Deep god it up heca s can.

Welcome back to Pixel Project Radio, the video game discussions podcast where we do deep dives and analyze all of our favorite games and some of yours too.

My name is Rick, and today we're finally doing it.

We're going through Claire Obscure Expedition thirty three.

Been talking about this for a while, been very excited to do a full narrative analysis on this show up top.

I've got to thank the patrons as always, these kind folks believe in the show and keep things moving along with their support.

And if you would like to be like these fine individuals, you can head on over to patreon dot com slash pixel Project Radio to check out what's on off or there.

Just did the Mortal Kombat ninety five movie that is coming out tomorrow, maybe on the Patreon at the time of recording.

Anyway, stick around to the end of the show you can hear all about the Patreon, the Discord, and all of those other plugs.

For myself and for my guest today, joined once again by Thrack from the three D Podcast.

Might remember Thrack from Lost Odyssey and Medieval It's two pretty similar games.

How's it going Threk, Hi, Rick, I'm doing great.

Thanks thanks for having me on.

We're back finally talking about another RPG.

So it didn't take thirty three tries to do it.

It's only the third try so but we're still divisible by three, so we're good.

That's right.

We took a little break from the PS one cult classics, though I did have a good time talking about medieval That was fun.

So today is all about Clayer Obscure.

This game is taking everything by storm, extremely popular, so we're gonna jump right in and talk about our personal histories with this game, which I expect will be roughly the same for the two of us.

This was on my radar since it was announced, maybe not immediately when it was announced.

I remember seeing it at I think a state of play months and months before the release date dropped.

Been on my radar since then.

I bought it day one, played through it basically every single day, beat it in a couple of weeks, and I am now at the time of recording this first episode into act two of my second playthrough.

I've been having a great time.

What about you, threc Did you buy this on day one?

Two?

Yeah?

Well not by technically because it was on game Pass.

I had first social game on.

It was one of the Xbox showcases.

It was either twenty three, twenty four, I can't remember.

They all kind of bleed together, but I remember this was like a really big standout game because everyone was like, Oh, this game is like really pretty looks looks really really cool.

And then we saw the game plan.

We're like, this is a turn based RPG.

It's got like persona type combat with you know, like the camera angles and everything that they were showing off, and it got It was a highlight of that initial showcase where it was shown and they had mentioned it was coming to Game Past day one, and whenever they show a game that looks interesting to me in his day one on game Pass in that regard, I'm like, yeah, I might as well, right, you know, I pay for the subscription.

I might as well use it.

And as we were inching further and further in to this game, the hype was it was remaining and it was getting pretty intense.

I didn't expect it to do as well as it did.

I believe it is still the highest rated game that's released this year.

But yeah, it was an exciting game to look at because it looked different.

It looked like it was trying to stand out from the other JRPGs that was surrounding it at the time, and I think it succeeded at that.

And just keeping things at a high level.

Did this hold up for you as you played through it.

Yes, So I did downloaded Day one and start playing it, but I ran into a little personal issue, and that was as I was playing it is I got kind of sick, and so I had to put it down for a little bit to kind of recover.

So for a little bit of time, I wasn't playing the game because when I'm like really sick and dealing with stuff, I don't really want to play story based games because you need to pay attention, and I just couldn't sure.

But I eventually was able to get back into it and finally did beat it.

I saw it all the way through, and I'm really glad that I did that.

I stuck it out.

I was very close to dropping it, only because just you know how sometimes you really get into a game, you start playing it, and then things happen, and you know, you kind of end up doing other things.

But I was like, no, this game is like really good.

I want to give it its credit because it was like, it's an indie team, it's their first game.

I wanted to give it the attention it deserves so and I'm really glad that I did, because it was well worth the journey.

And that seems to be the consensus.

Everybody that I've talked to personally has been very glad that they saw it through.

I've seen a few negative reviews online, but you know, we can talk about maybe what some folks might not like.

When I finished this, I had similar feelings as to when I first finished Disco Elysium and more recently One Thousand Times Resist, and I wanted it first.

I wanted to hold on to that.

I noted that feeling and I kept it in the back of my mind, but I wanted to hold off to make sure that it wasn't the hype that was sort of influencing me.

Now.

I think a lot of us say that we're immune to that, we don't take it into account, but everybody does to a certain extent, whether you know it or not.

We're group animals in that way.

But I wanted to let time pass, and I did, and I still feel that way.

I genuinely feel like this is going to be a generational JARPG generational insofar as this console generation.

I think people will be talking about this for years to come.

It's narratively very focused, it has fantastic visual design and audio design, and it deals with a lot of very human issues.

This geez.

We've been doing so many games on the show recently about grief in some way or another, and this is no exception.

I really believe in this game, and I'm glad that it is getting the extreme amount of praise that it has been.

I think it's very well deserved.

Yeah, it is an example of like an indie hit, you know, because it feels like the last however many years now.

It's like any game that kind of like breaks down and becomes a hit is usually like an indie game because it's not bound to sort of the corporate Triple A structure.

It can just kind of be whatever it wants to be.

And I think people really like that.

And yeah, this game, I agree.

It's as far as like being a generational game.

Like if you think about the PS five series generation, people have talked about like the lack of like good games.

I guess to an extent or it feels like gaming is in the kind of a weird spot right now, and I think that is true.

But there are still games like this one that can get released and still like kind of organically and find an audience and potentially.

Become a franchise.

A part of me doesn't want it to be, but you know, we can talk about that later.

A big part of me wants it to not be a franchise or let it breathe and exist on its own, you know.

To me, it was when they said they were going to be doing a film of it, a film adaptation, which I'm like, it makes sense in that regard, like maybe we can discuss it later.

But it's the idea of like.

Does this game need a sequel?

You know, Like I've been pondering that quite a bit since I beat the game, and I just I don't think it really needs one.

I don't know, what do you think.

Let's table that discussion for now.

Let's get fine with that.

Let's talk a little bit more about what this game is.

If you're not familiar with Claire Obscurity, this is a turn based RPG set in a fictionalized world called Lumier it's vaguely reminiscent, well, not vaguely, it's pretty reminiscent of France.

And the gist is this group of individuals known as the Expedition.

Expedition thirty three are setting off to take down this godlike deity known as the Paintress.

Sounds very paint by the numbers whenever you put it this way, but they do a lot of unique and personalized spins on that classic JRPG formula that we're going to talk about throughout.

Yeah, if this is your first time coming to the show, which I expect it might be for a lot of you, first of all, welcome Pixel Project Radio.

We do critical analyses on various games that we enjoy.

What we're going to do is we're going to talk through our broad impressions of Clab's things like the development, visuals, music, things like that, and then we will get into a beat by beat narrative analysis.

This is going to take place across three episodes.

Before we get there, there won't be any spoilers, and as we go through it, we won't have any spoilers for things to come.

Stuff in Act three will not be spoiled in Act one, nor will anything in Act two like that.

So at any point, if you need to jump off because you aren't far enough or you don't want to be spoiled, you will know what to do and when to do it.

But enough about that, let's talk through the community forum.

The community forum is a channel in our Discord server where I post what we're talking about and the community members can share their thoughts.

Now, I admit I posted this a bit late, so I've only got three today.

If I get any more, I will put them in the second or third episode.

But we've got a couple today.

First up, we've got John, regular Discord contributor John with no h and co host of the Video Game Lounge.

I believe his other co host is Elias if I'm not mistaken.

Here's what John has to say.

What happens when you catch lightning in a bottle while making a game that pays homage to some of the greatest JRPGs of all time.

You get Claire Obscure, brilliantly blending turn based combat from Final Fantasies eight, nine and ten and games like Legend of Dragoon with an incredible soundtrack, astounding visuals, and a story with as many layers as a bag of onions.

Okay, it's truly an unforgettable experience that makes you go wi and wu.

Also, huge shout out to the superb voice cast.

They really bring the dialogue and story to life.

They do really bring the wii's and the wus.

Yes, Rick at Clair, now do you mean the wrestler or do you mean the flare that I bring to the show?

Uh?

Or both?

Let's say both?

Yeah, why not?

That's the right and like that meme, why not both?

Abs Porgano lust knows.

Yes, I'm John is a fellow legend of Dragoon and enjoyer, and it's no surprise that he called that out.

It's funny.

I actually have a note on the legend of Dragoon influence or lack thereof.

Here in a little bit, we've also got Dave from Tales from the Backlog podcast.

Here's what Dave says.

There's usually just one or two games a year that completely grab a hold of me and never let go.

This year, it's Expedition thirty three.

I could never say anything, I could never say everything I want to say in one short blurb, but this is straight up one of the best games I've ever played, and one of the very few games where I deliberately put off finishing the game until I had exhausted all of the optional adventures and boss fights.

It's the newest entry in my personal pantheon of great games.

That's how I praise.

Yes, yeah, many are saying this.

You know, a lot of what Dave said has echoed in Matt's correspondence, but Matt adds a little spin that I have actually not heard in any of these correspondences yet.

Here's what Matt says.

This is easily one of my new favorite RPGs in my top ten games of all time.

But I want to praise it for being the game that got my spouse into turn based RPGs, her first one, and she absolutely loved it.

She's someone who has always had a passing interest in games, and even has several favorites that she's played in recent years, but none this mechanically dense.

It gave her the language and touch points to bond with me over something I adore, and that will also make this game and my experience with it even more special.

Also, Ska is best friend shaped boy.

Oh, I love him.

He's the best.

What a millennial thing to say, SKA is great.

That's really touching.

I really like hearing correspond well, whether it's a correspondence in my discord server or just anecdotes like this.

That's very sweet.

It's really special that you get to bond with somebody over a shared experience like this, like a game, like a book, like a play.

It makes it all the more special.

And I'm sure Matt will look back in years to come and just feel all the more fond of their time with this.

Absolutely, and that's really cool that she was able to find an RPG like this that she really liked, you know, because I think we all there's an RPG for everybody, right, and I'm glad she was able to find this one for her.

You know, whether or not she goes and plays more of them, that's up to her, but you know, that's great.

