Clair Obscur: Expedition 33's lead says they messed up a little by putting a ton of great endgame content next to a final boss you can easily outlevel: 'We weren't sure if our game was going to be that good'

Maelle, a character in Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, kneels in deference to a monolith of the paintress, which holds a 33 emblazoned on its center. — (Image credit: Sandfall Interactive)

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is a brilliant RPG with one wrinkle—the endgame scaling its touch skewiff. It's not bad, don't misunderstand me: It's just that if you're a completionist like me, you likely hit Act 3 and roamed around the overworld, ticking off all of your checklists, only to loop back to the final boss and flatten it like an artist with a bottle of turpentine, a paint roller, and a grudge.

The game's lead game designer Michel Nohra confesses that they might've gone a little astray, there, per an interview with Edge magazine for Issue 419 (thanks, Gamesradar): "The only thing I regret is not making it clearer that if you want the intended difficulty for the boss, you have to go beat it now."

See, while it's a safe assumption that Clair Obscur lets you keep playing after the credits roll, it's also a safe assumption that you're meant to do a little exploring first—more than that, Nohra explains, most players keep the final boss as a motivating carrot on the end of a stick:

"So it was a surprise for us [that] people were doing every single thing there is to do in the game before going to the final dungeon. We're happy about that, but we didn't see it coming." It's a humility that's echoed elsewhere in the interview—mostly, Sandfall's trying to make sure it keeps perspective after making one of last year's unexpected award-sweeping hits.

Harvey's history with games started when he first begged his parents for a World of Warcraft subscription aged 12, though he's since been cursed with Final Fantasy 14-brain and a huge crush on G'raha Tia. He made his start as a freelancer, writing for websites like Techradar, The Escapist, Dicebreaker, The Gamer, Into the Spine—and of course, PC Gamer. He'll sink his teeth into anything that looks interesting, though he has a soft spot for RPGs, soulslikes, roguelikes, deckbuilders, MMOs, and weird indie titles. He also plays a shelf load of TTRPGs in his offline time. Don't ask him what his favourite system is, he has too many.

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