Thread: Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 [OT] - The French Connection (Good Internet Connection Recommended)
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Might be a turning point for the industry. I'm sure some execs are going to notice this, or maybe a smaller group of people within a giant bloated company. It is possible to put out a great game with a smaller team and a smaller budget. There's definitely going to be some reevaluations after the success of this game

The industry definitely needs to rearrange the risk structure. Less huge 300m Dollar games with extremely high risk, more 40 - 75m Dollar games where one being a hit can finance 5 more.
 
Might be a turning point for the industry. I'm sure some execs are going to notice this, or maybe a smaller group of people within a giant bloated company. It is possible to put out a great game with a smaller team and a smaller budget. There's definitely going to be some reevaluations after the success of this game

What's sad and pathetic is that bigger devs have tried this many times but it does not satisfy them. Thinking of Ubi and their Rayman/Child of Light engine languishing, or Squeenix knocking it out of the park with Bravely and Octopath yet seemingly now using HD2D for remakes, EA funding games like Lost in Random or Unravel and dumping both, etc etc many such instances where these games become fan-favorites in their appropriate niche but the publisher moves on because it didn't hit Call of Duty numbers .
 
The industry definitely needs to rearrange the risk structure. Less huge 300m Dollar games with extremely high risk, more 40 - 75m Dollar games where one being a hit can finance 5 more.

Exactly. As jaded as we are and as much as we joke about it, giant companies don't like risking hundreds of millions of dollars on games because all it takes is a few of them to bomb and you're in serious trouble. Scaling it back to smaller budgets with the potential for higher profit margins is what they all want.
 
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Exactly. As jaded as we are and as much as we joke about it, giant companies don't like risking hundreds of millions of dollars on games because all it takes is a few of them to bomb and you're in serious trouble. Scaling it back to smaller budgets with the potential for higher profit margins is what they all want.

And what we've seen in the last few year, is that dev budget, production quality and even big names don't result in success. Avatar, big name, good game, sailes failure. Same for Outlaws. AC Shadows etc. all these games didn't make the investment back. While some of the smaller titles like Helldivers 2 are crazy successful.

Which means that the additional 200m of investment for these AAA titles are absolutely worthless.
 
Don't trust JRPG fans after they wasted my time with Chained Echoes, and I don't trust myself after I struggle to keep up with my genre favorite XCX regularly.

Rooting for this one though. Ex-Ubisoft has me skeptical on the message, but if they really escaped the asylum to crush this — 51,992 concurrent player peak!! — that's a great story.
 
Actually the developers of Expedition 33 did outright state they were inspired by Sekiro for the perry system even though Expedition 33 uses a turn based Persona influenced combat system.

They got influence from a lot of games.

I guess they didn't play Shadow Hearts or Paper Mario?
Just talking shit I have no idea what parries are in this game.
 
Played the first two hours. Given story is my favourite aspect of a game, it has me really intrigued very early on. Surprised with some of the early landfall developments, we will see if that gamble pays off. I really like the adventure aspect and hope it opens up a bit as the game progresses. Music and graphics are top notch "only" 100 fps on my 5090 with everything maxed at 4k native, so not sure what kind of performance everyone else will be getting. Music is the best I've heard in a game in a long, long time.

Main thing I didn't like, is just like the start of any rpg... is trying to learn all these made up words for abilities and spells etc. Kind of takes me out the experience a touch, as I'm focusing on mechanics rather than the story telling.

Overall highly recommended. Hard to judge the length (and I don't want to know). Could be 10 hours, could be 70.
 
Played the prologue. Very charming so far. Visually arresting and the music is sublime indeed. Slightly reminded me of the theme from A Good Year (love that movie, love its soundtrack) if slightly more sad.

Probably one of the best tutorials weaved into the introduction of the story I've played in a long while. I usually get bored of both tutorials and the start of most game stories. But this was lovely.

Performance for me is alright. Everything on epic except shadows and a couple of other small things down one notch, DLSS one down from native at 3440x1440 and I get around 75 fps on my 3080 and 10900. I am debating with myself if I leave it until I get my new machine or not. I have a couple of other games I need to finish anyway.

So far, impressed. Combat seems interesting, though I have not seen enough yet to judge.
 
Played the first two hours. Given story is my favourite aspect of a game, it has me really intrigued very early on. Surprised with some of the early landfall developments, we will see if that gamble pays off. I really like the adventure aspect and hope it opens up a bit as the game progresses. Music and graphics are top notch "only" 100 fps on my 5090 with everything maxed at 4k native, so not sure what kind of performance everyone else will be getting. Music is the best I've heard in a game in a long, long time.

