Clair Obscur: Expedition 33’s director admits that the team “made it a little bit too easy to get overpowered,” but says it’s classic PS1 RPGs like Final Fantasy 10 that are to blame.
Speaking with Edge magazine, Clair Obscur director Guillaume Broche is asked whether the ability to get overleveled ahead of the game’s final boss was intentional. In response, he says that “the vision” was to have a structure similar to PS1 RPGs, “where the last disc, which is for us the last act, is very open-ended, and you can go directly to the final boss or you can do side content.”
In the case of Expedition 33, it seems like more people opted to do side content than go straight to that final showdown – something the team say they didn’t expect and they admit led to a slightly disappointing boss fight for some. Broche admits that “maybe we made it a little bit too easy to get overpowered, but we wanted players who want to focus on the narrative to be able to go from the end of Act Two directly to the end of the game.”
I was certainly one of the players who didn’t do that, rinsing my way through several levels of the Endless Tower before heading into Act Three. As a result, the final fight was a bit of a walkover compared to some of the optional content, but Broche says developer Sandfall still “thinks it’s OK – more or less what we wanted.”
