are so challenging that you're just like, dude, I, I don't know if I'm ready to like get deep in the Duffy of this

[00:55:04] combat system to the point where I can fully min max this boss, you know? Yeah. I don't want to spend 30 minutes on an optional boss or the chance of getting cosmetics. That's end game stuff for me. That's if I really feel like being a sicko and achievement hunting, I do that. But as I'm playing through the game, I just feel like I'm constantly being pushed back to the main quest line because that's where it's comfortable to play. Um, and, but I will say like when you're doing the main quest,

[00:55:32] I think the difficulty pacing is really spot on. I think it's done super well, but I just am feeling no desire to do options. So when we do our full episode on the game, I will have beaten the main game and I don't know, mark my words, check, check back, um, with Jacob from the past. If you're listening in the future and see if Jacob from the future did any of the side content, I don't think he's gonna. Yeah.

[00:55:58] I would also like to finish this because I'm interested to see if it can get me convinced on the world jury's still out. I want it to, I want it to, but, uh, but we'll find out knowing me. I probably won't finish it, but I'll play more. Well, I wish I had, this is a good time for having a steam deck with game pass because I'm about to be on 20 hours of flights. Oh yeah, dude, you, you would definitely beat it. Xbox. Where's your handheld?

[00:56:28] Where's your game pass machine, bro? Where's the handle, man? Missed opportunity. Should I go over to Best Buy and buy, you think I can buy a Legion go like by some, by next week? Probably. Well, don't they have some sort of partner with the rogue ally? Is that what it is? It's not the Legion go. It's the rogue ally. Yeah. The rogue ally. You could probably get one. Oh, guess what? Uh, taking us all the way back to PAX. The first time I played a steam deck was at PAX. Oh, what'd you think?

[00:56:58] Feels, you gonna buy one? It feels immensely better in my hands than a switch ever has. Dude, switch feels terrible in your hands. Yeah, I know. I played, I played a switch on the flight home and I was like, dude, this is, does not feel like a steam deck. I should look into this rogue ally. See, I don't fly enough. If I flew a lot more than I definitely look at investing one. I don't think I could justify like a, like a super expensive handheld, especially cause I just ordered a switch to. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:57:28] Now I'm hoping the switch to feels a lot better in my hands. Um, but, uh, yeah, dude, I don't know. Well, ladies and gentlemen, this has been our, uh, first impressions, our breakdown of, uh, act one, Claire expedition, Claire obscure expedition 33. We are going to do a full blown episode with a special guest, uh, coming very soon. Uh, we're, we're still kind of organizing that, but we wanted to, we wanted to,

[00:57:58] this, this game's pretty big. Uh, it has a lot of eyeballs on it. It's very relevant right in this moment. So we wanted to kind of talk about it and give, give the game time to breathe in our conversations, time to kind of evolve a little bit on this one. So you're going to get a little bit more on Claire expedition, Claire obscure expedition 33. I think then similar to how we've done big episodes for like Elden ring and tears of the kingdom and games like that. Like we'll take some extra time and do multiple episodes. So kind of doing the same thing here.

[00:58:28] So, yep. Um, and what a mouthful of a name game to say, uh, yeah, I keep, I keep tripping over. Well, um, I keep trying to, I want to call it co 33, but I don't think people are doing that. So I don't think I can get away with it. Claire obscure obscure expedition. What's the front? I should play this game in French. I've heard that the French VA is amazing to be honest.

[00:58:57] I bet it is. I bet it is. Yeah. Well, ladies and gentlemen, if you like the show, please leave us a review on your podcast platform of choice. Helps people find the show. You can also support us directly. If you want patron.com slash period or cast, you can sign up at any tier that makes sense to you to get the level of content that you desire. Highest here gets you the most stuff. Smallest here gets you the least stuff. It still gets you extra stuff. Go sign up, uh, on Patreon.

[00:59:28] Uh, also check out Jake's stream because Jake streams chip dip, twitch.tv slash chip dip 18 streaming. Jake, what's the streaming schedule? Ooh, it's going to change this summer because my kids will be out of school, but, um, you can definitely catch me. Definitely Tuesday and Saturday evenings will be pretty regular in the summer. Tuesday and Saturday evenings. Um, yeah, go check that out.

[00:59:58] Um, by the time this episode airs, I will have been on a stream with Jake streaming Gollum, which, uh, that should be available. What? And Twitch bods, probably Twitch bods. And we might even dust off the old YouTube and put it up there. Yeah. Like it could be a good candidate. Uh, yeah, we're going to play Gollum guys. So I am, I'm not looking forward to this. I'm interested. Okay. I'm, I'm sickly curious.

[01:00:27] Is we're basically going to play this game until one or both of us is like, I cannot do anymore. Yep. That's the, it's going to be interesting to see how long that lasts. Probably not that long. Uh, folks also, uh, join us on the discord discord, a link link to that is in the description. Um, I really need to get Jake. I know we have like a server name. I need to figure out what our actual URL is, but if you want to join the discord, the link, uh,

[01:00:56] invite link is in the podcast description. You can come join our conversation. Uh, yeah, discord. Our discord is a fantastic place. Great community of people who listen to the show, fellow podcasters. Uh, and we talk, talking about everything, game recommendations, just a fantastic place to share your thoughts on video games. That is super safe. Uh, you can have great, we have great debates on here, great conversations. So come join us. Thank you so much for listening.

[01:01:24] Very much appreciate you and have a great night.