Despite being developer Sandfall Interactive’s first game, the incandescent upcoming turn-based RPG Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 has a surprisingly stacked voice actor cast, though that wasn’t an intentional choice. Actually, it was half an accident.
Sandfall CEO and creative director Guillaume Broche explains on a recent episode of the official Xbox podcast. Lord of the Rings’ Andy Serkis and Daredevil actor Charlie Cox joined the Clair Obscur lineup after agreeing through their agents. But, it’s “funny,” Broche says – he hired both Shadowheart actress Jennifer English and Final Fantasy 16 hero (also, banana champion) Ben Starr through blind auditions.
“In the beginning,” Broche says, auditions were “just for the trailer, for [scrappy protagonist] Gustave, and also the voiceover of the trailer, so we received, like, 20 different auditions. But it was blind auditions, so we didn’t know the name of the people who sent the tape.”
“There was one voice that stood out,” Broche continues, “and I said, ‘OK, this is a really cool voice. Let’s take this guy.’ Later, our quest designer Victor [Deleard], he listened to the tape, and he was like, ‘Isn’t that Clive from Final Fantasy?'” Now, Ben Starr is set to play the grizzled stranger Verso instead of simply being the booming trailer narrator.
His caramel voice was too undeniable for that not to be the case, as the sugar-high Clive hive is aware. Fans of Jennifer English’s number-one girlfriend Shadowheart no doubt feel a similar pull to her honeyed words.
Broche certainly did. “Jennifer English was kind of the same [experience],” he tells the Xbox podcast. “We received, like, 25 tapes for [orphaned protagonist Maelle], and I was like, ‘This is the one.’ Later, they just told me, ‘This is Shadowheart.'”
Saving the world with a baguette? “A joke that went too far,” shares Clair Obscur: Expedition 33’s creative director, as we talk Final Fantasy, Persona, and more.
