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Japan Forward
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- Japan Forward
Is Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 a JRPG?
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 has been lighting up the gaming world recently, winning big-time approval from critics and fans alike, despite being the very first game from independent developer Sandfall Interactive. People are calling it the best new JRPG (Japanese Role Playing Game) in years, a refinement of the template set out by games like Final Fantasy . The twist, of course, being that Clair Obscur is not a Japanese game. Made in France by a team of around 30 developers at Sandfall Interactive, Clair Obscur is helmed by Director Guillaume Broche and several of his fellow ex-Ubisoft colleagues. The game draws heavy inspiration from classic JRPGs like Final Fantasy and Persona , hidden gems such as Lost Odyssey and Blue Dragon , and Japanese action titles like Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice . Gustave and Lune begin their quest to slay the Paintress in Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. The result is a game that blends turn-based combat with action in a gorgeous fantasy world. Yet, while it is every bit as high-concept and fantastical as the games that inspired it, Clair Obscur manages to avoid much of the bloat that has crept into those series over the decades. It delivers an immersive world and a relatable story about a band of young adventurers on a quest for freedom over tyranny, told over a relatively compact 30 to 40 hours. Clair Obscur is set in a dark fantasy world where, for the past 67 years, the inhabitants of the island of Lumière have perished one age group at a time. Each year, they fall victim to a mystical sorceress known as the Paintress, who has been counting down from age 100, reaching 33 this year. Now aged 32 and facing their own demise next year, stoic expeditioner Gustave and his peers undertake a voyage dangereux to destroy the Paintress so that future generations may live. The game was released on April 24, receiving a critic score of 92% on Metacritic and a user score of 9.7, making it one of the most highly acclaimed games of all time. IGN gave it a 9/10 score, writing, "Wearing its inspirations on its sleeve, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 paints itself into the pantheon of great RPGs with a brilliant combat system and a gripping, harrowing story." Clair Obscur's deep and complex battle system is a hybrid of classic turn-based commands and skill-based action. Our writer at IGN Japan gave it a slightly lower score of 7/10, saying, "While I was hooked by its combat system, the story's sudden plot twist felt forced. Although this was hard to ignore, it is undeniable that Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is an appealing game that delivers a strong message." IGN France, meanwhile, gave it a perfect 10/10, labelling it "a sumptuous and captivating work of art that never forgets its status as a game, offering rich and exhilarating gameplay." Within 12 days, it had sold two million copies, plus an undisclosed number of additional players on Xbox Games Pass. Michael Douse, the publishing director at Larian Studios, whose own RPG Baldur's Gate 3 was a smash hit in 2023, estimated on his X (Twitter) account that the game will end up selling at least six million copies, and maybe up to ten million – huge numbers for a lower-budget independent game. I hope now word of mouth is in control it can reach its potential. and I say that in support of the developers and their incredible achievement. It has the potential to reach a conservative 6, at least. Could top 8-10. — Very AFK (@Cromwelp) May 6, 2025 For comparison, the most recent Final Fantasy game, 2024's Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth , also scored 92% with critics but 8.9 with users, while the latest mainline game in the series, 2023's Final Fantasy XVI , scored 87% and 8.4. Despite these being excellent and well-made games, sales in the series appear to be in decline. Publisher Square Enix reported that FFXVI sold three million units in its first week, but has been noticeably reticent to announce official numbers for Rebirth , suggesting they are low. This is less than previous games, with 2016's FFXV selling five million copies on its first day, the fastest-selling game in the series to date, eventually reaching at least ten million. Rebirth 's 2020 predecessor, a FFVII remake, sold 3.5 million in three days and finally hit around seven million. The budgets to make each of these games were likely much, much higher than for Clair Obscur . Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth, the second in a trilogy of remakes of Square Enix's classic RPG, was met with critical praise but apparently disappointing sales. That's not to pick on Final Fantasy or Square Enix: JRPGs are a niche genre in gaming. An important, storied, and beloved niche – but a niche nonetheless. Which makes Clair Obscur 's crossover success all the more impressive. Sandfall Interactive's game has sparked fresh debate about what the term JRPG really means. After all, if the "J" stands for "Japanese", should it only apply to games made in Japan? Or any game with the characteristics of a JRPG? What even are the characteristics of a JRPG? In fact, the term JRPG has had its controversies over the years. In February 2023, Final Fantasy XVI producer and veteran developer Naoki Yoshida told YouTube channel Skill Up that he found the term offensive. Clair Obscur has won high praise for its painterly art style and moving story. Yoshida commented, "For us as developers, the first time we heard it, it was like a discriminatory term, as though we were being made fun of for creating these games. And so for some developers, the term JRPG can be something that will maybe trigger bad feelings because of what it was in the past. It wasn't a compliment to a lot of developers in Japan. We understand that recently, JRPG has better connotations and it's being used as a positive, but we still remember the time when it was used as a negative." The term was coined at some point in the late 1980s or early 90s, with the first confirmed online usage made on a web forum in 1992, and was used to differentiate between RPG games from Japan and the West. As Yoshida pointed out, it was mostly used by gamers and media outside of Japan. I've personally never considered it a derogatory term, but I can understand how someone in Yoshida's position may find it othering. These days, we tend to expect a JRPG to cast the player as a specific protagonist to experience a set story, whereas Western RPGs will usually have players create their own character and co-author the story as they play. We also tend to expect a turn-based combat system and anime-influenced visual design and characters. 2023's Sea of Stars was a homage to classic Japanese RPGs, despite being made in Canada But of course, early Japanese RPG developers were themselves heavily influenced by Western games such as the early-80s Wizardry series from America, just as some of today's Western developers grew up with JRPGs. The lines have blurred accordingly, with games like 2023's Sea of Stars being considered a JRPG despite being made in Canada. While Clair Obscur does pay homage to the best of the JRPG genre, it also does a great job of honoring its French roots. The game's dialogue is available in French or English, with a stellar voice cast in both, and even in English, it is unafraid to slip in plenty of French terms. When the game's characters face erasure at the hands of the Paintress, their bodies disintegrate into petals that flutter on the wind, a process named the Gommage – a French word meaning to exfoliate and erase. And as you play, Gustave's friends mutter expletives in French, with a well-timed "Merde!" reminding you of their origins. Gustave dressed in an outfit simply titled Baguette. The setting itself is a fantasy take on France's pre-WWI Belle Époque period, a distinctly French visual style that is striking. And you can even dress Gustave, Lune, Maelle, and their amis in a stereotypically French costume comprising a striped T-shirt, beret, and freshly baked baguette slung across their backs, a tongue-in-cheek reference to the development team's culture. French President Emmanuel Macron even praised Clair Obscur in an Instagram post, calling it "a shining example of French audacity and creativity." IGN recently published a video titled The 25 Best JRPGs of All Time, in which it gave the editorial team's favorites, including titles like Chrono Trigger , Persona 5 Royal , and Final Fantasy X . In some ways, I was actually a little surprised that all the games in IGN's best JRPGs list were indeed from Japan. Our team at IGN Japan gave our own thoughts on the list during an episode of our video podcast Shaberisugi Gamer a few days later, drawing a lively debate in the comments from our viewers. As for me, I'm steadily working my way through Clair Obscur and loving every minute of it. I often struggle to play modern RPGs as the time commitment is so extreme, as many games require around 60-80 hours to beat, so the fact that Clair Obscur offers a fascinating story and hugely engaging combat system within a relatively tight package appeals to me. Gustave and friends on their perilous journey. As a British pop-culture journalist based in Japan for 19 years, I've always enjoyed cross-pollination of culture, and for me, the erosion (or gommage ) of boundaries is always welcome. So the idea of a JRPG made outside of Japan didn't seem strange to me until the conversation blew up around Clair Obscur . I hope you'll try the game and see what you think! Author: Daniel Robson