As for the development, this was released in April of twenty twenty five, on the twenty fourth to the exact, on the PlayStation, the Xbox and the PC.

Thrack.

You played this on Xbox, she said, right.

Yes, I played on the series X through game Pass because it was day one on game Pass.

Very nice.

I played this on PC I'm not going to flex that I bought it.

I want to support the developers.

I don't know what you're thinking for.

I mean, I, once I get my financial situation cleared, I do intend to buy a physical copy of this to support the devs.

So if you can find one, They've been sold out everywhere.

Last time I checked, I saw that like Xbox physicals were still like around, so I will keep my eyes out.

You can see the full credits for this game on the IMDb, on their wiki, or you can beat the game.

But of note, it's developed by Sandfall Interactive, their first game published by Kepler Interactive.

You might know Kepler from cat Quest three, Seafu and Threck.

What's the next one on the list?

Uh?

Hold on?

Let me plant in Vertig Gigun Canoni Commandant.

I was maybe fifty percent right.

Lynetta and Vertid de Gung's Kennon Commandant.

Sure.

I'm not an English major, so I don't know this.

I love German.

I'm not a German major either.

I've been I've been learning it.

I've been having a great time.

That's that's that's a two B released game.

That's like TVA I think for twenty five or twenty six, but that's what Kepler.

Kepler's done.

Directed by Guillam Broch, who also has a writing credit alongside Jennifers, Fedberg Yen, art by Nicholas Max and Francombe, composer Lorient Testard.

We're gonna talk more about all of them here in a little bit.

This team has been really active in giving interviews, and many of them can be found on YouTube and on various news publishing sites.

I don't want to pairt their responses this entire time, and there's just, you know, so much information.

So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna put a couple of interview links that I have liked into the episode description.

That's where I sourced all of this information from, and you can go forth and enjoy them too.

Wasn't there a whole talking point about this game that I was like, Oh, there was only like like like it was like a really small team or something like that.

That was a talking point for this game.

Was that like it was just like a really small development team.

I forget the exact number of people were using, but when you get to the game and go to the credits, it's like I wouldn't call the small team like it's probably smaller than most Triple A games, but there were still a decent amount of people who worked on it, and probably like outsourcing contractors as well.

Precisely so, it's Sandfall as a group is a core team of like thirty some people, maybe even thirty three.

But they did do a fair amount of outsourcing, yeah.

Which is very common for game development.

It is very common.

That word leaves a very sour taste in my mouth, given how it's used in my line of work, which very well could be different from the gaming developments line of work.

My understanding is one aspect that they outsourced was the battle animations things like that, which are very slick and very polished.

Yes, so I am not going to pretend to have all of the insider knowledge and business acumon to talk about all of that.

My hope is that outsourcing is different in game development than it is in my line of work.

I hope so.

But yes, that myth of it was only made by thirty some people technically not true.

Yeah, again, I'm not I'm not sure about how the outsourcing works either.

I mean, on one hand, it's nice to see people like getting work, but you know, you're not sure if it's like other people are losing jobs, these people can get jobs.

But my guess is probably since they're a new indie studio, it's probably not that case.

But who knows for sure.

But I think if I had to guess a total number of people who worked on this game was maybe in like the eighties, I think it's under one hundred people, which I mean is I mean a lot of Triple A games I think have like hundreds of people, So it's definitely smaller, like it's maybe more on the line of like like a double A or even like a single A type of game.

It's also good to talk about that too, because I remember when this narrative first came out that it was made by thirty some people.

The first thing that I said, and you could pull it up in the discord, was I think I prefaced by saying, maybe I'm being too cynical, but that romanticizing of a small team is going to be weaponized, and larger companies are going to just cut their budget, or yes, not cut their budget, but cut their staff, you know, say, make the same kind of thing but with less people.

I would be shocked if that doesn't happen yet.

That was something that concerned me too, And in fact, something that does concern me about this game was the reception to it.

Like, yes, it is a very amazing game, and I think it is incredibly well done.

But I saw so many people using this game as like a reason to like attack other companies for like not making as good of games.

It was kind of similar to Bowler's Gate three when that came out and people were like, oh, like, but this team can make like this really good game.

Why can't like this team do this really good game?

And it's like, well, there's a lot of different reasons for that, you know, especially if you're gonna crap on one of the big publishers for not being able to make a game at the level of an Expedition thirty three or bowlers Gate three.

It's like, I mean, should they be able to make those kind of games, yes, But when we're dealing with the corporate structure, he probably is more challenging to deal with than we realize.

Kind of a thing like I'm sure BioWare would love to make a game like this, but what's but what's going on behind the scenes with them?

Who can say we don't really know, So it's just like, as much as Expedition thirty three, as great of a game it is, I don't think we need to use that to be little other games around it, you know what I mean?

Yeah?

Absolutely.

This game was originally under the code name of Project W and then later came out as We Lost, and at first had a steampunk Victorian England setting.

That's a petriest of mine.

Steampunk is one of my least favorite aesthetics of all time, and I'm very glad that they ditched that.

That's fair.

Steampunk is okay when it's used right, like like Bioshan Gifinite's kind of a steampunky game, and I like how that looks.

Yeah, but I get that, Yeah, we Lost.

That's a decent title, but it comes off too much like an indie game title, you know what I mean?

Totally?

Yeah, totally.

The thematic core of this game that of grief, of loss, of morose, reflection of the weight of the past.

That is a phrase I have not used since Disco Elysium.

I don't think came strongly from both the dev team's past.

Jennifer in particular has spoken on a little bit of this in one of the interviews that they did, and because a large portion of this game was built out in its infancy during one of the at least in recent memory, one of the one of the most recent periods of widespread hopelessness that I think we've ever experienced, that of the COVID pandemic in twenty twenty.

Oh Yes, it's weird.

It feels like it was yesterday and also thirty years ago at the same time.

Yeah.

Man, that compression of time is getting a little bit absurd.

Yeah, the factor we're five years into this decade just gives me whiplash when I truly think about it.

Gillam Broch had this idea while working at Ubisoft in twenty twenty.

A lot of these folks are former maybe not a lot.

A handful of these folks are former Ubisoft employees, and in twenty twenty he sent some messages to fellow devs and made some posts on Reddit back when it was still called We Lost.

This led to getting more and more folks involved.

Eventually Kepler got involved as well and got some funding, and just like that, they left Ubisoft to create Sandfall, Sandfall Interactive First Game, Monumental First Game this is just like one thousand times Resist with a sunset visitor.

Now.

I had mentioned earlier some of the homages John had mentioned.

John had mentioned the legend of Dragoon.

Some of the homages in this game were intentional.

That's something that gets talked about a lot when discussing Claire Obscure.

This game pays tribute to that of the past, to the great jerrpgs of the past.

It knows the lineage, and indeed a lot of those were intentional, things like fixed camera angles the world map.

However, a lot wasn't A lot was just happenstance.

There have been some comparisons to the Final Fantasy Ter soundtrack that I could I guess I could see, and in particular the Legend of Dragoon combat style, which is also you could also say Super Mario RPG.

They did say that that was kind of just a coincidence.

They did not plan that.

Yeah, but I think it says a lot that they are so steeped into the genre that they sort of just absorbed through osmosis this lineage.

They have created a battle system that is really unique.

Another thing that really inspired another series that really inspired this game is the Soul's series, particularly seki Ro.

Seki Ro was a big inspiration for the perry and dodge mechanics, but you can see influences from Frumsoft all throughout this game.

Yeah, it actually leads into some of my issues with the combat system in general.

We can talk about that when we get to the combat.

But real quick, I wanted to ask you this earlier talking about when they were at Ubisoft.

Do you think they pitched this game to Ubisoft?

I mean do I I don't think they did, Like factually, I don't think they did, but I can't imagine this would have been something that Ubisoft would have been interested in.

That's fair.

If I could ask the devs a question, that would be the one thing.

I'm like, did one of you like say to somebody to who be soft, like, hey, what if we tried something like this?

You know, like there's such a big conglomerate anyways that you know, maybe somebody try, but who knows.

I just like the idea of Ubisoft publishing this and everyone been like, oh, they're actually doing something different for once.

But yeah, probably for the best.

It probably is for the best that it didn't happen, because they probably would have meddled with it, but them working at Ubisoft, I think explains part of like why visually it looks so good, because I think a lot of Ubisoft games look really nice, at least with what they're able to do with the tech that they have.

So I'm not as familiar.

I don't play as many of the Ubisoft games.

I can't I can't say one way or the other.

There are definitely a few things in here that give off that sort of triple a Ubisoft like impression when you're playing it.

You had mentioned the visuals.

Why don't we talk a little bit about those?

Sure really stunning, a really beautiful.

They do a nice mix of going for the motion capture, the real actors, the realistic graphic fidelity, while still maintaining a sort of fantastical art direction.

This is definitely not a quote unquote realistic game, and intentionally so it's not made to be.

I do agree though, I love this game's art style.

I think it has like one of the most unique art styles of any game probably this decade.

Really, like you can tell they were really influenced by like French and European kind of like folklore and art design and it really comes through to give the game a very unique look and in some ways the visuals, it's gonna be a weird comparison, but like, like you know how like the Akuza or like a Dragon series, they're able to sort of mix like really beautiful graphics and nice presentation with kind of like almost like stock or older style like a animations.

Like they cut corners just to like save money and everything, but they do it so well.

Everything kind of blends in and fits.

And that's kind of like with Expedition thirty three, Like there are certain things that I see where I'm like, yeah, there's there's like a corner cut here or there, but it all makes sense and it all kind of fits and is able to help kind of create this amazingly beautiful world.

And it just shows the power of like using technology and being able to you know, mix in old stuff with new stuff.

You know, Like it's okay if there are some reused animations here or there, it's perfectly fine as long as everything's kind of done with a purpose, you know, and soul.

It's got plenty of soul.

Man, So you're seeing those corners and the animations.

Like there are certain points where it's like certain like facial animations look kind of rough for things like that.

But I mean it's not like it's a detriment or anything.

