The beautiful ‘Clair Obscur’ is perhaps the most French game ever made

Former love couple Gustave and Sophie goes together once more to a celebration on the water. Why is the player of the game Clair Obscur Only gradually made clear, but their chemistry is unmistakable. The two complement each other perfectly: Gustave with his cynical pragmatism, Sophie with her warmth and empathy. They also seem to have both through, they come closer together – and then a grand, mythical being paints something in the distance. The projected number 34 disappears from heaven, a new 33 is drawn. Part of the city population disappears into the vacuum, including Gustave’s loved one.

The world of Clair Obscur Is struck by a curse. A mysterious being has been counting off for 67 years – they call her the ‘painter’. Everyone whose age is equal to that number disappears from the world. Nobody knows how this once started, attempts to fathom it have been stranded so far. Yet in his potentially last year of life, Gustave does not prevent Gustave from traveling with fellow sufferers in a boat to the painter, to kill her and to break the curse. You control Gustave and his companions while traveling around the world and fighting mysterious monsters.

The visual splendor of the game world would suggest that Clair Obscur A gigantic team has been developed, but behind the game is a development studio of only thirty people (with the help of freelancers, by the way). A French team whose culture was deep in the roots of the game. Sometimes that is explicit: one of the first bosses that Gustave can fight against is a mime player, who rewards him after victory with a beret, red-white shirt, tied cloth and of course a baguette on the back. On dramatic moments, the game does not scold with English power terms, but with ‘Merde’ and ‘Putain’.

The French roots are also hidden between the lines. Sometimes it is small, such as the way in which a teammate with a slanted head and raised shoulders communicates non-verbally. And Gustave is not an extrovert teenager, as you often play in similar games, but a thereaved man who, like Gérard Depardieu, mainly likes to communicate with his eyes.

Inner -vetters

The cast full inner venters makes it nice that prominent actors such as Andy Serkis and Charlie Cox play lead roles, who are able to convey the right emotion with little text. Gustave’s journey quickly spends him the whole world, with the magic of the painter even rewritten nature laws. The result is a colorful mixture of French art from the Belle-Epoque period-the Art Nouveau drips from the roofs-combined with fantasy illustrations from Japanese role-playing games.

It is a game that plays exactly like a Japanese role play, but then on French. It looks like classics like Final Fantasywhere traveling through the game world is alternated with alternate fighting. In the case of Clair Obscur His skirmishes are above average strategic and they also require a lot of reflex work, because you have to press buttons at the right time to avoid hits, for example.

Usually such Japanese role plays follow narrative conventions that are popular in the east, such as an emphasis on the development of a single character instead of the story. Op that front Clair Obscur The difference: this is a fantasy story with a clear European undertone. It is enough to give the game a unique face. In a game sector that increasingly Americanized in recent decades, that is extremely refreshing.

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