Yahoo
20-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 has Charlie Cox and it knows how to use him
Every Friday, A.V. Club staffers kick off the weekend by taking a look at the world of gaming, diving in to the ideas that underpin the hobby we love with a bit of Game Theory. We'll sound off in the space above, and invite you to respond down in the comments, telling us what you're playing this weekend, and what theories it's got you kicking around. The first thing that struck me when I finally got around, this week, to loading up Clair Obscur: Expedition 33—the new and extremely French turn-based RPG from Sandfall Interactive that everyone you know online has been losing their minds over since late April—was that the acting didn't suck. This isn't entirely surprising, given that the game stars Daredevil charisma machine Charlie Cox, and features supporting performances from the likes of Jennifer 'Shadowheart from Baldur's Gate 3' English. But that non-suckage is enough of a rarity in the gaming space—reminder that I'm fresh off Doom: The Dark Ages and The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy, neither of which ever get past 'serviceable' in this department—that it still made me sit up and go 'Hey, holy shit.' And it's not just the performances, although the performances (including the facial acting and animation) are very good. (Especially as the game winds its way through its stunningly confident prologue chapter, slowly revealing the mystery of why all these very pretty, very young French people seem so hideously sad.) I was also struck by the rhythm of the opening conversation between Cox's Gustave and his young ward Maelle, the two of them talking over and interrupting each other in ways that felt more like natural speech than the stilted 'I say my line, now you say your line' manner of so much video game dialogue. Editing is a deeply underrated skill in the world of games, and Sandfall clearly gets it in a way that even big-money studios that drop stacks of cash on big-name actors often don't. And Clair Obscur needs that boost as it busts out of the gate, giving everything a grounding of human recognizability as it slowly spools out its high-concept premise: An ongoing apocalypse in which everyone over a certain age is suddenly, magically killed, with the lethal number dropping every year. It could be the stuff of pulpy melodrama, as Gustave reunites with his lover Sophie on the day she's set to have her 'Gommage.' But the game's writing, and its performances, dovetail so nicely that the whole mad concept becomes entirely believable. (Sandfall is also careful to capture the inevitable culture that arises from this society-altering threat, from the webs of foster families and orphanages that spawn as whole generations of children are orphaned, to the ways those who are about to die pile their furniture on the street so that survivors can take their pick.) Cox is especially mesmerizing as Gustave, as the character forces himself to adopt a series of fragile, brave faces in the face of a grief that is no less painful for having been perfectly predictable. I'm not that far into Clair Obscur, having only just recently cleared its first major boss fight, about four hours in. But I've already gotten the sense that it's a game that might be frontloading a big portion of its impact, with that incredibly dense and detailed prologue giving way to much quieter, less focused exploration once the titular Expedition actually begins. This could be a fatal flaw. I've played plenty of games where their first chapters—i.e., the bits that get completed first, and demoed a million times as devs do the work of convincing people that what they've made works—were clearly polished to perfection, only to have later acts feel like an afterthought. But it's here where the commitment to emotionally mature storytelling, to using actors and animators and editors to create characters who actually feel like people, pays huge dividends. Even if the game loses some of its early complexity once you're actually running around and beating up Geometry Monsters every few minutes (and as the cast gets, uh, reduced in the opening minutes of its first full chapter), the memory and weight of those opening minutes lingers. 'Why does what I'm doing matter?' is one of those big narrative hurdles any game story writer has to tackle. Few games have answered it as definitively as Clair Obscur does in those first few scenes, and understanding that effectively staging and recording those moments, not just as bits of a game, but as dramatic scenes, is a huge reason for that success. More from A.V. Club The Last Of Us finally eulogizes Joel Miller Mr. Fielder goes to Washington in this week's The Rehearsal Joe Biden diagnosed with "aggressive" form of prostate cancer
