We Played Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 - Kinda Funny Gamescast

Summary

Kinda Funny Gamescast: "We Played Clair Obscur: Expedition 33" – Detailed Summary

Release Date: March 3, 2025

Introduction

In this episode of the Kinda Funny Gamescast, hosts Greg Miller, Andy Cortez, Blessing Adeoye Jr., and Barrett Courtney dive deep into their experiences playing the highly anticipated turn-based RPG, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. Released as a demo, the game has garnered significant attention for its ambitious mechanics and captivating narrative. The hosts share their first impressions, dissecting various aspects of the game from combat systems to storytelling.

Gameplay Mechanics

The primary focus of the discussion revolves around Clair Obscur's innovative combat system, which blends traditional turn-based mechanics with real-time elements. Blessing Adeoye Jr. expresses his enthusiasm:

"This is a game I could see me going all the way through for a number of different reasons. But what I played today was so goddamn impressive." ([10:02])

Barrett Courtney complements this view, noting the depth and customization available:

"Each character you have as part of your party has their own unique system of combat that works in different ways." ([24:06])

Andy Cortez highlights the active nature of the combat:

"Having that real-time action kind of built into your turn-based combat, I think just feels so active and so right." ([15:38])

The hosts discuss various combat mechanics such as parrying, dodging, and the integration of abilities that allow for strategic depth. They appreciate how these elements make combat engaging and prevent it from feeling static.

Story and Narrative

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 presents a narrative where the members of Expedition 33 are on a quest to eliminate a malevolent painter intent on "painting death." Blessing Adeoye Jr. articulates the story's impact:

"Seeing the early parts of this game of what they're dealing with, it's like, oh, Jesus Christ, this is such an interesting and kind of up world." ([11:07])

Greg Miller adds his perspective on the storytelling:

"The thing that really took me aback with kind of the little story tidbits that we got early on... that's when I think I had played it before Andy had and I was telling Andy, like, you got to check this out because I think this world and the story is definitely for you." ([25:04])

The narrative is praised for its ability to hook players early on, with elements of mystery and tension that keep the story compelling.

Visuals and Design

The hosts extensively discuss the game's visual aesthetics, comparing them to other titles and praising the artistic direction. Blessing Adeoye Jr. remarks on the game's distinct environments:

"I love that you can go from a super dreamy fantasy world... and then walk into something that looks equally dreamy, but still some somehow just equally cool." ([21:20])

Barrett Courtney points out the character and enemy designs, noting their uniqueness:

"I want to see these... it's like such a weird thing where I'm looking at first I'm looking at these enemies and I'm like, all right, I'm fighting just a rock creature." ([45:59])

There's also a humorous discussion about the protagonist Gustav resembling Robert Pattinson, adding a light-hearted moment to the episode.

Technical Performance

While the hosts are largely impressed, they do touch upon some technical issues encountered during the demo. Andy Cortez mentions:

"The game looks like it still needs some more work because... there were a decent amount of visual hitches and frame rate kind of drops." ([49:23])

Greg Miller adds his observations on frame drops during cutscenes:

"I was noting a lot of, of weird like frame drops and stuff like that in cutscenes." ([50:40])

Despite these minor issues, the overall consensus remains positive, with hopes that post-launch optimizations will address these concerns.

Overall Impressions and Anticipation

The hosts are generally enthusiastic about Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, viewing it as a strong contender in the JRPG landscape. Blessing Adeoye Jr. confidently states:

"I'm going to be bold and say, yeah, I think this is a contender for me." ([53:37])

Greg Miller cautiously agrees, emphasizing it's early days:

"I think it's too early to say." ([53:40])

Barrett Courtney echoes this sentiment, while also expressing optimism about the game's potential impact:

"The stocks in this game are looking up right now for me." ([55:24])

The release date is eagerly anticipated, set for April 24, 2025, with the game priced at $50 and available on Xbox Game Pass on day one.

Conclusion

This episode of Kinda Funny Gamescast provides a comprehensive overview of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, highlighting its innovative combat, engaging story, and stunning visuals. Despite minor technical hiccups, the hosts convey a strong sense of excitement and anticipation for the game's full release. As they wrap up, they encourage listeners to stay tuned for more coverage and reviews as the launch date approaches.

---

Notable Quotes:

• Blessing Adeoye Jr. [10:02]: "This is a game I could see me going all the way through for a number of different reasons. But what I played today was so goddamn impressive."

• Barrett Courtney [24:06]: "Each character you have as part of your party has their own unique system of combat that works in different ways."

• Andy Cortez [15:38]: "Having that real-time action kind of built into your turn-based combat, I think just feels so active and so right."

• Blessing Adeoye Jr. [21:20]: "I love that you can go from a super dreamy fantasy world... and then walk into something that looks equally dreamy, but still some somehow just equally cool."

• Blessing Adeoye Jr. [53:37]: "I'm going to be bold and say, yeah, I think this is a contender for me."

Transcript

[Greg Miller]

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[Andy Cortez]

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[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

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[Barrett Courtney]

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[Andy Cortez]

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[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

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[Andy Cortez]

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[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I'm ready for my life to change.

[Barrett Courtney]

ABC Sunday, American Idol returns.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Give it your all.

[Andy Cortez]

Good luck coming out with a golden ticket.

[Barrett Courtney]

Let's hear it.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

This is immense world.

[Andy Cortez]

I've never seen anything like it.

[Barrett Courtney]

And a new chapter begins.

[Greg Miller]

You're going to Hollywood.

[Barrett Courtney]

Carrie Underwood joins Lionel Richie, Luke Bryant and Ryan Seacrest on American idol.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Season premieres Sunday, 8. 7 Central on ABC and stream on Hulu. What's up, everybody? Welcome to the kind of funny games cast for Monday, March 3, 2025. I'm one of your host, Greg Miller alongside the Hispanic heartthrob Texas tree. Latino heat. Clicking heads and ripping them to shreds the globe trotting head shot and three point shooting. Rootin Tootin sick at home from Twitch tv, Andy Cortez.

[Andy Cortez]

Hello, Greg. Hello, blessing. Hello, Barrett. Great to see you all.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Can you say hi to the audience?

[Andy Cortez]

Hello, audience. How are you all doing?

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I'm more. I'm more worried about you, Andy. How are you doing? You've been giving me the updates. You had to leave. You know, you left work early last week, but you still came through and you clicked heads on the monster hunter stream with me and Mike for 12 hours. We love you for that. Thank you so much. But then it was up and down all weekend. I sent you a great Instagram message from the farmer's market and I didn't get a response there. That's how I know you're sick. So I just wanted to make sure you're okay.

[Andy Cortez]

Well, I mean, I also kind of wanted to save it for content. I still haven't even opened that message. I'm feeling great. It's a good one.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

It's a good one. I will lie. You know what I mean?

[Andy Cortez]

Should I play right now?

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Sure, play right now, everybody.

[Andy Cortez]

Okay, let me play.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Everybody knows that I'm always thinking of my. My employees.

[Barrett Courtney]

Of course.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

And so when I'm at the farmer's market and somebody's jamming on a banjo, I got. Let Andy know, man. I gotta let Andy know.

[Barrett Courtney]

Greg sent Me a tik tok about.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

6:45 and at the farmers market. A lot of people talking about you nuzlocking. I'm just thinking about Lip locking. Not. Not with you. Not with you. That'd be wrong. Leave him alone. That'd be wrong. Right. Right. I was proud of.

