Clair Obscur: Expedition 33may be thebest-reviewed game of 2025and abig commercial hit, but that didn’t prevent it from befalling the same fate as many games before it. Namely, me getting distracted, walking away for months, then returning to the campaign expecting to remember anything at all about what was going on.
Thankfully, Expedition 33 has a pretty straightforward overarching story: complete Expedition 33. If you ever forget, there’s a helpful obelisk with the number 33 written on it in massive, glowing digits. As simple as the game’s quest is, when hopping back in after rolling credits onDoom: The Dark Ages, I can’t help but be distracted by all the stuff I don’t remember or never knew at all.
Who Are These People And Why Are They Acting Like I Know Them?
Though the game introduces you to Gustave and Maelle in pre-expedition times, Lune and Sciel just show up and join your crew with little context. You obviously know that they’re from Lumière, and their uniforms denote them as members of the expedition. Gustave and Maelle react like they know them, too, so all the context clues point to them being friends from back home. But the game doesn’t tell you much else.
That’s fine, a little mystery is all well and good. My big problem is that there’s no way to get any more information about the characters in the menus either — aside from a breakdown of their stats and abilities — or review the little you know about them. Modern RPGs often include short descriptions of who your party members are and some, like Final Fantasy 16, go further, letting you read paragraph after paragraph about the characters and the world they inhabit.
When Lune showed up, I was puzzled about who she was, but there was no way to get that information.
Especially since I played that section during the pre-release period when there was no information about the game available online. I’m aware this is a nice problem to have.
The game acted like I should really know who she was. And, since the only characters that had made an impression during the opening section in Lumiere were a) Gustave, who I was playing as, b) Maelle, who Lune and Gustave were discussing tracking down, and c) Gustave’s sister, Emma, whose name I couldn’t remember, I spent an embarrassing amount of time wondering if Lune (who looks nothing like Emma) was supposed to be Gustave’s sister. This might have mostly been a me problem, but this would be easily solvable by including a codex with the characters you’ve met so far.
And What Was I Doing Anyway?
This issue is exacerbated by the fact that Clair Obscur has no quest log. The only quest that the game acknowledges exists is the one you’re currently doing.
At least, that is, where I’m at about eight hours in.
If you want to know what you did in the last play session, sorry. If you want to know what you did at the beginning of the game, you’re really out of luck. Revenge of the Savage Planet did something similar earlier this year, deleting your quests from your log once you completed them (which, while guiding the game, was very annoying). Clair Obscur just doesn’t have a logbook, period.
This is odd because it’s clearly an homage to classic JRPGs, and logbooks have been a part of the genre for decades. Pokemon Fire Red and Leaf Green had a recap of what you did in your last session every time you loaded the game up, and that was 21 years ago. This stuff is not revolutionary and its absence is noticeable.
Clair Obscur is still a great game, and I can’t wait to see where its story goes. I just wish I could remember where it’s already been.
