Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 swept The Game Awards much as expected, thanks to—well, being a blooming good game, all told. A solid turn-based RPG with a modest budget, absolutely swinging for the fences and hitting more home runs than it misses.
Developer Sandfall Interactive is so happy, in fact, that it just decided to do the developer equivalent of blowing a kiss: The "Thank you" update—that is literally what it's called—adds a bunch of content to the game for the low low price of 'nothin' but disk space', as seen in the trailer below.
The full patch notes go into greater detail—I'll rattle off the smaller bits first before we get into the real meat, but to summarise: There's a photo mode, now; You can save "up to 50 different lumina loadouts", which is a tremendous quality of life improvement, and there are new filters for them. Lastly, you can abandon battles, rather than simply waiting to die if you messed up.
I cannot understate how hyped I am for that lumina loadout detail. I'd estimate a good four to five hours of my 67 hour playtime in Clair Obscur was spent just messing around with my pictos in menus—and it was always agony when a singular fight forced me to custom-tune my setup, because after the fight concluded, it was always a huge operation to try and go back to the build I was actually enjoying.
The real thick paint here, however, is in the extra content added to the game: Verso's Drafts is a whole new endgame zone, "taking the characters of Expedition 33 to a brand-new location with new enemy encounters and surprises to discover." As long as Esquie is able to swim, you can access Verso's Drafts in Act 3—it's next to Lumiere. This comes complete with new luminas and weapons.
As if that wasn't enough, there's also a bunch of new boss battles in the Endless Tower for you to test your mettle against: "They are variations of iconic bosses from the main game, designed to be even more challenging." This settled a pit into my stomach—I'm yet to test it out, obviously, this came out overnight: But if I have to fight Simon again I'm gonna lose it.
Oh, speaking of, you can just straight-up play this now. No charge, no fee. Given how well the game sold, it's easy to understand why Sandfall might be in a position to toss this at us for free: But it's still deeply appreciated. No, thank you! (I reserve this right to rescind this thank you if you really are making me fight Simon again).
