Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 just swept The Game Awards, winning a whopping 9 out of 11 of its nominations, including Game of the Year. In celebration, Sandfall Interactive took the stage to announce that its previously-announced DLC for the game is out…now. Right now!
We learned back in October that this update – which is free, by the way – was happening, we just didn’t know when. At the time, Sandfall said it would include a new dungeon, enemies, bosses, and more, new language localizations, new costumes, and “even more surprises.”
It also shared the following image at the time, which seems to hint at what story the DLC might cover…and we’ve got a few guesses from staring daggers at it, but we’ll let you speculate yourselves. Or, just go play it now.
Following the news, Sandfall dropped a “Thank You” update trailer that seems to cover a little more of what to expect. There’s a colorful new environment full of toys, balloons, and assorted bits and bobs that seems to be an Act 3 location, and comments from Verso about how “Kids have quite the imagination,” suggesting that this has something to do with- okay, I don’t want to spoil it. It’s an Act 3 thing. If you get it, you get it. We get a look at a number of new fantastical enemies, some of which look pretty brutal, and several new costumes that seem to include Maelle in a top hat. There’s also a sick photo mode that lets you get down to a granular level of detail.
The trailer concludes with a rather creepy-sounding clip of Esquie, and a quick glimpse of a boss fight – is that Simon, again?
Here’s the full list of what the update includes, per Sandfall’s press release:
- A new, playable environment, taking the characters of Expedition 33 to ‘Verso’s Drafts’ – a whimsical storybook adventure with ties to a young Verso. Players will encounter celebratory Gestrals, surprising new locations and an encounter with a sinister, powerful presence…
- New music tracks by Lorien Testard, the award-winning composer behind the Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 soundtrack, which are also now available on digital streaming platforms. You can listen to the playlist on YouTube here.
- Challenging boss battles for late-game players to overcome within the Endless Tower. Besting these powerful adversaries will reward players with powerful new Pictos, costumes and gear.
- A much-requested official Photo Mode, allowing players to pause the action and commemorate their favorite moments from the game’s story and battles.
- New text and UI game localizations into Czech, Ukrainian, Latin American Spanish, Turkish, Vietnamese, Thai and Indonesian, bringing the total number of supported languages to 19.
- Added FSR 4 support, including AMD temporal upscaling for sharper visuals and frame generation for smoother gameplay on compatible GPUs.
- New Quality of Life improvements, other new features and further improvements to the game’s performance across platforms, including on handheld PC systems.
Sandfall creative director Guillaume Broche said when the update was first revealed that it was a “thank you” to fans for their support, a message which he echoed onstage tonight accepting Game of the Year on behalf of the beret-clad team in the audience.
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is fantastic, and we loved it, giving it a 9/10 and writing: “Wearing its inspirations on its sleeve, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 paints itself into the pantheon of great RPGs with a brilliant combat system and a gripping, harrowing story.” We’re hopeful that its riotous success means more games in the same universe, as Broche has said that Clair Obscur was a “franchise name” and Expedition 33 was just one story in it.
You can catch up on everything announced at The Game Awards right here and see the full patch notes for the Expedition 33 update here.
Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. Got a story tip? Send it to [email protected].
