Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 Launches on Steam with 145k Concurrent Players and 'Very Positive' Reviews (92% Positive)

Wow it came within 1500 of matching it's Saturday peak on a Monday, this has second weekend peak potential depending on how quickly people beat the game.
 
Which one of you bought it?


csTmeWV.png
 
Legendary drops video dropped:



This semi-sarcastic comment really put into perspective what might've happened if it had been put through a typical AAA evaluation process:

yt-fdsdgty413i1293.png


Realistically, the pitch probably wouldn't had made it passed Ubisoft's editorial team and/or stripped off any personality and neutered beyond recognition.
 
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Hypereides said:
Legendarydrops video dropped:



This semi-sarcastic comment really put into perspective what might've happened if it had been put through a typical AAA evaluation process:

yt-fdsdgty413i1293.png


Realisitically, the pitch probably wouldn't had made it passed Ubisoft's editoral team and/or stripped off any personality and neutered beyond recognition.
Click to expand...


The women playable cast certainly wouldn't all be beautiful like we have now.
 
hWuEiaV.jpeg

Seems to be doing remarkably better today than the last few days, plus a much higher minimum player count.

Is there some Asian holiday or something?
 
GWpZdV4.png


It's holding really well and was just over 4k from hitting a new peak on a Thursday! Word of mouth is getting around and it's almost certainly gonna hit a new all time peak this weekend. Love to see it!
 
Grildon Tundy said:
Play the one that sounds like the most fun 🤷‍♂️ You don't owe a game your time.
Click to expand...
While true, my curiosity rises with every new bit of praise. I think I'll beat the current one, Oblivion Remastered, Shelve Forbidden West on the back burner and see what this is about. I'm a huge fan of the turn based battle system and old JRPG in general. I Used to import JRPGs before they hit PS1..
 
ssringo said:
GWpZdV4.png


It's holding really well and was just over 4k from hitting a new peak on a Thursday! Word of mouth is getting around and it's almost certainly gonna hit a new all time peak this weekend. Love to see it!
Click to expand...
1. May is a holiday in many European countries (workers day). Explains the thursday peak. Its a somewhat long game so people didnt just beat it on the first weekend.

I know I played it yesterday :D
 
giphy.gif


Good job to the team, this game was amazing and they deserves all the praise they get.

I'm glad managed get the physical copy day one even tho I didn't pre-ordered.
 
Dirk Benedict said:
While true, my curiosity rises with every new bit of praise. I think I'll beat the current one, Oblivion Remastered, Shelve Forbidden West on the back burner and see what this is about. I'm a huge fan of the turn based battle system and old JRPG in general. I Used to import JRPGs before they hit PS1..
Click to expand...

Dude, me too. I used to love playing almost every SNES and PS1 JRPGs. They always caught my attention immediately... After around the PS3 era though, that excitement basically died for the genre. The stories, character and writing became too "childish" and predictable for my taste.

All I'm gonna say is, based on your history, you're gonna love this one. Just don't go looking anything online because I am already seeing a bunch of spoilers appear.
 
...To be a fly on the wall in executive meetings at Ubisoft/EA/Square/AAA studios when this game comes up.

Imagine holding the reins on a bloated, cludgy, outdated enterprise, and this game disrupts your understanding of the market.

Clair Obscur is to Final Fantasy XVI as a Tesla Roadster is to a Bugatti Chiron.
 
Grildon Tundy said:
...To be a fly on the wall in executive meetings at Ubisoft/EA/Square/AAA studios when this game comes up.

Imagine holding the reins on a bloated, cludgy, outdated enterprise, and this game disrupts your understanding of the market.

Clair Obscur is to Final Fantasy XVI as a Tesla Roadster is to a Bugatti Chiron.
Click to expand...
The people in these boardrooms will fail to grasp how something like Clair obscur came to be. They're devoid of imagination nor creators themselves. Heck, I reckon a large portion of these suits aren't even gamers themselves in the first place. They cling to trends, rigid evaluation processes, high fidelity graphics and marketing muscles to compensate for any lack of it. This kind of imagination and creative drive is actively suffocated and discouraged at these AAA behemoths. I want to believe somewhere deep down they fear how useless they would actually look if they granted their developers and creators to dream a little bit once in a while. Their insatiable desire for money has overshadowed any passion they may once had in their workforces.

Imo Clair obscur echoes the spirit that Squaresoft once stood for during the Sakaguchi-era, until it got swallowed by corporate interests along side Enix. This game coming out has humiliated and exposed how AAA CEOs have utterly crippled their own companies creatively. They ought to start worrying honestly, unless they want to get left behind. There's a growing swath of indie and AA developers that are forming at their feet with more desire and drive to create something personal and imaginative than they currently exhibit.
 
