After the near-simultaneous release ofClair Obscur: Expedition 33andOblivion Remastered, the publisher of the former came out and said that the release of Oblivion Remastered hadn’t harmed Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 commercially.
While I respect the nonchalance, there had to be some kind of nagging worry that the massive initial popularity of Oblivion Remastered would crowd out Clair Obscur. Bethesda may have realised this too, because Bethesda Game Studios actuallyreleased a social media postendorsing Clair Obscur around that time.
However, a fantastic new video from Skill Up that chronicles the journey of Clair Obscur from inception to release highlights that Sandfall was concerned about Oblivion Remastered (nice spot,GamesRadar+).
Sandfall Was Nervous
Art director Nicholas Maxon-Francombe says the team was “a bit concerned” about Oblivion Remastered, and that everyone was “pretty nervous” about the potential of being overshadowed by the remake of the beloved 2006 RPG.
However, the launch soon quashed any fears Sandfall may have had about the performance of Expedition 33: “When you have a team that love the game, they expect it to succeed. But not to the level it had, to be honest. Way beyond what we would have expected.”
He also mentions that the team prepared champagne and croissants for the day of the review embargo lifting on Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 and everyone erupted into joyous screams when the positive review scores came flooding in.
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 was previously the highest-rated game of 2025 onMetacritic, but it has since been eclipsed by the Switch 2 version of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, which hardly counts if you ask me, but I digress. It maintains the highest ever user-score on the platform, holding a 9.7 after 16,600+ reviews.
As for the future of Clair Obscur, Sandfall is currently working to address the various bugs and exploits that have cropped up since the game’s release. After that’s dealt with, the team plans to add highly requested features like photo mode and lumina loadouts.
