Before its launch, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 was far from the phenomenon we know today. Sandfall Interactive didn’t hesitate in seeking advice from industry leaders to help their game stand out from the crowd.

During the Busan Indie Connect conference in South Korea, Shuhei Yoshida, the former head of PlayStation’s internal studios and later of its indie games division, made a small revelation. In fact, about two years before the release of Expedition 33, Yoshida had the chance to play a demo and speak with Kepler Interactive, the game’s publisher.

While he was impressed by the combat system, he also advised the developers not to categorize their game as a turn-based RPG. At that time (not so long ago), Yoshida felt that players considered the genre "outdated", and might have overlooked Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 solely because of that label.

In the end, creative director Guillaume Broche and his team frequently described their game as a turn-based RPG without it hurting them. In fact, the opposite was true, as many observers believe that Expedition 33 helped revitalize the genre.