A love letter to Clair Obscur

These last few months have been a struggle. Recovery from my accident in January has been slow, tedious, and tiring. Endless hospital appointments. Painful physiotherapy sessions. Lawyers letters. Police visits. Return to work. Anxiety.

And yet, resilience. Persistence. The want to live, not to merely exist but to really live, to travel, to enjoy long walks with my dog, to see my son laugh as he splashes in the puddles.

But that isn't the letter I want to write. Not yet.

This is a love letter to a video game and those who made it. This is a love letter to Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, a game that, in a very real way, saved me, and healed me.

While recovering from my accident, I had arranged to undergo a separate operation on my heart. It was a minor operation, but not one without risks. When you consider your heart, its function, it is the beating engine that drives your fleshy body. No matter how low the risk, my anxiety, already raw from being struck by a car, was in over drive in the weeks prior to the operation.

To counter this, I bought a video game. It is rare that I buy games full price or on the day or release. I have a mountain of games that I regularly trade in at CEX. But something about this game, about the way people who had played it spoke about it, it sounded magical, a fascinating miracle created by a small core development team. Something about it called out to the fantasy writer in me. I wanted to taste its magic before I went under the surgeon's blade, because the world has been lacking in magic recently.

Expedition 33 in the world of Clair Obscur

The world of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is more beautiful and fully realised than the screenshots give it credit for. Its themes and motifs of painting, of music, of creation, are married into every aspect of the game, from the haunting and tragic storyline to the turn-based battles with behemoths.

This is not the first time I have been saved by a video game. When I broke my leg in Peru, halfway through a round-the-world adventure of a lifetime, I returned home and lay in a deep depression. The game that saved me then was Xenoblade Chronicles, a series that I have a deep love and appreciation for, such was my joy of exploring its word as I lay broken in this one.

The mysterious Monado blade from Xenoblade Chronicles

But Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 healed more than my anxiety-ridden soul. Since January, I have struggled to write creatively. At first I thought it was tied to the massive amounts of painkillers I was taking, but as the months went by and I weaned myself off of them, I still had no drive to write. My creative vision was murky and middling. I questioned every idea, every decision, every plot point, erasing entire storylines in frustration.

This game, this beautiful, wonderous game, inspired me to succeed, to tell bold visions in lands of my own making. In completing its story, in defeating its chromatic bosses, it gifted me back my creativity.

One of the many areas within Clair Obscur: Expedition 33

Even now, a full week after having completed the main story, I sit listening to the soundtrack, haunted by the music of the game. It is rare, if ever, I start a New Game+ where you start the world over again with more challenge and danger. And yet, like Maelle returning to a painting, I find myself returning to the game, to spend more time with these characters who are fully-formed and fleshed out in a way that will make most screenwriters jealous, to be inspired once again.

Thank you to everyone at Sandfall Interactive for this gift, and especially to Lead Writer, Jennifer Svedberg-Yen.

And to all the creatives out there, keep going. You are writing a book, or making a film, or designing a game that will change someone's life.

For those who come after...