Main thing I didn't like, is just like the start of any rpg... is trying to learn all these made up words for abilities and spells etc. Kind of takes me out the experience a touch, as I'm focusing on mechanics rather than the story telling.

Overall highly recommended. Hard to judge the length (and I don't want to know). Could be 10 hours, could be 70.

I'm also trying to get a hang of the mechanics, combat is fun and interesting though, so I'm motivated to dig into it. Performance wise, playing at 5160x2160 so basically 5k widescreen 60fps but will likely lower the res again because the image is so highly post processed that I don't think it makes a big difference. I'd love to see some mods that allow you to increase some of the UE5 settings.
 
Loving the game so far, absolutely gorgeous art and design.

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Tech wise, yeah it's not great. Never feels truly fluid, frame pacing isn't even, traversal stutters no matter what you do, some important cutscenes are in the wrong format, some fugly textures etc. but performance is the only thing really bothering me, it's just not fluid. Hope they'll improve that.

Other than that, incredible game. I adore the setting, the scenes, the characters... it's all so interesting. The imagery, story, it's stimulating, for the lack of a better word. Got the hang of the combat, beat the first boss thing without taking damage, it was an enemy that would one-shot me if he'd land a shot.

 
I've decided to hold off on Rebirth so I can play a single player game I purchased at launch for once.

Initial impressions of the game couldn't really be much better. I've read some of you praising the writing and I agree. The game has some nuance and maturity and I really appreciate that so far.

Music does deserve to be mentioned like some have.

I'm hyped up that the game went from all of those wonderful positives in the starting section to....

Sheer terror, hopelessness, decapitation and body horror in mere seconds after the prologue ended

30 people made this, huh? Hats off to them.
 
I've decided to hold off on Rebirth so I can play a single player game I purchased at launch for once.

Initial impressions of the game couldn't really be much better. I've read some of you praising the writing and I agree. The game has some nuance and maturity and I really appreciate that so far.

Music does deserve to be mentioned like some have.

I'm hyped up that the game went from all of those wonderful positives in the starting section to....

Sheer terror, hopelessness, decapitation and body horror in mere seconds after the prologue ended

30 people made this, huh? Hats off to them.

I complain a lot about UE5 and yes, it's a huge fuck up that the engine just isn't well performing in most cases. It really needs to improve on that front.

BUT it enables small teams to be very efficient. A game with this scale, these visuals and this variety, made by 30 people, that's where UE5 shines. It might suck for me because I'm bothered by the uneven performance, but for the vast majority of users, it's not really a factor. And the ease of use, quality of documentation, amount of tutorials, all the default settings that work somewhat fine - all of this enables such a small team to realize a project of that scope. And that's how these teams can rival triple A games.
 
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Only played a couple of hours, but this game definitely feels like something special. Such an intriguing and mysterious setting and the combat is quite engaging. Really enjoying it so far.

With that said, the image sharpening is disgusting. The game ran great maxed out with DLAA, but I turned it down to DLSS balance just to mitigate some of the insane sharpening. I hope they add a slider for it at some point.
 
Unfortunately, I'm getting really bad stuttering in this. Even if I lock it to 60 the frametime graph shows nonstop dips though the fps never changes. It's the same for Oblivions open world area. I noticed a degradation in performance once I downloaded the new drivers when I was playing Death Stranding. That game was pegged at 120fps without me touching anything in the settings the first several times I played it. Then after the drivers the framerate started fluctuating. Same for Snowrunner. Even rolling back doesn't fix it. What is happening? Thinking about RMA'ing but I've never done it before and I don't know if they'd do it for this issue...

Strangely on the other hand, I can run DOOM Eternal at completely max settings, no dlss even, @4k 120 without it so much as dipping once and it's smooth as butter no matter what is going on in game... It's also the only game I've tried that has an option to set the texture pool size. Don't know if that matters though.
 
Unfortunately, I'm getting really bad stuttering in this. Even if I lock it to 60 the frametime graph shows nonstop dips though the fps never changes. It's the same for Oblivions open world area. I noticed a degradation in performance once I downloaded the new drivers when I was playing Death Stranding. That game was pegged at 120fps without me touching anything in the settings the first several times I played it. Then after the drivers the framerate started fluctuating. Same for Snowrunner. Even rolling back doesn't fix it. What is happening? Thinking about RMA'ing but I've never done it before and I don't know if they'd do it for this issue...

