Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 takes home an absurd 9 wins at The Game Awards, more than Baldur's Gate 3 in 2023
This year's Game Awards GOTY (and almost everything else) is the popular French RPG Clair Obscur: Expedition 33.
I went over to Reddit so I could keep track if the game awards because I didn't have time to actually watch it. Holy shit the hate E33 is getting is completely ridiculous, as Reddit does. Whether you go to the Silksong, KCD2, Death Stranding, Dispatch, Arc Raiders, or any other games subreddit that was nominated for any award about half the comments saying E33 is trash, overhyped, and their game deserved to win instead. As someone that has enjoyed all of these games, the salt is absolutely bonkers. Most of the ones complaining are basically saying "I never played it but I heard they did [blank] so they don't deserve [blank] award."
I just don't get why they need to shit on other people and the games they like just because their game didn't win. Shit on TGA all you want, but the fans and the devs literally had nothing to do with winning. They were all great games and all deserve praise in their own ways. In two weeks none of us will give a shit anymore anyway and will probably be complaining that "RV There Yet" wins the "Most Innovative Gameplay" award on Steam. I mean, a flippin' gacha game won the "Players Voice" Award and people are spending their time shitting on objectively good games.
For what it's worth most people are more mad that E33 won best indie and best debut indie. It's not an indie game, many people have said as much and it's completely unfair that they won in categories meant for small budget games by small teams.
Totally deserved in other categories, but that does leave a bad taste in my mouth.
That's pretty much where I'm at too. Though the "Indie Award" has always had similar problems before, such as the Dave the Diver debacle. But even though you could technically argue E33 is an indie it felt really wrong to have it up against something like Blue Prince in the indie categories. E33 had a huge budget with A-list actors ffs.
I guess I'm confused because I didn't know that "low budget" was now synonymous with "indie." They are an indie dev that made their first game yet their game doesn't count as "indie" because they had a budget? What about a game like No Man's Sky? They were an indie dev that got promoted by Sony and everyone shat on it when it came out and said they bit off more than they could chew. In my opinion, that seems even less fair.
I'm not saying they deserved the award more than any other game, I enjoyed all the games nominated, I'm just saying that if E33 flopped I highly doubt anyone would call them more than an indie dev that tried to punch above their weight just like No Man's Sky.
The category is misnamed. It should be best single A game from an independent studio.
Technically Sandfall is an independant studio. A very well privately funded independant studio founded by industry veterans supported by a great publisher. But no-one is arguing that other games published by Kepler Interactive aren't independant. And with 30-ish full-time employees Sandfall's scale is that of an SME, not an Ubisoft/EA/Sony.
The award doesn't feel right because this middleweight AA category was completely abdandoned the previous decade (which legacy studios are now paying a heavy price for), and "indie" came to mean "single A" because if the material conditions of being an independant company.
At the same time though technological advancements enabled small teams to take on larger and larger projects. "Indie" does not mean what it used to, and Clair Obscur is trailblazing this AA renewal. Award shows simply need to adapt and start restricting entry based on team size or something.
That one is dumb. I love E33 so much but you can tell this had a budget behind it.
They need a “small team” game award or something like that or enforce requirements on indie categories.
Game awards are ridiculous, but I will never forget Expedition 33. It deserves all the accolades it has earned and achieved.
Yeah the game is just straight up amazing. I laughed because I saw an article about the streamer, Shroud, complaining about how Expedition 33 shouldn't have won because Arc Raiders was so great - but then admitted he hasn't played Expedition 33.
Whether you go to the Silksong, KCD2, Death Stranding, Dispatch, Arc Raiders, or any other games subreddit that was nominated for any award about half the comments saying E33 is trash, overhyped, and their game deserved to win instead.
Nine awards is a lot. And this is after they swept Golden Joystick. It's a fine game. It's just not the only game.
Holy shit the hate E33 is getting is completely ridiculous, as Reddit does. Whether you go to the Silksong, KCD2, Death Stranding, Dispatch, Arc Raiders, or any other games subreddit that was nominated for any award about half the comments saying E33 is trash, overhyped, and their game deserved to win instead.
This is why I don’t care anymore about what other people think and don’t check the communities of games. I just hope the game, I like the most wins. If it happens, great! If it does not, sad but that’s okay. That’s life.
I just don't get why they need to shit on other people and the games they like just because their game didn't win.
Because it is the internet and nowadays people only think about themselves. “I like this game, I want and need this game to win”. The internet allows people to be sort of anonymous and that brings the worst out of people (because more often than not, there’s no consequences of the actions when it is written anonymously).
Imagine the average gamer. Imagine the average reddit user.
