Saturday Morning Gaming: Clair Obscure Expedition 33

Remember the show Buffy the Vampire Slayer? There was a rumor I heard once that Joss Whedon had a plan to hook the viewers from the first show by having a regular setup for the show with opening credits that had the usual: characters from different moments in the season, looking good, looking fierce, then giving a slow infectious smile as a cute little poppy number plays. AND THEN HE’D KILL ONE OF THE PEOPLE YOU SAW IN THE OPENING CREDITS AT THE CLIMAX OF THE EPISODE. Like, this is Season One, Episode One. And they were in the credits! AND THEN THEY DIED!!!

Come back next week to find that, yep, still dead. Oh, and he wouldn’t be in the opening credits anymore.

Well, of course, network executives were horrified and said “NO WAY! THERE IS NO WAY WE WILL LET YOU DO THAT!” and so, instead, we got the episode we got.

I mean, if that story is true. If it’s not, well, we just got the episode we got anyway.

In Clair Obscure: Expedition 33, you are…

Wait, do you hate spoilers? If you hate spoilers, just get the game. Just get it right now. It’s Final Fantasy plus French Existentialism plus Paper Mario. So far in the game, I have been excited to have cutscenes, excited for combat, and excited to explore the map. “We’re back to the good part”, I’ve said pretty much every time the game transitions from one thing to the other. The gameplay is fun, the graphics are gorgeous, the music is FREAKIN’ OUT OF THIS WORLD, the voice actors are killing it, and it is dégoulinant de Francité.

When you meet one of the characters, she’s wearing a black and white striped shirt with a red kerchief scarf, for goodness’ sake.

Nobody smokes but it’s actually a distraction because when you see all of these French people talking about existence, you think “they should be smoking”. And that’s my main complaint about the game: Nobody smokes.

Everything else about the game is good. It’s worth going into unspoiled. It’s worth paying full price. It’s that good of a game.

Okay, still here? Alright.

In Clair Obscure: Expedition 33, you are Gustave. A guy who puts the game company in jeopardy from being sued by Robert Pattinson. You’re wandering around a dreamlike Paris, going to visit your ex who is getting ready for the “gommage”. Off in the distance is a giant rock with the numbers “34” on them. You can see this rock from pretty much anywhere in the city and the number hovers over everything.

You wander around, you talk to your friends you find out that you are the history guy in charge of Expedition 33… which will kick off as soon as the gommage is over.

As it turns out, the gommage is the moment when “The Paintress” stands up and wipes out the 34 and writes “33” on the rock and everybody 34 years of age and over is Thanos-snapped. Instead of turning into a black dust, they turn into petals. You watch your ex turn into rose petals and blow away.

And you are now the oldest person in this dreamlike Paris. Get good and drunk because Expedition 33 embarks in the morning. You’ll have a bunch of questions to have answered once you sail off to the island with The Paintress:

1. Why are you doing this to everybody?
2. How can we prevent the gommage in the future?
3. What happened to the other 67 expeditions that left before this one?

You’ve got a set of rules: Document everything and leave documents behind for the people who may come after. The mission is more important than any one member of the team, assuming one dies. Keep going and finish the mission. Save the world.

Well, your party lands on the beach of the Paintress’s Island and you get some of your questions answered, good and hard, in the most French Existentialist way possible. After everything calms down a little bit, it’s you and your party members and you’re off to get the other questions answered. And, seriously, this story is *GRIPPING*. I felt myself leaning forward more than once and wondering/dreading what was going to happen next… and then I couldn’t wait for the next one.

You go and explore and all along the way, you meet fantastic monsters, you make fantastic friends, and you have absolutely *FANTASTIC* combat.

Seriously, it’s great. Have you played any of the Paper Mario rpgs? It’s that kind of combat. You will have a bunch of special attacks that do X damage but if you press your button at just the right time, you do X + Y damage. If you get attacked, you can press the button with pretty good timing and dodge or you can press a different button with *PERFECT* timing and take no damage and counter-attack.

There’s all sorts of little mini-combos. Like, this spell does X damage, but if the creature has “burn”, then it does Y damage instead. So you’ll want your guy with the fire attack to attack the enemy prior to you using that spell. You’re going to *REALLY* want to work on your timing, too… that counter-attack is potentially combat-ending. It’s really powerful and I’m sure that we’re mere weeks away from the first “no damage” run showing up on Twitch.

You’ll want to practice the combat, you’ll want to see what happens next in the story, and you’ll want to do every little dinky sidequest so you don’t miss any of the cool weapons or the cool upgrades or the cool experience points that will have you go up cool levels to get new cool skills.

Grinding for XP doesn’t even feel like grinding. It feels like getting good.

Man, this is a good game. I’m only a handful of hours into it (I have a couple of new friends who show up in my campground… if you want a better hint than that, I have seen a rose that reminds me of my ex) and I can’t wait to get back to it.

It’s such a good game. Wow. This game is such a good game. My buddy is playing it at the same time that I am and he told me “I can’t wait for HBO to screw this up when they inevitably turn this into a show” and I agree with that 100%.

So… what are you playing?