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Dirk Benedict said:
While true, my curiosity rises with every new bit of praise. I think I'll beat the current one, Oblivion Remastered, Shelve Forbidden West on the back burner and see what this is about. I'm a huge fan of the turn based battle system and old JRPG in general. I Used to import JRPGs before they hit PS1..
Click to expand...
The game is great, but - and this is a really big but (I'm sure someone will be able to post the appropriate gif here) - while it has many classical JRPG tendencies, the combat is not traditional. You really have to be active with your dodges/parries (and to a lesser extent with your attacks) if you want to make it beyond the tutorial.

Not saying this is a bad thing (although the parry window is really tight even with the lowest difficulty), just that don't go in expecting you'll be able to handle the battles with your left hand (or right, whatever is your weaker one) while eating a sandwich.
 


PC optimization guide that DF stopped doing in favor of Alex complaining about every port.

He's also using a 5700X3D+4070S, still a fairly powerful system but a far cry from the 5090+9800X3D that DF often uses.
 
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Grildon Tundy said:
...To be a fly on the wall in executive meetings at Ubisoft/EA/Square/AAA studios when this game comes up.

Imagine holding the reins on a bloated, cludgy, outdated enterprise, and this game disrupts your understanding of the market.
Click to expand...
FYI Final Fantasy Rebirth sold 1.4 million on steam in the same timeframe.


Grildon Tundy said:
Clair Obscur is to Final Fantasy XVI as a Tesla Roadster is to a Bugatti Chiron.
Click to expand...

Tesla-Roadster_2a.jpg


vs

Bugatti-Chiron-Super-Sport-Golden-Era-main.jpg





Ill take the Chiron every time.
Even a badly specced one.

Clair Obscur is most certainly NOT a Tesla Roadster.
Its neither a worse version of something great nor is it vaporware.
 
Grildon Tundy said:
...To be a fly on the wall in executive meetings at Ubisoft/EA/Square/AAA studios when this game comes up.

Imagine holding the reins on a bloated, cludgy, outdated enterprise, and this game disrupts your understanding of the market.

Clair Obscur is to Final Fantasy XVI as a Tesla Roadster is to a Bugatti Chiron.
Click to expand...

I love the game but I don't think these publishers/studios will take any valuable lessons from this.
The game is selling amazing for what it is (new IP, new studio, small dev team, etc) but it's not doing the numbers these companies want. FFXVI sold 3 million in 1 week on just Ps5 and Square still wasn't happy.

They probably just look at the game and are like
"This is great, but if they made it a generic checklist style open world, with real time combat, a more generic plot with a more diverse main cast and spent another 100 million on graphics it could have done better"
 
Hypereides said:
The people in these boardrooms will fail to grasp how something like Clair obscur came to be. They're devoid of imagination nor creators themselves. Heck, I reckon a large portion of these suits aren't even gamers themselves in the first place. They cling to trends, rigid evaluation processes, high fidelity graphics and marketing muscles to compensate for any lack of it. This kind of imagination and creative drive is actively suffocated and discouraged at these AAA behemoths. I want to believe somewhere deep down they fear how useless they would actually look if they granted their developers and creators to dream a little bit once in a while. Their insatiable desire for money has overshadowed any passion they may once had in their workforces.

Imo Clair obscur echoes the spirit that Squaresoft once stood for during the Sakaguchi-era, until it got swallowed by corporate interests along side Enix. This game coming out has humiliated and exposed how AAA CEOs have utterly crippled their own companies creatively. They ought to start worrying honestly, unless they want to get left behind. There's a growing swath of indie and AA developers that are forming at their feet with more desire and drive to create something personal and imaginative than they currently exhibit.
Click to expand...
leonardo dicaprio bravo GIF


Well said. Couldn't agree more.
 
Black_Stride said:
FYI Final Fantasy Rebirth sold 1.4 million on steam in the same timeframe.




Tesla-Roadster_2a.jpg


vs

Bugatti-Chiron-Super-Sport-Golden-Era-main.jpg





Ill take the Chiron every time.
Even a badly specced one.

Clair Obscur is most certainly NOT a Tesla Roadster.
Its neither a worse version of something great nor is it vaporware.
Click to expand...
I hear your point. Of course you'd take a Chiron vs a Roadster and I would, too. If they were the same price. But a Chiron has a $3,000,000 base price vs the Roadster's $200,000.

