Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is the greatest game I've ever played

But talking about what happens would ruin the experience.

How do you praise something for its story when you want to reveal nothing about the story out of fear doing so would ruin the experience it offers?

This is the conundrum of the absolute masterpiece that is Expedition 33.

I want everyone to play this game. I want everyone to experience the art, level design, music, storytelling and journey. I want people to explore every nook and cranny of canon the story gives access to because not all of it is mandatory to complete the game. What makes the story so great and so compelling needs to be experienced firsthand to really appreciate and internalize its message, which leads to any encouragement you share manifesting with the same bug eyed intensity a conspiracy theorist exhibits when they encourage you explore the same rabbit hole they’ve crawled into.

Still, I want to try to express enough that perhaps I encourage at least one other person in the world to try it. Or maybe somehow one of the developers or actors sees this and is heartened by yet another appreciation post.

At its core, Expedition 33 is a story about grief on both a macro and micro scale. Grief is something we all experience for many different reasons and in many different ways. Grief is an abstraction for emotions and factors too varied to enumerate that is usually rooted in some form of loss but not necessarily death. It’s a useful encapsulation of a complex state that allows us to communicate how we’re feeling to others in a more complete and visceral way than words can muster on their own.

The forms of grief Expedition 33 captures are sometimes subtle and sometimes obvious and tend to provoke a lot of philosophical turmoil and debate in the process. They really manage to walk a tightrope of the human condition, sparking numerous threads about certain story themes and character arcs that both have no objective answer and hit people differently depending on their life experience.

Additionally, the voice acting in this game is of the very highest caliber, and includes some household names in the form of Charlie Cox and Andy Serkis. Simply put: the game is devoid of weak links in the delivery of its dialogue.

Expedition 33 is an experience that can bring even the most stoic gamer to tears, causing you to reflect on your own past with different perspective than you had before. It strongly confronts the idea that our own journeys with grief can be compounded by how we feel others around us process the same grief. It’s entirely possible to disagree or take issue with how someone else handles grief: friends, family, even coworkers aren’t immune to this circumstance. The dual mandate of navigating your own while empathizing with another’s is put on full display in this game, and it will wreck you in beautiful ways.

As if this game couldn’t do enough right, the art direction and music are both something to behold. The world is beautiful, haunting, and unlike anything I’ve seen. The music is wonderfully complex and deep, and uses classical instruments, rock instruments, and vocals to weave through the surreal setting of the game in magical ways.

Without spoiling too much, the end of the game presents you with a choice that culminates everything you’ve learned about the world, the characters, and the story. What cuts deep about this choice is that at its core its one we’ve all likely been faced with at some point in our lives. The consequences of that choice are frequently debated on various discussions of the game, but in ways where you witness strangers connecting with one another on a deeper level than usual.

The game already has a movie deal penned, and quite frankly I’m pretty worried about it because it’s an awful lot of ground to cover. In my mind’s eye this would be something perfectly suited for a 6-8 episode Apple TV or HBO Max series. Games never map one to one with their screen adaptations in terms of time commitment, but I don’t think enough of the story could be realized in under six hours to give it the credit it deserves.

All of that said, the fact that it does seem screen bound keeps me motivated to not reveal more of the story to anyone I know who doesn’t play video games.

I truly believe, no matter who you are or what you’ve experienced in life, you should play this game from start to finish because you’ll walk away from it a changed person, and I can’t think of too many video games that have had that profound of an effect on me. When I say changed, I don’t mean making some kind of drastic switch to anything in your life mind you; I mean thinking differently about your own past, relationships, and how you live with what you carry.

“For those who come after.”