JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
How do you deal with grief? It's a very personal question that the video game Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 invites its players to explore. This title's been a surprising success, setting a nominations record and winning game of the year at the Game Awards back in December. Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is set in a dystopian world where a goddess heals everyone of a certain age each year. A group of characters sets out to stop her.
(SOUNDBITE OF VIDEO GAME, "CLAIR OBSCUR: EXPEDITION 33")
JENNIFER ENGLISH: (As Maelle) How do you do it after all these years?
BEN STARR: (As Verso) They say time heals all wounds.
ENGLISH: (As Maelle) Does it?
SUMMERS: We wanted to explore how this video game addresses grief and loss and how it did so so successfully. So we called up Clair Obscur's lead writer, Jennifer Svedberg-Yen. Welcome to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED.
JENNIFER SVEDBERG-YEN: Hi, Juana. Nice to meet you.
SUMMERS: Nice to meet you, too. And a note for listeners before we get into things. If you haven't played this game or finished it yet, our conversation might include a few spoilers.
Jennifer, tell us about the inspiration. What inspired you to create this story?
SVEDBERG-YEN: One of the influences as we went through the course of writing this was actually the experience of going through COVID. There's this massive force that appears that is taking away our loved ones, and it's hard to understand what is going on, and it feels quite hopeless at times.
(SOUNDBITE OF VIDEO GAME, "CLAIR OBSCUR: EXPEDITION 33")
KIRSTY RIDER: (As Lune) When one falls, we continue.
CHARLIE COX: (As Gustave) Yes, I know.
RIDER: (As Lune) When one falls - when one falls. Not if - when. We knew not all of us would make it, but we continue.
SVEDBERG-YEN: And people react in different ways to this existential threat. So it was an indirect influence in how we approached some of the topics of grief.
SUMMERS: I mean, one of the things that I found interesting is I understand - was this one of your first-ever creative writing jobs?
SVEDBERG-YEN: It is, actually. The very first.
SUMMERS: And I don't - if I recall, you also don't play a lot of video games yourself, right? So tell us how this all came together.
SVEDBERG-YEN: That's correct. I actually did not play any video games prior to joining, but I now play extensively, probably a little bit too much now. I actually started my career in a totally different field, in finance. And I left that world in about 2015. One of the things I started doing was writing for myself personally, just in my own notebooks on my own time just for fun. And in the middle of COVID, I was bored, and I saw a Reddit post, actually, from Guillaume Broche, who is the CEO and creative director of the game. He was teaching himself how to make games himself. So he was looking for some free voice actors for a technical test that he was doing. And so he posted on the subreddit r/RecordThisForFree. I happened to see the post. I am not a voice actor by any means, so I lobbed in an audition, and that's how we sort of started talking. And we came up with the idea for Clair Obscur together around the end of 2020.
SUMMERS: I mean, one of the things that I love about video games is that when you play a game, unlike in a movie, you as a player - right? - you have agency. The game puts you in control. And in this game, you're asked to make choices about grief, and then you live with the consequences. Why was a video game the best medium to tell this particular story?
SVEDBERG-YEN: It's exactly what you said. It is that immersive quality, that interactive nature. We make the player complicit in this story in making that final decision. One of the things that was really important to us was that we didn't want to create a stark good versus evil, and we didn't want to create something where we tell this - the player, this is the right choice or this is the message because one thing in our game is that there is no evil person. It's that everybody actually cares a lot, deeply, but just because you care and - doesn't mean there's no conflict. That conflict can still arise when people have good intentions and really want what's best for each other. There are costs to people's happiness that the decisions that we make have consequences, not just for ourselves, but for a lot of other people. So that's something that we really felt we could dive into with a game.
SUMMERS: I think about the times in my life when I've turned to video games, and it's usually when I'm craving an escape or I just want to have fun. And yet, this story is a serious and emotional one at its heart. And it can be really hard, I think, to balance those competing goals of tackling something that feels serious and emotional while also creating an experience of joy or even whimsy for a player. How did you and the other creatives who worked on this project think about balancing those demands that can be, at time, competing?
SVEDBERG-YEN: Yeah, that's an excellent question. We thought a lot about that. There were times when we thought, is this too sad? Are we too angsty here? And I think there were a lot of different components that were contributed by different team members that helped to bring some balance. So for instance, Victor Deleard - he's one of our quest designers and writers. He wrote a lot of the Gestral Village dialogue.
(SOUNDBITE OF VIDEO GAME, "CLAIR OBSCUR: EXPEDITION 33")
RICH KEEBLE: (As Monoco) I will never join you again.
STARR: (As Verso) There will be a lot of fighting, though.
KEEBLE: (As Monoco) Oh, yeah, that's true.
STARR: (As Verso) Yeah, it's true.
KEEBLE: (As Monoco) There will be a lot of fights.
STARR: (As Verso) Exactly.
KEEBLE: (As Monoco) Count me in then.
SVEDBERG-YEN: The Gestral Village was a place where we knew we could add joy and whimsy. And within each character, we didn't want them to be all gloomy all the time. That's also not realistic for life. Even in the darkest of times, a lot of us still need to find ways - like, we have to find ways to balance that within ourselves. There's, like, a deep-seated human need, I think, to try to find some light in the darkness.
(SOUNDBITE OF VIDEO GAME, "CLAIR OBSCUR: EXPEDITION 33")
COX: (As Gustave) We can't bring anyone back. But I thought we can keep their spirit alive by pushing forward.
RIDER: (As Lune) Tomorrow comes.
COX: (As Gustave) Tomorrow comes.
SUMMERS: As someone who loves video games, when I think about the games that I love most, they all seem to have one sort of big thing in common. It's that they teach us something about ourselves or the human experience, what it means to be human. What did working on this game teach you?
SVEDBERG-YEN: I think it was quite a big therapy session (laughter), if I'm being honest. A lot of it I drew from my own personal experiences at different stages in my life. So for instance, Maelle reflects a lot of the feelings I had growing up, feeling a little bit isolated or feeling a little bit like there are parts of the world that I didn't understand, parts of myself I didn't understand. Lune I drew a lot from my 20s, my 30s, et cetera - Renoir, a lot from my family circumstances. I think that's part of the thing about telling stories and part of the things about role-playing games in particular. You have to put yourself in somebody else's shoes. And in so doing, you kind of challenge some of your own perspectives and memories or assumptions.
SUMMERS: We've been speaking with Jennifer Svedberg-Yen. She's the lead writer on Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. Thanks so much.
SVEDBERG-YEN: Thank you.
(SOUNDBITE OF LORIEN TESTARD'S "LUMIERE A L'AUBE") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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