The Hindu
19-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Hindu
‘Clair Obscur: Expedition 33' game review
There are two types of gamers: those who are obsessed with turn-based Japanese Role-Playing Games (JRPGs), and those who steer well clear. Today, a close friend of mine, firmly in the latter camp, surprised me by saying they have been drawn into Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, the latest turn-based, Final Fantasy-inspired JRPG from a passionate team of French developers. A game so deeply rooted in JRPG tradition, yet since its launch, it has been turning heads, blurring genre boundaries, and drawing in even the most hesitant of players. Given its rapid virality, it would be easy to dismiss Expedition 33 as just another flash in the pan. But even a cursory glance at the trailers and previews reveals a labour of love, one that pulls you into its mysterious world with a compelling story, inspired and challenging combat, incredible characters, and arguably one of the most memorable narratives in recent gaming history. Every year, the surviving humans gather for Gommage, a grim ritual in which a towering figure known only as The Paintress paints numbers in the sky. Each number erases everyone of that age from existence. That is where Expedition 33 begins: the number 33 is painted, and the protagonist Gustave is forced to watch his loved ones turn to roses and ash. With heavy hearts, the expedition sets out to end The Paintress, but the journey is anything but simple. Gustave and his companions must traverse a world of eerie beauty and unspeakable horror, one richly inspired by French art. The game begins in a deceptively light-hearted way, reminiscent of Chrono Trigger, with you meeting a friend at a fair. But things take a dark turn quickly when the number 33 is painted. From that moment, the game has you emotionally invested in Gustave's story. Expedition 33 excels at keeping you at the heart of its narrative filled with grief, hope, and quiet resilience. Despite the odds, its cast clings to hope as they march toward a conclusion that is as satisfying as it is weighty. The Paintress may paint death, but the developers have painted a storytelling masterpiece. The battle system is a love letter to the best elements of turn-based RPGs. It blends Final Fantasy's materia systems, Persona 5's sleek UI, Mario RPG's timing-based dodges, and even Sekiro's parries into a combat system that is both reactive and precise. The thrill of landing a perfect parry or using a character's unique mechanics to gain the upper hand is immensely rewarding. However, there are moments when the game throws overwhelming multi-hitting enemies at you, occasionally bordering on unfair, forcing you to truly master the mechanics. Each character has a distinct combat style, ranging from complex to beginner-friendly. For example, Lune generates elemental 'stains' based on her attacks, and chaining specific combinations boosts her damage output. Meanwhile, Maelle, a fan favourite, employs a more straightforward fencing stance system to deal powerful blows. The diverse cast allows players to experiment with different builds before settling on the party that best suits their playstyle. Clair Obscur Expedition 33 Publisher: Sandfall Interactive, Sandfall S.A.S. Developer: Kepler Interactive Price: ₹4,999 on Playstation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, PC Forget Steampunk, Expedition 33 embraces the elegance of the belle époque, a stunning yet ironically chosen aesthetic for a game centred on mass erasure. The world design is exquisite, clearly influenced by French art, history, and architecture. Every environment feels like a painting worthy of framing. Despite its harrowing plot, the game provides moments of peace, allowing players to explore, discover, and engage in well-crafted side quests that genuinely add value. Visually, Expedition 33 is astonishing. Sandfall Interactive — a relatively small team, many of whom are ex-Ubisoft — have delivered a game that feels AAA in every respect. At a time when even major releases like Star Wars Outlaws launch in rough shape, Expedition 33 stands as a testament to what passion and vision can achieve. While big studios often scoff at turn-based systems in favour of formulaic design, Expedition 33 proves there is a hungry audience for innovation within tradition. As Final Fantasy continues to drift away from its roots, perhaps this game will inspire a return to form. Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is a triumphant reminder that the JRPG is not only alive but thriving. If you are after a game that is beautiful, intricate, and emotionally resonant, look no further. It is only May, and yet this already feels like a strong contender for Game of the Year, especially with Grand Theft Auto VI sitting out 2025.
