One of the core elements of Lovecraftian storytelling is the idea that brushing up against knowledge changes you—the fear is not that you look upon something comprehensible, it's that you look at something no-one else can understand and, just for a fleeting moment, get that it is possible. Then you need to go back to your ordinary life.
The creator of Painkiller and current creative director of Witchfire, Adrian Chmielarz, sounds a little like a Cthulhu-stricken Lovecraft protagonist in his recent interview with Gamesindustry.biz. The cosmic entity in question? Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, which has confounded executive suits and game developers alike by raking in enormous success despite being built by a core team of 30 people (and a large list of contractors).
At the very least, Chmielarz is talking from a place of comparison with Witchfire's similarly-sized team of just under 30 devs—he's cognisant of the above quibble, stating later in the interview "we use outsourcing, and Sandfall Interactive used a lot of outsourcing". And he boggles not at the size, but at the relative amount of novices on Sandfall's roster.
"We only wanted to work with the best," Chmielarz explains, "Because during the development of Bulletstorm or Gears, I had a taste of that, and then I thought, 'This is what I want to do for the rest of my life.' So I don't care if the project is big or small, I only want to work with like-minded people: really passionate, really talented people."
He uses Valve as an example of the kind of team he wanted to create: "Valve hires people that can be self-organized. They don't really need a producer with a whip in order to create something. But when you have passionate people, this comes naturally. You also remove a lot of traction, because you just mention something to the guy, he gets it very quickly, you iterate, and then it's done."
In other words, "There is this old saying that ten professional soldiers are as effective as a hundred amateurs, or even a thousand, and that's quite simply true. So when you have a small team, it's really important that you have the best people."
Which is where Clair Obscur comes in, because ostensibly, it's a team of first-timers. Its composer was stumbled into on soundcloud, its lead writer from Reddit. Director Guillaume Broche seemingly has a sharp eye for talented newcomers and the guts to give them a chance, rather than hiring industry vets.
"Last week I learned that the guys behind Expedition 33 hired a lot of newbies, people who [hadn't made] a game before. And now my world view is ruined, and I don't know what to do.
"Here we have a game that looks AAA to me, it's just phenomenal in every aspect. There's a deep story, deep method of work, good gameplay, great visuals and sound. It's a very coherent product. And then you hear that the core team was 30 people, half of which were first timers. And I'm like, 'I don't know what to believe anymore.'
"Obviously, we didn't make Witchfire with 26 people, because we use outsourcing, and Sandfall Interactive used a lot of outsourcing—when you roll the credits on Expedition 33, it's 10 or 15 minutes long. But still, that doesn't change the fact that the core team responsible for the vast majority of the game and the ideas and execution is around 30 people, half of which are new. So it's the biggest mystery in gaming right now."
He's got some theories, though. For instance, Clair Obscur's a pretty cleverly put-together game: "When you actually look at Expedition 33 from a designer's point of view, there's an incredible amount of smart decisions that allow them to make a game that looks AAA, but is in reality full of shortcuts.
"I'll give you two examples: one is very easy, the other is more complex. The easy one is the enemies don't have faces. You don't really think about it, because the main characters have faces, but 99% of enemies don't have a face that you need to animate.
"A more complex one is that I couldn't understand how such a small studio can produce such high-quality cinematics. But then when you watch it, 99% of these cut scenes are actually theatre plays, meaning the characters do not interact with the environment … It takes a lot of effort and time to match animations with the environment, because even an act as simple as moving a chair to the right suddenly becomes a super, super complicated thing."
This also tracks with how Sandfall Interactive handled its voice actors. Clair Obscur has some top-billing VO talent, including Charlie Cox, Andy Serkis, Ben Starr, and Jennifer English. But rather than do the AAA thing of hiring them for expensive, in-depth mocap sessions, Sandfall used its own in-house mocap actors.
These actors did an incredible job, mind: Maxence Cazorla's ability to render heartbreak on his face is written all over Gustave in-game. But whenever you're looking at a cutscene in Clair Obscur, you're actually seeing two performances from two separate actors punched into one virtual body. Which leads to situations like the poor Charlie Cox being a bit ambushed as he's credited for a performance he spent around four hours recording.
This is ultimately what Chmielarz thinks let Sandfall punch above its weight, and what he believes is "missing in AAA games, which is finding shortcuts, [rather than] brute forcing."
