How 2025’s surprise RPG hit lured some big-name stars

Nestled betwixt the crowd-pleasing guns and gore of Xbox’s 2024 summertime showcase, was an eyebrow-raising, painterly relation playing game. As its enactment of grimacing adults urgently sprints crossed a shimmering, surrealist landscape, a voiceover depicts a satellite terrorized by an omnipotent being called the Paintress. Each year, she daubs a caller descending fig connected a distant monolith and everyone of the corresponding property disappears. With 60+ expeditions gathering a grizzly end, it is present up to the oldest remaining humans — the 33 twelvemonth olds — to effort and reverse their realm’s futile fate.

After Doom: The Dark Ages and Gears Of War E Day’s carnal thrills, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33’s existential travel offered thing refreshingly abstract. The 30 beardown squad astatine developer Sandfall Interactive took inspiration from some classical RPGs and Belle Epoque-era Impressionist painters, aiming to marque a refreshingly French instrumentality connected Final Fantasy. It was this lofty ambition that attracted immoderate large sanction dependable endowment to this comparatively humble game.

“I instantly was drawn to the ocular style, the world-building, the characters… conscionable the themes down the story,” says Andy Serkis, the …

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