[Barrett Courtney]

Right.

[Andy Cortez]

Asking for a lot of permission there.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

And yeah. Forms 30 under 30 aka New York Game Awards. Nominated aka Perry, Poppy. It's Blessing Eddie. Oh, yea Junior. But here's my problem with you. Yeah. I sent you a TikTok last week. I'm thinking of you at 6:45 in the morning.

[Greg Miller]

Why?

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

No response. I texted it to you.

[Barrett Courtney]

What's messed up is I was awake. I saw it come in and you sent me a text like I think like 10 minutes later that was like, I don't care that it's before 7am I'm sending you this to you and Roger, you need to see this.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Well, it's like, you know, I'm a. I'm a dad mode. So I'm awake, I'm not thinking about it. And so I sent it and then I 6:45, like maybe I shouldn't be texting my employees.

[Barrett Courtney]

I don't want to set the precedent of like, I'm gonna respond to your 6:45am texts.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

That's a great call.

[Barrett Courtney]

Yeah, I meant to text you back. It was a good tick tock. I did like it.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Good. Thank you. Yeah, yeah. Every so often it'll go around, the old social media meme rigamarole thing or whatever. Maybe a wholesome thing of like some CEOs, like sign off on their emails. They'll send emails at like 9:30 at night. And it's one of those things. Like, by the way, I know this is outside of work hours, but this, this is what works for me. Respond when it works for you. And so there is. I hope that's implied. Especially when I. Because I'll do it where I try to schedule slacks to everybody, but I'll do the thing where I send a slack Saturday at like 2:30. I'm like, I hope they're not looking at this going like they got.

[Barrett Courtney]

I'm also not. I'm not texting anybody back at 6:45.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Oh, that's fine.

[Barrett Courtney]

No, no, no, no, no, no, no.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I don't take it personally. I don't take it personally.

[Greg Miller]

Do you do the schedule slack thing like Andy? Hey, this is Andy from the past and you're Barrett from the future. Here's these four assets I have to You.

[Andy Cortez]

I have to set the. I have to set this sort of scene whenever I do that. Yeah, Greg, I wanted to bring up like how much fun I had fun playing Monster Hunter with you all.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Me too, man.

[Andy Cortez]

And how much I wanted to continue that fun on Saturday.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah.

[Andy Cortez]

And then it really hit me on Saturday. Oh boy. It was like I slept for like legitimately probably over 20 hours.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

God damn, dude.

[Andy Cortez]

Of like I woke up at 9am, went back to bed, woke up probably around 7pm, went back to bed, woke up Sunday morning. It was just like out of it, man. It was a bad time, but it was a good time too.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I appreciate you wanting to talk so much about Expedition 33 that you powered through today to come in and hang out with us.

[Andy Cortez]

Yeah, I love it.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Well, we're going to get into that and more because this is the kind of Funny Games cast each and every weekday on a variety of platforms. We run you through the biggest topics in video games, whether it be previews, reviews or conversations we need to have. If you like that, you should be watching us live on YouTube.com kind tofunnygames, Twitch TV, kind of funnygames or listening on podcast services around the globe. No matter where you consume the content, please consider picking up a kinda funny membership. $10 gets you all of our shows ad free and then your daily dose of me, Greg Miller and a one man podcast slash video cast. It usually goes on for like 15 to 20 minutes where I just rant and rave in my car and talk to you. That comes out five days a week. So that's like an hour long podcast a week. Wow, that's a lot of content. Wow. Wow. If you got no books tossed away, no big deal. Of course you can watch live. Like I said, you can watch later. YouTube.com CondoFundyGames Twitch TV, KindaFundyGames, podcast services around the globe like subscribe, share, ring the bell, tell your friends, leave a review, and if you're feeling generous and you're watching live, use your YouTube super chats over on YouTube.com kindafunnygames. You can super chat to be part of the show with your questions, comments and concerns. So get them in right now for what you want to know about Xbox Expedition 33. Now that we've played the demo and are getting ready to talk about it, housekeeping for you. You already got Kind of Funny Games Daily all about Rockstar acquiring a brand new studio and bless you, he is sick. He's not faking it everybody. After that, of course after this, you're gonna get Alien 3 as part of Alien vs. Predator in review. And after that, you're getting a stream of Mike and Nick in the afternoon. If you're a kind of funny member, my Greg way is in the process of going up. It's about how many universes I've jumped. There's more than one.

[Greg Miller]

Speaking of.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah.

[Greg Miller]

This month's premium collector's item.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Thank you very much. That came in while I was doing my thing. I forgot about that. Of course, if you wanted to go to patreon.com kindafunny right now, you could support us at our physical tier item and get this month's premium collector item. It, of course, is a Panda Musk poster. And it is about Greg Miller. Enter the Gregiverse. And it's Panda doing all the different iterations of me.

[Greg Miller]

You.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

He's seen throughout the years. You got up at noon. Greg in there. Wonder New Wonder Woman. Greg in there. You got over there. Look at that. That's G4. Greg when he was out there. You got me in my WWE area. You got that? You got it Looks like shirtless Spider Man. Miles Morales in the way back, looking very disappointed, just disappointed at what he's saying, which I understand and I appreciate it. Of course. This is our 10th anniversary this year of kind of funny. And Panda Musk is doing an amazing poster each and every month. You can go to patreon.com kindafunny and set up there. But if you wanted to see everything that's happened so far, including, you know, since we switched to this premium model, you could go to kindafunny.com premium and you would see it month by month and see the three posters. Panda's already done for this, of course. Get in now. Get this one. Have a great time.

[Greg Miller]

Is that Howard the Duck?

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

You mouse over him in the very back yet? Yes, yes, I was Howard the Duck in the Lego Video game. So one of the Lego Video games. I mean, that's how deep Panda must goes, you know what I mean? And getting all this stuff done. And I'm sorry for all the times he's had. Look at me shirtless. Ah, thank you to our Patreon producers, Delaney Twining, Carl Jacobs and Omega Buster. Today we're brought to you by Greg Miller's live show in Chicago. And better help. We'll tell you about that later.

[Andy Cortez]

For now, even more importantly, Greg, even more importantly, what's happening this Friday?

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I don't know what's happening this Friday.

[Andy Cortez]

Nick Lock Episode 2 Let It Go.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

It's A whole new world we live in, baby. Pokemon Johto.

[Barrett Courtney]

That doesn't get old.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I love that. I love.

[Andy Cortez]

It's happening. Everybody get ready for it.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

And so it's Johnny Ace this time. Going through. Is that what's happening?

[Andy Cortez]

It's Johnny Ace.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Johnny Ace is different than Nick.

[Andy Cortez]

Don't forget the Ace man cometh.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah. Oh, there it is. Look, you're showing the sprites right there.

[Andy Cortez]

Ace man cometh. Everybody get ready.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

That's right, everybody. We loved the Nuzlocke so much last year. We are back to do a brand new one starting on Friday with a big marathon stream of the boys doing Nick's new Nuzlocke come out. Support that. That will only be on Twitch tv kind of funnygames for right now. Of course that's where the marathon streams play best. Which is why as we said, Friday's marathon stream was only on Twitch, but it will be uploaded to YouTube.com kindafunnygames this week. That's the monster hunter one that Andy was a part of. That he gave his health for. That he gave his health for. And plus, I'm just saying it's never too late to jump in with us. We're out there having a great time killing monsters. Come on.