It's just you can tell they were like, oh, this part we can't go crazy on because of like budget reasons, so whatever, like, we'll focus, We'll focus on the parts that matter, and the parts that mattered are where it really shines.

It's funny that you said that you were the first person to agree with me that there is some wonkiness going on there.

I had mentioned this elsewhere and somebody else said, well, I disagree entirely.

I think it's so subtle and it's like it is but here, Okay, So here's the thing.

Bright lights cast long shadows.

That's exactly what I wrote here.

It is clear at times when the motion capture tech cannot keep up with the actor it is tracking.

Yeah, it just cannot keep up.

Particularly you see this in the face and in particular not just the eyes, but around the eyes.

I'm talking, yes, the eyes a little bit, but I'm talking the brow and the forehead muscles, the muscles that are directly on the sides of the eyes and underneath.

You can tell that the actors are really giving a stellar performance, but the technology just cannot keep up.

And this is just a risk of the medium, right, it is inherent to video games as an art form.

Yes, if you pursue this hyper realistic graphical fidelity see this, see Detroit Become Human, it will never approach live theater or film.

That's not a con that's just reality.

And that's okay, Like there's nothing wrong with that, But it is an inherent risk, you know.

Again, And the reason that I say bright lights cast long shadows is the rest of this game, the acting, the writing, the set direction, the blocking of the scenes, everything else is really really stellar.

So when these little tiny things pop up, you know, it's like, this scene is so phenomenal.

Why am I looking at their eyes so much?

Though?

What's going on here?

You know?

Yeah?

And I think because the game it's a fantasy game, right, Like it's in a fantasy setting and all that stuff that they can get away with some of those wonkier bits here and there.

You know.

It's kind of similar to what I say with Yakuza, where if you play the old Yucuza games, you can tell a certain points that they're reusing the same animations from like the PS three era, But does anybody really care?

No, because that's not really what's meant to be criticized here, you know, Like this isn't like a super ultra realistic video game anyways, So they don't have to get everything right one hundred percent of the time, and that's perfectly fine that they don't, because again, the game has such a striking look to it already and has like a really well defined art style that it's consistent throughout the game.

That it's okay if like a couple of animations look a bit stock or certain bits look a little weird, it's it's okay.

You know, It's not the end of the world.

It's a very minor issue in my opinion.

Cannot stress enough we are not saying that this is a bad thing and it's a knock against this game, not at all.

Yeah, I think I think art style is it like tops everything like, it doesn't necessarily matter how realistic something looks.

As long as it has a really nice, we defined art style, you will be just fine.

Like a prime example, wind Waker.

You know, I love wind Waker's art style, and that kind of precedes any like any sort of realistic attempt at Zell that they've done after with like Twilight Princess or whatever.

Like I think when Waker looks better and has aged far better because of it, and I think Expedition thirty three will age very well as well due to its incredible arts design.

If you've seen this game shared online, you've probably seen the character customization that's a fairly prominent part of this.

You can dress up your characters in different hairstyles and different clothings.

You can argue, actually that this is diegetic based on something that happens later in the plot, which I think is very very cool.

This isn't for me, Like, I'm not mad that it's here, but I don't really engage with this too much.

It breaks the fiction for me.

Like I'll mess around with a couple of hairstyles on cl or Mael.

I think I gave Gustave a different outfit, but some of them are pre silly, and again I mean for me, they break the fiction.

There is an option in the options, appropriately enough, that forces default character designs in cut scenes, so you can, if you really want to, you can go crazy with some of the goofy outfits, you know, like wearing a baget on your back and sunglasses.

But then the cut scenes where the drama happens, where the narrative fiction happens, that'll revert automatically to the stock character designs.

I think that's a really cool feature, you know, the best of both worlds.

Did they add that later, because I do not remember that option.

I'm not sure.

I just know it's there now, I don't remember when it came around.

That's interesting.

Yeah, that's cool that they add to that there, And yeah, the little costumes are neat, but yeah, I didn't I didn't really mess with them either either, Like I'm not really somebody who likes messing around with customization of characters in general.

Anyways, It's one of those things that it's almost kind of funny where it's like the story is so like sad and emotional and serious, but like in the middle of it, they're like playing dress up, you know.

But I think that's just I think that's just the nature of RPGs in general, usually like a pretty serious narrative with you know, a little lighter things here and there, but no big deal.

I am glad, you know, I am glad that they added that as an option.

I don't mind that it's there.

It's just very distracting to me.

Yeah, especially with some of the outfits that you can unlock are just so silly.

And there was this big not scandal, but there is this big discussion about the penis jiggle physics on one of the Swim super models.

I don't know which one I did.

I didn't see this at all.

Yeah, it was a whole thing.

I want to say.

It was a character named Verso I'm not one hundred percent sure though, I mean, let me, I'm gonna look at this.

I'm just looking at it on Reddit.

Another thing while while you're checking that out.

Another thing about this game that we will talk about as we go through the distinct level biomes are really diverse.

And I said distinct already, so I don't want to repeat it.

They're very nice, are all very unique.

Each level, each set, so to speak, gives you a different vibe.

It comes with different music, It comes with a different environment, and comes with different monsters.

They do a really good job of sort of progressing you through this story while keeping the drama of like a stage play alive.

You know, it almost feels like the lights go down and they do a quick set change just in video game form.

Love it.

Yes, And it doesn't like fall into like that grapyg trope of like the typical locales, you know, like sometimes it does a little bit, but again, I think it does enough unique things that it doesn't really have to be like, oh, we got to go to like the water area and now like the fire area.

You know, it doesn't really do that.

It allows sort.

Of the world to just kind of be its own thing, you know.

And yeah, those those being asimics are interesting.

Notably notably no sewer level.

Yeah right right, yeah, no sewer level.

Thank god.

I think that was enough to give the game an eight out of ten at the very least for me mechanics.

This is so you had mentioned that you had some problems with the mechanics, and I am curious as to where that comes into play.

This is a blend of sort of nineties and early two thousands JERPG and modern third person action games.

Of it is turn based, but there is a heavy emphasis on dodging and parrying.

Yes, so why don't we start there?

Why don't we start with the marriage of turn based combat with parrying?

So, really, when this game when it was first shown, I think everyone and was comparing the combat system to Persona five because I had that sort of look to it.

Which was a noted inspiration from gam broche.

Yes, yes, I mean Persona five has been such a that's another sort of like generational JRPG.

I still like to play all the way through that, but that's another topic.

So but I see the influence there, right, and trying to do the pairing and the dodging, I see them being influenced by Secoro on that.

I also was making comparisons to like, you know, like Los Odyssey or even like the paper Mario games where they do sort of that sort of it's like almost like a trick to keep people into like turn based combat is oh, have like button timing kind of puzzles or whatever so people will stay more invested and that kind of a thing.

And that's not inherently bad.

I have nothing necessarily against it.

It was just my issue was that, like the pairing in the dodging is fine, but I just don't like how the combat sort of expects you as the player to to use that as sort of like your defense.

Because if you ever look at.

The stats, Oh, interesting because if you ever.

Look at the stats for the other party members, I noticed that for most of them, defense was really low compared to everything else, and it almost felt like it was intentionally made to be really low so that you could get good at the dodging and the parrying and everything.

And I can understand that, and thankfully this game has like you know, like easy hard difficulty setting, so you can kind of set it to how you want.

And at a certain point I did not get to the story mode because I was just really not I just never really got a feel for the perry or the dodge at like the normal difficulty.

Just it could have just been me, could have been a skill issue on my part, but it was something that I just thought was a bit annoying, and how like I was trying my best to bump up their defense, but it never felt like it was really working.

And like a lot of your characters, even later on, despite how high of a level they are, they'll die in like two hits, So you have to get good at the dodging and the parrying, and there are definitely benefits for that, but just to an extent, it did frustrate me a little bit because there's like there's not really any tanks.

That's kind of one which we'll get to sure, but it was just one kind of issue I had with it.

It's like, I don't mind the dodge and perry mechanics, but I think it kind of punishes you if you're not really good at them.

Well, first of all, you're going to invite many a keyboard warrior to come into my mentions and tell you to get good.

Thinking that maybe I said it.

Yes, I beat it on story mode, but like, you know, hey, if they come at me, I'll talk to them, no problem.

It's interesting that that's why it's a con to you.

For that precise reason, I like it.

That's fine, you know when you had mentioned that it feels like a trick to get you engaged in turn based combat, and then followed it up with you know, it's so reliant on that when I think of like, you know, I was thinking to myself and not listening to you speak, obviously, I was thinking, what's a trick to get people interested in turns based combat?

And I thought of Super Mario RPG, where they do something uh kind of similar.

You know, you can you can do a quick little like block whenever enemies attack you.

That very much is optional.

You really don't have to engage with that.

And I you know, I don't know that I would call it a trick, but I can see it being described as such here.

I mean, I think the shear fact that it is so imperative that you do it, or at least you know, try to, especially with the dodging, I don't know, that makes it feel a little bit more special than a trick, a little bit more intentional.

I mean, I really liked it.

I'm team Perry or Bust.

I'm parrying and I don't even think about the dodge a lot of the time.

That's not true.

I mean, I dodge whenever I need to.

But yeah, what's cool, though, is this game.

You know, if we talk about the builds for this game, and we'll get to like Pictose and Luminas in a second, the gameplay strategy of this is largely balanced on attack and defense.

Where the defense is you know, it's not stats like you said, it's active mechanical skill.

You've got to parry, you've got to dodge, you've got to jump, and the game plan for attacking your offensive is not mechanical skill.

It is stat based.

That's the traditional you know RPG elements.

Your player builds incentivize high, high, high damage and that's all through builds, so you've got that nice balance of you know, mental strategy and physical skill.

I was a big fan.

There is a part of me that wished that buffs and debuffs were a little stronger.

They are in here.

Buffs are more present than the buffs.

I think they're.

Okay, Yeah, yeah, The debuffs they have aren't really at least from what I remember, they didn't really help that much.

They can, I mean they can if you stack enough burns, if you mark an enemy, that can be devastating.

They're not as powerful and useful overall as some other j RPGs.

