Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 developer Sandfall Interactive has revealed during an interview with GamesRadar that the game was inspired by numerous classic Final Fantasy games, which probably won’t come as a surprise considering it is billed as somewhat of a modern take on classic JRPGs.
François Meurisse, Producer and Studio Co-Founder at Sandfall, named “Final Fantasy 10” in addition to “the earlier ones on PlayStation, like 7, 8, and 9” were among some of the biggest inspirations for Clair Obscur: Expedition 33.
Those are big childhood games for Guillaume [Broche], our game director. He wanted to have like kind of feeling that he imagined would have remained in modern Final Fantasy-like games, if they had kept doing turn-based stuff. But he mixed also lots of different inspirations. Definitely Final Fantasy and JRPGs are the preeminent gameplay heritage we have. The defense system is more inspired by Sekiro and From Software games. It has this kind of rhythm element and a more real-time component in it. More skill-based.
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There are also lots of different smaller inspirations. For example, the idea of having action points for skills in the battles is more inspired by deckbuilding games than having the usual like magic points scores or mana in RPGs.
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is scheduled for release on April 25, 2025 for PS5, PC, and Xbox Series X/S.
[Source – GamesRadar]