[Barrett Courtney]

I mean, I would like to.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah.

[Greg Miller]

All he needs is a little push. I know he wants.

[Barrett Courtney]

Well, I do want. I. Barrett knows, right? It's just the thing of too many games. I was playing obscure expedition 33.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

What a bad name. There's also. Just call it. Just call it Expedition 3.

[Barrett Courtney]

We got used to metaphor refantation.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah, we did, we did. You're right, you're right.

[Barrett Courtney]

You know, I was also playing redacted with Barrett.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah, no, we'd say split fiction.

[Barrett Courtney]

I was playing split fiction.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah.

[Barrett Courtney]

I got lots to talk about. I got a lot I've been doing.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

The hits don't stop here. That's what we do on the Gamescast. We cover topics of the show. Tots. Tots. Tots. Tots.

[Andy Cortez]

Tots.

[Greg Miller]

Tots.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

We all have been playing Claire Obscure Expedition 33. If you are unfamiliar, Steam describes it like this. Lead the members of Expedition 33 on their quest to destroy the paintress so that she can never paint death again. Explore a world of wonders inspired by Belle O Peak France and battle unique enemies in this turn based RPG with real time mechanics. The dev is Sandfall Interactive and the publisher is Kepler Interactive. We have been watching this one for quite some time. Since the original debut trailers and everything else. We have had this gorgeous thing from Sandfall. Gorgeous demo from Sandfall, and we were able to jump in to a whole bunch of hours of it. Barrett, you're on the ones and twos, of course, as you always are, but you played this whole thing, right?

[Greg Miller]

I played an hour and a half because, yeah, I was also dedicating. Dedicating any free time I could to bless with Split Fiction, so didn't get too much time on the sticks here, but enough to, you know, have an impression.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Blessing. You've played the whole demo.

[Barrett Courtney]

I didn't, but I have played close to four hours of the game.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Okay, Andy, how much of this have you played?

[Andy Cortez]

I'm probably close to three hours around, like, probably 245, I'd say.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

And then I have played again coming off of Monster Hunter review everything else. I was able to get, like, 45 minutes in today, an hour to. And I'll start since then or at the end, after 45 minutes, after an hour. I'm glad that's all I got to play of this, because this game's fucking special, and I don't want to play anymore until I have review code. I am not a JRPG person. I know. I have had a history with them. I loved Persona 4, and then it's always in 3. It's been hit or miss for me, obviously, since then. This is a game I could see me going all the way through for a number of different reasons. But what I played today was so goddamn impressive. Like, I mean, my notes are, again, short but glowing. But I think the biggest takeaway and I think the biggest compliment I could give from the top is when I was playing this game. I finally had it click in my head to what Andy is, what you are, what Barrett is. But you guys get more spotlight for it. Of, like, I gotta learn to be Perry Poppy. Like, the counters feel too good in this game for me not to get this. This needs to be what I need to go do. So I am shocked by how much I like this. I hope they're able to stick, landing and go through this entire game this way. But from what we played, holy shit. It lives up to what I've seen. But am I wrong? Blessing?

[Barrett Courtney]

I agree.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Okay.

[Barrett Courtney]

I. So I didn't finish the demo because I. I didn't want to play more to then take away from my, like, full experience with the game.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Right.

[Barrett Courtney]

Like, the more I played this, the more I found myself getting into the RPG systems because I. I think on the top level thing to shout out that I, at first was apprehensive about but then was very sold on was the amount of inspirations and influences that this game has. I've been getting ads for this game non stop for the last, like six months or so. Right. Just on my.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

They know the audience. Yeah, yeah.

[Barrett Courtney]

And I'm like, I'll see like an ad on like, Twitter or whatever. And it's Expedition 33 redefining the JRPGs. And I'm like. I'm like, okay, sure. I'm sure this game from a French developer is going to redefine the JRPG genre. And I'm playing it, and I'm not saying I was going to redefine anything, but I. As I'm playing it, I can see the Final Fantasy, I can see the near, but then I can also see some of the souls, and I can see, like different inspirations taken from different places that are applied in all the correct ways to where I get to the Checkpoint system. And the Checkpoint system feels like a soul's Checkpoint system where you get there, you can rest, and then you can also apply your skill points and stuff. And I'm like, all right, there's weapon scaling with. Depending on how I want to put my points into might or defense or, you know, agility or whatever it is. And I am. I found myself so deep into those systems already in just a few hours I played, and I was like, I can't get too invested because then I'm going to. I'm going to break my heart when I have to restart this whole thing again.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

And we're so close. Of course, April 24th is the release date for this. And so, yeah, I want to talk about that skill tree because I think that is such a big part of why I was like, oh, okay, yeah, Andy, what do you think?

[Andy Cortez]

I'm really, really into it so far. I think narratively it. It's just kind of hitting. Even though I don't fully understand a whole lot of what's happening narratively. I think having Charlie Cox and the character who's. It's not Jennifer English because you meet her later on. Jennifer English played Shadowheart in Baldur's Gate, but you end up meeting her character later on. But the co protagonist that you're kind.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Of hanging out with, it's Loon, played by Christie Ryder, who I think was.

[Greg Miller]

One of the villains in Sifu.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Oh.

[Andy Cortez]

Oh, shit.

[Greg Miller]

She was the one with the chain mail thing with.

[Andy Cortez]

Amazing voice performances from everybody. Really a great emotion. Cool systems and God damn, do those. Perry's feel meaty and they sound great. More Importantly, they sound great, they look impressive, the parries are great. And then not only doing the pairs, but if you don't want to parry, if you can dodge as well, that's also an option. Having that real time action kind of built into your turn based combat, I think just feels so active and so. Right. Kind of initially it's. It could be a little bit overwhelming having all of these different. Hold on, let me hit the. The pause menu in the game right now. Because immediately as you sort of hop into the game, you're thrown a lot of lingo and jargon and most of.

[Barrett Courtney]

My notes here are just writing down systems of the game so I can, like, we can talk about them. Because it is so deep.

[Andy Cortez]

The. The pictos and the. The. There's some other word. It's like, okay, that just means, you know, go with Elden ring terms, your talisman or your, you know, your passives or whatever. I think it can get kind of overwhelming at the start, but it immediately kind of goes away once you get into the flow of the gameplay.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

And I think that's on purpose. Right. Because we're being tossed into a demo, a vertical slice, like a lot. They give you a hey. Story so far. Here's what's happened in the game already. Clearly we're hours into it by the time we.

[Andy Cortez]

And granted, I want to point out that, you know, Blessing said he's like close to four hours. I'm close to the three hour mark, like 245, 250. And they said that it takes three plus hours to beat. So I'm sure we were knocking right on the door of beating this demo. It's just. Yeah. Monster Hunter, man. Monster Hunter.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah. Barrett, of course, everyone knows you as Mr. Persona.

[Andy Cortez]

Hmm.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

What is your take here with Expedition 33?

[Greg Miller]

Yeah, and this was another one. Like every time we see this, it just feels like too ambitious of a game, especially when it was showcased at the Xbox developer direct question mark. Right?

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Sure.

