Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 might be one of the most polished and emotionally gripping RPGs of the decade, but it only got there after a complete reinvention.
The game is now an atmospheric, richly painted experience that taps into France's cultural essence. This wasn't the original vision. In fact, the original concept for Clair Obscur was so different from the final version that it's tough to picture how it would have stood out.
The truth is, this game dodged a creative bullet, and its success today is thanks to a bold decision to scrap everything and start fresh. When it was still known as We Lost, the game was set in a steampunk version of Victorian England.
The concept was a hybrid RPG world teeming with aliens, zombies, brass gadgets, and decaying London streets. The original concept was heavily influenced by common steampunk clichés: massive gears on buildings, tons of smoke and iron, and an overall design language that felt more cobbled together.
The initial version even included a demo trailer with placeholder assets and rough text-to-speech voiceovers, which was a far cry from the grand orchestral storytelling and professional voice acting in the final game. At that point, Sandfall Interactive was still finding its ground.
As a way to better understand his team's workflow, Guillaume Broche, the studio's founder and former Ubisoft project manager, began learning Unreal Engine outside of work hours. It started off as an experiment but quickly blossomed into a full-blown indie project.
As more people joined, including future lead writer Jennifer Svedberg-Yen (who initially applied to be a voice actor), the game's scope expanded. However, the story remained a jumbled mix of sci-fi elements, with characters far from what we recognize today.
The shift didn't happen gradually—it was a reboot triggered by a single investor call. When potential backers told the team not to limit themselves and asked what the game could become without financial restrictions, it made them stop and think.
That exchange gave Broche and Svedberg-Yen the nudge they needed to move away from steampunk and create something that felt more authentic and original. They went back to the drawing board, not to rework what they had, but to abandon it altogether.
The reboot brought forth a story that's intimately connected to French aesthetics, history, and imagination. The team chose to build Lumière, a surreal city inspired by Belle Époque France, instead of foggy London. They chose to explore painterly themes of life, death, and transformation rather than sticking to traditional RPG tropes.
This new vision gave rise to the Gommage ritual, a central theme in the story where people vanish at 33. Some elements from the early version did survive the reboot, but they were stripped down and repurposed. Names like Maelle, Lune, and Verso existed in the original prototype, but their personalities, designs, and narrative roles changed drastically.
The game started to look and feel like something truly authored, not something held together by prefab assets and placeholders. The real factor was the environment in which the team worked. Kepler Interactive gave the developers time to refine their ideas without rushing or causing burnout.
That space allowed the game to evolve organically, and it shows. It's rare to see such a dramatic creative pivot in game development, and even rarer to see it pay off at this scale.
The early version of Clair Obscur wasn't bad—it just wasn't special. It reminded us of what we've seen time and time again: a shadowy, gear-laden fantasy world full of beasts and intrigue. But what we got instead is a game brimming with personality and vision.
It's clear now just how lucky we are that We Lost became Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. In the end, Clair Obscur dodged a bullet and rewrote what was possible. The outcome is a game that doesn't just stand out in 2025, but could shape the future of narrative RPGs for years.