Quintin Lim | Game Designer
Expedition 33: Put Faces in Places
An Analysis of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33's Marketing
Quintin Luis V. Lim
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is the breakout hit of French studio Sandfall Interactive. Expedition 33 is an art-deco inspired, turn-based RPG with excellent combat mechanics and a compelling set of characters and narrative. Given the scope of the game, it is impressive how much content has been packed into the game given their small team. It has earned very high reviews from critics and fans alike and is already considered to be in the running for game of the year. Overall, it is an excellent debut from Sandfall Interactive.
Expedition 33 has already become a cult-hit despite its recent release and has built a small, dedicated fan-base. However, it lacks some content that would help push this game into becoming a cultural mega hit; it doesn’t make use of what it has to reach a bigger audience. The game has plenty of well-made content but most of it is difficult to use for marketing or for building a community with. In this analysis, I will be going over aspects of the game that could be improved from a marketing and community-building perspective. I will be using my background as a marketer and a game designer to analyze the content found within Expedition 33 to discuss how this game can be marketed towards a larger audience.
Looks Good, Feels Good
As of writing this, Expedition 33’s main draw has been how it looks; both in its visuals and how it looks as a game being played. The game has stunning visuals and cutscenes, a unique narrative and setting, and fresh takes on turn-based combat. Most of its trailers, both leading up to release and after, have been focused on those aspects. These are excellent choices for reaching their target audience, assuming they were targeting RPG fans and the general gaming audience. They’ve chosen to put their best foot forward with their decision to showcase what they have. The art-deco, French-style setting is something unique for RPGs of recent years; a setting and style that hasn't been seen since the days of Bioshock and thus feels fresh and new to the gaming space. However, I would argue that they’re biggest selling point, and the thing they’ve talked about the most so far, has been their combat and it looks while watching it.
As far as turn-based RPGs go, Expedition 33 has unique mechanics that make it a bit more palatable to non-fans of the genre, an element of the game they show constantly. It has blended the traditional turn-based mechanics with more modern action game trends; players must learn the animations of their enemies and dodge or parry appropriately to avoid damage. These changes to traditional turn-based combat have caught the eye of many players who may be averse to that style of gameplay. They make sure to feature this heavily in all of their trailers which is a good choice for getting the game noticed. It catches the attention of both fans of turn-based combat and non-fans; it lets the fans know that this is a new take on tradition and non-fans know that this may change how they feel about the combat in this new game. It’s a logical and effective step that has captured the attention of many players. It also helps that the game looks good while it plays.
The game looks good both in the sense that it’s appealing to look at and that it looks fun from a second-hand perspective. Many players nowadays do research before buying a game; this research usually entails watching Youtubers or streamers play the game first. Expedition 33 is very easy to understand from the spectator perspective. The actions performed during combat, by both the player and the enemies, are readable and use text to provide feedback when actions are performed. The attack animations and particle effects are also very high quality and make watching the game enjoyable. The cinematic camera for combat in particular, a feature the developers were very proud of, makes combat feel more dynamic and exciting. Their combat is both satisfying to watch and understandable even when hectic. These aspects make the spectator experience of Expedition 33 an enjoyable watch and an easier buy for consumers.
Mon Ami, Esquie
The game’s unofficially official mascot, Esquie, is a large, silly, balloon-shaped character that players will meet a third of the way into the game and is a beloved character in the community. He accounts for some of the game’s sporadic comedic relief but is also responsible for many of the game’s more endearing moments. He plays an important part in navigation as well and opens up the way players are able to move about the world map. Currently, Esquie is being used as Sandfall’s Twitter icon and is being heavily pushed by the team as a mascot. Sandfall has already confirmed that plushies of Esquie are on the way, at the time of writing, to the delight of many fans. Esquie is an excellent fit for a mascot for this game. He has the features commonly seen in mascots of brands and other games: his appealing and memorable appearance, funny personality, and an iconic feature that makes him hard to confuse with other mascots. I believe that Esquie’s mask is his best feature for the role of a mascot. Its design is fit to be a symbol that audiences can associate with your game and it’s distinguishable from other games in the market. Persona 5 has a character, Morgana, that is used in a similar fashion much to that game’s success. Morgana is a symbol that is used both in and out of the game to make Persona 5 a memorable and iconic game. Unlike Persona, much work is being done outside the game to turn Esquie into a mascot but the same cannot be said for within the game.
Despite his use outside the game, Esquie’s mask and symbolism appear very infrequently inside of it. His mask is an obvious choice for things like loading screen icons, menu buttons or tabs, and autosave icons. However, the game uses generic symbols or text in these places instead. This was probably due to not foreseeing how popular Esquie would become as a character. It wasn’t until some time after the game’s release that he became the face of their social media accounts. This hurts the player’s ability to connect him to the game and associate him with the brand of Expedition 33. While this does not necessarily hurt the game or Esquie’s popularity in any way, it was a missed opportunity to turn him into a symbol of the game.