[Greg Miller]

That's where we saw. And we got to see like how small that team is. And we really got to see a deep dive into like how ambitious this game really is. It was one of those like, okay, this looks cool. How is it actually going to feel in practice? Is this. Are they actually going to land this thing in a way that actually like, is fucking cool. And playing only an hour and a half of this demo, I walked away being like, God damn. I see the vision and I think they're pulling it off so far. Whether they're able to pull it off for a full 30 hour campaign, we'll see. But at least from this demo, I walked away from it very positive. Like, yes, I think the main kind of Persona influence is more so just like the using the face buttons to navigate your battle menus, which to me since Persona 5 has made turn based combat feel so active, although it's going back and forth, but then also adding in the layers of like being able to parry all of the enemy attacks or dodge the enemy attacks, which is definitely inspired by Souls games. Adding in the kind of like timed attacked things that is very Mario RPG coded and all this stuff go even further to make it feel even more active than like a Persona has yet. Right. Which I found myself very impressed by and was constantly engaged with the battle system and then with the world. It's very visceral. That's the thing that really took me aback with kind of the little story tidbits that we got early on where you know, these 33 year olds are going on their expedition for the, the painters and all this stuff. Seeing the early parts of this game of what they're dealing with, it's like, oh, Jesus Christ, this is such an interesting and kind of up world. And that's when I think I had played it before Andy had and I was telling Andy, like, you got to check this out because I think this world and the story is definitely for you whether the combat is or not. You know, it seems like it is so far, Andy. But yeah, like this is something special and I am completely impressed of just constantly being reminded how small this team is and what they're pulling off. And I'm excited to see the full game and yeah, I'm glad I only spent an hour and a half with it because yeah, I'm ready to play the full thing in like a month and a half.

[Andy Cortez]

It's something I brought up during one of the pre or during one of the presentations. I think probably after the Xbox developer direct when, you know, the game looks so visually impressive and a lot of it is, you know, the lighting looks fantastic and everything. But what sort of benefits them the most is having this turn based combat system where whenever you go into combat. Barrett, I'm not sure how well this will work right here. If you can cut to like just a full screen of my feed.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

We got it, baby.

[Andy Cortez]

What I want to show off real quick is just like, you know, the, the game looks good in action, right. But then when you hop into combat then they sort of set the stage for you and it's like they have it lit in a way that's like so perfect. And it, you know, it's like you're not moving the camera in these, in these sequences. So everything's going to look awesome here no matter what, because we are kind of in control of this. And it puts you at a really big advantage from an art perspective to kind of immediately say, like, well, you're not moving the camera. We don't have a roaming time of day, so things are always going to look nice. And we're kind of in control of that. And I, I freaking love how they're able to like, kind of. It's almost like cheating in a way because other games, you know, you might have. I remember us thinking back to when Halo Infinite first showed off and it's like, well, it's a, it's a full day night cycle and there are times when the game isn't going to look great, but here they're like, no, we control this, like the games that look good because we want it to in this little area. And the lighting is perfect. And all of the, you know, the amazing ui, which is very like Atlas coded, it looks so influenced by some of the best Atlas games that I've, you know, I hear Bear talk about.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

All the time in the live chat. Yeah. Ryan says hand place lighting will always be the best. And one of my notes here is just drop dead gorgeous. And I put the flex of running through this lush green forest to this dark cave and then into this, this red evil light. It was like back to, back to back in a 10 second, you know what I mean? Of like, oh man, it's really pretty out here. Oh, it's really dark and scary and dank in here. Oh my God, it's red and horrible and evil in here. I was like, holy shit, this looks fucking amazing.

[Barrett Courtney]

Yeah. I think even for me. One of my, one of the few critiques I had with my demo was that I think there's a lot of bloom.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah.

[Barrett Courtney]

Like, there's like a lot of glowy effects where at first I was a bit put off, but as I play more and I don't know if you guys got to like the second big section that's in the demo and like the second half of it. But you get to an environment that is way different than the first environment that you're in that is way more like underwater vibe. Like you're walking and there's like, you know, sea life that's flying around you. And. And legitimately I was like, oh, okay, I'm sold. Like the fact that you can go from a super, like, dreamy fantasy world, like, fantasy environment that is more like, you know, foresty kind of area, and then walk into something that looks equally dreamy, but still some somehow, you know, just equally cool. Yeah. To look at and also so different. Was very impressed by that.

[Andy Cortez]

Yeah. Walking into this area, Bless. Reminded me of the time that we were doing the Nvidia sponsor stream and I was like, always telling Greg, Greg, just walk slowly to kind of look at the vistas and let the, let the visuals soak in. And there's an amazing moment in Dragon Age Valegard where you walk into the underwater area and a whale is kind of like, you know, underwater doing this cool thing, and Greg's just running around looting. I'm like, can you just look at the, can you just focus on the visuals? Because it looks so amazing. But I had the exact same vibe here where being in this underwater area, it's just so freaking cool. And I'm like, but you played the demo on PC, right, Bless?

[Barrett Courtney]

Yeah.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

So I believe we all Immediately.

[Andy Cortez]

Okay. Immediately when I see the bloom, I go into post processing and I go to off or like low. Because post processing usually includes bloom and all sorts of, like, visual things to try to make the game look cooler. But that was really distracting for me as well, and it made the experience a lot nicer. When I turned the post processing post processing down to, like, lower, I might.

[Barrett Courtney]

Have to hit you up at the full game because I was in my settings, like, looking for a bloom off option. Like, I put off, I turned off Motion Blur and I was like, ah, this didn't do enough for me. But yeah, even still, like, I, I, I think one of the things that grew on me as well as I played through the game is how much they threw out you both, like, presentationally. But even within the RPG stuff, where there's so many systems in this thing, sure. Every character that you have as part of your party has their own unique system of combat that, like, works in different ways. Right. Like we had, at least for my, in my playthrough, I had three characters. Gustave, Loon and Male.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Right.

[Barrett Courtney]

And Gustavi has like a charge system where the more you attack the enemy, the more you dodge, the more you parry, I believe the higher your charge goes up. And then you can use your overcharge attack at some point to deal big damage. Loon has a stain system that is element based to where the more you do attacks different elements, we then collect those elements in like your stain thing and Certain abilities you have will then absorb those elements, then use them to make it stronger, to make them stronger. And the male has like a whole stance system that is separate from that. But the fact that you're able to like loop those in, like make those character, make the combat feel unique with each character, while also I think like maintaining the overall thing of like the active combat, Dodging, parrying, like throwing in these attacks. Very impressed. I'm very impressed by it. Like, it is very fun. And to bear its thing of. You know how Persona 5 felt like it was taking turn based combat and trying to make it a bit swifter. This game feels like it's doing the natural evolution of that of all right, we found a way to make it swift. Now how do we make turn based combat almost feel like it's action combat?

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah.

[Barrett Courtney]

And so far it's working.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah. Like we haven't seen like huge. A lot of people try that since, like Persona 5. Like, yeah, we've had Sea of Stars, like a dragon as well, has made it more active. And now this game. And it's. It's really cool to see like how these different teams, big or small, are trying to like iterate on that and try to convince the Andes of the world of like, hey, turn based combat can be fun, it can feel active. And I think what Expedition 33 is doing so far is fucking incredible.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah. The thing that stood out for me about the combat is everything you just said. Right. But it was the idea of like, okay, here you can dodge, but if you want to take it to that next level, you can parry because pairing will get you the action point, so you can actually go and use it. Right. That was super swift and cool. But it was then obviously the X on there, so it was having to pay attention the entire time. But I then really appreciated. You know, there's these flags throughout the world from the previous expeditions. As you said, or I think the chat said us as a whole said, you get to, this is where you can rest and heal up. This is where you can unlock your abilities. And going into those skill trees, that was like what really, really got a hook in me of being like, oh, okay, I can go through and really make these characters act the way I want them to act in this. Whereas with Persona in the past and stuff, you know, merging Personas and you know, you unlock this new ability, you can get rid of an old ability, that kind of thing that's similar to what we're doing here. But I felt like this gave me more of a Roadmap or Runway of what I was doing in a way that felt like it gave me more control.