Yeah all.

All I'm trying to say is the offensive strategy is very much geared with no matter who you're playing as as deal the most damage possible.

And you know, some some people might say, well, yeah, that's the point of all of them.

That's I forget what I was listening to.

And somebody on another podcast was like, you know, I don't I don't need any of those d buffs.

The only debuff I care about is debuffing their HP to zero.

That's funny, and it's like, yeah, sure, I mean that's that's true.

That's how I approach Pokemon, you know, flamethrower, fire, blast, fire, slash, and cut.

Yeah, that's all my charts are ever needed exactly.

It's interesting because in the attack it does have the like sort of the Lost Odyssey thing where when you attack, if you hit the button at the right time, you'll do some extra damage.

And there are certain attacks, certain like multi string attacks.

If you don't hit A, it will cancel it entirely where it's like, oh, it's like a seven, like it'll do seven hits, but if you if you miss the A, it'll like do like two hits kind of a thing.

I don't think I ever, Are you sure?

Yeah?

Yeah, it was a character will get too late.

When we get to that character, I'll remind you.

But I mean he was the only one that really had that.

And yeah, it is more based on the stat thing.

And I wasn't necessarily implying that how they handled the Perrys and Dodges.

Here is a quote unquote trick.

I was implying that there are you know, other games like say like when Yakuza went RPG.

It's like something that they do that's just kind of like a almost kind of gimmicky.

I think like this game, I see the Secoro influence with the perry and dodging, but also like I like Saecio, but I'm not very good at it, so sure, sure, yeah, but I was able to once I bumped it to the lighter difficulty.

I just thought the perry and the dodge window was more was better for like my skill set, and I was able to get through the rest of the game.

I felt on the harder or even the standard difficulty, I just thought the windows for perrying and dodging were just a little bit too small.

It's just a personal thing, you know.

You had mentioned Lost Odyssey.

The attack system here was a bit inspired by that.

Yeah, it is much more obvious when you need to press a here versus when you need to pull the right trigger in Lost Odyssey.

It's still to me this battle system in terms of the attacking sits firmly between Lost Odyssey and Legend of Dragoon for me, where it's like I like it a little more than Lost Odyssey, but it doesn't have the satisfaction that the additions and legend of Dragoon have where each and every one is different and you've just got to master everybody's timings and you get to see all the cool animations.

That is one where if you mess mess up a combo, it drops immediately.

I will say that, yeah, pretty cool.

Yeah this game.

In addition to that, you can also shoot and shooting as well as your special skills, all use AP every turn your characters.

Your characters all start with a certain amount of AP, and you can use some buffs and whatnot that you equip outside of battle to get more.

Each turn you're going to replenish one unless you've got some buffs on and attacking will generate AP skills use AP shooting, one shot, one AP.

There's always this balance to consider.

Do I want to do a lot of shooting and then just attack once I'm out of AP, or do I want to save my AP and build it up across a few turns to really unleash some big level nine AP skills.

I really liked that aspect of the combat.

I thought that was you too, as you said, with that strategy of you know, should I just shoot the enemies now or save it up to for some of my more stronger attacks as you progress later in the game, and the game tries to throw some interesting twists on it where it's like, oh, there are certain enemies where anything but a shooting will, like say a normal attack, they'll like dodge it ninety percent of the time, but if you shoot them, it'll always hit.

So it's one of those like, oh, I can you know, focus on them, or certain enemies will have like weak points and if you like shoot the weak point, it'll do a bunch of damage or even perimeter damage around the other enemies as well, so you kind of learn to balance that.

And also with your turn order, where some characters you don't mind if they shoot, because say their AP attacks aren't as good as some other characters, so it's like, oh, I'll have them below the AP and so when I get to this other character, I'll build up their AP so they have enough strength to do like the big attack that wipes everybody out.

So so yeah, that little bit of strategy that involves, you know, balancing the projectiles with your normal attacks and your magic attacks, I thought was really nice.

I really enjoyed that, and that was a way I think of keeping the battles fresh in a way that I found more kind of exciting.

You know.

It was like, oh, you know what am I going to deal with here?

Like how does this?

Like the cause and effect thing, like if I do this, it'll cause this to happen, that kind of.

Thing, especially with how much synergy there is between all of the characters and how heavily you're incentivized to really break the damage barrier, which you do have from the beginning there is a nine nine nine nine damage barrier.

You eventually get a Pictose to take that away.

And speaking of pictos, let's talk.

Pictose and Lumina are the sort of binding a duo that create your character builds.

Now, there aren't character builds like you would expect in a traditional JRPG, like Blue Mage.

There is kind of a Blue Mage, but there's not like a Mage a fighter or anything like that.

It's not quite that divided, and I don't want to say nuance, but divided.

You are still largely encouraged to have everybody pushing damage.

But the Picctose and Luminas system can help create some builds within that.

The way it works, it's kind of similar to Final Fantasy nine in a way, wherein your pictose you can equip up to three at a time.

They will give you special abilities like one will give you plus one AP on perfect dodge once for battle.

One will give you plus three AP to all of your party members upon this character's death.

One will I don't know, add a twenty percent chance of adding a burn if you shoot an enemy.

Things like that.

After four battles, I think three or four battles, you learn that pictose.

And where this is different from Final Fantasy nine is once a pictose is learned by one character, everybody else has access to it and they can equip it by using Lumina points.

This is I mean, I keep using Final Fantasy nine.

This is just like the ap in that game.

Every lumina is going to have a cost one, four, five, ten, fifteen, And as long as you have the points, you can equip that, and as long as it's learned by any one character, the whole cast can use it.

The one con to this system is there's just an overabundance of choice and it can be overwhelming.

Very early into the game, you're going to have like a full page and a half of all of this stuff, and there's just so much to look at that it can be a bit overwhelming.

On my second time through, I was like, Okay, I'm used to this now, but I'm thinking back to my first time.

There was a long stretch of the early game where I just ignored it because I was like, this is you know, this is a lot to look at.

I need to just and I'm doing okay in battles because I'm just so good at parrying, but not really, but it is a lot.

Yeah, and yeah, I don't think.

Yeah, the characters necessarily are specific like classes, but they do kind of have sort of defined roles.

Like it's like in the story, it's like, oh, this character is supposed to be like this type of a class.

But yeah, as you said, you can sort of change the builds of them to kind of mold them to how you like.

And yeah, and that's that's this the luminous stuff.

It reminded me a lot of Lost Odyssey as well, like say, when like it's like the mortals gain the skills that they have by leveling up, right, and you can pass those on to the immortals and kind of like link them.

This reminded me a little bit of that as well, especially at the end of the game, where I was trying to like boost my characters so I could be strong enough for the final part, like looking through everything and seeing what I could do to sort of not necessarily min max, but like get everybody as strong as I could.

It reminded me of Lost Odyssey, when near the end of the game I was going to grind so that I would get the right skills, like attach them to the mortals, they would level them up, and then pass them off.

To the immortals.

It has a similar sort of idea where certain characters, like you put the alumina on them and then they can like through battles, get better at it, and then pass it on to everybody else.

So and yeah, I liked the system.

I thought it was really good.

But yeah, as you said, way too much abundance of choice, especially when a lot of them do very similar things.

Yeah, so the point of like like looking at that list, it's like you could probably cut like a third of those out and still be just fine.

Maybe so, And and the abundance of choice is mainly just a visual thing.

It can feel overwhelming.

I'm not mad that they're there, and it's it's cool because it does.

It makes playthroughs feel a lot more unique.

You know, you can really get to different builds.

And while yes, I do stand by what I said before, you know, at the end of the day, it very much.

Which is this guy's kind of a blue mage and he deals damage.

Male's a fencer and she deals damage.

Lune is kind of a mage, but she deals damage.

You know, it comes down to debuffing the HP stat to zero.

But there are enough ways to build characters with very neat and interesting synergies that you might not expect.

For example, one build that I've got going right now that I really like is one of my characters has a skill that immediately kills them upon a battle starting, They just immediately fall.

What's cool about that, though, is I have other skills equipped that when they die one the enemies automatically like take a bunch of damage and get a bunch of stacks of burns because burns can stack.

In this game, which is cool, and burn and burns are like the most powerful debuff in the game, at least from from what I remember.

Two.

When they die the rest of the cast that's on the field, my guys get like an extra plus four ap so yes, I do need to revive them.

Or I could which I haven't done this yet and I kind of want to.

I could just equip pictose that says the first time you die in battle, you're automatically restored to one hundred percent health.

Do it once per battle, but it happens every time.

I could just do that.

So now suddenly everybody is buffed to hell and the enemies are burning.

They don't know what's going on, and I send them to hell.

I debuff their HP to zero because of that.

One build is just so cool.

A lot of stuff like that can be done, things that you just that you you know what this feels like to me, And I thought of this whenever another character was introduced.

We'll talk about that soon, but a lot of this does feel like card game rules.

You know, a lot of if them statements, which I think you said earlier.

Lune and a character named Ceo in particular, very much remind me of trading card game rules in terms of how their battle systems work.

But a lot of these synergies that you can set up function on if then statements, and I just get you know, I remember setting up strings and Yu gi Oh that just set off all these crazy combinations to get me tons of light life points and monsters and send my opponent to hell.

I really like that.

I like how strategic this feels, even though, yeah, you do have that mechanical get goodory in the dodging and the parrying.

There is that, and that's a nice little balance.

But you can get fairly creative with a lot of this.

I can't stop singing the praises of it.

This isn't my favorite battle system that still belongs to Final Fantasy ten two, but this is up there.

It is up there.

It is really good.

Yeah, for sure.

A lot of that customization.

It almost reminded me more of like, you know, how Western repgs are, where they give you a lot of different options to do different things.

So that might have been a little bit of an influence there, yeah, perhaps.

So let's now talk a little bit about the music and the sound design.

So this was composed by Lorien Testard.

Really interesting background.

They found him just through some discord posts.

It may have been Reddit.

I think it was Discord.

I thought they found him on SoundCloud.

