Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 Developers Reveal the Secrets Behind the Game’s Creation

At this year’s Game Developers Conference, Sandfall Interactive unveiled the unconventional methodology behind the development of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. Despite the game’s ambitious scale, the studio managed its creation with a remarkably lean engineering cohort. The key to their efficiency? The team bypassed traditional coding for the majority of the project, instead leveraging the robust suite of pre-built tools within Unreal Engine to architect the game’s core features.

During their GDC presentation, titled “Delivering a Wide Scope of Features & Content When You Only Have Four Programmers,” Technical Director Tom Guillermin and Senior Gameplay Programmer Florian Torres provided a granular technical breakdown of the hit RPG’s internal logic. While the hour-long session delved into the minutiae of bug-reporting interfaces, it offered invaluable insight into how everything from the intricate turn-based combat to the expansive overworld was meticulously constructed.

Early in the talk, the programmers disclosed that a staggering 95% of Clair Obscur’s gameplay systems were constructed via Unreal Blueprints—a revelation that sparked audible astonishment among the audience of seasoned developers. According to Guillermin and Torres, their four-person in-house team authored surprisingly little original C++ code during the production cycle.

For those unfamiliar, Blueprints serve as an Unreal Engine visual scripting utility that allows developers to connect pre-configured nodes to design complex gameplay mechanics. This versatile toolset enables teams with limited resources or programming backgrounds to realize sophisticated concepts with relative ease—a necessity for Sandfall Interactive, given that the game was initially conceptualized by a solitary programmer.

Blueprints underpinned the majority of Clair Obscur; the team illustrated how essential elements, such as character skills and combat modifiers, were derived from the system. Guillermin and Torres noted that this paradigm offered distinct trade-offs. On the positive side, it streamlined the pipeline, allowing designers to contribute ideas directly and resulting in a more stable build. Conversely, it complicated the debugging process and necessitated careful management of memory usage. Custom code was still utilized sparingly to facilitate experimental features and fine-tune optimization.

Beyond the technical logistics, the programmers shared a humorous revelation regarding the protagonist, Esquie: despite appearances, he doesn’t actually swim. A significant portion of the panel detailed the challenges of building the overworld around the character. From a technical standpoint, Esquie is essentially “walking” on a surface rather than navigating liquid volume. The team later playfully offered a conflicting account, suggesting Esquie is permanently in a default swimming state, leaving the character’s true mechanical nature somewhat of a mystery.

The ultimate takeaway? Guillermin and Torres were careful to specify that their journey wasn’t intended as a universal blueprint for others. An introductory slide underscored that they were simply sharing their unique path to completion, rather than prescribing it as the definitive industry standard. Regardless, the presentation served as a compelling testimonial for the capabilities of Unreal Engine.

Source: Polygon