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Clair Obscur: Expedition 33

I'm still enjoying the game and I'll certainly finish it, but there will be a nagging sensation in the back of my mind the entire time. As I said before, if I'd known they'd used AI during production, I wouldn't have bought it. I'm already giving Larian some real side-eye after their recent comments about using it for the next Divinity game. I'm not laboring under any false pretenses that what I personally buy is going to make any kind of difference, but I at least I can continue trying not to support what I think is wrong.
 
Violentvixen said:
Hell, I'm actively getting in trouble at work for NOT using it and will probably crack eventually, so I also don't feel good about judging people... but also don't want AI art in stuff. Shit sucks!
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Kind of where I'm at - while I don't get in trouble for not using AI, there are also use cases where it might speed up my coding workflows. Or maybe not - so far, the few times I've tried, it hasn't really given me the sort of code I need. But it's also only been because I used Bing to search and it spat Copilot code at me, which I hear kinda sucks. I wouldn't say that all my coding is super complicated, but I'm usually trying to do things that are a bit unique.

Anyway, I think there's responsible ways to use AI, so I don't hold it against them at all. And I'm hoping the AI craze dies down - it's just old school machine learning, we just have a lot more resources to throw at it now. But I still think it's going to plateau soon and all these pie-in-the-sky promises are going to fail.
 
The AI bubble will burst but, naturally, a residue will be left behind. Right now, it's mostly marketing. What we currently call AI is little more than the kind of hyper automation we've been driving toward for decades now. The bandwagon will break down and they'll rename it, stop calling it AI, or they'll lose too much money and figure out it's better as a targeted technology than AI ALL THE THINGS. But the genie isn't going back in the bottle. Generally speaking, a cogent argument could be made that things like Alexa and Siri are AI, that the chatbots that have been around for years are AI, that some of the things done in Unity are AI. We're going to have a breakdown in language and concepts around AI and automation (if we don't already) and it's going to make wrangling the genie more difficult.
 
4-So said:
The AI bubble will burst but, naturally, a residue will be left behind. Right now, it's mostly marketing. What we currently call AI is little more than the kind of hyper automation we've been driving toward for decades now. The bandwagon will break down and they'll rename it, stop calling it AI, or they'll lose too much money and figure out it's better as a targeted technology than AI ALL THE THINGS. But the genie isn't going back in the bottle. Generally speaking, a cogent argument could be made that things like Alexa and Siri are AI, that the chatbots that have been around for years are AI, that some of the things done in Unity are AI. We're going to have a breakdown in language and concepts around AI and automation (if we don't already) and it's going to make wrangling the genie more difficult.
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An argument doesn't need to be made because it's self-evidently true. Unfortunately you can't even just say that LLMs are what everyone hates, because it turns out that making most models multi-modal heavily improves performance.
 
The game's director gave a new interview that directly addressed the studio's use of gen AI, and it honestly made me feel better about the situation.

"To what extent was generative AI used in Clair Obscur, how was it beneficial, and how do you plan to use it in the future?" crizco inquired.

"Everything in the game is human-made," Broche responded, "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."

Broche went on to note that the studio did experiment with using AI specifically to cover up textures that the studio had missed, but that it was an extremely brief dalliance. "We took it out as soon as we found it," Broche said. "But yeah, the concept art, voice actors, everything is human made."

Broche then drew a line in the sand. He mused that it would be hard to predict how AI might be used in the gaming industry in the future, and declared, "But everything will be made by humans, by us."
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tl;dr they tried it to cover missing textures, didn't like it, tried to remove everything (but obviously missed the one the game shipped with); they won't use it again in the future.

Going back to the actual game, yesterday I finally got the ability to break the damage cap and holy crap was that welcome.
 
Yeah, I think this is the best response I've ever seen from a studio to genAI backlash. Hey Larian, do that.
 
Most of what I'd say about this has been echoed already (still my GOTY, I'll take their explanation in good faith at this time). It's clear the game was a product of intent.

I will say this though: generally one does NOT leave anything glaringly obvious in as a placeholder, because if you do then what you've got there is a final asset. My understanding is this works in games the same as it does anywhere else. So they took an unwise approach to having it in there in the first place (the correct approach for placeholder stuff is to make it like, bright magenta or something so your eye doesn't just slide past it; lorem ipsum can be missed too, I would personally use it to fill a space to check text flow but would never leave it sitting in a text box without changing the color to something very painful to look at).
 
Maybe, but I also think a placeholder is there to serve to look similar to the intended final asset, and see how the ideas mesh before going final with a particular texture or piece of art design. It would be good to have something in the system that perhaps flags a texture as a placeholder, a sort of global toggle that would indeed light them up to make sure none were missed.

All that being said, I still think genAI has legit uses - I can see freeing up artists from the drudgery of doing, say, grass textures or whatnot so they can spend more time on the bigger art pieces. Studios probably won't be that responsible with it, but one can hope.
 
This seems like a good time to share the concept trailer (different titled game that got scrapped but you can see a lot of the basics) which... look it's real ugly there's no other way to describe it ha.