Strangely on the other hand, I can run DOOM Eternal at completely max settings, no dlss even, @4k 120 without it so much as dipping once and it's smooth as butter no matter what is going on in game... It's also the only game I've tried that has an option to set the texture pool size. Don't know if that matters though.

Might be related, but Nvidia's most recent drivers have been pretty fucked.
 
Might be related, but Nvidia's most recent drivers have been pretty fucked so it could be related.

I'm really hoping it's that. It's just that even rolling back and using DDU it's still happening. Even turning off my overclock did nothing.

I really wish I'd never updated from the first driver the card came with because it worked really well. And to make it worse, I wasn't even thinking to check what version it was before I did...
 
Unfortunately, I'm getting really bad stuttering in this. Even if I lock it to 60 the frametime graph shows nonstop dips though the fps never changes. It's the same for Oblivions open world area. I noticed a degradation in performance once I downloaded the new drivers when I was playing Death Stranding. That game was pegged at 120fps without me touching anything in the settings the first several times I played it. Then after the drivers the framerate started fluctuating. Same for Snowrunner. Even rolling back doesn't fix it. What is happening? Thinking about RMA'ing but I've never done it before and I don't know if they'd do it for this issue...

Strangely on the other hand, I can run DOOM Eternal at completely max settings, no dlss even, @4k 120 without it so much as dipping once and it's smooth as butter no matter what is going on in game... It's also the only game I've tried that has an option to set the texture pool size. Don't know if that matters though.

How large are those dips? I have issues with the performance as well. Intro was fine, but getting into the larger world caused uneven performance. I get 80-110 fps but it feels like shit. Locking it to 60fps doesn't feel good either. Fps readout is 60 but the frame time graph shows all these little hitches and isn't a straight line. Doesn't feel smooth. And there are regular traversal stutters, most of the time small, but I also had a large one that froze the screen for a second.
 
How large are those dips? I have issues with the performance as well. Intro was fine, but getting into the larger world caused uneven performance. I get 80-110 fps but it feels like shit. Locking it to 60fps doesn't feel good either. Fps readout is 60 but the frame time graph shows all these little hitches and isn't a straight line. Doesn't feel smooth. And there are regular traversal stutters, most of the time small, but I also had a large one that froze the screen for a second.

This sounds exactly like what is happening to me. Weird thing is, I see tiny dips in SnowRunner as well, however, it seems at least there, G-sync is doing a lot of heavy lifting because it still feels smooth.

EDIT: Here's some pics...

Uncapped...
sqDCKhk.jpg


Capped at 60...
Jp6qZkS.jpg


Also, the graph and choppy feeling is the same no matter what settings or resolution I use. It's almost as if Gsync isn't activating or something.

The game isn't supported by Nvidia yet and I can't even get it to show up in the app so maybe that has something to do with it?
 
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This sounds exactly like what is happening to me. Weird thing is, I see tiny dips in SnowRunner as well, however, it seems at least there, G-sync is doing a lot of heavy lifting because it still feels smooth.

EDIT: Here's some pics...

Uncapped...
sqDCKhk.jpg


Capped at 60...
Jp6qZkS.jpg


Also, the graph and choppy feeling is the same no matter what settings or resolution I use. It's almost as if Gsync isn't activating or something.

The game isn't supported by Nvidia yet and I can't even get it to show up in the app so maybe that has something to do with it?

I had gsync on for Marvel Rivals and it caused massive stuttering for me until I turned it off.
 
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The industry definitely needs to rearrange the risk structure. Less huge 300m Dollar games with extremely high risk, more 40 - 75m Dollar games where one being a hit can finance 5 more.

The bigger issue for me is not how much is being spent but how it's being spent. I feel like so much of these huge AAA budget is being wasted on low talent staff. When you look at this game and the level of graphics they can achieve with only a handful of devs, it makes you wonder about the studios that have hundreds upon hundreds of devs and their games look and run like crap. If you have so many devs I expect your game to look like Horizon Forbidden West, not like some game from a decade ago. Big studios need to get rid of the bloat and keep only the most talented and passionate people.

I bet if DOGE audited some of these big studios, they would find so much waste.
 
This sounds exactly like what is happening to me. Weird thing is, I see tiny dips in SnowRunner as well, however, it seems at least there, G-sync is doing a lot of heavy lifting because it still feels smooth.

EDIT: Here's some pics...