Now combine them.
I don’t want to imagine the smell
Gamers make me embarrassed to enjoy video games
Seriously though.
I used to be afraid to tell people how much I love video games, because most people thought of the South Park MMO guy meme as your average gamer. It MIGHT be true, but some of us really just love the craft and what is made of that craft!
It's like no one has/had any strong opinion about movie aficionados, other than they may not be fun to watch a movie WITH. I don't know. It was strange then, and still is. lol
The problem with the Internet is that it amplifies minority negative voices. Hundreds of thousands of people played that game and 100 pieces of shit get on reddit and be assholes and it gives all of their players bases a bad name. It's the same across anything. On the Internet a loud minority is going to piss in everyone's lemonade because they are trash humans.
What makes it worse is algorithm based social media prioritize rage bait since it creates engagement. It's breaking all of our brains.
I've only seen removed about it not being an indie and taking those awards.
They hired out a small army.
Hopefully their next game continues with that quality. The old RPG giants are mostly floundering are mere shells of what they used to be. Most of the old talent already sold out or retired.
The industry needs new talent to take over.
And get rid of its predators... I'm always so sad to see my friends working in the game industry so exploited, fired without a thought, all to benefit greedy executives who never played a single game in their lives...
executives who never played a single game in their lives...
Makes me think of Gaben who is a Dota2 nerd.
If we could just keep this trend of having the game awards completely snuff the big studios, that'd be great.
"We've picked one game and we're giving every award to that game because it's the best game at everything and have you played the game yet? You should it's so good it's just the best at everything."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kepler_Interactive
Kepler Interactive was founded in September 2021 at the initiative of former Ubisoft employee and French entrepreneur Alexis Garavayan, who had previously co-founded the video game investment fund Kowloon Nights. Self-described as a "super developer" publishing group, Kepler was born out of an alliance between seven independent studios to “pool their resources and knowledge”:
Hedge Fund ass publisher. Come on, guys. The Gaming Awards have always just been sponsored content and you're getting hoodwinked because you don't recognize the sponsor this time around.
does seem weird to me to just give all the awards to one game, but then critic-awards shows always have been kind of a joke
If you had ever seen the Game Awards before, this isn't exactly surprising.
It was not only good, but weird and unique. It was always going to sweep the show because that's exactly the kind of game the judges of it have favored every single year.
That's why the good, but ultimately derivative games didn't win as much.
Which is weird, since that game wasn't even marketed. I literally hadn't even heard of it till it started winning shit left and right
One could even say it's quite the obscure game to win awards like this..?
That’s Clair
yes
That's one area where you can see it is indie despite the large development cost.
They were published by Kepler Interactive and for some markets Bandai Namco. Neither of which have Ubisoft or EA's marketing budget which normally makes up something like half of the development budget of a game.
They did have some marketing. I know a lot of French streamers were paid to play the game on launch. But yeah not "in your face for 6 months in front of every YouTube video and inside every happy meal box" like a new assassin's creed or something.
Like I had heard whispers of it, but that's abojt it.
It wasn't the only game to have that problem. I was barely aware Death Stranding 2 existed let alone that it was out.
I had heard of Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 (because the fans wouldn't shut up about how right leaning and "non-woke" the game was) but did not think it deserved a mention.
To be honest the only game even nominated I had played was Donkey Kong Banaza.... (I was obviously VERY aware Hades 2 and Silksong existed. I just haven't had time to play them. Though I would have been offended if they weren't nominated. Especially Silksong)
I don't think it had a big marketing strategy, but it definitely marketed itself through word of mouth because it definitely deserved all the praise (and now awards) it got.
That's impressive, to be honest. Expedition 33 even had complete normies talking about it.
I'm so happy for them, the emotions this game brought to me were absolutely unique, its approach on grief was so beautiful. And can't forget the music that I keep humming for the last months...
Renoir's battle theme is the best song I have ever heard in a video game before. For a while, my YouTube algorithm was taken over by streamer reactions to hearing that song for the first time in game, because universally people were just stunned like "holy shit this is amazing".
The only award I think it didn't deserve was Best RPG.
But, on the other hand, it should have gotten Best Sound Design over BF6; so it still would have gotten 9 awards.
Truly a masterpiece of a game. To those haters saying "But not even BG3 got that many awards!" it's not a fair comparison. BG3 is a slightly better game IMO, but Expedition 33 is a work of art on top of being an amazing game and appeals to a much wider audience. Which isn't to say games like BG3 aren't beautiful, but I think anyone would agree that E33 is on a whole other level.
I'll see you Best RPG and raise you a Best Independent and Best Debut Indie.
