232 - Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 [Part 1] (feat. Joe Kassabian)

I found that ciel, lune and maelle were the best team to go with. Especially in the last axon fight.

Sciel was my best character. Possibly because I immediately stacked all her ability points when you get her on luck and then gave her double hits. That makes her a formidable character until the end game. And, by then I felt some loyalty to keep her in the main party.

I've done a little more thinking, and an underrated thing that I appreciate is that Gustaves prosthetic arm is not treated like a foreign object, or a tool. It is treated like it is fully a part of him. When he dies and Verso/Maelle keep his arm for a while, it is only to find a suitable burial place for it. Furthermore, we never get a story for how he lost his original left arm, not even a hint. The fact that he has the prosthetic is noteworthy, but it is very much integrated into his being.

I had Sciel in my party from the beggining I mean I kept all my party members equal in level but I ended the game primarily with the ladies party 💅

Only cowards don't use Sciel

Brian briefly mentioning Golden Sun and then mildly crashing out about 4 member right parties made me feel so fucking seen

So glad y’all are covering this!!! I joined the Patreon just so I can listen to the other expedition 33 episode parts.

Most underrated line for me is from after the arena. Maelle: Well, that wasn't so bad. Gustave: Yeah, really just felt like beating old people. Maelle: So it wasnt so bad. Sciel: Am I one of those old people?? Gustave: One day. I hope.

My first time playing Final Fantasy Tactics advanced I got soft locked in the second battle. After the snowball fight tutorial there is a fight with your new crew and. Judge shows up. They can randomly ban something and he chose Attack. So early in the game I had no other options.

Renoir?! Yo I’m related to that boss!

Oh I CANNOT wait to hear your thoughts on the endings. It has so much room for discussion that I think yall will pick apart beautifully

My thoughts on everything related to AI is KILL KILL KILL

Hearing you guys rant about the lumina system; never play Path of Exile 2. The skill tree will hit you like a Lovecraftian concept that ethers your mind. I like the game and I think it is a House of Leaves ass progression system

Was looking forward to this since Josh mentioned it was coming on Lions. Will say the game doesn't appeal to me (I don't like JRPGs) but it's been a delight to listen to and I do not regret I'm basically spending a whole work day listening to this

Broooo Sciel is a god. My entire play cycle basically depended on her and Verso. Like yes Lune is also god tier but Sciel is equally as good.

This is also my favorite game of all time. I'd never heard of it until Joe mentioned it on Lions a little bit ago. I've since beaten it multiple times and got the plat trophy for it. The combination or story, art, and music is just perfect. Expert difficulty is a special kind of weird torture that brings back the feeling of playing JRPGS in the 90s. The content beyond the story taking longer than the main game? Chef's kiss. 40 minute battles in the Endless Tower? please give me more. Optional bosses that make the final boss of the story look like a worthless shit? Emerald and Ruby are smiling up from hell and I love it.

I also can confidently say that I used all the party members and Sciel is amazing. You can buff your party members to do double (and more!!) damage with a specific skill. Among other awesome things. Underrated as hell.

I am over the gd moon to hear you talk about this game. It hit me SO hard (esp. Gustave) and I'm glad I'm not the only one.

Well gents, after hearing Joe speak about this game for months on LLBD I pulled the trigger and bought it on PSN. Now I just gotta resist the urge to listen to the rest of this episode. I'm currently gettin my ass handed to me in Nine Sols, which is a fantastic hand drawn 2d Metroidvania Soulslike. Gorgeous game, it's like a 2d Sekiro with loads of exploration.

Franco-Ontarians are the actual waluigi of the French and I expect you to respect my weird and shitty culture.

See I just always had Maelle, Luna, and Sciel in the front (Team I Fucking Love Women) and the men un the back as the reserve who always end up getting stomped (the good luck lads) I still tried to level them equally, but it's feels weird that I was one of the few who used Sciel

Nocco is truly an incredibly mediocre energy drink

I think you’re missing the point on the AI controversy. These guys had the thought “what if we got some assets and didn’t have to pay a person for them?” The fact that they didn’t like the assets and didn’t end up using them doesn’t change that they had that thought. If we don’t draw the line here, I suspect that we never will.

I have two thoughts about the AI. The first one is, game studios are lying liars who lie. They repeatedly use AI and only admit it when being caught, so I don't trust any studio that uses it. The second thing is, by their own admission- they had no moral quandary with using the art theft machine. They stopped using it because it was bad.