The point I'm trying to make is more about the reception, production budget and consumer price of (for example) Final Fantasy's 1.4M sales/$100-200M budget/$70 price tag vs Clair Obscur's 1M/$10-50M budget/$45 opening price tag.
 
I'm just jumping in and saying I've put maybe 8ish hours into it and absolutely love it. It's not without its flaws … the menu is clunky in regards to equipping Pictos and Lumina and the lip syncing is dog shit but everything else is sublime. The music is superb and the voice acting is top notch. I'm playing on the PS5 Slim with performance mode. I turned off motion blur, film grain, and chromatic aberration. Game looks alot better after those adjustments imo. Regardless, I think about the game a lot when I'm not playing. Easily my 2025 GOTY so far.
 
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Grildon Tundy said:
I hear your point. Of course you'd take a Chiron vs a Roadster and I would, too. If they were the same price. But a Chiron has a $3,000,000 base price vs the Roadster's $200,000.

The point I'm trying to make is more about the reception, production budget and consumer price of (for example) Final Fantasy's 1.4M sales/$100-200M budget/$70 price tag vs Clair Obscur's 1M/$10-50M budget/$45 opening price tag.
Click to expand...

The Tesla roadster was ~80,000 dollars at launch, wasnt exactly well received it sold like 2500 units, the Elise its based on sold some 10 times that easy work.
The Gen 2 is Vaporware until proven otherwise.

The Chiron sold its entire allocation even with that price.

I get what you are trying to say, but your analogy is extremely flawed.

And while I absolutely adore Clair, its not like its the first AA game to do well and is somehow a completely new revolution in game development.
ITs not the first and certainly wont be the last AA game to seemingly come out of nowhere to perform above its weight class both critically and in sales.


P.S
As per the article:
Final Fantasy did 1.4 million on PS in 6 days.
Clair did 350,000 on PS in 6 days.
 
FF sales would presumably be a lot more front-loaded than a relatively unknown game like Exp33. It would be interesting to know what the next 6 days comparison looked like.
 
Dirk Benedict said:
The critical praise for this has really got my gears grinding because I got two games to finish.
What to do…
Click to expand...
Once you're through the Prologue I'm 100000% sure you'll be

'Fuck this shit. Sorry two games to finish, you can fuck right off till I'm done with this masterpiece' 🤷🏻‍♂️
 
Little Mac said:
I'm just jumping in and saying I've put maybe 8ish hours into it and absolutely love it. It's not without its flaws … the menu is clunky in regards to equipping Pictos and Lumina and the lip syncing is dog shit but everything else is sublime. The music is superb and the voice acting is top notch. I'm playing on the PS5 Slim with performance mode. I turned off motion blur, film grain, and chromatic aberration. Game looks alot better after those adjustments imo. Regardless, I think about the game a lot when I'm not playing. My 2025 GOTY so far.
Click to expand...
That's about the highest form of praise any bona fide game developer can receive, mate. The genuinely ambitious and imaginative game creators and visionaries out there want to leave a positive imprint on you.
 
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Black_Stride said:
The Tesla roadster was ~80,000 dollars at launch, wasnt exactly well received it sold like 2500 units, the Elise its based on sold some 10 times that easy work.
The Gen 2 is Vaporware until proven otherwise.

The Chiron sold its entire allocation even with that price.

I get what you are trying to say, but your analogy is extremely flawed.

And while I absolutely adore Clair, its not like its the first AA game to do well and is somehow a completely new revolution in game development.
ITs not the first and certainly wont be the last AA game to seemingly come out of nowhere to perform above its weight class both critically and in sales.


P.S
As per the article:
Final Fantasy did 1.4 million on PS in 6 days.
Clair did 350,000 on PS in 6 days.
Click to expand...
You seem like you know your cars. Do you have a more fitting car analogy for this situation, or do you think it's an analogous dead-end?
 
I overheard two teenagers talking about the game on the train today. Made me smile honestly, because they spent the first 30 mins talking about CoD zombies and I was losing faith in the younger nerd gen
 
Grildon Tundy said:
You seem like you know your cars. Do you have a more fitting car analogy for this situation, or do you think it's an analogous dead-end?
Click to expand...
I don't know how much he knows about cars but he's also a huge Elon Musk and Tesla hater so his opinion is completely invalid

The OG Tesla Roadster actually sold all they could make, and at the time the company was a tiny startup which had a fixed contract with Lotus for the Elise gliders. Once the contract was fulfilled, sales of the car ended because Lotus didn't sell them any more gliders after the 2500 allotted

So in fact both the Roadster and the Bugatti Chiron sold all they made

Today, the Roadster is a valuable collector's item. It was and is the first serial production EV ever made and is therefore a museum piece
 
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