I do kinda wish Maelle's crazy catsuit in this was a DLC though, that's neat Cyberpunk stuff there.
 
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Finished this up today, did just about everything I cared to do. (Things left undone: the last 40% of the Endless Tower, any/all of the new DLC superbosses added to said Tower, Osquio. I noped out of that last one once I saw the second health bar.)

I enjoyed the ride quite a bit, but I found the endings both kind of disappointing? Either you succeed in doing what you fought to do for the entire game, Maelle ultimately gets corrupted, and Verso is trapped in a life he doesn't want, or you let Verso destroy the painting along with everyone inside it and Maelle is forced to live a life outside the canvas that she doesn't want. Neither of those feel like a great place to end, at least to me. I guess it'll be interesting to see which one is the "canonical" ending for the inevitable sequel.
 
Definitely a downer way to end things in either case but the second ending you mentioned felt like the “good” one to me . I’d expect any sequels to focus more on the war going on that is barely hinted at.

I got the platinum the other day and cleared out the new DLC area. I liked that a lot and beat Osquio on my second try. I gave the new endless tower bosses a few tries and I’m sure I can get through them but that may be a project for another vacation. The steamworld
sim city knock off was only a few bucks and distracted me.
 
jpfriction said:
I’d expect any sequels to focus more on the war going on that is barely hinted at.
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Yeah that's my guess as well. If it shifted perspective and was (massive spoilers for end of Act 2/start of Act 3 if I remember correctly) inside a book on the Writer's side instead of a painting that'd be interesting.
 
jpfriction said:
I’d expect any sequels to focus more on the war going on that is barely hinted at.
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Yeah, same.

jpfriction said:
the second ending you mentioned felt like the “good” one to me
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"Good" for the Dessendre family, maybe. For literally every other character we've met in the game -- who we've been told are real, have real feelings and desires and needs -- they just get wiped from existence altogether. I have a hard time believing they'd really just show up to wave goodbye to Maelle and be cool with that.
 
The "good" / likely-canon ending also ends the unwilling eternal servitude of a perpetual child. It reminded me of "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas", there ... but walking away from Omelas didn't mean genocidal destruction, either. Both endings are definitely fucked up, even if the narrative does seem to favor one over the other.
 
Kalista said:
The "good" / likely-canon ending also ends the unwilling eternal servitude of a perpetual child.
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I mean, yes, but the thing that made this whole premise ring false for me is that at no point were those stakes ever revealed to the audience. All we hear is "Verso made this canvas and then he died," emphasis on made, past tense. Nothing in the story even hints at the fact that he's somehow still maintaining it (or if it does, that clearly went over my head). Aline, Renoir, Clea, and Maelle all paint stuff in the canvas and nothing happens to the place when they leave (aside from Verso letting it be erased after he kicks Maelle out). Hell, Painted Clea is the one who made all the nevrons, and they don't suddenly disappear after you fight her. Why does the canvas have to be actively painted 24/7? Why can't it just be painted and exist? There's no setup for this revelation, it just kinda happens and it feels like a weirdly manipulative rug pull to me. The whole point of your quest during the entire game is to give these characters a chance to exist and lead unconstrained lives. Having the "good" ending wipe out their entire pocket universe instead is just abandoning that central premise for the sake of a potential sequel hook.

There's one other instance in the game that felt similar to me, albeit with lower stakes, which is at the beginning of Maelle's side quest when you get to the Reacher. She tosses off a line about how the tower is so high because Renoir knows she has vertigo. Does she? It never comes up before or after that moment, has no bearing on the gameplay, and ignores the fact that you literally flew there on the back of a giant bipedal wineskin. This is pretty lazy in a game with otherwise extremely good writing for its characters.

Don't get me wrong, I'm nitpicking here. As I said, I enjoyed the game very much, but the very high bar it sets for itself means that the parts that stick out for bad reasons really stick out. I just don't think they stuck the landing at the end.
 
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Neither ending is supposed to be a comfortable button. I'm not sure if that's a problem with narrative closure or a problem of audience expectations and what people have been "trained" to expect. It's certainly a choice, and it's not like those two ideas are mutually exclusive anyway. (For my part, I prefer Maelle's ending.)

Here's a pretty good interview with the primary writer. Obvious spoilers and whatnot.

 
My reaction to the ending was basically “Ah, well, yes, the game is French.”

It is a French sort of ending imo. Either one.
 
Yeah, the only thing the good ending is missing is Verso taking a big drag off a cigarette and saying c’est la vie as they fade away.
 
OK, I feel dumb: you know how in COE33, the tracks (SPOILERS FOR REAL AHEAD) Alicia and Maelle are musically the same? I wondered more than once why the song was a reprise with a separate track aside from spoiler reasons, and didn't notice until just now that Alicia's in the standard "E33 singing non-language" style and Maelle is in French, and the second version has actual lyrics about her that would have obviously given things away at the title screen.
 
Yeah, I found that out listening to someone to talk about the music after I beat the game. I felt pretty dumb, too, but I mean, I don't speak ze French.
 
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