I knew absolutely nothing about this game before this episode. I went and watched Gustave's scene as you were describing it, and it's a testament to the writing cause I've only known this character for three hours and am DEVASTATED

I’m gonna break a personal rule and comment before I even start listening. I’m having a great time imagining Joe, locked in the hair salon podcast man-cave with a carton of white monster and a fresh 50k puff vape, spending *six to eight straight hours* talking about an obscur video game with you.

This is such perfect timing--I just finished the game a day or two ago. Lots to go here, but I'm a little surprised it has made such an impression on you guys. I enjoyed the game, but found myself really unimpressed by the direction the story takes and some of the design choices. It kind of felt to me like a game that really needed a director who could tell people "no." There's just so much stuff and not all of it works together. Also, I found myself screaming for somebody who knows about blocking to direct the cutscenes. Everyone is just always directionlessly ambling around even when things seem super urgent. But I'll be interested to hear your takes!

Sciel was one of my top characters in act three, especially after I learned all of Monoco’s moves. She took Lune’s place.

Something that struck me on my second playthrough is that during the opening Gommage scene, those pink pieces look like rose petals at first glance but I'm pretty sure they're actually supposed to be eraser shavings as those people are physically erased from the Canvas.

Honestly, if like Ubu Roi, you need to listen to Pere Ubu’s (the Cleveland experimental band) reworked version of it from 2009. The singer, David Thomas/Crocus Behemoth, plays Pere Ubu. The Brothers Quay created animations to play in the background

Extremely appreciative of Brian's Alfred Jarry Corner. Ubu Roi was the first play fall semester my freshman year of college and I got cast in that bullshit. My parents came to see me shout "Pshit!" at the top of my lungs in clown makeup. Extremely Tim and Eric -coded.

Burns definitely don't cap at 999 stacks, I have personally gotten more than 1000, and have seen screenshot of Burns stacked over 10,000 times.

I haven't played this game yet, but I did use steam to gift a copy of this game to a Ukrainian friend who was looking for some escapism from the war. Now im wondering what i did given Joe's intro.

Like Brian, I also had to play this on story mode because the god damn parries made me want to throw my PC into the garbage at the beginning.

I will have things to say on this, i'm only up to inspirations for the game now. Sandfall lists all of their employees on their website, and they very helpfully include their favorite games. "Oh, the lead level designer is a Fromsoft nerd? Imagine that"

the manor music slaps so hard. that subtle guitar riff gives me chills every time.

Also, quick note about Maelle's stance system; it's mechanically derived from StS *and* the stance system used by Dante in Devil May Cry, because one of the dev's is a tremendous DMC sicko.

Listening to all this chatter about mechanics and party comp, I yearn to hear The Lads talk about Darkest Dungeon.

So glad yall are covering Clair Obscur, it's my favorite game too! I don't think a game has ever made me feel as deeply as Clair Obscur has. Excited to hear part two after this one! Also, I collected all of the journals and wrote in Gustave's journal every chance I could (I did miss like, two music records tho, I wish NG+ kept your records lol). I will also say, I leveled up every party member and rotated through all of them because I thought they were all very fun to play.

I heard Joe reference Lumiere on a recent LLBD, very stoked to listen to this

As an expert mode sicko I really loved lumina, *eventually*, for how much the sheer variation of them opened the door to experimentation where emergent properties from combining them cleverly sent your build into the fucking stratosphere. And as hard as you can break the game like that, postgame content on expert is actively counting on you mixing and matching to a power level where the final main story boss would become a punchline. And in a way, I almost want to defend how much of a clusterfuck that system is on the basis that the width of options is what allows for so many different loadouts that are if not equally broken, all broken enough that the differences don't matter so much. But I did also take one look at that system early on and decided I wasn't going to dig deeper than "equip whatever makes sense at a glance with the highest stats" until it seemed necessary, which ended up being the back half of act 2. The system itself before you've collected a big buffet is definitely too much information that you're given not enough help parsing. Still, I am very glad it could come out in this state and leave a mark of succeeding in some big ways while failing in others, because now I can look forward to whoever starts from that idea and comes up with something even better. For those who come after, and all that.

I was praying SO HARD you guys would discuss Clair Obscur. So stoked to listen to this.

random drive-by on JGL's stupid HIT RECORD — I had the misfortune of being at a promotional "party" that he was touring around college campuses and no one there took my dim view of it — I knew I loved you guys

je suis rpg