May 2, 2025 • 45 mins
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 has released, and reviews are glowing. It's rare for a game to excite us in such a way so early in the life cycle...so we had to talk about it. Look forward to a full narrative analysis series coming soon!
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Click on the following to find PPR on the web!
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Thank you for listening! Want to reach out to PPR? Send your questions, comments, and recommendations to pixelprojectradio@gmail.com! And as ever, any ratings and/or reviews left on your platform of choice are greatly appreciated!
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:19):
Welcome back to Pixel Project Radio, the video game discussions
and analysis podcast. A different kind of episode. Today, we're
doing a first impressions on a recently released game, Claire
Obscure Expedition thirty three. I'm joined by Dave Jackson from
Tales from the Backlog podcast What's Up?
Speaker 2 (00:37):
Dave Rick, Thank you for having me on. You know,
I have to wait a little bit before I get
to talk about this game on my own show, but
it's there's so many thoughts whirling around, so I'm really
excited to get into it.
Speaker 1 (00:50):
I am feeling the same way. First impressions episodes are
not something that I tend to do often over here,
but every so often a game comes around that really
excites me in such a way that I think it's
it would be a fun idea to do. Notably, we
did that for Final Fantasy sixteen. I remember. I don't
remember if that was released in the main feed or
(01:11):
just the Patreon feed, but I do remember that, and
Claire Obscure came out, I knew that I wanted to
play this day one. This was on my radar for
a long time, as it has been for many and
playing it, I am so far blown away. I'm only
about ten hours in or so, I'm really taking my time,
(01:32):
but it is a breath of fresh air in a
lot of ways. And I want to say this up
top two. It will be on the show proper. We've
got three or four episodes of narrative analysis for Claire
Obscure coming later in the year, but I wanted to
talk about it now early while it's still fresh. Admittedly,
this episode's coming out like roughly a week after release,
(01:54):
so you know, I'm not one of those day one folks.
You know there are already full playthroughs on YouTube of
this game.
Speaker 2 (02:01):
Yeah, people just get you know it comes out, they
know life it for like three days so they can
be one of the first to get the play through
up there. Respect to anyone who can like put that
time in and put in that work to get a
high quality playthrough up there so quickly, especially the no
commentary playthroughs. Those those are the real heroes. Yeah, and
(02:22):
we salute you.
Speaker 1 (02:23):
But we're today, We're just going to talk broadly about
Claire Obscure, what we've liked so far, about what we've
been playing. This will be spoiler free, absolutely no spoilers
will preface with with things that we think might verge
towards that. But I don't think either of us will
be spoiling anything. We just want to, you know, talk
(02:44):
briefly about a new game that's exciting us. And hopefully,
if you're a listen, if you're a new listener coming
in because of the Clare Obscure hype, you know, hopefully
you check out the back catalog and you stick around. So, Dave,
how long have you been playing Claire Obscure? What's your
what's your play looking like? Uh?
Speaker 2 (03:02):
Ten twelve hours something like that. I just finished Act one.
That acts are very clearly divided. You'll know when you
get there. So I finished Act one, I got a
kind of an ability for exploration, and then I just
explored a ton. So yeah, twelve ish hours something like that.
(03:22):
So I'm not that far ahead of you. There is
a lot to kind of explore around if you don't
want to just mainline the story in here.
Speaker 1 (03:30):
And you and I have talked off Mike, you are
feeling just as excited about this as me.
Speaker 2 (03:35):
Oh yeah, dude, it's you said, a breath of fresh air,
and it's like, I have a lot of thoughts about
all the discourse about how this game is saving jarpgs
or turn based combat or any of that bullshit, but like,
it's legitimately different from even a lot of like the
recent favorites in the genre that I've played, and I
play a lot of these games, like this is one
(03:58):
of my favorite type of game, and the games that
this game takes an inspiration from are some of my
favorite games of all time. So to see a kind
of different take, and I think a lot of the
difference in the fresh air quality comes from where this
studio is from, and you know what art inspirations they're
taking and things like that. So I couldn't agree with
(04:20):
you more that it just feels incredibly fresh, while maybe
not reinventing the wheel the way some people are claiming.
Speaker 1 (04:27):
It feels fresh, but also, at least to me, feels
very much steeped in the history of nineties early two
thousands j RPGs, not totally. This doesn't feel like I've
seen some folks saying, yeah, this feels like a nineties JRPG.
I wouldn't go that far personally, but it feels more
like that than not. There's a lot of common DNA
(04:50):
there and a lot of things that they're doing that
pay homage. Did you like how I frindshed up that
word unintentionally? Yeah, I'm gonna do homage. They're doing a
lot of that, a lot of the tradition in the genre,
and it's working for them. But they're adding a new perspective.
As you said, I'm playing this on PC finally putting
(05:12):
my beefy rig to a test. It looks beautiful. This
is one of the rare instances where I've been taken
aback by a game's visual fidelity. And I think it's
because also the art direction is so nice.
Speaker 2 (05:27):
Yeah, it's it's not just that it has these beautiful
photorealistic four K textures or something like that. It's it's
the beautiful textures and character models and stuff like that,
plus this very very stylish art direction, like you said,
like you know, just think about the prologue and how
(05:47):
you know, you have those really striking colors and all
the flowers and everything like that around the city streets,
and it's striking when you boot it up just looking
at how it looks. It's not all the flash of
you know, the stuff in combat, which it is flashy,
which turn based combat is not always flashy. This one
(06:07):
definitely is. There's an emphasis on that too, But just like,
look at any screenshot of this game basically and you'll
be like, wow, this is not only is it realistic looking,
but it's it's got a real style to the art
direction too.
Speaker 1 (06:20):
And it's no surprise that color plays such a large role.
Let's talk about the name for a second, Claire. Obscure
is a sort of Englicized spelling, I guess is one
way to put it of an Italian phrase called kierascura, which, okay,
is made up of the Italian words kiao, which is
light or clear, and obscuro, which means obscured or dark.
Speaker 2 (06:45):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (06:46):
This is a technique that was found in painting as
far back as like I don't I don't want to
drop stylistic periods and get it wrong. But painting's dating
back to, you know, the fifteen hundreds, maybe even before.
This technique was used back then, and what it is
is a contrasting of light and dark, of light and shadow,
(07:07):
and j RPG writers around the world are palming their
foreheads saying why didn't I think of this?
Speaker 2 (07:13):
Yeah? You can also tell in like the naming of
game systems and stuff. You know, you have pictoes and
lumina and chroma, and you have all of these other
words and phrases that are like directly related to light
and color and things like that too. So you know,
art is on the forefront of this as a game,
(07:36):
just generally.
Speaker 1 (07:37):
Yeah, And color symbolism plays a huge role, and I
suspect it'll play a larger role once I'm farther in
the story. That idea of kiro and obscuro light and
dark shadows, we can expand that out to be about
contrasts life and death, light and darkness, you know, the
shadow versus the self. Any number of thinkers across time
(08:00):
have grappled with this concept. And on one hand, yes,
this has been brought into stories before, but on the other,
I think this is being done in a fresh way
and I'm really excited to see where this goes. From
the opening scenes, you see the color symbolism at play
early on this town Lumiere, well, particularly certain members of
(08:22):
the town. But again, we're not gonna that's not really
a spoiler, but I don't want to dive too much
into the story. Are characterized are represented by the colors
of red and white. Both of those can mean a
lot of things, but they are both in tandem and
sometimes at opposites with each other. Power versus purity, birth
versus red, the color of blood. We could think birth
(08:45):
and murder, birth in the loss of life, passion and
what do you call it? Passivity. A lot of different
directions you could go with this, But that opening area
lumiere that is characterized in such a colorful, vivid way
is completely at odds with where game goes shortly thereafter,
a very much darker landscape, with the exception again of
(09:07):
one area. I have a lot of theories about where
this may be going. But we see this idea of
contrasts of light and dark, of opposites and how they
relate to one another being put forth very early on,
and I'm really really excited and looking forward to seeing
where this goes.
Speaker 2 (09:26):
Yeah, same here, And you mentioned contrasts. I mean I
learned a little bit about French history by looking into
the inspiration for the setting from a particular period in
French history before World War One, when optimism was at
an all time high and arts were flourishing and things
like that. And you have that contrast with what happens
(09:49):
like the not even a spoiler, just like what the
basic premise of this story is does not fit with
high optimism, you know, and it fits into character motivations
super early on, like within your first ten minutes of
talking to people in the game. So the way that
they set those things up, it makes for like a
(10:10):
really interesting and rich world from like basically the second
you start playing it, the first time you look at something,
the first time you see what the story concept is,
and the first time you hear two characters talking in
a way that's not super like let's teach Dave what
this game is all about. It's like two characters really
talking to each other about their shared history and how
(10:33):
they live in this world and stuff. It all comes
down to that contrast.
Speaker 1 (10:37):
I like the setting a lot too, and I did
appreciate that they're not afraid to drop certain ideas or
phrases at onto you and sort of wait to expound
upon them or define them, well, not even define them.
They don't really do that. You don't get a lot
of as you know, dialogue here. You don't get a
glossary that explains exactly what the fracturing was or the fracture.
(10:59):
I think it's called you're you're left to fend for
yourself with context clues for a while, which is a
mature way to handle this.
