There are so many ways to describe Sandfall Interactive’s 2025 RPG Clair Obscur Expedition 33. Moving, beautiful, exhilarating. Game of the Year frontrunner. But, perhaps most obvious, after a glance at its mime enemies and characters clad in berets with baguettes at their back, is French. The game is French AF, wearing its inspirations proudly, which makes sense; Sandfall was formed by French game developers.
“It’s been an amazing journey,” CTO and lead programmer Tom Guillermin told me in a recent video interview discussing what the past few months have been like for Sandfall after the runaway success of Clair Obscur, which has sold 5 million copies and counting. Alongside COO and producer Francois Meurisse, we chatted about the forthcoming update that’ll add a new environment, challenging boss fights, and more. We also discussed the absolute most important aspects of the game.
Case in point: Was Francois the character named after Francois the developer?
“Oh, that’s a really good question,” Meurisse said. “I think at that time we’re primarily looking for French names that were […] typical French names.” He noted there was no direct connection between Francois, who is friends with fan-favorite Esquie in the game, and himself, “but I ended up really much liking that specific character in the game. So I’m a bit proud that Francois has such an important role in the story.”
Francois doesn’t have a large role at the outset, and, until the post-game, is only encountered when players meet Esquie. When Act 3 hits, and the secrets of Clair Obscur’s central Paintress-versus-expeditioners conflict are revealed, players get to know Francois more. Just like Gustave, Maelle, Verso, and everyone else, he’s a tragic figure. However, threaded between the tragedy and grief present in Clair Obscur are moments of lightheartedness and French details.
“Actually we went really over the top, but in an unexpected way” with the game’s Frenchness, Meurisse said. He noted some people “were even pissed” that there wasn’t a French-language dub announced alongside the English dub cast, and so in October 2024 the team released the Baguette Trailer announcing the French voice cast in a “kind of self joking way.” (Seeing all the characters, even Renoir, in baguette costumes is quite funny, especially knowing what happens in the emotional scenes the trailer showcases.)
“And this wasn’t even planned to be in the game at first. It was just really a joke when we’re discussing specific marketing,” Meurisse said, referring to the “mimes and red berets with baguettes.” As Guillermin succinctly stated, “It would be harder to embrace our Frenchness even more.”
“Could put snails and frogs everywhere in the next game then,” Meurisse quipped.
The baguette costumes really hit with players, as did the prologue’s trash-can man. The opening segment in Lumière has interactable trash cans scattered about, telling the player there might be more than meets the eye to them. One of Lumière’s citizens hides in a trash can, and explains this is his way of avoiding the Paintress, the mysterious deity responsible for turning Lumière’s citizens into flower petals. “I turn 33 today. Can you believe my luck?” the trash-can man says, moments before the Gommage occurs and ostensibly takes his life.
“I think it’s such a staple in gaming to have hidden stuff when you interact X number of times,” Guillermin said. “It’s great to see people go crazy on the perfectly normal trash can, nothing to see here.”
Clair Obscur’s Lumière is clearly inspired by France, and even includes its own version of the Eiffel Tower, all broken and malformed, bent at an unnatural angle. “We wanted it to be in a French setting because there were some proximity with those references, obviously,” Meurisse said. Sandfall’s artists were “pretty free about the references that they wanted to use” in crafting Lumière. “We were also under some technical constraints, so we couldn’t do Lumière as big as a city as we could have done or adding too much urban density to the game,” Meurisse added.
The Lumière-set prologue is instantly compelling and establishes the stakes at play in the story. You can control early protagonist Gustave or his former lover, Sophie. The game doesn’t directly state Sophie is on her way to being Gommaged, but dialogue and environmental cues allow the players to piece this together on their own. Clair Obscur’s prologue is one of the game’s strongest storytelling sections, but that wasn’t always the case, according to Sandfall.
“It’s part of the [development] story that at some point we were a bit skeptical about the intro, the prologue of the game,” Meurisse said. “Lumière was feeling a bit empty at that time, and it had to be narratively engaging to create something from the very beginning of the game.” He noted how important it is to get players invested right away, and that CEO and creative director Guillaume Broche took time to “rethink the narrative path and the prologue and the environmental storytelling and to add lots of NPCs, small gameplay elements” to make the opening feel “alive.”
“Also being able to control Sophie, which was not the case,” Guillermin added. He explained that making her playable “really helps create a connection to her. And when you reach the harbor, then it’s even tougher.” Calling the opening “tough” might be a bit of an understatement — I could barely watch the scene through tear-filled eyes, and I doubt I’m alone there.
“It might be a little bit sadistic,” Guillermin said, “but it’s important to build a genuine connection to the characters.”
After covering some of the more emotional parts of the game, our discussion ended on a more light-hearted and gracious note. We talked about Expedition 60, the famous naked expedition, and Meurisse commented on how “it’s cool to have had this space to put many little stories like that.
“I take this opportunity to give a shout out to the cosplayers that did Expedition 60 [at Dragon Con] in Atlanta. [We] weren’t even aware there would be some Expedition 33 cosplayers.” The team found social media posts of “200 people dressed with red berets and that specific group making expedition 60 cosplay,” with Meurisse saying, “this is one of the photo[s] I shared the most with other people. This is really a great achievement with regards to cosplay.”
Players learn about Expedition 60 through Clair Obscur’s collectible journals. They give plenty insight into what life was like for previous expeditions, like the one that got sick from eating Nevrons. I couldn’t help but wonder if there were any off-the-wall ideas for journal entries that didn’t make it into the game.
“I mean,” Guillermin said, “as soon as you have a naked expedition, I think that’s as crazy as you can get.”