They have a publisher that funded them with hedge fund money and outsourced aspects of the production to entirely different companies. I'm not making a comment on the quality of the game, but how is that indie?
A bit overhyped I think. Yes, I haven't played it through yet. Yes, it is indeed a good game (even though I don't like JRPGs). The soundtrack is absolutely fantastic. Bit I don't think it's better than BG3 and I'm sad, that KCD2 didn't win anything because in most, if not all, categories it was paired up with COE33.
In my honest opinion as someone that had played and enjoyed both games, they both deserved the awards in their own ways. I think Kingdom Come is definitely a better RPG in general, but at the same time E33 is an amazing game that is an RPG. It's semantics at this point and I think it's more of a lack of categories. RPG is such a loose term these days that I feel like it should be sub-divided into a few more. Lumping games together and comparing games that are vastly different based solely on a loose term like RPG is disingenuous.
That's because Clair Obscur is directly influenced by the JRPG genre which is why it feels almost like not a RPG compared to something that is a western RPG like KC:D2.
But I agree, the term RPG is way overloaded and it needs a more stricter set of rules to define what a RPG is. But it's been that way for almost a decade at this point and I no longer care to split hairs about it, I just laugh when Monster Hunter gets nominated as an RPG because in my mind I would never consider it a RPG.
Couldn't agree more. E33 isn't a RPG in the classical sense but has certain RPG elements. Don't get me wrong, it is, as far is I've played, a great game in it's own right, but imo it didn't deserve to win in the RPG category and maybe not even storytelling.
Which is funny because it didn't win best sound track at the biting awards.
KCD got absolutely shafted. Not getting best RPG sucks but the leads not even being nominated for best performance is just straight up bullshit.
I agree it's a wonderful game and it deserves recognition, but I also agree it's not as good as BG3. The thing is, that doesn't detract from any of it's awards this year because it was only competing with the games that came out in 2025, not the ones that came out in 2023.
Had BG3 and Clair Obscura come out at the same time, I think the split in awards would have been very different.
E33 was the surprise of the year for me. It came from nowhere.
Baguette supremacy.
Aaaaah this game was amazing, can't wait to download it again to play the new update
I just started playing expedition 33 and I can see why it won so many awards absolutely amazing game!
The French are really something else! Their ability to convey emotion is peerless in the planet.
I love when they block all the roads with tractors and spray manure into government buildings to protest the government being shitty at governing.
It conveys the emotions I feel so much better than I ever could (I don't own large quantities of manure, not the means to propel them at high speeds).
Pure civilizacional gold!
I am sad now that I'm not into this dark fantasy stuff.
Absolutely deserved. Good on em!
Why do they look like stereotypes?
Because it was a joke.
Cool, just curious.
I'm not saying E33 didn't deserve to win anything, but I don't believe it deserved to dominate like that. No single game should be allowed to do this, ever.
I mean, of the 6 nominees for Best Performance, 3 of them (50%) were from E33. That shouldn't be allowed, IMO. Pick the single best performance from one game, then you can have more variety to pick from. Also, the winner of Best Indie Game should automatically be disqualified from also winning Best Indie Debut game.
In my opinion: KCD2 snubbed for Best RPG, Silksong snubbed for best Action Adventure, and Half-Life 3 snubbed for Most Anticipated Game (is it disqualified -- no professionals allowed?).
I have the most issue with the performance win, that the nominations are for the English voice acting and this is not even an English game. The original acting is French, I played it with French voice + English subtitle. To me the English voice acting is just part of the localization. This is such an English-centric award and snub for non-English performances.
If anything the motion capture actors are more "worthy".
Original language is always better in my opinion. Filtering it into English has to leave out or change something.
I think for other people though they see the English voice actors as more professional or higher paid or more famous, whatever it is.
Why shouldnt the best actor be for the best performance regardless of which game it appears in?
To me, it’s an indicator that the rest of the industry bankrupted its talent and innovation. There’s been some great indie games, but nothing overwhelmingly amazing, certainly not in the AAA space.
I don't see the point of limiting the nominees to just one-per-game, for best performance. There's still only one winner, and if that game legitimately had that many fantastic performances, more power to 'em.
I'll second the idea of keeping Best Indie and Best Debut Indie separate. I'll go further and say E33 just isn't an Indie game, it's pretty solidly AA.
This is why some award shows have an award for being so outstanding you're in danger of ruining the show by taking all the awards. They give the award to them at the beginning and remove them from all categories, basically letting everyone play for second place.
I think more than specifically any game being better at X than E33, I think a lot of people are mostly just upset there were so many great games that just didn't win anything because E33 was there.