Speaker 2 (11:07):
Yeah. No, they introduce that stuff and then they just
kind of trust that you're going to be interested enough
to play long enough to find out what the gomage
is and what the fracture was and these things like.
That's perfectly fine. I'm hooked. I'm happy with waiting to
find out exactly what happened.
Speaker 1 (11:24):
You know, do you happen to know what time period
this is modeled after.
Speaker 2 (11:30):
In French history? Just is the Bell Epoch setting? I
have the Wikipedia page open. I'm not a French historian
by any means, but that's the name of the setting,
and it's like this pre World War One area when,
like I said, arts were thriving and optimism was high
and things like that.
Speaker 1 (11:49):
Gotcha. I appreciate that very much too. I mean, not
just that this is from a French perspective and it
is very French inspired, but being steeped in the real world.
This isn't And you know you all know me. I
don't have anything against fantasy stories, sci fi fantasy. I
love that stuff. But it's really nice to have a
story where the setting is based in, you know, reality,
(12:12):
once in a while. This could be I don't know
if you could consider this low fantasy. I want to
open that debate once again. But well, I don't know.
But there are real world inventions here. There are guitars right,
There are Ferris wheels. There are what look like apartment complexes.
Speaker 2 (12:30):
This isn't There are mimes in this game. That's that's
as real world as you get.
Speaker 1 (12:35):
Yeah, there are mimes. Fuck me, there are mimes. It's exciting.
The French angle. I'm admittedly not super familiar with French culture,
but the French angle is an interesting one. I don't
I can't really lock into the influences just on site
that they're pulling from that except for the music, but
(12:58):
it is. It is nice. You know. We we see
a lot of this genre coming out of Japan, and
that's not knocking them. I mean, the writers over there
do this genre very very well, and the creators in general,
I should say. But seeing a new perspective and a
new team is really exciting. This is a brand new team.
I don't think this studio has done anything before this,
(13:18):
have they it's.
Speaker 2 (13:19):
Their first game. Obviously not the first game that the
people have made, but as Sandfall, it's their first game.
Speaker 1 (13:26):
Extremely exciting and an incredibly promising start. I mean, this
is such a justification to what so many of us
are saying about companies these days and how greedy they
have become with their ips and with their workers, and
you know what they're asking and what they're charging and
(13:47):
what they're not paying related to that, and you know
there's a cynical part of me that's worried about that too,
which is another conversation for another time. But seeing a
smaller team make something so grand and so of the
heart is exciting in a way that you know, we
(14:08):
don't see a lot of the time.
Speaker 2 (14:10):
Yeah, I have a lot of thoughts about the indie
noss of this game, but it is definitely a smaller
core team and they set out to make a game
with these graphics, using the Unreal Engine and stuff like that.
There's things about this that kind of make me wonder,
(14:31):
like should we be grouping this in with all the
other indie games? I mean, like Charlie Cox is the
star of the game, Like it's not can't be cheap
to get Charlie Cox on your project, Andy Serkis and
Ben Starr and Jennifer English from Balder's Gate IREI like
there's a lot of star power in the voice cast.
There's the credits are actually huge. There's a ton of
(14:54):
people that worked on the game. So I want to, like,
you know, set people out there this narrative. There's like
it's only thirty people that made the game, and it
was not only thirty people that made the game.
Speaker 1 (15:05):
It's a small core group of thirty people, but that
doesn't mean that it's limited to those thirty people and that's.
Speaker 2 (15:11):
It, Yeah, exactly. But I think, like if I can
kind of guess at what you were like getting at there,
was like we want smaller teams. We want companies to
be able to make like games like this, single player
games using supposedly outdated combat systems to make the kind
(15:34):
of game and like tell the kind of stories that
they want to tell. And while I don't think this
really fits in with that, Like I want like smaller
games made by less people who are paid more to
work less. I don't think it really fits in with that,
but I think that it does fulfill like the type
of game that a lot of people are looking at
(15:55):
the bigger companies who have the means to make more
games like this and just being like, like, look how
well this game did. Look how much it's it's sold,
Look at how highly it reviewed. Look how many people
love this game. This is what we've been asking for
instead of trying to make another fucking extraction shooter to
try to make as much money as possible. Look what
(16:17):
games dominating the talk about video games over the last week.
It's this one. So I definitely get like the the
idea there that like, people can point to this and
be like, this is an example of how this can
work if you make a really good game.
Speaker 1 (16:35):
And I'd be particularly interested in seeing just how much
how to phrase this, just how much influence and pull
the publisher had on what game decisions were made. You know,
that's something that we hear about a lot with these
huge companies, you know, EA and honestly probably Square Nintendo
that are making games, and that they have these guidelines
(16:57):
and expectations for the product that are under their name,
regardless of who's working on them, and those creative decisions
have to fall in line with that. There's that's just
how modern business in this in this frame works, meaning
that this is a smaller core team. Yes, I know
it's not just the thirty three people or the thirty
(17:17):
people that is being kind of poetically tossed about online.
But I would be curious to know how much sway
the developer or the publisher, the one that's funding this,
had on this. I don't know. I didn't look into
this at all. It doesn't seem like a lot. It
seems like this is a passion project in the best
sense of the phrase.
Speaker 2 (17:38):
Yeah. The publishers Kepler, which is I mean they've they've
put out some pretty or they have published some pretty
notable releases over the last few years, but they're not
a giant in the in the publishing sphere. I mean
like they before this, probably their most notable game was
Ceafu that they they worked with, which is like a
(18:02):
successful game, I think, but it's not it's not clear
obscure level of huge, you know.
Speaker 1 (18:08):
So Yeah, I would.
Speaker 2 (18:09):
Guess, like you said, I mean, you play this game
and you're like, don't. I don't feel like they sand
it off any weird creative edges in this game. I
don't know if you've got that feeling.
Speaker 1 (18:18):
No, not at all, Not at all, and I don't
expect to just based on how things have been going,
but it'll be interesting to go through this and do
a full analysis on it. You had mentioned the combat.
(18:52):
I want to talk a little bit about why the
mechanics of this have have been so exciting to me,
and the two things that stick out right away way
are the battle system and the Pictose system Pictose and
Lumina system. Let's talk battle system for a second. This
reminds me a lot of you know, everybody is saying
Super Mario RPG. That's the one that I've seen get
(19:13):
tossed around the most because that's a popular j RPG,
and it's it's a fine j RPG. It's good. I
was thinking Legend of Dragoon. That's what this reminded me
of immediately. I'm a huge fan of that game. I
just finished up playing a large portion of it this year.
That game has an addition system with the combat, wherein
you know, this square overlay will be on the screen
(19:37):
and when another square falls into it, you have to
press X and that's how you do your combos. This
is similar to that, it's still time presses. There are
multiple sometimes there are singles, sometimes multiple, sometimes none at all,
and that's how you get your combos and your moves
to be more powerful. I'm a big fan of that.
I see this kind of bashed online a lot, as
(19:58):
you know, being kind of like a jingle keys, you know,
for somebody to get into the combat like jingling keys.
I think that's a pretty cynical way to look at it.
I don't agree with that. I find it to be exciting,
particularly because too, you don't have to engage with it.
I mean, you're you're nerved pretty significantly if you don't,
but you don't have to.
Speaker 2 (20:19):
I disagree. I think you do have to, but more
on the defensive end of things than the offensive event.
I agree with you, though, I think, I mean, I
haven't played Legend of Dragoon, but I mean there's a
bit of Lost Odyssey's combat system, and when you get
to your full analysis, Lost Odyssey may come up again,
(20:41):
but there's a bit of that. You know, it's much
better than the ring system in Lost Odyssey for sure,
And then you do have some of the the defensive
options that feel more out of the Mario and Luigi RPGs,
where you have multiple ways that you need to to
defend against attacks, whether it's jumping over stuff, paying dodging
(21:05):
out of the way. There's like four defensive verbs for these,
depending on what attack is coming out. So that's what
I got. I got a bit of Octopath Travelers combat
system out of the AP system and the conservation of
AP between turns if you don't use them all stuff
(21:26):
like that. I love it. I love the combination of
influences that go into the combat system. It feels like
they were very strategic about like which things they used
from other games. And I love how that characters all
play very, very differently. It feels like each character comes
from a different game, almost within the confines of Clare
(21:51):
Obscure's combat system as a whole. If that makes sense.
Speaker 1 (21:56):
It does. It does. There's one character in particular that
you get. I want to say it's the fourth character
that reminds me a lot of a sort of deck
builder style game, not be which that sounds like a
really vapid comparison. It's not because of the weapons that
they're using. It's because of how many if then statements
there are. If this is used, then this charges up,
(22:17):
if this many charges than this, if this move used
and this many charges, that many if then statements makes
me think of a crunchy card game, and I really
really appreciate that. And in tandem, I mean going back
to the theme again of contrasts. In tandem with a
high octane, action oriented combat system at least as action
(22:37):
oriented as turn based can get. With Perry's dodges and jumps,
that makes for a really exciting battle experience. And I
do like having those defensive verbs at play too, because
they each have their own timing quirks and timing difficulties.
It's significantly easier to dodge than it is to Perry. Yeah,
(22:58):
I don't know when I get the dip or the
or the dive verbs, but I'm looking forward to it.
