JRPG love letter Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is coming in hot next year with a full release that looks on par with plenty of other AAA games, though its origins are far more indie.

Speaking to Edge in issue 404 (on sale now), creative director Guillaume Broche recalls writer Jennifer Svedberg-Yen joining very early on as a voice actress before quickly becoming a co-writer and lead writer. “Then it built very organically – just for fun in the beginning. Everybody was working for free,” he says.

It wouldn’t be until later that the scope grew to a commercial release, with Broche taking the leap to leave Ubisoft and spin up Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 studio Sandfall Interactive. Even then, though, development remained scrappy for a while.

“I started off in Belgium during the pandemic and then moved to Montpelier, where I went with Guillaume and Francois [Meurisse, COO and producer] to an Airbnb for about a month,” artist Nicholas Maxis-Francombe says. “About a week before we had to leave, we were like, ‘Oh, we have to find apartments.'”

Thankfully, once the team settled, they raised the funds to create a vertical slice that secured them a publisher in Kepler Interactive, “who generously gave us enough money to finish the game.”

Since its reveal, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 has continued to grab eyes – mine especially – for a few reasons. At first, it was the impressive level of graphics slapped atop a turn-based RPG because, hey, as Persona frequently shows, being modern doesn’t have to mean leaving that combat style behind. It also has oodles of vocal talent, from Daredevil himself, Charlie Cox, to mocap magician Andy Serkis.

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is due to release next spring.

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 creative director put parrying in his turn-based RPG after playing Sekiro and thinking “Why can’t I parry in my game?”