Games to look forward to in 2025: Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
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An ambitious French epic inspired by 20th-century surrealist painters and the belle époque will push the turn-based RPG genre forward. In the 1990s, the turn-based RPG was unstoppable. From Pokémon to the multimillion-selling PlayStation Final Fantasy games, there was nothing cooler than vanquishing blocky beasts via drop down menus. Then came the new millennium. As computing power blossomed and western-made games rose in popularity, traditional Japanese-made RPGs slowly but surely fell out of fashion.
![[Clair Obscur: Expedition 33.]](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/8a71a107fdc32a63bc1d3dcf65530b1fc67455e1/0_0_3840_2160/master/3840.jpg?width=445&dpr=1&s=none&crop=none)
“What Final Fantasy was doing before – a more realistic, grounded take on the turn-based genre – now, nobody is doing that. And that’s where we want to be,” says Guillaume Broche, CEO of Sandfall Interactive and creative director of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. Citing 2007’s Xbox 360 classic Lost Odyssey as the last truly high-budget turn-based RPG, the ex Ubisoft employee founded a studio with a mission to move the genre forward.
The result is Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. The name is a baffling mouthful, but this ambitious French epic is inspired by France’s 20th-century belle époque and surrealist painters. A lavishly rendered party of adventurers move through a world that shimmers with a dreamlike quality, from a Little Mermaid-esque underwater kingdom to gothic, grandiose mansions.
It’s not just the setting and aesthetic that separate Expedition 33 from its peers, but its fast, fluid combat. “I’m a bit burned out on turn-based RPGs, because I’ve just played far too many,” Broche shrugs. “So for players like me, we wanted to make sure the turn-based battles feel more interactive and different, requiring skill and offering something fresh.”.