Lumiere Fashion Blunder
Unlike Esquie, most of the playable characters, save for Monocco, suffer in regards to their appearance for marketability. The playable characters in Expedition 33 all look the same to an outsider. They lack distinguishing features that make them unique aside from gender or hair color (even this is a bit lacking). The characters are also all dressed the same with only slight modifications to each outfit. This was likely done for both narrative/thematic reasons and for production purposes. For the game’s setting of a team of expeditioners exploring dangerous magical territory, it makes sense to have the characters dress similarly. It makes sense thematically and narratively, the choice to have the characters wear similar uniforms; the story and setting are about a team and so the characters must look the part. Production wise, it also saves time and resources to create a reusable asset that will be used for many characters, in this case the uniform. Many characters, objects, and items make use of the uniform design and using one, uniform (no pun intended) design and asset for all of them can save a lot of time during production.
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This can be seen as both good and bad in several aspects. On the one hand, the characters having their own uniform is an obvious angle for merchandise and cosplaying. The black and gold French-style uniforms are prime material for creating jackets, coats, t-shirts, and sweatbands (more on this later). However, this can also cause problems for the game’s recognizability, particularly from the non-player audience. Aside from Esquie, there’s no immediately recognizable character among the playable ones. Their relatively generic uniforms make it difficult to tell apart from other fantasy or art-deco characters. While the gold and black coats are easily identifiable to those familiar with the game, those unfamiliar will have trouble tracing their origin back to Expedition 33. Nothing about their outfit/appearance or the aspect of them being a team features prominently in the game’s marketing either. Overall, there are opportunities for the game to use its character design for marketing but fails to do so.
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"What lovely feet you have!"​
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There is one exception in Monoco, the last unlockable character. He does not share the rest of the team’s uniform appearance and has a design exclusive to him. He shares a look with the Gestrals, a group of puppet characters found a quarter of the way into the game. He is more identifiable than his teammates and has a unique icon that sets him apart from other characters: his mask. These elements of his design are a good use for advertising, social media posts, and trailers for the game because they are all distinctly his features; they are all distinctly Monoco.
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An unforunate case of lookalikes
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Unfortunately, Monoco is not very present in most of the game and is not the protagonist either. The game lacks an identifiable main character that can be used outside of the game to represent the IP as a brand; it lacks their own Kratos or Lara Croft. The game features 2, arguably 3, main protagonists that players will be viewing the story through. However, the two main characters are remarkably similar in both appearance and voice. They both share the problems stated previously, that they can appear as generic fantasy characters, but also have a problem of being confused for one another. They lack any “hero features,” an element of their design that makes them stand out like Kratos’ white skin and red tattoos as an example. The main heroes of the game lack any sort of identifiability that would help them outside their medium. Their personality isn’t apparent from their appearance, a feature that’s important to many other games and connecting with their audience; the main characters are not visually striking enough. Audiences won’t be able to recognize them in memes or collaborations with other brands; they wouldn’t be recognizable as an Astro Bot easter egg for example.
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One design element present on all playable characters is their expedition armband; a simple piece of cloth with a golden “33” embroidered on the side. These are a good design element for use in marketing; they all fit the needs of being recognizable and unique to this game, have the potential to drum up merchandise, and fit in with the rest of the game’s art and thematic motifs. These are a great piece of character design that can be used for numerous purposes. They are not being used much for promotion at the moment, but the potential for helping sell the game and have it reach new audiences is very good.
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While it might seem like nitpicking to be as harsh as I am on the character design of this game, having identifiable characters is an important part of a game’s branding identity. It lets your game and characters become icons for the franchise instead of remaining locked to their world. In today’s gaming landscape with brand collaborations, memes, crossovers, and many games coming out all at once, having an identifiable and memorable cast of characters is more important than ever.
Conclusion
Expedition 33 has a lot of content that would make for perfect marketing material in the future. While they may have missed the chance for the weeks leading up to release, there’s plenty of things to use going forward. As for why they were not being used this way leading up to release, my best guess as to why they didn’t or couldn’t capitalize on their content is that they simply did not have a team for marketing.
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According to interviews with Sandfall Interactive higher ups, the team behind Expedition 33 is only 35 people strong. Given the scope of content in the game, it makes sense that most of their focus would be put into things like gameplay and visuals as opposed to something like marketing. It appears that most of the marketing of the game was handled by their publishers and distributors like Kepler Interactive and Microsoft or Sony who may have had limited knowledge of the game’s content. Given how much high-quality content the game already has and the lack of manpower they must have been facing, it’s no surprise that figuring out mascots and merchandising was a very low priority for the team.
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The runaway success that the game has experienced since its release means that the team can now focus on what elements of their game will help it stick in the minds of players and potential players for the coming months. Many people have their eyes on the game now and it’s even being considered for a Game of the Year contender. The opportunity has not been lost, but it is fleeting. If they want to stay relevant in the minds of gamers and ride the momentum their release has set up for them, they’ll have work to do selling the game to more and more players. However, there’s plenty of content for them to work with.
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