Well, he posted his SoundCloud and it was like an indie game forum Subreddit Discord or whatever, and he would post his tracks and that's how the sand Fall team found him really really cool, he has said.

Test Stard has that he tried not to take too much inspiration from other sources, which, like he also says something a little bit later about how like French culture and French music just seeped into him because he heard it.

I don't think.

I don't think he meant that.

I'm not criticizing the man's English.

But you can't just decide not to take inspiration from star it doesn't work well.

Yeah, exactly.

But he did say that he's a huge fan of Joe Hsaishi, a composer for Studio Jibli, and Koji Kondo, specifically his work on Zelda.

Those are two like noted influence of his.

Yeah, I absolutely hear the Koji Konda from Zelda, and and it's funny the Hisashi because currently I'm playing for Nino Kuni too, so I can definitely hear some of the comparisons in each of those soundtracks as well.

Yeah, and those are two phenomenal reference points if you're going to take inspiration from any two, if you're gonna choose who to be inspired by, like you could do a lot worse than those two.

Exactly.

What did you think of the soundtrack overall?

I really liked it.

I thought it was it was fantastic.

It was pretty diverse as well, because you know, you do have your big kind of sweeping orchestral moments.

But the tunes that stuck out to me were when you went to the Gestral beaches, which are like kind of like side areas where you kind of do random stuff.

The tunes there really struck me because they were kind of like a lot more like upbeat and kind of like lighter in tone, you know.

And those were the tunes that I still think about really are like the Gestraal Beach tunes.

But the rest of it, yeah, is just fantastic.

You mentioned like it feel like it doesn't fit.

I don't know where else this could fit appropriately enough, So I'm just gonna say it here.

This isn't related to music, but they did put a lot of easter eggs in this game, a lot of them, and it's really fun to find them.

There's an easter egg for Final Fantasy Seven's logo.

There is an easter egg to that Garfield Dancing breakdancing theme.

You know really in the gestural village.

Yeah, they put in one NPC like just sitting in a fire and if you talk to him, he just says, this is fine.

There's a lot of that in here.

And it's not so much that it becomes like self referential and to like self parody.

It's just every so often you find it.

It gives the feeling that they were having fun when they were making this.

Yes, yes, and I can really appreciate that there.

You know, if I can be convinced that the dev team and the designers and the writers were having a good time, that does a lot for me as a player.

It does a lot for me in terms of like, yeah, I like this.

It's like finding that random oh in in Disco Elysium where the hood where the hood, where the hood at?

Does it really have it in that?

Yes, that's awesome.

Another reason why I should just play that game already phenomenal, phenomenal game.

But yeah, it's it's stuff like that.

It's really cool anyway, not related to music.

But yes, but you can tell when I'd said earlier that the game has souls, like yeah, you can tell this was a passion project that the people making it you know, really wanted to make it, and yeah, having that stuff definitely adds to that.

The soundtrack.

Back to the soundtrack, heavy use of strings, accordion, and guitar.

Those are like overall, if you're gonna pick some primary instruments, I would probably say it's those other instruments used throughout.

You can hear synth patches, you can hear distorted guitar, you can hear saxophone, you can hear various kinds of electronic manipulation of the voice, things like talk boxes and auto tune and things like that to give different kind of vibes.

It's very as you said, Thrack, it's stylistically diverse, not like I don't.

It's not so diverse that you can't tell different tracks are from the same game.

But it's cool that you get these intimate, sort of Parisian cafe folk melodies alongside of the bombastic battle theme, alongside of lo fi beats to chill and Perry two, and then you get a Monoco's theme, which is just tenor saxophone, yeah, going crazy.

And then there's even some stuff that sounds a little prod rocky.

Yeah.

Yeah, there was a couple of prog moments in there.

For sure.

Voice is used pretty heavily here too, French lyrics primarily.

It does include some English and some language which gives me some like big near vibes.

There's a track called Linen and Cotton, for example, which is one of my favorites in the game.

I tend to like in this game, I tend to like the more intimate stuff than the big sweeping orchestral stuff that to me, it just works so much more.

Yeah, because I think at the end of the day, this is much more of an intimate game as far as like the story is.

So those songs, I think Hitting You More is probably more of like the intention, you know, like it doesn't feel as big in sweeping as it like presents itself at times.

I was looking through some Reddit threads because I do serious research for this show, and I saw some people that said that they were native French speakers, or at least they were claiming to be.

I have no idea if they are.

You know, anybody can just say anything on Reddit and it doesn't matter.

Like you anyway, I'm choosing to believe that these people are telling the truth.

Let's humor them and say that they.

Are, and they said that they looked at the French lyrics.

They said that they are like not straightforward all and extremely cryptic, but they sound pleasing phonetically to the ear.

And you know, you and I can't judge the French stuff, but we can judge the latter.

And this is an aspect of music that I think about anytime I hear a language that I don't know, but I'm hearing it, you know, in the tune.

The voice itself becomes an instrument.

You know, you think about this in opera a lot, especially when you're first exposed to it, especially if you know you're like me and you don't speak French or Italian or German very well.

The voice becomes an instrument the musicality, not just of the voice itself, but of the language of the cadence, the consonants, the vowels, the articulations of the d's, t's and p's, things like that they can be heard in a way that's not often immediately apparent to like our native language like English, which which isn't to say like it is there, but I would venture to say you and I, well, maybe not you and I, because you and I do have background in music, but the average person doesn't hear it that way unless it's pointed out to them.

Because it's the native language.

They hear the words, they know the meeting, they recognize those patterns.

Whereas somebody from I don't know, from France or from Italy that doesn't speak English, they hear it, and they hear the musicality of the way words sound, the ups and downs of intonation, and the beginnings and ends of the articulations of words.

It's very cool.

It's something that I love.

I'm glad that I don't speak French because one because you can hear a lot of the characters' names throughout, and I feel like I might find that a little cheesy if I knew what they were saying.

They're not, I mean, to be clear, they're not actually talking about the Gustave and the verso they're I mean, it's you know, those words mean things.

But so I hear that as an English speaking and I'm like, are they singing about our guys?

Is this a theme song?

What are we doing?

Yeah, it's possible, It's it's great.

I really like it.

Yeah, And even like even in English, there have been numerous instances of people like writing English words that like the lyrics don't make a lot of sense when you read them, but phonetically they sound really good with the music as well.

And like I've always been a fan of like French being sung.

I've always thought French is like the best sung language.

Like I've listened, like I've listened to quite a bit of a Sergey Gainesborough.

There's a French Canadian band I really like called Harmonium.

They have a really cool album that's about like the four seasons and then making like a fifth season, and like it's it's a beautiful, kind of like seventies proggy folky kind of a record.

And but I've always loved the way French sounds when it sung, just the way it kind of rolls off the tongue just I think just leads naturally to being a very beautiful language when you sing it.

So so this having a lot of that French stuff I really enjoyed as well.

So and yeah, it's just a gorgeous soundtrack, like all the way through.

Have you ever heard of that Italian song that was created to sound like English?

Do you know what I'm talking about?

Maybe I just looked it up on YouTube.

It's Adriano Keelitano.

I cannot pronounce the name of the song A prison culin en sin nine q soul.

It's like he's this Italian guy in the seventies.

He's a musician.

He wrote a song in Gibberish to sound like English, and I swear it's it's so funny.

I I remember finding this in middle school.

If you if you listen to it just passively, you can swear the man is speaking English just randomly above time.

Yeah, it's so it's so funny, it's so cool, and it you know, it demonstrates that musicality of language.

You know, it's yeh, it's it's wild, dude.

I would like to to he listened to that.

I don't think I ever have Adriano Kellntano.

He's he's like doing a whole bit in front of what looks like a studio audience.

It's crazy.

It's so cool.

But yeah, this ost really strong.

The character themes themselves weren't quite as strong for me.

I did like them, but again, those intimate moments that are set dressings, whenever story beats are happening, where whenever character relations are being developed at the campsite to give an example of what I mean, those moments where the music is very much in the background, that is always whenever I started perking up more and appreciating what was going on.

There is no shortage of really fantastic music in this and you know what I appreciate too.

And what this has got me thinking of is, you know, I've talked on the show before.

I have a background in music.

I have a master's in a DMA in classical music, and you know, so I'm obviously I would never call myself an expert anymore because I don't actively practice, but at one time I was.

At one time, I was at the top of the field, you know, comparatively.

And this soundtrack, thank you, This soundtrack is done by somebody that doesn't have that formal education, and it I just can't stop thinking about how one how amazing human beings are, and two, how many phenomenally talented people must be out there, talented through hard work.

Let me be clear, not just I hate the phrase god given talent.

It's so dismissive talented people through hard work that we will just never know of, you know.

It Also like there's that meme that always goes around of like it's like a newspaper comic of a dishwasher, and like it's been memed over to say, like, sorry, bro, I hate to break it to you, but we all are well versed in hidden and esoteric knowledge.

You know, like these people are all around us and we will never know because of things like credentials and you know, people just never giving a shot and the smartest person you know could be working at the taco bell down the street.

You know, people are so goddamn amazing and things like this get me so hyped up about it too.

Yeah.

And also I think it's you know, you know capitalism, you know, not being able to like financially support yourself in order to realize these talents that you have, can also you know, prevent that stuff from happening.

That's a huge part of it.

Yeah.

And to your point about like like naturally like god given talent thing, I think to a degree, I think we when we're all born, there is like something that like things we are like naturally better at than other things.

But in order to like actually see those through, you do have to work at them, you know what I mean.

It's not like everybody's born like they have a virtu virtuosic talent at something.

Oh, of course, like as we said, I have a music background.

I was a drummer for many years, and I found when I had first sat down and started playing like that, like a lot of like the basics of drumming I found came very naturally and easy to me.

But when it came to a lot of the harder like rudiment, technical stuff that definitely took woods shedding to get better at.

So, of course, I don't mean to suggest that aptitude doesn't exist.

I remember, going through my ED degree, one of the last things that we had to do in like an educational psychology class or no it was it was something to do with music.

I don't know, but we, you know, took and administered these aptitude tests, admittedly to our collegiate peers, so like it was far from a real environment, but it was these things that you can give to children and administer to them to see if they've got rhythmic aptitude versus like tonal aptitude.