[Barrett Courtney]

I mean, it's closer to metaphor than its Persona, I think, in that.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah.

[Barrett Courtney]

Or metaphor, I think does a similar thing of you can kind of look down the barrel and be like, oh, this is what I'm going to build to. And I know I can mix and match my abilities however I want to to make my party into what feels like an original creation by me. Like this game. Yeah. The same thing of looking down the skill trees and then also just looking down my stats in General, because the 80 point earlier, there's just so much as far as I got Pictos, which gives me a passive, but then also gives me like, you know, some stat buffs. I have my actual staffs or stats that I can like, you know, upgrade individually by putting numbers into them and then I have my skill tree. So I'm going to have this character be very like high on might and then maybe high on luck because they have a weapon that skills with that. But then I know they're going to do that. So I'm going to have my abilities be more, you know, taking out an entire group of enemies as opposed to one enemy at a time. I'm going to have this person heal or have this person, you know, buff this other person. They give you so many options and let you see those options. So at least in this place where we're at in the demo and I'm again, I had to stop myself from falling too into it. And I had to keep reminding myself that this is not my canon playthrough. I can't let myself get lost in this playthrough because in the four hours that I played already, I'm like, I'm into it. I'm looking at everything here.

[Greg Miller]

And so quick question for you. Just because we're talking about like the Luminas, the Pictos and all this stuff, it sounds like none of you had trouble like equipping some of this stuff. Because I don't know if my session was just like bugs, like, it wouldn't let me, like, the feedback in the menus didn't seem like it was letting me equip some of these things, like, early on. So that was something that I was like, am I missing something here?

[Barrett Courtney]

Are you doing it from the menu or are you trying to do it from the checkpoints?

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah, flags.

[Barrett Courtney]

Because I think in the menu you can equip Pictos, but I think to upgrade stats and like equip Certain abilities you might have to be at the flag.

[Greg Miller]

See that I was doing at the flag, but I'm talking just about like luminas and pictos of just editing those. Like, do you have to be the at the flag for that stuff?

[Barrett Courtney]

Pick those. You do. You don't have to.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Okay.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah, it was the. That was getting a little bugged.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

So this is the skill tree I was talking about, which again, I loved being able to see where I was going. You're talking about. You bring up metaphor, which is a far better example of this. Yeah, but even metaphor, I always felt kind of overwhelmed. Like, especially like. So over here in the chat, pretty dude says that meant this menu is overwhelming. Not the skill tree, but the one we were just looking at with all the words on it stuff I think it's important to show. When we were playing this demo, we had one. I had one defense one to start. Right. It's not like this is where you start in the game. Right. They're showing you how complex it could be. And then if you jump to the skill tree. The skill tree looked like this in the demo where it was, all right, these two are open. These three are going to be next or whatever. So to be able to look down that, figure it out and go character by character and see who I want to build and how I want to build, I like that a lot.

[Andy Cortez]

Yeah, the, the. All those items that you were seeing are just things that you find around in the world. Those are just additive sort of things to add to your character where, you know, I think one of the first ones you get is called like the Dodger or something.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah.

[Andy Cortez]

And it means. And your character gets more ap. Anytime that they dodge, you know, correctly or whatever. And then you can kind of find more power. I think I have like up to five now. Where one of them is when an enemy is burning, you do such and such more critical damage or whatever. I think it's like 20 higher critical damage rate. And so those are all little things that you can kind of add to your character to kind of make the experience kind of feel more like your own and kind of customizable, you know, 100%.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Before we continue, I want to remind everybody that this is the kind of funny games cast and we couldn't do this without you. Remember, Kinda Funny is an 11 person small business, all about live talk shows. If you like hanging out with us all day or catching up in your car later on. Let me tell you about the Kinda funny membership. For $10 you get all of our shows ad free. That's more than 20 a week and you get a daily dose of me and a 15 to 20 minute podcast I call Greg Way. If you like all of that, please consider picking up a membership on patreon.com kinda funny, YouTube.com kindafunnygames, Apple or Spotify. However, right now you're not using your membership benefits, so here's a word from our sponsors. This episode is brought to you by me, Greg Miller Chicago what are you doing Thursday, April 10th at 7pm the answer coming to my live show. That's right, Mrs. Miller's baby boy is coming back to Chicagoland and putting on a 90 minute one night only show live from the Goodwin Auditorium at Benedictine University in Lyle. I'm mixing a bit of up at Noon with a bit of my best Comic Con performances with a lot of my Chicago influences. I'm calling it A Late Night with Greg Miller and it's gonna offer never before heard adolescent tales, an interview with one of my favorite bands of all time, a conversation with Millie Ramsey about growing up in the Internet, Spotlight your live questions for me and of course tons of fabulous video game prizes. Get your tickets [e-mail] Chicago and hey Midwest people. We never do shows out there, so this is your chance to see a Greg Miller stage show. Indiana, Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin we always talk about how we love to drive as Midwest people, so hit the road for an opportunity you may never get again. This is a fundraiser for Benedictine University. That's right, my childhood best friend Poe School. So get your tickets [e-mail] Chicago and I'll see you on April 10th. This episode is brought to you by BetterHelp. It's always important for us to be aware of a relationship red flags we should avoid. But what if we focused more on looking for green flags in friends and part if you're not sure what they look like, therapy can help you identify green flags. Actively practice them in your relationships and embody the green flag energy yourself. Some of our best friends use BetterHelp and love how helpful it can be for learning positive coping skills and how to set boundaries. It empowers you to be the best version of yourself. It isn't just for those who have experienced major trauma. If you're thinking of starting therapy, give BetterHelp a try. It's entirely online, designed to be convenient, flexible and suited to your schedule, and it serves over 5 million people worldwide. Discover your relationship green flags with BetterHelp. Visit betterhelp.com kinda funny to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp. H E L P.com kinda funny. Betterhelp.com kinda funny. We are back. Everybody still talking about claire obscure expedition 33.

[Andy Cortez]

Say what you want about the name.

[Greg Miller]

It's a good name.

[Barrett Courtney]

I like it.

[Andy Cortez]

Look, say what you want about the name. It could be Outlander or Void Land or what. Like there's just so many similar sounding games.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Sure.

[Andy Cortez]

At least this is, you know, going the extra mile and just being too many words.

[Barrett Courtney]

And we're, I think we're trying to put Clear Obscure on the map. You know, this is the beginning brand. This is the brand.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I can't wait to meet Claire.

[Barrett Courtney]

I mean, somebody look up.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

She is the Patriots.

[Barrett Courtney]

Now is Clear a real person? Because I assume this is a Tom Clancy scenario where like they're a writer.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Or they're a creator.

[Barrett Courtney]

No, because there's nobody named Clear Obscure in this game, so it must be a creator situation.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

No, it is nonfiction. No.

[Barrett Courtney]

Is Clear Obscure the name of the world?

