If you listen to the punters, you might believe that Clair Obscur: Expedition 33—a rather really very good videogame from Sandfall Interactive—rather embarrassed the modern RPG megastudios of today. How could this team of 30 (a bit more than that, actually) outdo the giants of the industry? For shame! Shame! (Just ignore the fact that Metaphor Re:Fantazio was excellent, it doesn't suit this narrative).
In actuality, I've always viewed Obscur as a love letter to these studios, regardless of my opinions on whether they've gone a touch wayward. While it's good for engagement to get folks invested in a war, I've never had the sense that director Guillaume Broche was anything other than a superfan of the games that very clearly fused themselves to his DNA, DNA which forged 2025's best Je-RPG.
It's nice to have that hunch confirmed yet again—Sandfall Interactive devs, including Broche himself, recently visited Square Enix's offices for "a creatively rich exchange of visions and ideas".
As seen in the X post (shared below), Broche was accompanied by lead programmer Tom Guillermin and co-founder and producer Francois Meurisse in a visit to the creators of Final Fantasy. You can also see Naoki Hamaguchi, the director of Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, and Final Fantasy series producer Yoshinori Kitas in the photo.
Guillaume Broche, Francois Meurisse, Tom Guillermin from Sandfall, and Alexis Garavaryan from Kepler—creators of EXPEDITION 33—visited the Square Enix office for a creatively rich exchange of visions and ideas.-EXPEDITION 33のクリエイターであるSandfallのGuillaume… pic.twitter.com/hIhMNYZJ8cJuly 24, 2025
It's a nice reminder—that I'm maybe a little cynical about people heeding—that game developers don't tend to engage in console-esque slap fights with each other, especially if they're making good games. If the adage "good artists borrow, great artists steal" is true, then you absolutely have to be a fan of the companies that inspired you—and I don't think I've seen a game that more lovingly combined its darlings than Clair Obscur: Expedition 33.
On the flipside, it's nice to see Square Enix taking inspiration from its sprog competitors—though Square's not the only one to give them an invite. Hideo Kojima of Metal Gear and Death Stranding fame also had them over to talk shop, which is lovely to see.
From the studio that brought us “EXPEDITION 33,” with Guillaume Broche, Francois Meurisse, and Tom Guillermin of Sandfall and Alexis Garavaryan of Kepler. pic.twitter.com/ut18fkGnGsJuly 24, 2025
Sandfall developers have well and truly established themselves as the popular new kids of the industry—a title I'm very much certain they deserve, even if their game endings need to stop ripping my heart out of my chest.
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