Things like that.

Yeah, that's definitely there.

I'm more so talking about, like, you know, whenever I was auditioning for my masters and hearing people in my family say like, well, I wish I could do that.

You're just you've got a gift.

God gave you a gift.

And it's like, no, actually, I spend like two to five hours a day practicing.

That's yeah, the gift is from me.

I made this.

I'll get this here.

I made this for you.

You know, if anything, the gift that you get is the desire to work at it and get better at it.

Sure, and you know, again, like you said, capitalism, a lot of that comes down to nurture as well.

Breaks my heart to know there are a lot of really talented musicians that never discover it because they didn't come from, you know, a family with means.

Classical music is a prohibitively expensive field and hobby.

So there are plenty of people I'm sure that would be phenomenal musicians that just never get a chance.

It's sad.

But to bring it back to Claire obscure, Laurent Testar did amazing work and he's showing I will tell you the man with three degrees, you don't need one too.

You don't even need one to do phenomenal work.

I've worked in my days work I don't have any sort of like musical degree.

I have some formal music education, but not a lot.

And yeah, I worked with people of all ILKs, like people who have full on music degrees and people who have nothing.

And what I learned was really the skill comes from, like the willingness to actually like get better at the instrument, and like when you're in a band situation, like being able to communicate with everybody so that you're creating a real piece of music.

That's where the skill comes in for sure.

All Right, So we've talked through the preamble as I often call it, probably erroneously, that's probably not correct.

But we've talked through the visuals, our, overall thoughts, music mechanics.

We're about to dive into our narrative analysis of Clare Obscure.

If you were tuning in up to this point and you do not want spoilers, you want to play this game for yourself, you haven't got to it yet, now's a good time to jump off.

If you are currently playing through this, I can promise you we won't get up to act too.

We might get up to the end of Act one, it kind of depends, definitely, not farther farther than that, and we don't speak so quickly that we're gonna, you know, spoil you unless you're like driving and juggling at the same time, which I recommend you not do.

As cool as it looks, it's not cool.

Don't do it.

Yeah, it's a little cool.

Don't do it though.

Thankfully, the game, like if you're just doing the story, it's not a super long game, which is another great thing about it as an RPG.

I think it's like maybe forty hours, which I think is a pretty good length for this game as well.

I ironically I got up to about thirty three hours my first playthrough.

I did not do all of the side content if you wanted to watch an in game, if you wanted to watch a game movie, as they're called, all the cutscenes seven hours at most.

I've seen some that are four and a half.

I've seen some that are seven.

I trust the longer just because they usually are more exhaustive.

But at any rate, I think now is a great time if you're going to jump off feel free.

Otherwise, let's take a stroll into Loumiere and begin the journey of Expedition thirty three in Claire Obscure Expedition thirty three.

I don't know about you.

I love this prologue, This whole introductory sequence is just fantastic.

Yeah.

We open with shots of the landscape of Lumiere, a sort of alternate or parallel world of France.

You see one character who will be introduced to in a minute named Gustav on a semi rustic sort of villa that's overlooking a distorted city.

It's bent architecture, suspended debris in the air.

It's a little bit tim Burton.

That's how I've heard it called by me in other areas.

Yeah, it indicates above all that we are in a fantasy setting.

Yeah.

I also think this game, I mean, you know, because French, I think it takes a lot of influence from like French cinema as well.

And I mean we can probably get more into that the further we get into the game.

But there were a lot of moments that that had that sort of cinematic presentation to it that I thought were just expertly done.

No doubt.

I'm not a film guy.

I say this all the time, but I keep thinking back to what Lorian Testard said when asked, like, oh yeah, were you influenced by French music?

And he said, not consciously, but I've lived in that culture and absorbed it since I was born, so it involuntarily has seeped into me.

It's made me, you know, yeah, paraphrasing, but that's what he meant.

Probably I know him.

Yeah, we all get influenced like that.

We meet Gustav and Myo.

There are going to be our two characters for the moment.

The town is getting ready for a festival of some sort and Gustave is killing time.

He's putting off meeting up with this lady named Sophie.

Four years after not seeing her, we learned that they were in a relationship and something is about to happen called the Gomage.

This is you know, this is a spoiler for just a couple of minutes into the story, but the Gomage is imminent death.

People are going to die.

And there's an exchange that happens here and cards on the table, cards on the table, everybody.

I wrote this exchange down as soon as I played the game.

And wouldn't you know it, Jacob Geller beat me to the goddamn punch.

And what does he do?

But he structures an entire video around it, and I was like, damn it.

I thought I had one thing.

I thought I had one thing to myself here.

I thought I could do it, but I promised I did.

And this is what they say.

Miele sees Gustav killing time and she says, if you're going to give someone flowers, you should probably do it before they wither and die, to which he gives the pithy response the flowers or Sophie, and that kind of frames this what we're looking at.

This gallows humor, this defense mechanism against grief.

This game is entirely about grief and loss and the weight of the past and reflective, pensive feelings.

This exchange is just, especially on a second playthrough, is so beautiful.

This is where you get the combat Toatoria with Myel.

I admit I wasn't the best at writing down the tutorial spots in this game on the replay on a new game, Plus, you don't engage with the tutorials.

They're just kind of in the menu where you can go back and review them, so we're probably not going to call out every tutorial.

But this is where you get to do a little duel with Mayel.

The absolute tank of the game.

Might beloved my favorite character.

She's incredible and was easily the hardest hitting of anybody in the game.

Another character named Monoco comes close for me, but Mayel is just a tank, so much so that they had to nerve her because people were just going insane with her builds.

Yeah.

Like, when I was playing it, I noticed that, like, Mayel was just so incredibly strong, and it was so weird because I guess it's just you know, preconceived biases.

You don't expect her to be such a beast, but once you actually start playing with her.

Yeah, Like I kept her in the party.

She never left the party.

You know.

There were two characters that, once they entered my party, Mayele was one of them, they never left.

Yeah.

I have that sickness where I have to rotate everybody all the time, you know, And that goes all the way back to Pokemon too.

I would consistently always have like two teams at least going I'm one of those guys.

Yeah, I'm more of a Once I find like the three or four people I like, I'm just sticking with them.

I'll just stick with them to the very end.

That's just the kind of player I am.

It sounds like you're reading off of like your card for a dating show.

What do you mean?

No, I'm not so speaking of dating.

Male convinces you, She takes you over to Sophie.

You run across the rooftops.

This is a little bit Ubisoft kind of you know, running across the roofs.

He's a little creedy.

Yeah.

Yeah.

The reunion with Sophie is a little tense, but it's it's warm, it's receptive.

It's awkward, but it's tender.

They split up.

What we come to learn is that Sophie wanted children and Gustav didn't because you know, he knew about the Gomage.

Hey, folks, future here, I got it backwards.

Sophie did not want children, Gustave did.

What a blunder?

Can you believe it?

Anyway?

I just wanted to correct the record.

Let's get back to the show.

Their future was stolen because you know, the Gomage happens.

We should, I suppose we should maybe explain what the gomage is.

It is an annual event where this godlike deity that we'll talk about, known as the Paintress, paints a number on a large monument.

This year, it's going from thirty four to thirty three.

And on that day, it's the same day every year, presumably on that day when the new number is painted, everybody that is that age is wiped away.

They are they die, they get wiped from existence.

Gomage is a French word that means, as most of these will be, is a word that means to scrub, like to scrub away, to brush away, to folid away.

And that's literally what happens.

We'll see it coming up.

So this is it's very tense day, and it's it's so terribly sad that she wanted to bring children into the world.

He didn't because and they both knew that this was coming terribly sad.

It's one of those things that I feel like in this fictional world, the idea of having children has to be even more complicated of a question, because you know, I mean, it's one thing to bring children into just like our normal world, right, but like this world where like, oh, life is like ticking down by the year every year, and it just creates that conflict of you know, like do we bring children into this world knowing that, oh, they're not gonna have like say, at the thirty three, it's like, oh, if I bring a child into this world, like, are they're going to be dead by like fifteen right if we don't ever fix us.

So that like emotional weight there is really heavy.

And yeah, then when that happens.

Yeah, they all just kind of reminded me of I think it's like Avengers, like Infinity War endgame, when they all just kind of like disintegrate away.

It's exactly like that.

Yeah, like that thing kind of happens.

Yeah, yeah, you had said fix this.

Every year, an expedition goes out and attempts to fort the paintress and stop this cycle.

It is a perpetual cycle of death, the wheel of fate from whatever literature that's from.

But every year, a group of volunteers, it is voluntary.

Actually we get to explore the town right now, and we get to hear everybody's like differing opinions on the paintress and the gomage and the expeditions.

But the expedition goes out every year to try and stop the paintress.

They're all volunteers.

Generally, they are people with one year left to live, you know, they're going to be gomaged on the next date of that they volunteer to spend the last year of their life fighting for a better future.

This year is interesting because Gustave is part of this next expedition, but Mael has volunteered as well, and she's only sixteen, so she still has because the countdown goes down and people up.

Typically she's got I think nine years.

They say she still has nine good years.

But she's still volunteering to go on this potential death sentence of an expedition.

And I thinks she's going because she doesn't have really any family or anybody to like stay behind for exactly.

Yeah, she is an orphan that is mentioned pretty early on, also very important to who she is.

Two quick things that I wanted to mention here.

First, the symbolism of color is really nice.

Here.

It didn't go as extensive as I had thought, just based on my initial initial reactions.

But color is used as a symbol, particularly red.

Red can mean a lot of things, passion, anger, but here it largely symbolizes home.

Flowers are used too, and what a nice symbol flowers are.

I mean, not only a universal symbol for blooming life, but once plucked that becomes a death sentence.

Beautiful for the cycle, this perpetual cycle of life and death that Lumier is experiencing, and flowers here are being used to celebrate the gomage is celebrated by a big festival, people get together in the town square.

Flowers are everywhere, red and white flowers, wreaths, petals thrown everywhere.