[Greg Miller]

I think it's like Claire Obscure is the metaphor and then Expedition 33 is the refante.

[Barrett Courtney]

No.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah.

[Andy Cortez]

I thought Clear Obscure was like a, like, like a state of mind, a state of being. You know, we're all Clear Obscure.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah, of course, like I said at the top of the show. But to remind you, this is developed by Sandfall Interactive, published by kepler interactive out April 24, 2025. And what we didn't mention at the top, only $50. And also Xbox game pass day one. So that's crazy bad deal out there for a game we love and that we're not alone in loving. I really loved [e-mail] Will Borger it went like Years ago, a mentor told me that the most important part of any story is surprise. A few years later, a writer I deeply respect wrote that perhaps the difference between good and great writing is technique. Though even that was probably not as important as conviction. But what keeps us invested in a story is curiosity. The gap between what we know and what we want to know. The questions that drive us. Combine all three and you tend to create something special. Each and every one of us has played a video game that grabbed us from the jump, that connected with us in some unexpected way. A game that surprised us, whose belief in itself was obvious from the first frame, that made us want to explore. I have played a lot of video games, friends, and that feeling is increasingly rare for me, especially in the AAA space. So when I tell you that Clair Obscure Expedition 33 grabbed me by the throat from the jump and didn't let go for a single second of the three and a half hour demo. I played twice. Believe me when I tell you that's some powerful magic. That's fucking writing right there, Will. That is you writing your ass off. Great job over there. And what a great way to put what we're all talking about. And I think, again, perhaps the greatest show of respect from all of us were like, we didn't beat it on purpose. We could go. But we don't. But you're sitting there. And I was like, in today. You know, there is a deadline on the demo I'm playing, right? Because I'm like, all right, we're live at a little after 11. It's like 10:30. And I'm sitting there hemming and hawing over what skill. I'm like, this doesn't even matter. Why am I worried about the skill tree for a demo I'm never coming back to?

[Barrett Courtney]

Clarab Scare is the French translation of Chero Scuro. It is a term used in art to describe a particularly strong contrast of light and dark. Thematically, it's a reference to the Pinterest. The party is journeying to stop.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Oh, there you go. Thank you very much.

[Andy Cortez]

State of mind.

[Barrett Courtney]

State of mind. The vibe. I like that they give you a gun. They give you a gun in the combat. And obviously, again, this is another, like, Persona ism or an Atlas ism of. Oh, yeah, here's an option to shoot at your enemies. The thing that I like about the gun is that literally, like, you aim and you have to shoot at their weak point to, like, do a lot of damage to them. And then some enemies are flying again, they take more damage, which I think also is a similar thing in the.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Also doesn't use up your turn.

[Barrett Courtney]

No, it uses.

[Andy Cortez]

It uses ap.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah, yeah. But I mean, like, for the, like, flying enemies, you can only do that. But it felt great to be able to. You empty my clip, take out a flying enemy that wasn't that big, big of a deal, then just attack the enemy that's vulnerable to physical attack. Right? Like, I thought especially even though there's so much going on in this game, like, we're talking about, I think getting in here and playing it, I was surprised that I wasn't overwhelmed by the spinning plates where it was like, okay, I got it. Okay, I understand. Okay, this is great. This feels good. Oh, I should have done that, but I screwed this up. But I was so happy.

[Barrett Courtney]

The spinning plates feel fun. Like, the. I Mean even in status effect type stuff where early on they give you a burn. In this, in this demo, you can burn your enemies. And I like the fact that instead of taking place at the end of an enemy's turn, like the burn takes place at the beginning. So it is the thing of, all right, I know they're weak. I'm going to do an attack that's going to burn them. So by the time it gets to their turn, they won't even be able to do their attack because they're going to die at the beginning of their turn. Like having to strategize in these different ways work. One thing that Andy brought up during the break is the fact that like there's also a jump button in combat where at some point they introduce like these sweeping attacks, these big sweeping tax enemies will do. And if you time a jump at the right time, you can jump and then shoot back at them in midair. And it's sick as like again, a lot of really, I think smart things on the gameplay side that shows that they understand RPGs and they understand JRPGs, but then also just a lot of flair, which, I mean, I'm just very impressed. I think it's rare to see those two married so well. Like, I think it is in the Atlas games that you get something like that or maybe like a Final Fantasy or whatever. To see a, a French developer be like, okay, we're going to take this on and do it so well so far in the demo. I'm. I'm impressed over here in the chat.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Before it goes away. Sorry. In the YouTube chat, SG17 says, but if it sells poorly, it'll either end up on deep sale or PlayStation plus in the next three months like Veil Guard or and Immortals. I'm not. I don't think you have to be concerned about that. I think you're talking about valeguard specifically. Right. Being from a gigantic publisher, a gigantic developer, and took a gigantic amount of time where I think expectations were far different for that one than there are for this one. Coming from a small French developer put out by Kepler, who isn't the biggest name in game, so makes good stuff. Like I think they have the thing right. And I think the reaction you're seeing today, as long as this game doesn't fall apart immediately after this or before it, this game is going to find an audience real quick and be a darling.

[Andy Cortez]

I think 100%. I wanted to bring up near the beginning of the demo, you're immediately sort of shown a way to grapple towards little places in little platforms, little things in the world, and your controller vibrates and you can, like, grapple towards this new platform. And now your characters are walking over there, and I. It's kind of a small nitpick, but I hope it's not just grappling for the sake of making traversal flashier. Like, I hope that that's more of a Metroidvania type thing where maybe at some point in the game, you didn't have the ability to grapple towards those things, and now you do. Because as cool and flashy as it looks, it's like, okay, well, this does nothing for me mechanically. That's different than. Than walking or running. It looks cooler, sure. But I hope that there are parts where maybe I don't have access to the grapple. And then finally, when I have the grapple as an. As an ability, then I can go back to certain parts of this really cool overworld map to go back and explore. Because otherwise it just feels like, you know, is it style over substance?

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

You know, do you think you're gonna get that, though? Because, like, playing through this, this felt very much like, oh, cool. This is a linear game that I'm going, there's side shoot off the side. Get the glowy purple shoot over here. Use your grappling. But, like, we're being funneled. It doesn't strike me as a game. I'm going to double back in Metroidvania.

[Andy Cortez]

I think you're being. I mean, I think the fact that there is a big open world. Yeah, yeah. The overworld map, I think that that indicates that there will be a lot more exploration than we think that there will be.

[Barrett Courtney]

I think it'll get pathy as well. I was surprised to see further on in my demo, they have, like, the, you know, in God of War, either 22 or Ragnarok, where they have, like, the chests that you have to hit the three things to open.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

It was on both of them.

[Barrett Courtney]

Yeah, they have that in this game as well, where it's like, you have to shoot the three things with your gun.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Corey Barlog, right now. Start the lawsuit. I'll do it.

[Barrett Courtney]

And again, like, great inspirations and influences from great places. I like that mechanic in God of War. And to see it here, I was like, okay, cool. Like, that's another layer added to exploration on top of just the chest that you're opening. Right. Or, like, whatever you're doing. I think the fact that you have an Overworld probably means that, yeah, you're gonna be doubling back to certain locations. But I think my hope is that when you go back to certain locations, things will be different.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Right.

