Clair Obscur: Expedition 33’s director got on the RPG train early, playing FF8 ‘when my brother and I could barely read’

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 feels like a love letter to JRPGs—and that’s because it pretty much is. Director Guillaume Broche has a long-lasting history with the genre, including an ill-fated attempt to play Final Fantasy 8 before he and his brother could actually read.

That’s per a recent interview with The Washington Post, wherein Guillaume recounts some of his earliest gaming memories: “[FF8] came out at a time where my brother and I could barely read.” Guillaume is, fittingly, 33 years old—which would’ve made him around 7 at the time. That does indeed put him within developmental striking distance of being able to barely read the reams of text in your average RPG.

“We have fond memories of struggling against the first boss. We couldn’t beat him because we couldn’t read, as the only thing we knew how to do was just auto-attack. Which is really bad.”

It’s a charming little reveal from Guillaume, who appears to’ve hit the ground running with Sandfall. Having sunk a good 60 hours into a much-enjoyable playthrough myself, I can see the influences of his JRPG experiences scattered throughout it.

There’s the obvious stuff, like the heftily Persona-inspired menus, but then there’s also other bits: Like that one volleyball minigame that raised my blood pressure, or those charmingly-janky jumping puzzles. Infuriating, optional nonsense is basically a mainstay of classic Final Fantasies.

It’s also unmistakably French, but Guillaume says that’s all part of the cultural exchange: “It goes both ways, because when we go to Japan as French developers with our game, we show them this distorted version of Paris, and we immediately catch their attention because they are also influenced by French culture. There is a reciprocal fascination for one culture to another.”

It’s nice—and a little reassuring, given how cynical the industry has become—to see a game so clearly forged out of passion and appreciation for its contemporaries. Guillaume sums it up well at the tail-end of the interview: “There is a lot of joy and sincerity in how we made the game, and I think it’s something players can connect with … We are emptied out. There is all of us in the game, nothing left.”