And also flowers are used in the grieving process as well, like whenever a funeral happens or somebody passes away, a lot of times people will just send flowers to the grieving family, So it fits in with that theme of grief as well.

Yeah, absolutely, grieving celebratory multi The second thing that I just wanted to bring up super quick the voice talent here.

The voice actors really spectacular.

They do something that I don't see a lot of games do.

Uh.

They interrupt each other, They talk over each other, they stumble over each other, and that is so well realized.

It happens a few times throughout but here, when Sophie and Gustav meet up for the first time in four years, they like cut each other off and they stumble over each other.

They oh, sorry you go, Sorry, sorry you go, and it is just so fresh.

Games don't do this nearly enough captures that verisimilitude of what it's like to be in an awkward conversation with somebody that you haven't seen and you don't know what to say, you know, I'm sorry.

I like even in like films and TV, like, they don't do that as much either.

And I think sometimes that's hard to write, you know, it's hard to write down sort of like when people are like interrupting each other and that kind of thing.

Like I've seen a lot of like improv, like comedy kind of use that because they can use the awkwardness for comedic purposes.

But to and I don't know if this interrupting dialogue if it was written that way, or if they sort of allowed the actors to sort of improve the lines a little bit and create more of a natural flow in the conversation.

But however they were able to do it, Yeah, it creates a greater sense of you know, realism and ways of like people would be interacting in this type of situation.

You know.

Yeah, I'm not sure.

I wonder.

I wonder how much improv versus scripted.

I would imagine it's much heavier on the scripted side, But I don't know for sure.

We should say too.

By the way, we should call out some voice acting talent.

Gustav is played by Charlie Cox, who I was completely unfamiliar with until this game.

To be honest, as far as video game credits go, this is the only thing he's c what it did for.

He uh, just recently he spoke about this.

He in some kind of a panel.

He was like, you know, I feel like a fraud, but because people keep congratulating me, but I don't play video games.

I haven't played this yet.

He was like, yes, my agent just said, do you want to do this?

And he was like, yeah, it sounds really cool.

Four hours in the studio one day, that's it.

Yeah, it's so good.

I mean, he did a good job.

What else, I assume he's done a lot more in like, you know, movies and that kind of stuff, because I'm not familiar with his name.

Yeah, I think he's a movie guy.

Let's see, just taking a gander at some stuff.

Okay, Yeah, he's done some like Marvel Avenger stuff and some other stuff I just have never seen before at all.

But yeah, he's been getting around.

But he does a really good job with Gustav.

In this indeed.

Yeah.

Mile also does a great job Jennifer English, whose career is just blowing up right now in the best possible way.

And she does have some video game credits.

She's in the Shadow of urg Tree Eldinary expansion.

She's even a character in a boulders Gate three or at least Shadow Heart.

Yeah, so yeah, good for her, and I love her performance as Mayel.

I think Mayel she had like the most like her character.

I think really was the one that I gravitated towards the most.

But I mean, she's kind of perceived as like the main character of the game, so I think it would make sense.

But English did such a fantastic job with the voice acting for her.

I'm gonna hold off on what I was gonna say because I don't want to.

I don't want to spoil anything.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Gustave and Sophie head to the harbor hand in hand.

It's tentative, it's hesitant, but it's necessary.

They are at this moment the only comfort in the world to each other.

And as the sky's twilight comes, as the rust of the day's end begins to come in, the scene's color fades to monochrome and we see the painters stand up this giant humanoid clearly but sort of lanky, gray, disheveled, almost like almost disheveled in the same way that like the character from The Ring looks.

Yeah.

Yeah, a being that doesn't look like omnipotent and all powerful so much as it does heavily depressed at all times, but still like wildly powerful.

And the way the hair like covers her face all the time is very your Ring influence as well.

It makes everybody below look like a diorama, which is just terrific.

Yeah, I love sort of that.

I don't want it's not really forced perspective with the paintress, but I just love the way throughout the entire game, the way they always like have her, like say in the map or in this like she's always this big haunting sort of just like figure in the sky as you're progressing the game, like I think most of the time, no matter where you are, you always kind of see her or sort of like the big thirty three where she is, so it's always like in the back of your head, this sort of like imposing force.

And I think that was that.

I love that she stands here, she's gaunt, she's withered, and she away the thirty four and replaces it with a thirty three.

A piano chord reintroduces the scene with color.

It's this half diminished arpeggio that goes up just tons of tension, and it's a moment where your breath catches, not just yours is the player, but the characters too.

And this is where the gamage happens.

At one at a time.

Everybody that is of age, that is thirty three begins to just disintegrate and melt away into dust and rose petals, flower petals of red and white and float away.

And it's it's heart wrenching because you see children hugging each other.

There's a shot of one young child hugging an older child, bearing their chest into the older child because they're orphans.

Now, who do they have.

You see parents holding their child's hand as they disappear, and inevitably, you know, Sophie disappears as she looks into Gustav's eyes for the last comfort of her short life.

It's it's tragic.

Yeah, it's quite a way to create that emotional tension early on, you know, because because as you had said before, when you're going through the garmage and everything's kind of cheery.

There is sort of that hanging aura of like sadness because you know it's meant to be this day of celebration before something really bad happens, and then to like see it happen, you know, really it really hits to you, how like emotional this whole journey is going to end up being, especially the way it hits Gustav because you could tell him and Sophie never really wanted to break up, but I think sort of that impending doom of the gamage is what caused sort of their rift, but they still really loved each other and how they behave Right before she goes away, you can very well see.

That right the last thing that he says to her is I'm here.

I'm right here.

Last minutes of comfort that she ever gets to experience, as she's just wiped away from existence and he now effectively widowed, stands alone.

There is an aftermath of this.

The aftermath is before the expedition goes off that night, everybody gets well a bit grim, but everybody left gets together before they go off to the expedition have a party.

Different people are grieving in different ways.

Gustav is mostly in shock.

Other folks are getting drunk, you know how it goes.

You can do some mini games here if you want to get some points and a new haircut and such.

On New Game Plus, you can get a baguette as a weapon if you keep all of your coins from the first play through.

Nice.

Kind of neat.

But Gustav's sister, Emma gives a little speech to rally everybody.

I don't think we ever see her again?

Yeah, I don't think so.

Like her name doesn't ring a bell to me.

After this point, and the expedition sets off across the sea toward the paintress.

They hit this beach.

This is about to take us out of the prologue into act one.

They hit this beach and immediately you see this old man walk up.

He's incredibly sinister and imposing.

The cane that he's carrying makes a knocking sent an echoing knocking sound that just reminds you of the ticking down of a clock and appropriate too.

He's not speaking, he's clearly fifties plus.

And as soon as somebody says, who are you?

How are you?

You know, like, what is going on?

He begins his slaughter.

He chops the head off of somebody in the expedition I don't remember their name, starts shooting these blasts of energy.

He's raining biblical levels of destruction and murdering the expedition one by one, and nobody knows what's going.

On, including the player, Like when this happened, I didn't expect something like this to happen right away, Like this level of carnage that happens, it's pretty insane really, And yeah, like just as it throws the expedition off, it throws the player off as well.

And how is one man causing so much destruction?

It's insane.

We don't know who this is, but he is a malevolent force that clearly doesn't want to see anybody from Loumire survive, probably not Loumier either, And you know, we're left thinking, okay, well this is where have we been sending off our expeditioners to certain death?

Immediately?

Is this what's happened?

We don't know.

Yeah, it creates a level of intrigue right away, like how is this guy older than thirty three still alive?

How is he able to do what he did?

Like is there more to the paintress than we immediately see.

Like it hooks you right away, so you're like, oh, I got to see what's going on now.

Even so, I mean, we don't even know if this man is connected to the paintress yet exactly.

This could just be a whole new dude.

Yeah, we don't know.

It's all that intrigue, you know that, like that kind of intrigue you need to create early on in a game like this in order to I think, hook people and keep them interested all the way through.

Gustave blacks out and when he wakes up, that brings us into Act one titled Gustave.

He wakes up in spring Meadows.

This is a beautiful, verdant, serene area.

Soda voch cello is brought in, this mournful melody, rushing water is all around.

I know we talked about the visual language before.

Just beautiful.

I love it.

And it's so the flash of going from an absolute massacre on a beach at night to this bright, verdant area with rushing waters.

It's a lot.

You're like, whoa, what the ha what what just happened?

But it's it's crazy.

It almost creates the idea that it was like some crazy bad dream that happened, you know, because at first you're like, did that even happen?

Is any of this real?

But as you find out it did actually happen.

I'm sure he wishes that it was.

Yeah, Gustav encounters his first Nevron here.

Nevrons are the enemies of the game.

If you swap out Nevron with Monster Ghooli in the right area, I'm gonna save what I think we're going to do.

Don't quote me on this, it's not in stone yet, but we've been talking about doing a fourth episode, like a final episode, as a roundtable discussion just about the game as a whole.

I you know, I'm a little bit blanking, you know.

I said this on another episode, like that quote that's attributed to Emerson where he says, I I don't remember the books that I read any more than the food that I eat, but in either case they've made me, you know, that kind of thing.

I've been feeling that lately with books that I'm reading and games that I'm playing, Like there's like I remember the big things I most importantly, I remember how I felt, but the little intricate plot points are being lost.

I have a theory about Nevron's and I think it's based on how close the word is to neuron and how other words are distorted into what we see.

I have a theory.

I can't back it up right now.

I might save that, but there you go.

You get your first little fight there.

You also get to see grappling hooks are set up by previous expeditioners, which just reinforces this game.

You're going to be going through seeing the grappling hooks set up by the past expeditions.

You're going to be seeing their dead bodies everywhere, finding their journals.

Yeah, this game is insistent, obsessed with confronting the past, like that's very much the game in the game's thesis conversation, and.

That this is not the first attempt of of I guess the humans, for lack of a better word to h to kind of prevent this from happening.

And it's so crazy how the further you in you get into the game, you'll note you will start to notice how many expeditions, like how far they made it compared to say where you are, because there are some that you only see in like this first, like early area of the game and you never see that number again.

