It’s been quite the year for Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 and developer Sandfall Interactive. After launching to critical acclaim in April, the RPG began to dominate award ceremonies such as The Golden Joysticks and The Game Awards. Its use of controversial generative AI technology, though, saw the game stripped of its Indie Game Awards wins for Game of the Year and Best Debut Game.
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 also won TheGamer’s Game of the Year. You can check out our full top ten here.
The announcement divided the gaming world, with some jumping to the defense of the stunning title, and others quickly lamenting it.
Now, for the first time since the controversy, the game’s director, Guillaume Broche, has spoken out, saying everything in the final game is “human-made” and that using the technology “felt wrong.”
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 Director Addresses Recent AI Controversies
In a new Q&A, hosted by Kepler Interactive and transcribed by YouTuber Sushi, Broche detailed the studio’s thoughts and feelings around the recent controversies and AI in general.
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Another tally in the win column for Clair Obscur.
“Yeah, we’re aware of what’s been going on with that,” he said. But I can say, everything in the game is human-made.”
He continued, “When AI first came out in 2022, we’d already started on the game. It was just a new tool; we tried it, and we didn’t like it at all. It felt wrong. We originally used it as a placeholder for textures we missed, but we took it out as soon as we found it. But yeah, the concept art, voice actors, everything is human-made.”
We tried it, and we didn’t like it at all. It felt wrong.
AI has become a hot topic in games over the last year. Some of the world’s most prominent developers, including Larian, CD Projekt Red, and Epic Games, have all come out in favor of the technology. Broche isn’t sure what the future of games looks like, but he can confidently speak for his own studio.
“It’s pretty hard to predict what the future will look like, but everything will be made by humans from us.”
Much of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33’s success can be attributed to the game’s human feel and the developer’s ability to create what they wanted without a giant corporation bearing down on them. This will, inevitably, allow them to skirt AI in the future — while big companies push the tech, smaller ones will be free to avoid it.
- Released
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April 24, 2025
- ESRB
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Mature 17+ / Blood and Gore, Strong Language, Suggestive Themes, Violence
- Developer(s)
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Sandfall Interactive
- Publisher(s)
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Kepler Interactive