The Star
12-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Star
A spectacular RPG has balletic combat and powerful twists
Narrative games mostly cater to the desire for victory or a flattering resolution, rarely placing the accent on an undigested loss. That is why Life Is Strange, The Beginner's Guide and The Last Of Us series have etched themselves deep into my memory. I can now add Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, a stunning debut title whose story moves from a grandiose save-the-world premise to a smaller drama about a grieving family, to the list of video games that have left me emotionally shaken when I've reached the credits. Clair Obscur draws inspiration from Japanese role-playing games like Final Fantasy in addition to the viciously challenging Souls series, but it leavens those influences with a proud Gallic sensibility. (Fair warning: The irascible mimes in this game, by French developer Sandfall Interactive, are no joke.) In debonair fashion, Clair Obscur opens with Gustave, dressed in an elegant suit, standing in a rooftop garden and gazing toward a distant shore. There stands a monolith emblazoned with '34'. As Gustave throws a rock in its direction, his air of defiance slides into one of resignation. A 33-year-old woman dear to him is about to die. And he wants to bring her a rose. Flowers are arrayed everywhere throughout the Paris-like city of Lumière, where 33-year-olds are wearing floral necklaces on occasion of their Gommage, an annual ritual when a mysterious figure known as the Paintress will write the number on the monolith that triggers their disappearance. Gustave, 16-year-old orphan Maelle and a team of volunteers embark on an expedition to kill the Paintress and free the city from the ritual that causes people to evaporate and leave behind a swirling cluster of red petals in their wake. They are following in the footsteps of dozens of similar expeditions. But not long after leaving Lumière, Expedition 33 comes to near ruin when it encounters a cane-wielding gray-haired man and the army of monsters, known as Nevrons, at his disposal. Clair Obscur's art direction, voice acting and sumptuous score establish a fascinating world, and some of the game's fantasy aspects are cleverly undermined as the spirit of enchantment – the expedition's pursuit of an unambiguous goal – gives way to something messier, morally compromised and tragic. The end of each of the game's three acts arrives with escalating force. Though the twist at the end of Act 1 made me think of a key narrative manoeuvre in Game Of Thrones, I was fairly blindsided by the game's finale, so much so that I had tears in my eyes. Let's just say that there is a moment, in the ending I chose, where one of my favourite characters looks at her erstwhile companion and then slumps to the ground. The disappointment on her face may be the most haunting look I've seen on a video game character since the ripple of emotions played out on Ellie's face at the end of The Last Of Us Part I. Clair Obscur grew out of a prototype by Guillaume Broche, who taught himself to use Unreal Engine while working as a narrative lead at Ubisoft. He was interested in making a game with turn-based combat that explored the passage of time and teamed up with Tom Guillermin, a programmer at Ubisoft, to create an hourlong slice of gameplay. Incredibly, Broche met Jennifer Svedberg-Yen, who ended up becoming Clair Obscur's lead writer, through a vocal sample that she submitted through Reddit when he was searching for voice actors for his prototype. After Broche, Guillermin and François Meurisse founded Sandfall in 2020, setting up its headquarters in Montpellier, the team decided to scrap the original scenario of what was then called We Lost. Broche, Sandfall's creative director, was now interested in a story based around a monolith on which a number clocks down and causes people to disappear. The idea for structuring the game around expeditions came from a French fantasy novel, La Horde du Contrevent, which tells the story of groups of people setting out to discover the origins of a mysterious wind. 'We liked the idea of expeditions trying to overcome previously failed expeditions and finding their remains, their journals, their past stories,' Meurisse, Sandfall's producer, told me. Clair Obscur is a hard game in which it is best to not get hit. By listening for audio cues and looking for visual tells, players can evade or counter an enemy's attacks by precisely hitting the correct button. As someone not particularly drawn to games structured around turn-based combat, I was unexpectedly taken with the vigorous fighting mechanics that feature real-time elements. The timing window for dodging is more generous than that for parrying, but some attacks can only be parried. Even on the easiest difficulty level, it's important to come to grips with these mechanics. And it's fitting that Maelle and other characters often invoke the notion of a dance when they strike up a fight. When things go well, fights unfold like a piece of choreography. Each of the six characters whom players end up controlling has a different fighting style. Characters can equip up to six skills from their corresponding skill trees in addition to three 'pictos', or stat buffs, that can be used interchangeably between characters. After winning four battles with a particular picto equipped, any party member can also make use of that ability – for example, incurring twice the amount of burn damage when using a fire-based attack – provided they have enough 'lumina points.' If all of this sounds like it can lead to some heady decisions over character builds, that's absolutely correct. Away from the game, I found myself daydreaming about how best to gear up my party to tackle some of the more daunting boss fights. For the 54 hours that it took me to see Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 through to the end, it ably held my attention. Its world-building, character arcs and challenging gameplay are executed with no shortage of finesse. Expect this one to be a serious contender for game of the year. – ©2025 The New York Times Company (Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 was reviewed on a PlayStation 5 Pro. It is also available on the PC and Xbox Series X|S.) This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
