There are still secrets in Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 fans are yet to discover, but its director won’t give any hints.
Speaking to Eurogamer about the game’s forthcoming update and the future of the Clair Obscur franchise, director Guillaume Broche discussed inspiration taken from the Final Fantasy games. While there’s a reference to Final Fantasy 8 specifically in the Gestral Village – with characters swapping “Double Dyad cards” in a nod to that game’s Triple Triad card game – overall Broche simply took inspiration from the general vibe of Square Enix’s iconic series.
But are there other secrets yet to be uncovered? “There are, but I don’t want to say them because they won’t be secrets anymore,” Broche told Eurogamer. “Maybe they have been found, but I haven’t seen anything about it. There are still a few things, yeah.”
Fans have scoured Expedition 33 for hints and references, but it seems some of these weren’t intentional.
“The funny thing is [fans] found secrets that were absolutely not secrets originally,” said Broche. “And we are just like, ok cool. I guess that’s a secret!”
Ahead of the game’s release, Broche told Eurogamer he was keen for players to experiment with the game’s battle system to create “broken builds” and – as a Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice speedrunner himself – he was looking forward to seeing no-hit runs of Expedition 33.
So did the community live up to his expectations?
“They are up to my expectations, which were very high,” said Broche. “They destroyed the game very fast. My personal speedrun record was broken in one week, maybe even less.”
The team did release an update to fix one particular ability that proved a little too powerful. But other than that, Broche is “very happy that people found crazy builds that even [he] didn’t really think about. It’s exactly what we made the system for.”