Knowing what's happening off camera in Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 brings some levity to those dramatic cutscenes

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 camera mode — (Image credit: Sandfall Interactive)

There's a lot going on in games that we're not supposed to see, such as the invisible bunnies that make World of Warcraft work. In the case of hit RPG Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, it turns out that some of those dramatic cutscenes are happening in the midst of unseen limb chaos, as evidenced by a recent dev blog.

The hit RPG got a photo mode in an update late last year, which senior gameplay programmer Florian Torres notes "allows players to see a lot of things we don't want to show during normal gameplay." With apologizes to Clair Obscur's cinematics team, Torres offers an example—the first image below is what you see during the cinematic, and the second is what the camera mode reveals:

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I'm not a doctor but those ankles might need to be X-rayed. I'm unsure what to do about a subterranean leg.

I played around with the photo mode myself during cutscenes in the prologue and didn't find any contortionism, just a few characters hanging out in their default poses, but I imagine there's more off-camera appendage shenanigans to find throughout the game. I was impressed with the amount of freedom Sandfall Interactive gives us in the mode. With some patience, you can traverse the ocean and admire the untextured sea floor on your first visit to the harbor.

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Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 camera mode examples. — (Image credit: Sandfall Interactive)

When developing the photo mode, Sandfall decided that allowing players to break the illusion was worth it to avoid stifling their creative impulses.

"In many games we tested, photo modes often felt restrictive, which could quickly become frustrating," says QA coordinator Naja Dalmagne. "So, from the very beginning, one of the key goals we all agreed on was to give players as much freedom as possible. It was really about letting players express their creativity without getting in the way."

Another issue the developers encountered was heads and torsos becoming "displaced or deformed" if a character hadn't been visible recently during exploration, according to Dalmagne. It sounds like they may have fixed that one, but here's what it looked like:

Don't you just hate it when the bottom of your face shoots through your groin?

You can read more about how Clair Obscur's photo mode was implemented in the Steam post. Since the mode was added in a big free update last year, players have been sharing some cool shots on the Steam community page.

It'd be nice to see this 'just accept that players are going to see behind-the-scenes jank' philosophy applied to other photo modes—I agree with Sandfall that limits are just annoying, even if they do help preserve the illusion that consistent physical rules underpin the world and no one's torso is capable of wandering away from their neck.

Tyler grew up in Silicon Valley during the '80s and '90s, playing games like Zork and Arkanoid on early PCs. He was later captivated by Myst, SimCity, Civilization, Command & Conquer, all the shooters they call "boomer shooters" now, and PS1 classic Bushido Blade (that's right: he had Bleem!). Tyler joined PC Gamer in 2011, and today he's focused on the site's news coverage. His hobbies include amateur boxing and adding to his 1,200-plus hours in Rocket League.

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