The general consensus of pretty much everyone who gets their hands on Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is that it's pretty dang breathtaking, but it obviously wasn't always as polished as it is now. An old draft trailer for the RPG has emerged on Reddit, highlighting just how far Sandfall Interactive's game has come in the last few years.
As highlighted on Reddit, an old post by game director Guillaume Broche (also the CEO of Sandfall Interactive) shows the dev looking for three female and two male voice actors for an "ambitious AA project" back in April 2020. At the time, Broche stated that the studio's demo was "almost complete," but they were still lacking cutscenes and voices.
"The game is a 3D modern take on the JRPG genre with western style characters, developed on Unreal Engine 4," Broche wrote. "We have five main characters so far who need to be voiced: two adult female, two adult male and one child female. The game will be heavy on narration so voices are very important to us."
[Game] Ambitious AA Game project looking for 3 Female and 2 Male voices from r/RecordThisForFree
Included in the post is a link to a draft trailer, which you now need to request access for. However, another Reddit user has shared the video, which they claim was saved from the post itself "way back then" by someone else, giving us a peek into the past. At the time, the game seemed to be titled "We Lost," and footage shows characters exploring different areas, including a snowy landscape and a steampunk-style city, as well as fighting in turn-based battles.
Early draft trailer for the game from r/expedition33
By Broche's own admission at the time, "none of the shots are final, and there is a big black part at the beginning because we are making [our] cutscenes right now, which is why we now need voices (and not these terrible robotic voices)." However, he believed it gave "a good idea of what the game will look like."
Well, maybe he thought that was true at the time, but looking back at the draft trailer now, it's barely recognizable. If you look closely, you can see that two of the characters are called Maelle and Lune, so the bare bones of two party members we know and love were there already, but most other things have changed pretty drastically.
Obviously though, the whole thing ended up being a success, and it also sounds like this specific Reddit post had a massive impact on the game. Previously, the RPG's eventual lead writer, Jennifer Svedberg-Yen, told the BBC that she auditioned for a character role after she "saw a post on Reddit by [director] Guillaume [Broche] asking for voice actors to record something for free for a demo."
While she was initially cast as a significant character, she later became the lead writer, instead, helping shape the story as we know it. Looking through Broche's old Reddit posts, it seems like this is the only one that Svedberg-Yen could have been referring to. Who'd have thought one lone post would lead to something so fantastic?
