
If you listen to the punters, you might believe that Clair Obscur: Expedition 33—a rather really very good videogame from Sandfall Interactive—rather embarrassed the modern RPG megastudios of today. How could this team of 30 (a bit more than that, actually) outdo the giants of the industry? For shame! Shame! (Just ignore the fact that Metaphor Re:Fantazio was excellent, it doesn't suit this narrative).
In actuality, I've always viewed Obscur as a love letter to these studios, regardless of my opinions on whether they've gone a touch wayward. While it's good for engagement to get folks invested in a war, I've never had the sense that director Guillaume Broche was anything other than a superfan of the games that very clearly fused themselves to his DNA, DNA which forged 2025's best Je-RPG.