[Barrett Courtney]

Like you're going to have more tougher enemies or maybe like some paths change or maybe you have a new. I guess the big hope is that you have a new ability that allows you to get to certain places that you weren't able to before. But I think that is almost like the max that you can do because then you are getting into Metroidvania vibes of. All right, well, that's not what this game is. It's a GRPG kind of thing. But if you're going to have an overall like this, I think you got to make it so that you are.

[Greg Miller]

There's reason to come back and explore and stuff.

[Andy Cortez]

Yeah, yeah.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

The big. The big elephant in the room we haven't addressed, of course, is we're talking about these playable characters. We're talking about an amazing cast list. Of course, as you already said, Jennifer English, Baldur's Gate, Elden Ring, Christy Rider, the Sandman and Sifu. Like you were saying, Barrett. Then you have Andy Serkis, of course, Nick's mortal enemy. Ben Starr, of course, my mortal enemy. But Charlie Cox playing Gustav.

[Greg Miller]

Charlie Cox playing Robert Pattinson.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yes.

[Barrett Courtney]

Charlie Cox playing the elephant in the room is.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Why did they make this man look exactly like Robert Pattinson?

[Greg Miller]

I was joking with Andy that it felt like they might have been in talks with Robert Pattinson early on.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Not even early on. Like, full glove. It's a handshake deal. We haven't signed the contract.

[Greg Miller]

Dedicated to it. And then that fell through because he decided to go make Mickey 17.

[Barrett Courtney]

And they're like, fuck, yeah.

[Andy Cortez]

He was like, I love Final Fantasy. I love. You know, he talks about how he was in love with Tifa as a child and stuff. It's like, we all know those stories of Robert Branson. He was definitely in this game. There's no way this guy looks exactly like I thought.

[Barrett Courtney]

I was crazy. I had to look it up. I was like, did I miss Robert Pattinson in the trailer? Because why is this man just rob.

[Greg Miller]

Robert Pattinson from the Lighthouse?

[Andy Cortez]

It's.

[Greg Miller]

It's so weird. But Charlie Cox, very good.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Of course. Amazing Daredevil. You can do no wrong. Don't worry about that. What I liked about Gustav, and this is an early point, but it was one of those, like, you're looking at this game especially for where we're at, for endearing things or whatever. And like, you know, for me, it's about connection. The characters And Yeti. Yeah, I think the plot line in general is so cool. Right. Of again you have the Pinterest who's coming through and killing everybody at a, at a certain age. So all the 34 year olds die in the story so far. Clip we see. And then of course 33's numbers up to go out and try to stop her. I appreciate it when they got there and all hell breaks loose and you get the whole thing and da da. There's a million people talking about like more of the story part of there. But what was cool from what we saw in the story so far, you play a bit and then you get to where you're just finding all these expedition members just murdered. Right. Killed all the stuff. And the character Gustav collapses in front of one of them and brings up his gun from combat and puts it to his head. And I was like, God damn. Yeah, that's a real fucking moment. Right. I was talking about killing myself if shit went sideways like this.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah, it's visceral. And then like 10 minutes later you get into like your first kind of like entry level boss fight where you see that boss like fuck up one of your expedition like people. And it's really fascinating like how much they're going to try to get us invested in some of these characters and immediately kill a bunch of people off.

[Barrett Courtney]

The first note I put in my notes was based off of the previously on. That starts off the preview where they show you like a bunch of stuff that was in the trailer.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Right.

[Barrett Courtney]

But like one of the things was somebody just fucking getting in their head.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Falls off.

[Barrett Courtney]

Yeah. I was like, holy shit. Like this is, this seems really cool.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah, 100%. They got, they're cooking over here and.

[Andy Cortez]

I'm like, music is fantastic as well.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.

[Andy Cortez]

It's very operatic during the, you know, during battle can get a little samey when you're kind of just running around. But you know that's, that's most games when you're just kind of running around and adventuring.

[Barrett Courtney]

I do like how they, it feels like there are different genres that they're exploring there as well. Because when I got to that second big area and like I get into combat, there's like more of like a chill vibe to the music where I'm like, yo, this is, I'm kind of digging it. Like it's. See I, I, I'm really curious to see when we get that final game, how varied the soundtrack is because yeah, I like what they're offering so far. Even Though there wasn't anything like big and bombastic. But that also just doesn't seem like the vibe they're going for with it.

[Andy Cortez]

Yeah, I agree.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

One of the things we didn't touch on that was a point for me that was like, oh, this is Greg Miller. Kind of shit was going through in. There's this whole thing of picking up the journals of the previous expeditions and learning from the ones that came before to kind of the whole idea here is that you're even people who die, you're passing the baton. So learn from the ones who came before and then leave something for the ones that will come after so they can do this. But then there are audio journals, so you collect when you get to listen in. I was like, oh, the performance was great. And the one I found, I'm like, I want to see this through.

[Barrett Courtney]

I want to shout out design. Like, character design specifically. I think the character outfits look dope on all the party members that you're playing with. But the enemy design is so, like, weird and cool. It's tough to get me to fight, like, enemies in a game that don't have faces.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

You want to see these.

[Barrett Courtney]

It's like such a weird thing where I'm looking at first I'm looking at these enemies and I'm like, all right, I'm fighting just a rock creature. Like, I mean, I wish. I wish I had two eyes and mouth or some shit. Give me some personality. But, like, fuck up this guy's mouth. The more I'm fighting, like, these different enemies and these different creatures, the more I'm like, damn, who the fuck thought of this shit, right? Like, it is just the. I don't know, like, just cool, cool ass designs.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah, for sure. 100%. Yeah. And again, I like the different size stuff. I like the idea of like, you know, the ones that come up and slam their shield down and it goes off. And again, how satisfying it is. You hit the parry and just throw it back at them and kill him. And like that. That was awesome. Like, we're talking about the guys who have. Yeah. The light for their head, basically, that you pop then to get the thing off of there. Oh, this is.

[Andy Cortez]

That's Robert Pattinson, bro.

[Greg Miller]

This is him, man.

[Barrett Courtney]

It's great. That's just.

[Andy Cortez]

It's just Robert Pattinson. Like, there's no way that it's not. It's unbelievable how uncanny it is to being Robert Pattinson.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

We'll figure it out.

[Andy Cortez]

Look at him, dude. He's a handsome guy, though.

[Barrett Courtney]

They're so Dripped out. Look at that.

[Andy Cortez]

Yeah, well, I upgraded his outfit to have that like one wing thing. It looks so cool.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah, he's the one wing angel Tim's always talking about. We had a lot of people write in for super chats, but no super chat questions. First we'll start by booing ak, who writes in and says french JRPG equals rpwee. Rpwee, rpwee. It was good enough that I clipped it out and put on social media, but still I was like, ooh, you got me. CJ splits on, says shout out to Ben Starr's agent. He's killing it. Did you guys run into Ben Starr? I didn't play deep enough to find verso is what the character's name is according to our little guide here.

[Barrett Courtney]

I don't recall.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Okay.

[Andy Cortez]

I have not. No.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Jordan White wrote in, said since this game was announced, no other game has excited me more with avowed Expedition 33, Outer Worlds 2 and eventually fabled Fable. It's a great time to be an Xbox RPG fan. Yeah, 100%.