And then there are some you don't see until like the very end, and it's like, oh, some actually got there.

You know, we're able to actually get there, So just to kind of see like your place along all the various expeditions as well, and yeah, the nevery one's Do you want to talk about the enemy designs?

Because I really like the enemy designs in this game.

I think they look awesome, very dark, souls esque.

Yeah, it fits with the whole art aesthetic of the game, which, if I remember correctly, it was influenced by a period in France called bele Epic.

I'm probably saying.

It wrong, probably Bela epoch.

Epoc, thank you.

It was this like little period in like French and European history and like the late eighteen hundreds, and it had this very sort of unique, specific art style that you can tell this game is copping from.

And to see even the enemy designs taking on that style I really liked.

And yeah, I just I think all the enemy designs look great, even like these first kind of I guess grunts that you see, like they're these like kind of big, imposing kind of characters, like right away to make you feel sort of weak and not as powerful as compared to everything else, you know, just even the early guys.

And I think it's great.

Yeah, they're tough to describe.

You also brought up a good point that it's worth mentioning the first expedition was Expedition zero, then ninety nine, then ninety eight, et cetera, et cetera.

We're all the way down to thirty three now, so no that plenty have been through here before.

Yeah, yeah, And I mean, I don't know if it's too early to say, but like, as you go through the game, one of the things you end up collecting our journals of the expeditioners, so you get to hear some of the past expeditioners and sort of their sort of trials and tribulations through their expeditions.

And a lot of the flags that you see throughout the game that are sort of like your rest point or your level up spots are flags that have been put by the other members of the expeditions as well.

Speaking of expeditioners, we're encountering a lot of them here, speared and slain, bloodied, dead on the battlefield, and we come across a particular bunch of them, and I do mean bunch, just mounds and mounds of them.

And we see those of the thirty three that died on the beach, and Gustav is a moment where it's just too much to bear.

The music becomes reverent, almost church like, almost holy, almost not quite, but very close.

He's accepting.

He sits down next to one of the dead thirty three.

He puts his pistol to his temple.

He's decided it's done, it's over.

But as he's about to pull the trigger, Lune, one of the people that we could have met at the beginning, playing guitar.

She was also at the expedition party.

She shows up next to him.

You do that, we both die.

And for a long time I thought that they were setting Lunae up to be a sort of manic hallucination or otherwise some sort of deteriorating reality situation of Gustav's mental state.

That's interesting, well think about it.

I mean, she only appears after a cut to black.

That's when she says, if you do that, we both die.

What does that mean?

You know, if you kill the mind, if you kill the master the mind, that means I die too.

What is that saying like I'm a creation of your mind.

I really thought that's where they were going with this.

That would have been an interesting way the game, a different direction the game could have gone.

I mean, clearly it does not go that way as we find out, but that is that is an interesting way to look at I never thought of it that way.

We're gonna fight our first boss here, EVEK with Gustave and Lune.

Gustave's fighting centers around electricity and building up charges for his arm.

He's got a mechanical arm that you know, lets some harness electricity and you build up charges by attacking.

Lunai is your quote unquote made.

She can float and she uses these things called stains.

If you do an ice attack, you get an ice stain, fire attack fire stain, and the stains can be used to further buff the rest of your skills.

This is going back to the trading card thing, you know, thinking back to Pokemon cards.

You put a little counter on your card.

Suddenly now your fire spin does more damage, or you get to flip a coin an extra time.

Very very cool.

I like Luna's move set.

A lot, yeah, and you can build up four of them in sort of this like diamond kind of a shape.

And there's one skill she can get a bit later in the game, and that is when you build up all four whichever elements that you use, you can then unleash those as like a chain of attacks on enemies, which and near the end of the game can be an absolute killer on bosses.

Like, yeah, I like she is a character I kept pretty much the whole time as well, Like I thought she was.

I mean, she's your main healer.

I think, I don't.

I think other characters can learn heal to a certain degree, but she's the only one that has like the basic like, oh, heal a person by doing this skill.

Just do what I do and attach the pictose that immediately kills one of your guys on the start, and then another pict dose that revives other people if your character dies.

Yeah, you know, Kami Kazi fuck it.

But also her elemental attacks are so good that she's absolutely worth keeping in the party the whole way.

Oh yeah, yeah, she's she's baller.

You know, you beat that boss no problem.

You find your first expedition journal up ahead, like you had just mentioned, we're finding journals from all the previous expeditions.

Some of them are pretty funny, some of them are sad.

You also find your first friendly Nevron here.

These are so interesting.

They are totally devoid of all chroma.

Chroma is an in universe energy in this game, it's a currency.

It's also a life for It'll make more sense once we get into act three, but this one totally monochromatic, devoid of all chroma, not hostile, tired, and you can talk to it.

There are quests kind of like Final Fantasy nine friendly Monsters where you get these guys items.

They give you rewards because they're friendly.

You can fight them, but you shouldn't.

You can talk to this friendly Nevron, which is striking, and it says that the paintress or no it says that it would quote never plunge others into darkness.

It was painted to bring light.

And then he talks about the paintress whenever we bring her up.

He says the thing says she marked a path that we must walk, but I sit here in darkness without light, I can't follow her.

And this is the first inkling, which is a good pun that the paintress has more to her than we know.

She's maybe not just this horrific deity.

Yeah.

And also I.

Felt there was more to her character as well, when like sort of her main poses her just kind of sitting there like crying, like with her hands on her knees, and she's sort of like crying into her arms.

Yeah, an upright fetal position that signifies withdrawing from the world, signifies withdrawing from the world and protecting yourself from the outside world because whatever is outside is too much to bear, something that we all experience when it comes to grief.

Yeah, Like it gives you the impression that the paintress is just as trapped in this sort of like loop as everyone else is.

And in fact, Sophie says that on the way to the Gamage, and Gustav brushes her off and says, you know, I could never have empathy like that.

Maybe she's a prisoner too, stuck in the same cycle with us.

Silly hah hone, you could choose empathy at a moment like this, It's one of the few choices I can make.

I couldn't do it.

It's okay, you don't have to perfect.

I love it.

Good stuff up ahead, there's a strange tree or a wall or something, and it's got writing on it.

The writing says, took Mael to the weird quarrels head nerf head north, look for a door inside a hut.

So that's where they're off to.

This is the first time Gustav and Lunai are like at ideological odds.

You know, Lune follows protocol, rationality prevails rules or rules for a reason.

She says, this message feels off.

Everyone knows the protocol.

This is a trap.

Gustave less rigid leads with his heart and morality.

He says, protocol doesn't cover every contingency.

Was our entire team dying part of that optimal plan, you know?

And again the conversation, they're interrupting each other, interrupting.

It's so good, but Gustave ends up leaving.

He says protocol states never move solo.

I'll let you choose which protocol to break, which is such a good line.

Yeah, I love it.

And again it's it's them sort of like handling grief or in this case, like trauma, Like they've bone in through this traumatic experience of watching their basically entire party die, and you know, Gustav is almost just saying like protocol.

Who cares, right, But then Luna is like, no, we have to stick with it because she thinks that's her way of getting through it, is just sticking to the plan.

Yeah, you know, and Luna kind of has she is sort of that kind of character throughout the whole game.

She's very like, you know, trying to play by the rules, kind of a character, which I think you would need in this kind of a party totally.

So for today, this is where we're going to end.

Still a lot of story to cover.

Don't worry, We're still going to go through all of it.

Next two episodes might be a little bit longer, but that's okay.

We're ending at the world map.

This is where we'll start next time.

Next time, also, we'll get as far into Act two as we possibly can, and then the finale will end at Act three.

Is comparatively quite short because it's a lot of side content.

That side content.

If we do part for roundtable, which I'm really thinking we're going to do, that's where we'll talk side content, So look forward to that.

But for today, this is where we're going to stop, and we'll pick up next time at the world map.

I got to thank you for sticking around again.

If this is your first time here, If you're a new listener, thanks to Claire Obscure, hope you love the show today, please check out the rest of our catalog.

Narrative analysis is what we like to do.

And of course I gotta thank Thrac because Thrac was terrific on Lost Odyssey.

Medieval was fun too, and you know, medi was not quite as deep as Lost Odyssey, but it's still fun.

And you know, speaking of fun, Thrack, you're a part of The three Do Experience, which is a podcast dedicated to the Panasonic three Do along with good friend Bill Man.

I've canceled so many episodes I was supposed to do with Bill.

I feel so bad.

But do you want to tell everybody a little bit about the three Do Experience if they haven't heard you on the show before?

Yeah?

Sure, So Now for something completely different, Yeah, the three Do Experience is all about the Panasonic three Do, which was a failed video game console in the mid nineties that despite that failure, it holds a very interesting legacy and me and my co host Bill have been trying our best to sort of explore that legacy of the console and its game library.

And even looking into what the three DO did post the console because they became a third party publisher for a while.

And yeah, it's been a it's a fantastic series.

We've had plenty of guests on.

We're hoping to have a rick of this show on as a guest in the future.

So if you guys are interested in games like gex return Fire or Plumbers Don't Wear Ties, then the three D O Experience is the place for you.

Absolutely yeah, and I definitely recommend checking it out.

Some of those three DO games are wild.

Indeed they are, and I never would have played it if it wasn't for the show.

As I said, you can also hear Thrack on the Lost Odyssey episodes and the medi episode.

If you want to check out the three D zero Experience, you can see the links in the episode description.

You can find all of their social presence there, as well as how to listen to them.

In the episode description.

You can also find links to the interviews I mentioned before, as well as links to our stuff on the web, the discord which is free, the Patreon which is not.

But if you love the show, you know we appreciate the support as well as our presence on Blue Sky, Instagram, TikTok and the like.

Thank you once again to Thrack Major.

Thank you to Thrack Major.

Thank you to you the listener.

Can't wait to talk through the rest of this game.

With that, we're going to sign off for now and pick up next time at the world map of Claire Obscure.

I'm Rick, I'm your host.

As always, we'll talk to you again next time.

See you soon, passing.

Don't to be afraid of.

Classing time you.

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