Speaker 2 (23:03):
Yeah, it's a long game. They're coming. Patches o'hulahan big
inspiration for the game as well. One thing I'm wondering about,
you know, since this is just impressions, it's not a
fully formed critique or opinion yet, But one thing I'm
wondering about is how the game is going to balance
players skill versus RPG stats, gear, Picto's everything that you
(23:27):
know raises the math of how effective your characters are
because the best players in the game could just go
beat the superbosses right out of the gate. If you
can parry everything, you're allowed to parry everything. As far
as I know, there is no unavoidable damage in the
entire game that I've come across. Everything is there's one
(23:50):
attack that will like remove a character from the battlefield,
but it doesn't hurt them. So if everyone else is okay,
they survive and they come back. So the best player
will just time up all the peris they'll do great
against everything. The players who struggle with the time stuff
can lower the difficulty, so they did include that, and
(24:12):
then it leaves the people in the middle, like me,
who are fine at perrying. I'm not great at it,
but I also don't want to lower the difficulty because
I feel like I'm getting by. I'm doing okay, and
I'll go fight those superbosses when i'm level appropriate. But
there's a problem I had with Mario and Luigi Superstar Saga,
(24:32):
where the end boss of that game is so incredibly
difficult because they want you to be at a certain
level and you have to be an absolute master of
the defensive vocabulary, which in that game, I don't think
that that worked well when they raise the challenge up
to that level, and so it's got me wondering in
(24:53):
the future, are they going to stay on an even
difficulty curve or is it going to be like, Okay,
we're getting to the hard stuff. Now you have to
parry every single thing perfectly or you stand no chance.
Because that's how the final boss of Mario and Luigi
Superstar Saga felt, which was a nasty surprise.
Speaker 1 (25:13):
Yeah, you have to somehow scale the difficulty such that
it is challenging to the mechanical players that are parrying
everything and the stats players that are playing the numbers
game to win the battles, right, And that's a same
line to walk.
Speaker 2 (25:26):
Yeah, honestly, I think that what I've noticed from Expedition
thirty three so far is I think that they're okay
with just saying our you know, our top ten percent
of players, they're just going to breeze through this, and
we're okay with that, because I've been talking with some
people who think the game is way too easy because
they're really good at the parrying. So that makes me
(25:48):
think like they and this feels like a good thing.
On Clare Obscure's part to just say, if you're that good,
you're just going to breeze through this because you're that good,
and we're not gonna make it harder for the other
ninety percent of people just because of that.
Speaker 1 (26:04):
And they've got a story to tell as well. This
isn't so mechanically focused that the story falls to the wayside.
I think the narrative is still the forefront, so it
would make sense for them to think that way. Like,
you know, if you're that cracked at parrying, then you know,
enjoy the story. I don't mean to brag, but I'm
pretty I'm schmooving with the parrys. I'm doing pretty well.
(26:24):
The thing is, though, is that I have fought some
things that I think I maybe shouldn't have so far.
And yeah, while I won, you know, not to brag,
but while I won, and like, while I could parry
them and it's you know, dodge, it's fine. It wasn't
exactly exciting because it turned to the chip damage game, right,
and yeah, the steaks are there, like they could wipe
me out in two three turns, but it takes me
(26:45):
a long time. You know, I have to really chip
down that health that health bar and is that exciting.
I mean I kind of look at that the same
way as folks look at grinding. You know, it's it's
not mindless, don't get me wrong, and it is meditative
as I've called grind before. It's just a different kind
of tedium. You have to choose which one you're okay with.
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (27:05):
It would be like if if Final Fantasy seven the
original was just like you can fight Ruby Weapon right
at the beginning if you're good enough, instead of being
like you have to grind up to be able to
fight this thing. I think it's the same thing. Like
if you have the patience to go do a half
hour of NonStop perying to beat this superboss before your
(27:27):
level appropriate, then by all means try it. Give it
a shot. I think that's what they're saying here. But
for everybody else, they're like, yeah, just come back later.
Like it's an open you know, the overworld map is open.
You can backtrack to places really easily, So just come
back in you know, ten twenty hours and try it again.
Speaker 1 (27:45):
This is the minorist of spoilers. It's it's almost not
but it's the most minor so you know, skip forward
a minute if you don't want to hear it. There
was one fight that I think I stumbled on a
little earlier than I was intended to. I mean, I
got there, so it's not like I choosed the environment.
But there was a part of that fight where the
(28:06):
enemy faked out their punches and kind of pretended to
hit and then stop and then hit, which I laughed
out loud. I loved that so much because it threw
a wrench into my plan. And that's the kind of
difficulty thing that you would have to adjust for those
mechanically oriented players, right like being with this as an
art themed game, there's a lot of art influence. I
would love to see like a status effect that's like
(28:28):
water logged or something that slows down your movements so
you have to adjust how you time your perry's or
your dodges or your jumps per character. I think that
would be really exciting. It would be a pain, but
I think it would be very exciting.
Speaker 2 (28:42):
It might. It would definitely shake things up, especially for
you know, if you ever get to a point where
you're like, this thing can't touch me, but oh I
got hit with this status. Now I have to adjust.
It would shake things up. It would also I would
also probably complain in the moment about that for sure. Though,
Oh sure, I wanted to ask you a question about
how you feel about this because the last time I
(29:03):
was on the show, we talked about Soul's games. I
think that was the last time I was here. And
the game Clare Obscure takes a lot of from software influence,
and not just because you know it can be difficult, YadA, YadA, YadA.
I think there's a lot of like mechanical systems that
they took straight out of Soul's games. And well, I've
(29:27):
heard anecdotally that the games director has a history with Sekuro,
so like maybe a little bit of influence there too.
What did like are you picking up on that stuff?
Do you think that Soul's experience has helped in any way?
Speaker 1 (29:44):
If it has, I wouldn't be the guy to ask,
you know, I can see it. I haven't got far
enough in Securo to really make an informed analysis on that.
And Demon Souls too, I mean, I don't know that
I'm the guy to ask. I can see it though
in some of the monster design too, But and obviously
of course the paying I'm I'm a big fan of
(30:05):
the parrying and the dodge system. I think it's really great.
I like how the wind ups and the time execution
and the frame data of enemy attacks is generally not
what you'd expect. It's always a little bit awkward, and
that kind of prevents complacency. I'm a big fan of that,
you know, I don't I don't know that I would
be the guy to ask about any other influences, but that's,
(30:28):
you know, if you think they're there. I tend to
trust your word on souls more.
Speaker 2 (30:32):
Yeah, so I think, and we talked about this in
that Soul's episode, but like there's so much more that
goes into those games, even mechanically than this boss hits
really hard if you get hit by it, you know.
And so I like this game using the estes system
and the quote the bonfire system where you should rest
and replenish all your potions. They're limited potions, so like
(30:54):
this is the thing in a lot of turn based
RPGs where it's like I'm gonna make sure I'm ready
for the final boss by taking ninety nine you know,
ex potions or whatever. You can't do that in this
game because they're limited. You start with like three or something,
and you rest at those those flags and they respawn
all the enemies, but they replenish all your healings. So
(31:17):
it sets up that little like should I push forward
and try and find another flag or should I go
back and heal up and try again now that I
know the enemy is better and I can probably get
through this easier this time around. They brought stat scaling
into this, which is something I absolutely never see outside
of the Souls series. Like, when you level up your
(31:37):
your weapons will have specific stats that will give you
bonus if you level up what kind of synergizes with
your weapon, And that's a Soul's mechanic that I even,
you know, even like the oh like the the Nios
of the world and stuff, I don't think those even
have those, like even the hardest of them. So they
definitely feel like they've taken a bunch and kind of
(32:01):
looked at what else can we take? Besides enemies are
going to hit hard if you don't watch their animations
and stuff like that.
Speaker 1 (32:09):
Yeah, the stat scaling is interesting too. Going back to
that theme of contrast, you've got a decidedly non JRPG
approach to building characters with you know, you level up,
you get a certain number of points and you allocate
those to whatever stats you'd like. You also have a
point system that I think is kind of right out
of Final Fantasy nine with the Luminas and the pictose.
(32:30):
So you don't have gear in this game like you
know Final Fantasy seven, like you had said, but you
do get these pictose which are equippable items, and once
you battle enough with them, you learn their ability. That's
the same as Final Fantasy nine. And then all of
your available AP points here called Lumina, can be used
to equip abilities that you've already learned now here. They
(32:51):
give they do you a solid and if one character
learns that, everybody can equip it, which is really awesome.
It's it's really allowing you to min max builds and
play how and express yourself through play however you'd feel.
And I think that's very interesting to combine those two
in that way. It's made this a real blast. You know,
my l in my game is just beating ass and
(33:14):
tearing down everything almost single handedly, whereas Mike Gustav is
a powerhouse in terms of defense, but he's kind of
getting outclassed in every other metric.
Speaker 2 (33:24):
Yeah, it's cool too, because I've run into some situations
where I needed to completely remake my build right there
for one specific fight, and the way that the Picto
and Luminous system works, you can do that, and then
you can just change your build back to something that
fits a more general approach of just going through a level.
