The following contains minor story spoilers forClair Obscur: Expedition 33.
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33is a wholly wild and unpredictable ride that maintains suspense and intrigue for three acts and two epilogues. One of its best worldbuilding choices is not playing its hand or explaining too much about Lumiere and Fracture lore too soon, allowing players to immerse themselves in the portrait that’s been painted, both literally and figuratively. The humble yet somber prologue ofClair Obscur: Expedition 33marinates in melancholia with a pinch of hope afforded to the next expeditioners preparing to set sail to the fantastical Continent’s mainland, and it’s here that players learn precisely how far previous Expeditions got.
Meanwhile,Naughty Dog’s upcoming sci-fi IP,Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet, has protagonist Jordan A. Mun crash-land on Sempiria, a planet where nobody has been heard from in over 600 years. IfIntergalacticturns out to be an inadvertent expedition of Jordan’s to learn about what happened to the Sempirians and flee from the planet, it would be exhilarating if it exercised a comparable collection of journal entries or audio logs, let alone corpses and other means of environmental storytelling, to add tissue to the bones of exploration like inClair Obscur: Expedition 33.
Clair Obscur’s Journals are All That’s Left of Previous Expeditions
Clair Obscur’s Expedition 33 follows in the footsteps (and handholds used to scale rock faces) of previous expeditioners and discovers these expeditioners’ journals to discern what their adventures or misfortunes were like. None of these audio logs are exceptionally pertinent to the story aside from ones labeled with a name or the entry from Expedition 34, wherein Expedition 33 comes to the revelation thatClair Obscur’s Verso is Renoir’s son, but they go beyond what mere audio logs accomplish as collectibles.
Journals are presented as a grid of numbered squares, with each newly discovered entry satisfyingly marked amid all those yet to be listened to and read.
Journal entries from previous Expeditions are a diverse palette of humor, desperation, melancholy, and perseverance depending on the context of the expeditioner’s batch and whereabouts; for example:
Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet’s Sempiria Could Be Littered with Environmental Storytelling
Intergalactic’s deep-space, ‘intergalactic’ sci-fi lends itself to virtually any storytelling imaginable. Everything aboutIntergalactic: The Heretic Prophet’s storyis presently an inexplicable mystery, and anything is possible; for example, the Sempirians might’ve been alive this entire time, all lifeforms might’ve somehow transformed into machine-like creatures like the one Jordan battles, and so on. LikeClair Obscur: Expedition 33, it may be impossible to predict precisely how elaborate or layered the narrative is inThe Heretic Prophet, but particularly since so few details are available anyway.
Journal entries from previous Expeditions are a diverse palette of humor, desperation, melancholy, and perseverance.
Still, if its chosen route has Jordan uncovering a sinister religious plot, for instance, it would be fascinating to learn about it in the same way thatExpedition 33drip-feeds sparse, abridged information about theClair Obscurexpeditioners who came before Gustave, Maelle, Lune, and Sciel, even if such details aren’t terribly vital to the overarching narrative. It would also be neat if Jordan runs into other people who crash-landed on Sempiria and have yet to ascertain a way back into space, potentially allowing for even more journals to collect if such an endeavor left them stranded there until they perished.