The Verge
11-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Verge
Expedition 33's big twist was designed to ‘inflict the pain on the player'
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is my favorite game of the year so far, with an exhilarating battle system, excellent exploration, and a haunting soundtrack. But I'm not the only one who loves it: the game has become a huge hit, with more than 2 million copies sold just 12 days after its late April release. 'It feels very surreal,' says Guillaume Broche, Sandfall Interactive's CEO and creative director. According to Broche, the game is performing 'far beyond expectations' and that the team was not expecting it to 'blow up' as fast as it did. 'We are still in denial, basically' he says. Lead writer Jennifer Svedberg-Yen adds, 'I'm going to wake up tomorrow and this is all a joke, right?' A major part of Expedition 33 's success is its gripping story. It kept me coming back to the game every moment I could just to see what happened next. The opening hits you with a gutpunch. Playing as Gustave, voiced by Daredevil 's Charlie Cox, you learn about the tragic circumstances of the world, its characters, and the annual 'Gommage' that makes everyone of a certain age disappear in a flurry of petals when a giant being called the Paintress paints a new, lower number on a giant monolith. Gustave is one of the next Expeditioners that will strike out and attempt to take down the Paintress, and that team also includes Maelle, a teenager who he is responsible for. But he also loses an ex, Sophie, to the Gommage after the Paintress paints a 33. It's a powerful, emotional opening, and it got me interested in Expedition 33 right away. But there was a key scene later on that shifted the game's story from good to great for me — and I got to talk to Brocke and Svedberg-Yen all about it. Spoilers ahead. Don't scroll past this picture unless you want to read about a major plot development. If you chose to keep scrolling, the moment I'm talking about is at the end of Act 1. The mysterious white-haired man who massacred much of Expedition 33 earlier in the story appears after an intense boss fight. Without warning, the man stabs Gustave with a gigantic sword, and after a brief battle, stabs him again, killing him — and all right in front of Maelle, who is trapped in a dome of magical energy that renders her helpless. When it happened in my playthrough, my jaw was on the floor. Expedition 33 had so far portrayed Gustave as the protagonist, and I figured he had the plot armor to make it all the way to the end so that he could get closure on losing Sophie. (Heck, they cast Charlie Cox, who also plays a Marvel superhero, to voice him!) But within hours of the game's opening, Gustave was gone. 'It's where the story needed to go,' Svedberg-Yen says. For the narrative and themes that the team was going for, 'it's what was most organic.' 'One of the main themes of the story is very obviously grief,' Broche says. In order to make a game about grief feel true, the team wanted players to 'go through the horror that the characters are going through,' he adds. 'It just made sense to inflict the pain on the player as strongly as the characters receive.' Broche says that actually playing as the character creates a deep link and attachment. 'Losing that is the hole that the characters in the game experience basically every year with the Gommage, and it's something here that just felt true to the game and the narrative.' The scene is brilliantly crafted to make the death feel impactful. After the boss fight and before the white-haired man's appearance, I had relaxed — I figured I would get a nice, post-fight cutscene of celebration before moving on to the next thing. But the surprise of what happened next and the powerful performances from the motion capture actors and the voice actors made the scene memorable and powerful. I was particularly struck by the killing blow: after the white-haired man stabs Gustave, the game goes into slow motion to pause on that moment, on Maelle's horror, and on Gustave's armband emblazoned with '33,' which Sophie put on him shortly before she Gommaged. To me, it felt reminiscent of Aerith's death in Final Fantasy VII, but Broche and Svedberg-Yen say that wasn't intentional. 'If people find some similarities, it's not actually conscious from us,' Broche says. (Svedberg-Yen said she hasn't actually played FF7, so I apologized for spoiling Aerith's death.) Gustave's final words are powerful, too: 'For those who come after, right?' It's a motto used by the Expeditioners to acknowledge the purpose and futility of their mission, and throughout act one, it becomes something of a catchphrase for Gustave. But in the moments before the killing blow, he seems to know what's coming, and he says it as he gives a heartbreaking look to Maelle — who will have to grapple on her own with whatever comes after — before making his final attack. 'That's his whole character,' Broche says of the line. The motto itself has broader meaning, too. 'We really wanted to hone in on the idea that they are part of a larger tradition, that they are one expedition in a chain,' Svedberg-Yen says. 'So we really wanted to figure out a way to encapsulate that.' Like the rest of Expedition 33 's most impactful moments, what makes the scene work is a combination of elements — writing, performance, music, and more — that merge together to create moments I can't stop thinking about, even when they don't feature a dramatic and unexpected death. 'When we think about the storytelling, it's all the teams together — that whole package — that really made it come alive,' Svedberg-Yen says.