(33:47):
For example, there are fights where you fight alone. Only
one character can take part in this fight, and you
can build up you can spec for a solo fight
as opposed to a full party fight. So stuff like
that's great. The only issue I had is it took
me legitimately five to ten hours to understand the menu
for the Picto's Aluminus. I think they could have done
(34:09):
better with that. But otherwise, now that I get it,
it's a cool character customization system.
Speaker 1 (34:16):
It's an overflux of information for sure, but I think
that appeals to those stats based players that like to
play that like to play RPGs by the numbers. You've
got this huge, crunchy menu that you can just pour over,
you know. I'm I mean, I'm only nine ten hours
into the game, and I've got upwards of thirty skills,
you know, and that is a lot. That's not even
(34:38):
counting the fact that you could still equip things that
you've already learned if you don't want to spend the
ap on that. It's a very crunchy mechanical game in
that way, just like the j RPGs of the nineties
and the early two thousands. It's really, it's really, really something.
I cannot wait to see how this expression of play evolves.
(34:59):
I did get spoil old on the class of a
character that's coming up, which I'm very excited to see
how they do. I I genuinely don't know how they're
going to do it, but I can't wait to see it.
Speaker 2 (35:09):
I was I was gonna say something earlier, but I
held back. But it's it's interesting, and I don't know
if there are more characters in coming, but it's uh.
They they certainly have lots of ideas for how to
make different characters feel extremely different from each other.
Speaker 1 (35:42):
We would be remiss. This episode is not going to
be overly long, but we'd be remiss not to talk.
I think about the music, dude, Yeah, what are you?
What are you feeling about the soundtrack?
Speaker 2 (35:52):
I could not be more positive about this soundtrack. I'm
blown away by it, and I don't have a lot
of like really specific things to say or like, you know,
I love this particular influence in here, but just like
a few small things, like there's a bunch of songs
that like don't sound really noteworthy on their own, but
(36:13):
they have these really cool accents in them throughout. There's
a mansion in the game that you go to and
the backing track is really just kind of chill, and
then you have these like electric guitar accents that pop
in and it's really cool. And then there's another song
that has a talk box in it. Dude, I've been
going nuts about this talk box because when was the
(36:35):
last time you heard a talk box in a video
game soundtrack? And it sounds really cool. So like stuff
like that, the music will pop, but not in ways
that I often am used to in video game soundtracks.
Like there are like the melodies and the main menu
theme is great, and the battle songs are awesome. But
(36:58):
I can say that about a lot of RPG But
there's a lot of these these tracks that have these
things that just make me think, like, man, the composer
is like really cooking in here, like trying weird stuff out.
Did you hear this story about the composer and how
they got involved with this game?
Speaker 1 (37:15):
By the way, Lorian Tastard, they found him on SoundCloud, right, yeah, just.
Speaker 2 (37:19):
A random like I think they said. The composer said
they posted a track or a collection of tracks in
a Discord server for indie game developers, and the people
making this game found it and they were like, yeah,
this is our guy. So it's crazy the way that
you would hear that and be like wow, they had
they had a vision for what this soundtrack should be,
(37:41):
and then because it fits perfectly. In my opinion, I'll
turn over to you.
Speaker 1 (37:46):
Yeah, no, I agree with you. I think it's great.
There's a lot of variety, there's a lot of contrasts,
going back to that core theme. What I think will
be the core theme of this game is contrasts. There's
a lot of that in here. The contrast between the areas,
you know, the talk boxes versus the more intimate chamber
settings versus the more low five beats to chill and
(38:08):
perry to how I've seen it referred to what I
really like. There are some areas that are very that
really do feel like they've got a French influence to them.
You know, there's this gracefulness that is in a lot
of French chamber music and French works in elegance, in
like a fragile elegance that is always there, even when
(38:29):
the music it's a little heavy, it's always effervescent, sort
of bubbly and fizzy, elegant. It's refined, even if it's
kind of folk inspired. Again, contrasts the theme of Lumiere is,
which is the opening area, by the way, is really nice.
You get this really singable folk melody dun dun da
(38:50):
da da dundund very singable, very narrow range that just
the common person can sing. And even in that kind
of plottingness of a singable folk melody that farmers sing,
there's an elegance to it, a gracelessness. There's gracefulness in gracelessness.
(39:11):
I guess you could say one thing, this is this
is me going kind of pepe Sylvia a little bit.
You can find this soundtrack on Spotify, on band camp.
You can listen to the whole thing. This is me
going a little pepe Sylvia for a second. And this
isn't a spoiler, because I don't I'm just guessing and
I think I'm looking too far into this. But that
(39:33):
theme of lumiere, you can boil that down to three
notes d just three notes. That's the skeletal structure. It's
how I used to describe it to students. If you
go to a much later track on the soundtrack that
is titled after who I expect is the antagonist, although
(39:56):
I think that might not be so simple wh all
I'm saying, but it's named after that thing, that person.
Oh yeah, that skeletal structure is both alluded to and
put forth in inversion. So instead of da da dah,
you get du du u. And I think I'm looking
way too far into it because that's just a three
(40:17):
note motif that's incredibly common. It's there's nothing weird about it.
And I don't have the music in front of me.
But if I'm right, I think that idea of contrasts,
let's say Yin and Yang, for example, I think is
going to play an immense part in the true nature
of who we believe to be the antagonist. That's all
I'm That's all I'm gonna say. Near near automata, near
(40:40):
replicant to everybody. The clear inspiration from those two games.
I think I'm really excited about it. This soundtrack is
terrific and it really I hope it makes everybody think
for a second about how many astoundingly talented people are
out there and we just don't know it.
Speaker 2 (40:58):
Yeah, one hundred percent.
Speaker 1 (41:00):
Like what what did Brendan Brendan Fraser's character in the
Whale say, Like people are amazing, These people are everywhere
and this this person just happened to be found in
a discord Yep.
Speaker 2 (41:11):
It's crazy to think of what it would have looked
like for both sides had that not, had that, you know,
game director not just been looking at a Discord server
on the day before that message got buried by a
bunch of other messages. I'm sure a lot of people
sharing their work and whoever that placed, uh, wherever that
place is. So it is kind of crazy to think.
Speaker 1 (41:32):
Of Balatro too, Balatro too right, like just just a
normal person that's making a creative endeavor and just happens
to get noticed. That is a life changing event.
Speaker 2 (41:43):
Mm yeah, and that it turns I'm not I'm obviously
I'm not going to say that if they picked a
different composer, the soundtrack would have been less effective, but
it turns it then sets like the tone of of
what this game is because I think this is one
of those sound tracks that is going to win a
bunch of awards at the end of the year. I
(42:05):
think it's going to be a soundtrack that people are
going to like, very very strongly associate with this game
and the story most importantly. So if they do, you know,
return to some of those themes as as you thought,
perhaps they will some of those motifs, I think it's
going to be the type of thing where you're going
to hear those notes or you're going to hear maybe
(42:26):
an inversion of that phrase, and it's going to have
an impact on you because it's obviously just a super
well done composition across the board. Like every new area
that I go into, even if it's like wildly different music,
I'm like, wow, this is this is just so good.
Speaker 1 (42:42):
My prediction for Claire Obscure is that it is going
to be in my personal running for Game of the Year. Yeah,
and I think this is going to be a j
RPG that's talked about long after this year is over
if they continue based on the try they've built in
me already, I really firmly believe that.
Speaker 2 (43:04):
Yeah, I have heard. I know. I read reviews when
it came out, and a lot of reviews mentioned that
they didn't love the direction that the story took, which
they obviously didn't say what happened. So I don't know
what they're talking about, but I agree with you probably
regardless of where the story ends up going, unless it's
like really fucking dumb, it's gonna be very high on
(43:26):
my personal game of the year. And if they stick
the landing, like you said, this feels like at all
timer to me. The first ten twelve hours that I
played have certainly been all time stuff.
Speaker 1 (43:40):
I have trouble trusting these early reviewers, not like early
reviewers from like outlets, just early reviews in general. Ever
since I saw several several early reviews saying that, oh yeah,
one thousand times resist it's just near but it's not
done as well, It's like, all right, I can't trust
anybody anymore.
Speaker 2 (43:59):
I'm glad I missed the reviews.
Speaker 1 (44:00):
Then yeah, yeah, geez, talk about reductive. I I really
believe in what I've played with this so far. I'm
just you know, I want to play it. So let's
end the episode I want to go play it.
Speaker 2 (44:13):
I was gonna say, you know, like I, I, you
and I we both have several games going out of
time for our shows and for me personally, I always
have one, maybe two, but usually it's just one that
like when it's like, all right, I'm done with work,
I'm sitting down at my PC, what am I going
to play? And there's usually one that's like, that's the
one you want to play right now? And that's absolutely
(44:35):
this game. So probably after we hang up, I will
be on it very soon after we're done here today.
Speaker 1 (44:42):
Same rather same, Well, that's we're going to keep this short.
That's all for today. Look forward to more Clear Obscure
in your feeds. At least in this feed I can't
I can't reveal the intentions and plans of others. But
in Pixel Project Radio Land and later in the year,
maybe August November sometime around there, you'll see three or
(45:05):
four episodes on this. Until then, I think easy to
say that we both recommend this wholeheartedly.
Speaker 2 (45:11):
Yeah, absolutely, go check this out.