Uncapped...
sqDCKhk.jpg


Capped at 60...
Jp6qZkS.jpg


Also, the graph and choppy feeling is the same no matter what settings or resolution I use. It's almost as if Gsync isn't activating or something.

The game isn't supported by Nvidia yet and I can't even get it to show up in the app so maybe that has something to do with it?

What GPU do you have again?

That's UE5 for you right there. Don't know what you're using, but in general, don't use in game fps limiters, I always use RivaTuner for example.

It's typical for UE5 games where the devs just took the default settings and made a game without diving deep into optimization. Which this 33 people dev team clearly couldn't prioritize. It results in super shitty asset streaming, bad CPU utilization, bad utilization of multiple cores, resulting in the uneven performance.

The only way to get a somewhat smooth experience is to have very high fps and cap it at a significantly lower frame rate. I just switched from 5k and DLAA (I was getting +80fps) to 3440x1440 and DLSS Quality. Now getting around 140fps that feel like garbage unlocked, but I locked it down to 60fps. That feels mostly smooth, just some tiny traversal hitches but nothing too bad.

I suggest trying this mod, that should reduce the stuttering in general:

 
What GPU do you have again?

That's UE5 for you right there. Don't know what you're using, but in general, don't use in game fps limiters, I always use RivaTuner for example.

It's typical for UE5 games where the devs just took the default settings and made a game without diving deep into optimization. Which this 33 people dev team clearly couldn't prioritize. It results in super shitty asset streaming, bad CPU utilization, bad utilization of multiple cores, resulting in the uneven performance.

The only way to get a somewhat smooth experience is to have very high fps and cap it at a significantly lower frame rate. I just switched from 5k and DLAA (I was getting +80fps) to 3440x1440 and DLSS Quality. Now getting around 140fps that feel like garbage unlocked, but I locked it down to 60fps. That feels mostly smooth, just some tiny traversal hitches but nothing too bad.

I suggest trying this mod, that should reduce the stuttering in general:


I have the MSI 5080 shadow 3X
 
The bigger issue for me is not how much is being spent but how it's being spent. I feel like so much of these huge AAA budget is being wasted on low talent staff. When you look at this game and the level of graphics they can achieve with only a handful of devs, it makes you wonder about the studios that have hundreds upon hundreds of devs and their games look and run like crap. If you have so many devs I expect your game to look like Horizon Forbidden West, not like some game from a decade ago. Big studios need to get rid of the bloat and keep only the most talented and passionate people.

I bet if DOGE audited some of these big studios, they would find so much waste.

Just look how many writers these woke turds have, in addition to paying Sweet Baby Inc and the likes millions to write as well. These large games have more writers than Clair had overall devs. And Clair absolutely demolishes these games in all aspects regarding the characters and the writing.

Imagine a thousand people (including third parties & support) working on a game. That's a total nightmare from a project management perspective and inevitably causes big issues and ineffectiveness.
 
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I have the MSI 5080 shadow 3X

A scandal that this game doesn't perform perfectly on such a strong card tbh. But the UE5 issues are mostly CPU and RAM related, what are you rocking?

Either way, try the mod I posted, use DLSS Balanced mode, then cap it at 60 and see if that helps. I'd say you need to be around 100fps unlocked for it to feel ok capped at 60fps.
 
A scandal that this game doesn't perform perfectly on such a strong card tbh. But the UE5 issues are mostly CPU and RAM related, what are you rocking?

Either way, try the mod I posted, use DLSS Balanced mode, then cap it at 60 and see if that helps. I'd say you need to be around 100fps unlocked for it to feel ok capped at 60fps.

10700k and 32GB of 2666mhz GDDR4 RAM...

My CPU was gonna be the next upgrade. Which also means motherboard and RAM as well. So I was hoping to be able to save up for a while but man...
 
10700k and 32GB of 2666mhz GDDR4 RAM...

My CPU was gonna be the next upgrade. Which also means motherboard and RAM as well. So I was hoping to be able to save up for a while but man...

Yeah that's the issue right there, very slow ass RAM and a rather slow CPU. Going from 2666mhz RAM to like 6000mhz alone will provide a large increase in performance. Let alone the CPU.
 
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Yeah that's the issue right there, very slow ass RAM and a rather slow CPU. Going from 2666mhz RAM to like 6000mhz alone will provide a large increase in performance. Let alone the CPU.

I just don't understand why a game like DOOM ETERNAL runs so amazingly well on my rig at super max settings, ray tracing included, with DLSS off even, pegged @120fps with never a dip no matter what is going on... And that game looks awesome.