The year 2025 has been one of the best for gaming. I have discovered some of my favorite games of all time this year alone, starting with Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 in early February. After completing my journey in Bohemia, I was sure that KCD 2 was going to win the Game of the Year without a doubt…until I played a game made by 33 French developers who were former Ubisoft employees.
I am obviously talking about Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 from Sandfall Interactive. This was a game that I had not anticipated at all, and had gone in completely blind with zero expectations. By the end, I was a changed man and a tiny bit somber. Why somber? Because I knew exactly then that my favorite game this year, Kingdom Come Deliverance II, had zero chance of winning the 2025 game of the year award.
It was important to draw a parallel between Clair Obscur Expedition 33 and KCD 2. It shows the immense brilliance exhibited by a group of 33 developers that forced me to acknowledge defeat for my favorite game, way before the TGA nominations were made final. From this point onwards, this op-ed will be solely dedicated to Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 and why I think it will be the clear GOTY 2025 winner, sweeping every category.
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 Brings Out Every Humane Emotion
So, where should I start? Let’s start at the very beginning, launching the game. The moment you start the game, one of the best music composed in gaming history blasts into your ears, absorbing you into the grand tale of Expedition 33. Lorien Testard, their music composer, doesn’t just try to please your ears; he tells a story with every note.
A story of a mysterious world with equally fascinating beings. The world of Clair Obscur is absolutely gorgeous, buffoonishly funny, and in equal parts depressing and back-breakingly difficult. From Monoco, Verso, and Gustave’s funny antics, to Lune, Maelle, and Sciel’s serious conversations, every moment in Clair Obscur brings a new emotion out of you.
Gustave acts like the big brother to everyone, but succumbs to emotions when he has to make difficult decisions. Lune acts strong while craving to be protected. Sciel is constantly seeking love and tries to overextend to protect her friends. Maelle is constantly lost, trying to untangle the twisted fate she has to deal with. Monoco tries to act tough and is always the first to fight, but he has a much deeper side. Verso tries to bring happiness at the cost of himself. And then there is Esquie, a big, lovable balloon of a mythical being, who was born at the dawn of time, is extremely lazy, has pet rocks, vomits wine, and cracks the funniest of jokes without even realizing it.
These are not just characters; they feel like beings, each having their own story and a distinct set of emotions. With every new area traversed and new camp set up, you slowly learn a little more about them. In just a couple of hours, they become your family, and you want to learn everything about them, share their sorrows, help them redeem themselves…and avoid their deaths.
The outstanding nature of Clair Obscur Expedition 33’s storytelling is that it never lets you think that you are speaking with an AI or NPC. Every actor didn’t just play their role, they lived it in the game, and it shows with them bagging three nominations in the performance category.
Funny Encounters are a Specialty in Expedition 33
Sandfall Interactive has a sense of humor that is starkly needed in many other AAA gaming studios today. While telling a story that, at its core, is depressing and filled with hardships, Expedition 33 also allowed equal parts of fun activities. From funny interactions and side quests to hilarious costumes and mini-games, the game leveled out the depressing nature of its overall setting and storyline.
The Gestral Village is among the funniest areas I have visited. From interacting with random street vendors to little kids, every conversation will leave you wheezing from laughter. I still perfectly remember dialogues like “Time spent Yapping is better spent training,” or the Gestral that broke into literal break dancing in the middle of a conversation. Encounters like these are not just limited to this area; they are all over the game.
And the funny part is that none of the Gestrals actually have a dialogue. All they do is speak in gibberish, while you read subtitles. But even their gibberish has more emotions than many games with full sets of useless NPC dialogues nowadays.
On top of that, when you are bored with the normal turn-based combat or the sad story, you can simply play a mini-game at one of the Gestral beaches. These minigames include a rendition of the game Going Up, an obstacle course, a tennis duel, and many more. The mini games alone brought a smile to my face, but the rewards were equally good. I often won beach costumes for the characters, which were some of my favorites in the game.
There is nothing better than having a half-naked Verso wearing stripped underwear, a red baguette, and sunglasses to cut the tension in a scene. The costumes you make your characters wear in the game are used during in-game cutscenes, which can be hilarious at times. Although it does cost for the severity of the scene, the fact that the game allows players to do it makes it better than eighty percent of the titles out there.
Clair Obscur Didn’t Need to Reinvent the Wheel to Win GOTY, But It Did It Anyway
You have likely heard that Clair Obscur Expedition 33 has reinvented the Tactical RPG genre, making it more acceptable for action lovers. In many ways, this is true. Although the game doesn’t add anything new that many of the other Tactical RPGs haven’t done in the past, what it does is bring all those amazing features into one single game. The parrying and dodge system makes the combat much more than a simple tactical game. The Dark Souls fan inside me resonated at the challenging combat, and I am sure it attracted many others like me from the Souls community.
Clair Obscur Expedition 33 mixed the best parts of a tactical RPG, planning your next move and preparation, with mechanics loved by Souls fans. Being a massive fan of both genres, I never knew this was even something I craved before playing Expedition 33.
I still remember meeting Chromatic Lancelier for the first time in one of the earliest areas in the game. Like common in Souls games, this was a boss that would one-shot you with its attacks when you met it for the first time. However, you still could defeat it if you play your cards perfectly.
Being a hardcore Souls fan, I couldn’t help but throw myself at the challenge from the very start. Although my friends, our editor Anmol, and colleague Ishan kept on laughing at me on Discord for dying for the 10th time, I couldn’t help but push further. Eventually, I did push enough to defeat it, and that felt as satisfying as any such encounter in the Souls games. By then, I was completely hooked to the game, continuing to take on such challenges in other areas as well, and the game doesn’t shy away from challenging players at all.
Although Clair Obscur Expedition 33’s story and premise seemed enough to me to win this year’s GOTY, their reinventing an entire genre of gaming only cements this claim.
Clair Obscur Expedition 33 Will Sweep Every Award and It Won’t Even Be Close
Clair Obscur Expedition 33 has already broken the record of most nominations ever bagged in the history of The Game Awards, grabbing 12 nominations in total and 10 nominations for different categories. From best performance, art direction, narrative, and score and music, to GOTY, Expeditions 33 is expected to grab all of them.
The music and narrative should be a no-brainer, because none of the other nominated games even comes close to the sheer brilliance of cinematography and music composition of Sandfall Interactive. The only game that may come close is Death Stranding 2, in this regard, but even that is a hard argument to make.
Next, the best performance alone features three nominations from Clair Obscur, and it will most likely be grabbed by Charlie Cox, who was phenomenal as Gustave. After that, if we look into the best categories of specific genres like Indie or RPG, then Clair Obscur being a favorite for GOTY already makes it triumph above the other games in the nominations. Expedition 33 winning GOTY 2025 and losing the Indie Debut would not make sense. This leaves out Art Direction, which I feel would be either awarded to one of the other games because their distinct art style is over Clair Obscur.
If I have to guess, Clair Obscur would easily sweep 8-9 awards, and might even tie Baldur’s Gate 3 with 10 awards in TGA. And it deserves every bit of it. Clair Obscur Expeditions 33 is a game for the ages, easily standing out among the best games in history, shoulder to shoulder with the likes of Red Dead Redemption 2, Baldur’s Gate 3, and Elden Ring.
So, what’s your take on Clair Obscur Expeditions 33? Do you also think they will sweep the Game Awards this time around? Let us know in the comments.
Ishan Adhikary