Speaker 1 (45:13):
Take a break from Lunar, which I know you're all playing,
and check out a new JRPG and Claire Obscure Expedition
thirty three. Thanks Dave for joining me. Tales from the
Backlog podcast, folks, check it out, check it out, Thank you,
and until next time, I'm Rick, I'm your host and
we'll talk to you against So take care,
Welcome back to Pixel Project Radio, the video game discussions
and analysis podcast. A different kind of episode. Today, we're
doing a first impressions on a recently released game, Claire
Obscure Expedition thirty three. I'm joined by Dave Jackson from
Tales from the Backlog podcast What's Up?
Speaker 2 (00:37):
Dave Rick, Thank you for having me on. You know,
I have to wait a little bit before I get
to talk about this game on my own show, but
it's there's so many thoughts whirling around, so I'm really
excited to get into it.
Speaker 1 (00:50):
I am feeling the same way. First impressions episodes are
not something that I tend to do often over here,
but every so often a game comes around that really
excites me in such a way that I think it's
it would be a fun idea to do. Notably, we
did that for Final Fantasy sixteen. I remember. I don't
remember if that was released in the main feed or
(01:11):
just the Patreon feed, but I do remember that, and
Claire Obscure came out, I knew that I wanted to
play this day one. This was on my radar for
a long time, as it has been for many and
playing it, I am so far blown away. I'm only
about ten hours in or so, I'm really taking my time,
(01:32):
but it is a breath of fresh air in a
lot of ways. And I want to say this up
top two. It will be on the show proper. We've
got three or four episodes of narrative analysis for Claire
Obscure coming later in the year, but I wanted to
talk about it now early while it's still fresh. Admittedly,
this episode's coming out like roughly a week after release,
(01:54):
so you know, I'm not one of those day one folks.
You know there are already full playthroughs on YouTube of
this game.
Speaker 2 (02:01):
Yeah, people just get you know it comes out, they
know life it for like three days so they can
be one of the first to get the play through
up there. Respect to anyone who can like put that
time in and put in that work to get a
high quality playthrough up there so quickly, especially the no
commentary playthroughs. Those those are the real heroes. Yeah, and
(02:22):
we salute you.
Speaker 1 (02:23):
But we're today, We're just going to talk broadly about
Claire Obscure, what we've liked so far, about what we've
been playing. This will be spoiler free, absolutely no spoilers
will preface with with things that we think might verge
towards that. But I don't think either of us will
be spoiling anything. We just want to, you know, talk
(02:44):
briefly about a new game that's exciting us. And hopefully,
if you're a listen, if you're a new listener coming
in because of the Clare Obscure hype, you know, hopefully
you check out the back catalog and you stick around. So, Dave,
how long have you been playing Claire Obscure? What's your
what's your play looking like? Uh?
Speaker 2 (03:02):
Ten twelve hours something like that. I just finished Act one.
That acts are very clearly divided. You'll know when you
get there. So I finished Act one, I got a
kind of an ability for exploration, and then I just
explored a ton. So yeah, twelve ish hours something like that.
(03:22):
So I'm not that far ahead of you. There is
a lot to kind of explore around if you don't
want to just mainline the story in here.
Speaker 1 (03:30):
And you and I have talked off Mike, you are
feeling just as excited about this as me.
Speaker 2 (03:35):
Oh yeah, dude, it's you said, a breath of fresh air,
and it's like, I have a lot of thoughts about
all the discourse about how this game is saving jarpgs
or turn based combat or any of that bullshit, but like,
it's legitimately different from even a lot of like the
recent favorites in the genre that I've played, and I
play a lot of these games, like this is one
(03:58):
of my favorite type of game, and the games that
this game takes an inspiration from are some of my
favorite games of all time. So to see a kind
of different take, and I think a lot of the
difference in the fresh air quality comes from where this
studio is from, and you know what art inspirations they're
taking and things like that. So I couldn't agree with
(04:20):
you more that it just feels incredibly fresh, while maybe
not reinventing the wheel the way some people are claiming.
Speaker 1 (04:27):
It feels fresh, but also, at least to me, feels
very much steeped in the history of nineties early two
thousands j RPGs, not totally. This doesn't feel like I've
seen some folks saying, yeah, this feels like a nineties JRPG.
I wouldn't go that far personally, but it feels more
like that than not. There's a lot of common DNA
(04:50):
there and a lot of things that they're doing that
pay homage. Did you like how I frindshed up that
word unintentionally? Yeah, I'm gonna do homage. They're doing a
lot of that, a lot of the tradition in the genre,
and it's working for them. But they're adding a new perspective.
As you said, I'm playing this on PC finally putting
(05:12):
my beefy rig to a test. It looks beautiful. This
is one of the rare instances where I've been taken
aback by a game's visual fidelity. And I think it's
because also the art direction is so nice.
Speaker 2 (05:27):
Yeah, it's it's not just that it has these beautiful
photorealistic four K textures or something like that. It's it's
the beautiful textures and character models and stuff like that,
plus this very very stylish art direction, like you said,
like you know, just think about the prologue and how
(05:47):
you know, you have those really striking colors and all
the flowers and everything like that around the city streets,
and it's striking when you boot it up just looking
at how it looks. It's not all the flash of
you know, the stuff in combat, which it is flashy,
which turn based combat is not always flashy. This one
(06:07):
definitely is. There's an emphasis on that too, But just like,
look at any screenshot of this game basically and you'll
be like, wow, this is not only is it realistic looking,
but it's it's got a real style to the art
direction too.
Speaker 1 (06:20):
And it's no surprise that color plays such a large role.
Let's talk about the name for a second, Claire. Obscure
is a sort of Englicized spelling, I guess is one
way to put it of an Italian phrase called kierascura, which, okay,
is made up of the Italian words kiao, which is
light or clear, and obscuro, which means obscured or dark.
Speaker 2 (06:45):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (06:46):
This is a technique that was found in painting as
far back as like I don't I don't want to
drop stylistic periods and get it wrong. But painting's dating
back to, you know, the fifteen hundreds, maybe even before.
This technique was used back then, and what it is
is a contrasting of light and dark, of light and shadow,
(07:07):
and j RPG writers around the world are palming their
foreheads saying why didn't I think of this?
Speaker 2 (07:13):
Yeah? You can also tell in like the naming of
game systems and stuff. You know, you have pictoes and
lumina and chroma, and you have all of these other
words and phrases that are like directly related to light
and color and things like that too. So you know,
art is on the forefront of this as a game,
(07:36):
just generally.
Speaker 1 (07:37):
Yeah, And color symbolism plays a huge role, and I
suspect it'll play a larger role once I'm farther in
the story. That idea of kiro and obscuro light and
dark shadows, we can expand that out to be about
contrasts life and death, light and darkness, you know, the
shadow versus the self. Any number of thinkers across time
(08:00):
have grappled with this concept. And on one hand, yes,
this has been brought into stories before, but on the other,
I think this is being done in a fresh way
and I'm really excited to see where this goes. From
the opening scenes, you see the color symbolism at play
early on this town Lumiere, well, particularly certain members of
(08:22):
the town. But again, we're not gonna that's not really
a spoiler, but I don't want to dive too much
into the story. Are characterized are represented by the colors
of red and white. Both of those can mean a
lot of things, but they are both in tandem and
sometimes at opposites with each other. Power versus purity, birth
versus red, the color of blood. We could think birth
(08:45):
and murder, birth in the loss of life, passion and
what do you call it? Passivity. A lot of different
directions you could go with this, But that opening area
lumiere that is characterized in such a colorful, vivid way
is completely at odds with where game goes shortly thereafter,
a very much darker landscape, with the exception again of
(09:07):
one area. I have a lot of theories about where
this may be going. But we see this idea of
contrasts of light and dark, of opposites and how they
relate to one another being put forth very early on,
and I'm really really excited and looking forward to seeing
where this goes.
Speaker 2 (09:26):
Yeah, same here, And you mentioned contrasts. I mean I
learned a little bit about French history by looking into
the inspiration for the setting from a particular period in
French history before World War One, when optimism was at
an all time high and arts were flourishing and things
like that. And you have that contrast with what happens
(09:49):
like the not even a spoiler, just like what the
basic premise of this story is does not fit with
high optimism, you know, and it fits into character motivations
super early on, like within your first ten minutes of
talking to people in the game. So the way that
they set those things up, it makes for like a
(10:10):
really interesting and rich world from like basically the second
you start playing it, the first time you look at something,
the first time you see what the story concept is,
and the first time you hear two characters talking in
a way that's not super like let's teach Dave what
this game is all about. It's like two characters really
talking to each other about their shared history and how
(10:33):
they live in this world and stuff. It all comes
down to that contrast.
Speaker 1 (10:37):
I like the setting a lot too, and I did
appreciate that they're not afraid to drop certain ideas or
phrases at onto you and sort of wait to expound
upon them or define them, well, not even define them.
They don't really do that. You don't get a lot
of as you know, dialogue here. You don't get a
glossary that explains exactly what the fracturing was or the fracture.
(10:59):
I think it's called you're you're left to fend for
yourself with context clues for a while, which is a
mature way to handle this.
Speaker 2 (11:07):
Yeah. No, they introduce that stuff and then they just
kind of trust that you're going to be interested enough
to play long enough to find out what the gomage
is and what the fracture was and these things like.
That's perfectly fine. I'm hooked. I'm happy with waiting to
find out exactly what happened.
Speaker 1 (11:24):
You know, do you happen to know what time period
this is modeled after.
Speaker 2 (11:30):
In French history? Just is the Bell Epoch setting? I
have the Wikipedia page open. I'm not a French historian
by any means, but that's the name of the setting,
and it's like this pre World War One area when,
like I said, arts were thriving and optimism was high
and things like that.
Speaker 1 (11:49):
Gotcha. I appreciate that very much too. I mean, not
just that this is from a French perspective and it
is very French inspired, but being steeped in the real world.
This isn't And you know you all know me. I
don't have anything against fantasy stories, sci fi fantasy. I
love that stuff. But it's really nice to have a
story where the setting is based in, you know, reality,
(12:12):
once in a while. This could be I don't know
if you could consider this low fantasy. I want to
open that debate once again. But well, I don't know.
But there are real world inventions here. There are guitars right,
There are Ferris wheels. There are what look like apartment complexes.
Speaker 2 (12:30):
This isn't There are mimes in this game. That's that's
as real world as you get.
Speaker 1 (12:35):
Yeah, there are mimes. Fuck me, there are mimes. It's exciting.
The French angle. I'm admittedly not super familiar with French culture,
but the French angle is an interesting one. I don't
I can't really lock into the influences just on site
that they're pulling from that except for the music, but
(12:58):
it is. It is nice. You know. We we see
a lot of this genre coming out of Japan, and
that's not knocking them. I mean, the writers over there
do this genre very very well, and the creators in general,
I should say. But seeing a new perspective and a
new team is really exciting. This is a brand new team.
I don't think this studio has done anything before this,
(13:18):
have they it's.
Speaker 2 (13:19):
Their first game. Obviously not the first game that the
people have made, but as Sandfall, it's their first game.
Speaker 1 (13:26):
Extremely exciting and an incredibly promising start. I mean, this
is such a justification to what so many of us
are saying about companies these days and how greedy they
have become with their ips and with their workers, and
you know what they're asking and what they're charging and
(13:47):
what they're not paying related to that, and you know
there's a cynical part of me that's worried about that too,
which is another conversation for another time. But seeing a
smaller team make something so grand and so of the
heart is exciting in a way that you know, we
(14:08):
don't see a lot of the time.
Speaker 2 (14:10):
Yeah, I have a lot of thoughts about the indie
noss of this game, but it is definitely a smaller
core team and they set out to make a game
with these graphics, using the Unreal Engine and stuff like that.
There's things about this that kind of make me wonder,
(14:31):
like should we be grouping this in with all the
other indie games? I mean, like Charlie Cox is the
star of the game, Like it's not can't be cheap
to get Charlie Cox on your project, Andy Serkis and
Ben Starr and Jennifer English from Balder's Gate IREI like
there's a lot of star power in the voice cast.
There's the credits are actually huge. There's a ton of
(14:54):
people that worked on the game. So I want to, like,
you know, set people out there this narrative. There's like
it's only thirty people that made the game, and it
was not only thirty people that made the game.
Speaker 1 (15:05):
It's a small core group of thirty people, but that
doesn't mean that it's limited to those thirty people and that's.
Speaker 2 (15:11):
It, Yeah, exactly. But I think, like if I can
kind of guess at what you were like getting at there,
was like we want smaller teams. We want companies to
be able to make like games like this, single player
games using supposedly outdated combat systems to make the kind
(15:34):
of game and like tell the kind of stories that
they want to tell. And while I don't think this
really fits in with that, Like I want like smaller
games made by less people who are paid more to
work less. I don't think it really fits in with that,
but I think that it does fulfill like the type
of game that a lot of people are looking at
(15:55):
the bigger companies who have the means to make more
games like this and just being like, like, look how
well this game did. Look how much it's it's sold,
Look at how highly it reviewed. Look how many people
love this game. This is what we've been asking for
instead of trying to make another fucking extraction shooter to
try to make as much money as possible. Look what
(16:17):
games dominating the talk about video games over the last week.
It's this one. So I definitely get like the the
idea there that like, people can point to this and
be like, this is an example of how this can
work if you make a really good game.
Speaker 1 (16:35):
And I'd be particularly interested in seeing just how much
how to phrase this, just how much influence and pull
the publisher had on what game decisions were made. You know,
that's something that we hear about a lot with these
huge companies, you know, EA and honestly probably Square Nintendo
that are making games, and that they have these guidelines
(16:57):
and expectations for the product that are under their name,
regardless of who's working on them, and those creative decisions
have to fall in line with that. There's that's just
how modern business in this in this frame works, meaning
that this is a smaller core team. Yes, I know
it's not just the thirty three people or the thirty
(17:17):
people that is being kind of poetically tossed about online.
But I would be curious to know how much sway
the developer or the publisher, the one that's funding this,
had on this. I don't know. I didn't look into
this at all. It doesn't seem like a lot. It
seems like this is a passion project in the best
sense of the phrase.
Speaker 2 (17:38):
Yeah. The publishers Kepler, which is I mean they've they've
put out some pretty or they have published some pretty
notable releases over the last few years, but they're not
a giant in the in the publishing sphere. I mean
like they before this, probably their most notable game was
Ceafu that they they worked with, which is like a
(18:02):
successful game, I think, but it's not it's not clear
obscure level of huge, you know.
Speaker 1 (18:08):
So Yeah, I would.
Speaker 2 (18:09):
Guess, like you said, I mean, you play this game
and you're like, don't. I don't feel like they sand
it off any weird creative edges in this game. I
don't know if you've got that feeling.
Speaker 1 (18:18):
No, not at all, Not at all, and I don't
expect to just based on how things have been going,
but it'll be interesting to go through this and do
a full analysis on it. You had mentioned the combat.
(18:52):
I want to talk a little bit about why the
mechanics of this have have been so exciting to me,
and the two things that stick out right away way
are the battle system and the Pictose system Pictose and
Lumina system. Let's talk battle system for a second. This
reminds me a lot of you know, everybody is saying
Super Mario RPG. That's the one that I've seen get
(19:13):
tossed around the most because that's a popular j RPG,
and it's it's a fine j RPG. It's good. I
was thinking Legend of Dragoon. That's what this reminded me
of immediately. I'm a huge fan of that game. I
just finished up playing a large portion of it this year.
That game has an addition system with the combat, wherein
you know, this square overlay will be on the screen
(19:37):
and when another square falls into it, you have to
press X and that's how you do your combos. This
is similar to that, it's still time presses. There are
multiple sometimes there are singles, sometimes multiple, sometimes none at all,
and that's how you get your combos and your moves
to be more powerful. I'm a big fan of that.
I see this kind of bashed online a lot, as
(19:58):
you know, being kind of like a jingle keys, you know,
for somebody to get into the combat like jingling keys.
I think that's a pretty cynical way to look at it.
I don't agree with that. I find it to be exciting,
particularly because too, you don't have to engage with it.
I mean, you're you're nerved pretty significantly if you don't,
but you don't have to.
Speaker 2 (20:19):
I disagree. I think you do have to, but more
on the defensive end of things than the offensive event.
I agree with you, though, I think, I mean, I
haven't played Legend of Dragoon, but I mean there's a
bit of Lost Odyssey's combat system, and when you get
to your full analysis, Lost Odyssey may come up again,
(20:41):
but there's a bit of that. You know, it's much
better than the ring system in Lost Odyssey for sure,
And then you do have some of the the defensive
options that feel more out of the Mario and Luigi RPGs,
where you have multiple ways that you need to to
defend against attacks, whether it's jumping over stuff, paying dodging
(21:05):
out of the way. There's like four defensive verbs for these,
depending on what attack is coming out. So that's what
I got. I got a bit of Octopath Travelers combat
system out of the AP system and the conservation of
AP between turns if you don't use them all stuff
(21:26):
like that. I love it. I love the combination of
influences that go into the combat system. It feels like
they were very strategic about like which things they used
from other games. And I love how that characters all
play very, very differently. It feels like each character comes
from a different game, almost within the confines of Clare
(21:51):
Obscure's combat system as a whole. If that makes sense.
Speaker 1 (21:56):
It does. It does. There's one character in particular that
you get. I want to say it's the fourth character
that reminds me a lot of a sort of deck
builder style game, not be which that sounds like a
really vapid comparison. It's not because of the weapons that
they're using. It's because of how many if then statements
there are. If this is used, then this charges up,
(22:17):
if this many charges than this, if this move used
and this many charges, that many if then statements makes
me think of a crunchy card game, and I really
really appreciate that. And in tandem, I mean going back
to the theme again of contrasts. In tandem with a
high octane, action oriented combat system at least as action
(22:37):
oriented as turn based can get. With Perry's dodges and jumps,
that makes for a really exciting battle experience. And I
do like having those defensive verbs at play too, because
they each have their own timing quirks and timing difficulties.
It's significantly easier to dodge than it is to Perry. Yeah,
(22:58):
I don't know when I get the dip or the
or the dive verbs, but I'm looking forward to it.
Speaker 2 (23:03):
Yeah, it's a long game. They're coming. Patches o'hulahan big
inspiration for the game as well. One thing I'm wondering about,
you know, since this is just impressions, it's not a
fully formed critique or opinion yet, But one thing I'm
wondering about is how the game is going to balance
players skill versus RPG stats, gear, Picto's everything that you
(23:27):
know raises the math of how effective your characters are
because the best players in the game could just go
beat the superbosses right out of the gate. If you
can parry everything, you're allowed to parry everything. As far
as I know, there is no unavoidable damage in the
entire game that I've come across. Everything is there's one
(23:50):
attack that will like remove a character from the battlefield,
but it doesn't hurt them. So if everyone else is okay,
they survive and they come back. So the best player
will just time up all the peris they'll do great
against everything. The players who struggle with the time stuff
can lower the difficulty, so they did include that, and
(24:12):
then it leaves the people in the middle, like me,
who are fine at perrying. I'm not great at it,
but I also don't want to lower the difficulty because
I feel like I'm getting by. I'm doing okay, and
I'll go fight those superbosses when i'm level appropriate. But
there's a problem I had with Mario and Luigi Superstar Saga,
(24:32):
where the end boss of that game is so incredibly
difficult because they want you to be at a certain
level and you have to be an absolute master of
the defensive vocabulary, which in that game, I don't think
that that worked well when they raise the challenge up
to that level, and so it's got me wondering in
(24:53):
the future, are they going to stay on an even
difficulty curve or is it going to be like, Okay,
we're getting to the hard stuff. Now you have to
parry every single thing perfectly or you stand no chance.
Because that's how the final boss of Mario and Luigi
Superstar Saga felt, which was a nasty surprise.
Speaker 1 (25:13):
Yeah, you have to somehow scale the difficulty such that
it is challenging to the mechanical players that are parrying
everything and the stats players that are playing the numbers
game to win the battles, right, And that's a same
line to walk.
Speaker 2 (25:26):
Yeah, honestly, I think that what I've noticed from Expedition
thirty three so far is I think that they're okay
with just saying our you know, our top ten percent
of players, they're just going to breeze through this, and
we're okay with that, because I've been talking with some
people who think the game is way too easy because
they're really good at the parrying. So that makes me
(25:48):
think like they and this feels like a good thing.
On Clare Obscure's part to just say, if you're that good,
you're just going to breeze through this because you're that good,
and we're not gonna make it harder for the other
ninety percent of people just because of that.
Speaker 1 (26:04):
And they've got a story to tell as well. This
isn't so mechanically focused that the story falls to the wayside.
I think the narrative is still the forefront, so it
would make sense for them to think that way. Like,
you know, if you're that cracked at parrying, then you know,
enjoy the story. I don't mean to brag, but I'm
pretty I'm schmooving with the parrys. I'm doing pretty well.
(26:24):
The thing is, though, is that I have fought some
things that I think I maybe shouldn't have so far.
And yeah, while I won, you know, not to brag,
but while I won, and like, while I could parry
them and it's you know, dodge, it's fine. It wasn't
exactly exciting because it turned to the chip damage game, right,
and yeah, the steaks are there, like they could wipe
me out in two three turns, but it takes me
(26:45):
a long time. You know, I have to really chip
down that health that health bar and is that exciting.
I mean I kind of look at that the same
way as folks look at grinding. You know, it's it's
not mindless, don't get me wrong, and it is meditative
as I've called grind before. It's just a different kind
of tedium. You have to choose which one you're okay with.
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (27:05):
It would be like if if Final Fantasy seven the
original was just like you can fight Ruby Weapon right
at the beginning if you're good enough, instead of being
like you have to grind up to be able to
fight this thing. I think it's the same thing. Like
if you have the patience to go do a half
hour of NonStop perying to beat this superboss before your
(27:27):
level appropriate, then by all means try it. Give it
a shot. I think that's what they're saying here. But
for everybody else, they're like, yeah, just come back later.
Like it's an open you know, the overworld map is open.
You can backtrack to places really easily, So just come
back in you know, ten twenty hours and try it again.
Speaker 1 (27:45):
This is the minorist of spoilers. It's it's almost not
but it's the most minor so you know, skip forward
a minute if you don't want to hear it. There
was one fight that I think I stumbled on a
little earlier than I was intended to. I mean, I
got there, so it's not like I choosed the environment.
But there was a part of that fight where the
(28:06):
enemy faked out their punches and kind of pretended to
hit and then stop and then hit, which I laughed
out loud. I loved that so much because it threw
a wrench into my plan. And that's the kind of
difficulty thing that you would have to adjust for those
mechanically oriented players, right like being with this as an
art themed game, there's a lot of art influence. I
would love to see like a status effect that's like
(28:28):
water logged or something that slows down your movements so
you have to adjust how you time your perry's or
your dodges or your jumps per character. I think that
would be really exciting. It would be a pain, but
I think it would be very exciting.
Speaker 2 (28:42):
It might. It would definitely shake things up, especially for
you know, if you ever get to a point where
you're like, this thing can't touch me, but oh I
got hit with this status. Now I have to adjust.
It would shake things up. It would also I would
also probably complain in the moment about that for sure. Though,
Oh sure, I wanted to ask you a question about
how you feel about this because the last time I
(29:03):
was on the show, we talked about Soul's games. I
think that was the last time I was here. And
the game Clare Obscure takes a lot of from software influence,
and not just because you know it can be difficult, YadA, YadA, YadA.
I think there's a lot of like mechanical systems that
they took straight out of Soul's games. And well, I've
(29:27):
heard anecdotally that the games director has a history with Sekuro,
so like maybe a little bit of influence there too.
What did like are you picking up on that stuff?
Do you think that Soul's experience has helped in any way?
Speaker 1 (29:44):
If it has, I wouldn't be the guy to ask,
you know, I can see it. I haven't got far
enough in Securo to really make an informed analysis on that.
And Demon Souls too, I mean, I don't know that
I'm the guy to ask. I can see it though
in some of the monster design too, But and obviously
of course the paying I'm I'm a big fan of
(30:05):
the parrying and the dodge system. I think it's really great.
I like how the wind ups and the time execution
and the frame data of enemy attacks is generally not
what you'd expect. It's always a little bit awkward, and
that kind of prevents complacency. I'm a big fan of that,
you know, I don't I don't know that I would
be the guy to ask about any other influences, but that's,
(30:28):
you know, if you think they're there. I tend to
trust your word on souls more.
Speaker 2 (30:32):
Yeah, so I think, and we talked about this in
that Soul's episode, but like there's so much more that
goes into those games, even mechanically than this boss hits
really hard if you get hit by it, you know.
And so I like this game using the estes system
and the quote the bonfire system where you should rest
and replenish all your potions. They're limited potions, so like
(30:54):
this is the thing in a lot of turn based
RPGs where it's like I'm gonna make sure I'm ready
for the final boss by taking ninety nine you know,
ex potions or whatever. You can't do that in this
game because they're limited. You start with like three or something,
and you rest at those those flags and they respawn
all the enemies, but they replenish all your healings. So
(31:17):
it sets up that little like should I push forward
and try and find another flag or should I go
back and heal up and try again now that I
know the enemy is better and I can probably get
through this easier this time around. They brought stat scaling
into this, which is something I absolutely never see outside
of the Souls series. Like, when you level up your
(31:37):
your weapons will have specific stats that will give you
bonus if you level up what kind of synergizes with
your weapon, And that's a Soul's mechanic that I even,
you know, even like the oh like the the Nios
of the world and stuff, I don't think those even
have those, like even the hardest of them. So they
definitely feel like they've taken a bunch and kind of
(32:01):
looked at what else can we take? Besides enemies are
going to hit hard if you don't watch their animations
and stuff like that.
Speaker 1 (32:09):
Yeah, the stat scaling is interesting too. Going back to
that theme of contrast, you've got a decidedly non JRPG
approach to building characters with you know, you level up,
you get a certain number of points and you allocate
those to whatever stats you'd like. You also have a
point system that I think is kind of right out
of Final Fantasy nine with the Luminas and the pictose.
(32:30):
So you don't have gear in this game like you
know Final Fantasy seven, like you had said, but you
do get these pictose which are equippable items, and once
you battle enough with them, you learn their ability. That's
the same as Final Fantasy nine. And then all of
your available AP points here called Lumina, can be used
to equip abilities that you've already learned now here. They
(32:51):
give they do you a solid and if one character
learns that, everybody can equip it, which is really awesome.
It's it's really allowing you to min max builds and
play how and express yourself through play however you'd feel.
And I think that's very interesting to combine those two
in that way. It's made this a real blast. You know,
my l in my game is just beating ass and
(33:14):
tearing down everything almost single handedly, whereas Mike Gustav is
a powerhouse in terms of defense, but he's kind of
getting outclassed in every other metric.
Speaker 2 (33:24):
Yeah, it's cool too, because I've run into some situations
where I needed to completely remake my build right there
for one specific fight, and the way that the Picto
and Luminous system works, you can do that, and then
you can just change your build back to something that
fits a more general approach of just going through a level.
(33:47):
For example, there are fights where you fight alone. Only
one character can take part in this fight, and you
can build up you can spec for a solo fight
as opposed to a full party fight. So stuff like
that's great. The only issue I had is it took
me legitimately five to ten hours to understand the menu
for the Picto's Aluminus. I think they could have done
(34:09):
better with that. But otherwise, now that I get it,
it's a cool character customization system.
Speaker 1 (34:16):
It's an overflux of information for sure, but I think
that appeals to those stats based players that like to
play that like to play RPGs by the numbers. You've
got this huge, crunchy menu that you can just pour over,
you know. I'm I mean, I'm only nine ten hours
into the game, and I've got upwards of thirty skills,
you know, and that is a lot. That's not even
(34:38):
counting the fact that you could still equip things that
you've already learned if you don't want to spend the
ap on that. It's a very crunchy mechanical game in
that way, just like the j RPGs of the nineties
and the early two thousands. It's really, it's really, really something.
I cannot wait to see how this expression of play evolves.
(34:59):
I did get spoil old on the class of a
character that's coming up, which I'm very excited to see
how they do. I I genuinely don't know how they're
going to do it, but I can't wait to see it.
Speaker 2 (35:09):
I was I was gonna say something earlier, but I
held back. But it's it's interesting, and I don't know
if there are more characters in coming, but it's uh.
They they certainly have lots of ideas for how to
make different characters feel extremely different from each other.
Speaker 1 (35:42):
We would be remiss. This episode is not going to
be overly long, but we'd be remiss not to talk.
I think about the music, dude, Yeah, what are you?
What are you feeling about the soundtrack?
Speaker 2 (35:52):
I could not be more positive about this soundtrack. I'm
blown away by it, and I don't have a lot
of like really specific things to say or like, you know,
I love this particular influence in here, but just like
a few small things, like there's a bunch of songs
that like don't sound really noteworthy on their own, but
(36:13):
they have these really cool accents in them throughout. There's
a mansion in the game that you go to and
the backing track is really just kind of chill, and
then you have these like electric guitar accents that pop
in and it's really cool. And then there's another song
that has a talk box in it. Dude, I've been
going nuts about this talk box because when was the
(36:35):
last time you heard a talk box in a video
game soundtrack? And it sounds really cool. So like stuff
like that, the music will pop, but not in ways
that I often am used to in video game soundtracks.
Like there are like the melodies and the main menu
theme is great, and the battle songs are awesome. But
(36:58):
I can say that about a lot of RPG But
there's a lot of these these tracks that have these
things that just make me think, like, man, the composer
is like really cooking in here, like trying weird stuff out.
Did you hear this story about the composer and how
they got involved with this game?
Speaker 1 (37:15):
By the way, Lorian Tastard, they found him on SoundCloud, right, yeah, just.
Speaker 2 (37:19):
A random like I think they said. The composer said
they posted a track or a collection of tracks in
a Discord server for indie game developers, and the people
making this game found it and they were like, yeah,
this is our guy. So it's crazy the way that
you would hear that and be like wow, they had
they had a vision for what this soundtrack should be,
(37:41):
and then because it fits perfectly. In my opinion, I'll
turn over to you.
Speaker 1 (37:46):
Yeah, no, I agree with you. I think it's great.
There's a lot of variety, there's a lot of contrasts,
going back to that core theme. What I think will
be the core theme of this game is contrasts. There's
a lot of that in here. The contrast between the areas,
you know, the talk boxes versus the more intimate chamber
settings versus the more low five beats to chill and
(38:08):
perry to how I've seen it referred to what I
really like. There are some areas that are very that
really do feel like they've got a French influence to them.
You know, there's this gracefulness that is in a lot
of French chamber music and French works in elegance, in
like a fragile elegance that is always there, even when
(38:29):
the music it's a little heavy, it's always effervescent, sort
of bubbly and fizzy, elegant. It's refined, even if it's
kind of folk inspired. Again, contrasts the theme of Lumiere is,
which is the opening area, by the way, is really nice.
You get this really singable folk melody dun dun da
(38:50):
da da dundund very singable, very narrow range that just
the common person can sing. And even in that kind
of plottingness of a singable folk melody that farmers sing,
there's an elegance to it, a gracelessness. There's gracefulness in gracelessness.
(39:11):
I guess you could say one thing, this is this
is me going kind of pepe Sylvia a little bit.
You can find this soundtrack on Spotify, on band camp.
You can listen to the whole thing. This is me
going a little pepe Sylvia for a second. And this
isn't a spoiler, because I don't I'm just guessing and
I think I'm looking too far into this. But that
(39:33):
theme of lumiere, you can boil that down to three
notes d just three notes. That's the skeletal structure. It's
how I used to describe it to students. If you
go to a much later track on the soundtrack that
is titled after who I expect is the antagonist, although
(39:56):
I think that might not be so simple wh all
I'm saying, but it's named after that thing, that person.
Oh yeah, that skeletal structure is both alluded to and
put forth in inversion. So instead of da da dah,
you get du du u. And I think I'm looking
way too far into it because that's just a three
(40:17):
note motif that's incredibly common. It's there's nothing weird about it.
And I don't have the music in front of me.
But if I'm right, I think that idea of contrasts,
let's say Yin and Yang, for example, I think is
going to play an immense part in the true nature
of who we believe to be the antagonist. That's all
I'm That's all I'm gonna say. Near near automata, near
(40:40):
replicant to everybody. The clear inspiration from those two games.
I think I'm really excited about it. This soundtrack is
terrific and it really I hope it makes everybody think
for a second about how many astoundingly talented people are
out there and we just don't know it.
Speaker 2 (40:58):
Yeah, one hundred percent.
Speaker 1 (41:00):
Like what what did Brendan Brendan Fraser's character in the
Whale say, Like people are amazing, These people are everywhere
and this this person just happened to be found in
a discord Yep.
Speaker 2 (41:11):
It's crazy to think of what it would have looked
like for both sides had that not, had that, you know,
game director not just been looking at a Discord server
on the day before that message got buried by a
bunch of other messages. I'm sure a lot of people
sharing their work and whoever that placed, uh, wherever that
place is. So it is kind of crazy to think.
Speaker 1 (41:32):
Of Balatro too, Balatro too right, like just just a
normal person that's making a creative endeavor and just happens
to get noticed. That is a life changing event.
Speaker 2 (41:43):
Mm yeah, and that it turns I'm not I'm obviously
I'm not going to say that if they picked a
different composer, the soundtrack would have been less effective, but
it turns it then sets like the tone of of
what this game is because I think this is one
of those sound tracks that is going to win a
bunch of awards at the end of the year. I
(42:05):
think it's going to be a soundtrack that people are
going to like, very very strongly associate with this game
and the story most importantly. So if they do, you know,
return to some of those themes as as you thought,
perhaps they will some of those motifs, I think it's
going to be the type of thing where you're going
to hear those notes or you're going to hear maybe
(42:26):
an inversion of that phrase, and it's going to have
an impact on you because it's obviously just a super
well done composition across the board. Like every new area
that I go into, even if it's like wildly different music,
I'm like, wow, this is this is just so good.
Speaker 1 (42:42):
My prediction for Claire Obscure is that it is going
to be in my personal running for Game of the Year. Yeah,
and I think this is going to be a j
RPG that's talked about long after this year is over
if they continue based on the try they've built in
me already, I really firmly believe that.
Speaker 2 (43:04):
Yeah, I have heard. I know. I read reviews when
it came out, and a lot of reviews mentioned that
they didn't love the direction that the story took, which
they obviously didn't say what happened. So I don't know
what they're talking about, but I agree with you probably
regardless of where the story ends up going, unless it's
like really fucking dumb, it's gonna be very high on
(43:26):
my personal game of the year. And if they stick
the landing, like you said, this feels like at all
timer to me. The first ten twelve hours that I
played have certainly been all time stuff.
Speaker 1 (43:40):
I have trouble trusting these early reviewers, not like early
reviewers from like outlets, just early reviews in general. Ever
since I saw several several early reviews saying that, oh yeah,
one thousand times resist it's just near but it's not
done as well, It's like, all right, I can't trust
anybody anymore.
Speaker 2 (43:59):
I'm glad I missed the reviews.
Speaker 1 (44:00):
Then yeah, yeah, geez, talk about reductive. I I really
believe in what I've played with this so far. I'm
just you know, I want to play it. So let's
end the episode I want to go play it.
Speaker 2 (44:13):
I was gonna say, you know, like I, I, you
and I we both have several games going out of
time for our shows and for me personally, I always
have one, maybe two, but usually it's just one that
like when it's like, all right, I'm done with work,
I'm sitting down at my PC, what am I going
to play? And there's usually one that's like, that's the
one you want to play right now? And that's absolutely
(44:35):
this game. So probably after we hang up, I will
be on it very soon after we're done here today.
Speaker 1 (44:42):
Same rather same, Well, that's we're going to keep this short.
That's all for today. Look forward to more Clear Obscure
in your feeds. At least in this feed I can't
I can't reveal the intentions and plans of others. But
in Pixel Project Radio Land and later in the year,
maybe August November sometime around there, you'll see three or
(45:05):
four episodes on this. Until then, I think easy to
say that we both recommend this wholeheartedly.
Speaker 2 (45:11):
Yeah, absolutely, go check this out.
Speaker 1 (45:13):
Take a break from Lunar, which I know you're all playing,
and check out a new JRPG and Claire Obscure Expedition
thirty three. Thanks Dave for joining me. Tales from the
Backlog podcast, folks, check it out, check it out, Thank you,
and until next time, I'm Rick, I'm your host and
we'll talk to you against So take care,
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