[Andy Cortez]

It's crazy.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Game Pass is a great pickup for this one. Yeah, a great pickup for this one for sure. And again, I'm just excited to see what looks to be a game that's going to have a great story because I'm super into the premise of this. I love this idea. Right. And then have it just be just in quotes. Just be 30 hours or whatever. Yeah, like be a. Be a turn based RPG that I can see. Like, oh, I can actually commit to beating this. And be.

[Barrett Courtney]

Did they say that it's going to be 30 hours? Is that like a development?

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

A quick Google found that. I would assume that that's true, but I can try it again.

[Barrett Courtney]

Once I started looking at those stats, I was like, ooh, I wonder if we're talking. I wonder if this is the thing where they say 30 hours and like we come out of it being like that was 50, 50 hours long.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. The Googles I'm finding are 30 plus. Yeah. Is what people are saying, but I.

[Barrett Courtney]

Don'T know where they're going.

[Greg Miller]

This comes directly from their X account. Says, to be clear, we poured all of our hearts and souls into this game. When you play Expedition 33, you can expect 30 plus hours of main game and as much side content for our completionist Expeditioners. That was back in October.

[Barrett Courtney]

I don't like that plus word. That plus word.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Don't do it. Just don't go off and do every side thing. Trevor super chatted while we were Going and said was interested, but now quite excited for this game. Two questions. Number one, how well did the demo run? Number two, even though y'all didn't start at the beginning, did the demo do a good job of introducing combat and other systems at play? Andy Cortez, you have the visual triangle. You know it well. You sold merch about it for us. You are the one who we always throw at the Nvidia streams to tell us why games look good. How did this game look for you?

[Andy Cortez]

The game looks like it still needs some more work because, you know, there were a decent amount of like visual hitches and frame rate kind of drops. But you know, I'm still impressed with where it's at. Like I guess I'm just impressed that this game is running at all. Based on what we've seen. This game always just looked like it's a small developer and holy shit, this looks really ambitious. I don't know if you know, we've, we've, we've, you know, heard this song before so many times with small developers, but I think it looks awesome in action still. I think like once the game comes out, hopefully it comes with all the bells and whistles like the dlss and you know, for the AMD fans out there, getting FSR running, getting anything to help, you know, because right now it currently has just the resolution scaler where if you're kind of having trouble running the game, you can drop the resolution down to like 75. So it'll go down and help the game run better at a lower res. But it doesn't have any like AI upscaling or anything like that. So hopefully when the game launches, it'll come with a lot of those bells and whistles because that happens with a lot of games. A lot of previews don't have everything, don't have their sort of options fully kitted out.

[Greg Miller]

The other thing I noticed too is like in gameplay things really started to pop and like look smooth and stuff. I was noting a lot of, of weird like frame drops and stuff like that in cutscenes, which I don't know if they're pre rendered or not. Andy. I couldn't tell. But like it says like, like you can have like your custom outfits in cutscenes. So I, I don't think they are. But that was where I was seeing a lot of like oof. Okay, this is.

[Andy Cortez]

Yeah, I noticed that too. I'm not sure. I was wondering the pre. If they were pre rendered or not as well because it, the cutscenes Immediately started. It's like, okay, what you were watching, now it's 30 frames per second with a shitload of film grain.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah.

[Andy Cortez]

So it always looks pre rendered to me. But I'm not exactly sure to answer.

[Barrett Courtney]

The second part of that super chat's question. One of the things that impresses me the most about this demo is how well it's just done as a demo where you start off and one of the first NPCs you run into is literally, literally says hey, I'm an npc. That's for this demo. And basically that you have the choice of doing it. Jumping into tutorial straight from that NPC to teach you the battle mechanics before they, they throw you back into that chapter there that we're on.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah.

[Barrett Courtney]

And like that's like an extra piece of work to do to like for a demo that you usually don't see. Like I'm. I don't remember seeing a demo that has that of like, oh, here's a specific piece just to teach people like the press play in this game, how to play this game real quick before doing it. So shout out to that and then also shout out to like just how easy this was of. Hey, here's a code. We're going to, you know, let you redeem this preview on Steam. Play at your leisure. You know we have up to. It says three, three plus hours. Right. But like you know, I played for four hours or something like that and still kept going and yeah, like we were able to play it at our leisure for this preview. Yeah, really well done.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Real quick in the chat, Wolf Fox 10 JC says Nick is roasting Andy on Instagram. And yeah, the kind of funny vids account on Instagram is live while Nick is just making fun of Andy. So that's. That's a. Sorry about that, buddy. Oh, they just ended the stream. But they were.

[Greg Miller]

I can't see.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

They were zooming in on your face and they had the football. So you know, it was bad. I don't. And I could hear him laughing out there. I didn't really make content about you.

[Andy Cortez]

What does he do?

[Greg Miller]

I don't know.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

It's a great question.

[Barrett Courtney]

Good question.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

You know what I mean? That's a great question. I think he's really trying to work his way through the outer worlds right now. He's got his finger on the pulse, you know what I mean?

[Andy Cortez]

He's liking a vowed though. I know that.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah, yeah, that's true. He had to watch Alien 3. Yeah.

[Barrett Courtney]

Hard life.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Any closing thoughts about Expedition 33 Blessing.

[Andy Cortez]

I think it's shaping up to be pretty awesome.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah, totally.

[Andy Cortez]

I think it's. I think it's shaping up to be a game that looks like it can hopefully deliver on the promise of just looking like this, you know, really gorgeous, but also awesome storytelling wise. I hope it can kind of, you know, deliver there.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Wasted bandwidth. Ask you, Andy, is it a contender?

[Andy Cortez]

I'm going to say. I'm going to say no for now.

[Greg Miller]

Oh, I think it's too early to say.

[Andy Cortez]

Yeah, I think it's too early to say.

[Greg Miller]

Like, again, off this demo. Yeah, I'm feeling the high. But again, let's see if they can uphold this for 30 hours and keep it engaging in both world story and gameplay.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I'm going to be bold and say, yeah, I think this is a contender for me, which is shocking. But I can't. Like, if this, if we had code right now, it would be. Toss a lot of things to the side right now. Say goodbye to Ben, go to boarding school. You know, you got to do it. You got to get in there. And again, like, if this is, if I can sit there, I, I. What I'm really interested in and what I didn't see in this game because I didn't feel like I was playing a normal difficulty, so I didn't. Granted, I was very early, so I didn't die in the section I was playing. I'm interested to see how they restart where checkpoints are because again, like, I want to right now, bullishly, on Monday, March 3, 2025. I want to commit to being Perry Poppy in this because it feels so good to throw the attack back in their fucking faces. Yeah. And in one of the clips we showed from one of the trailers, you saw the entire team parry and throw it back at the boss. I'm like, oh, my God. Like, I want that, but I'm not that person, but I want that in this game. So let me just see if I commit to that or end up turning down the difficulty. But I'm super excited and juice for this one. Bless.

[Barrett Courtney]

Yeah, I think, I think the Office is going to be liking this one a lot. Like, I'm sad that Tim isn't on.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

This preview because this strikes me.

[Barrett Courtney]

Yeah, this strikes me as like very much like a Tim type of game, knowing how much he loves a Final Fantasy and, like, how much style is in this and how fun the combat is here. Like, I think this is one that is, you know, uniquely tailored to possibly all of our tastes here. And coming out of this, like, I Don't. I'm. I. I'm with you guys that. I think it's early for me to say contender, but, like, the projections for me are looking up. Like if I'm doing the, you know, the. What do they call it?

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

The.

[Barrett Courtney]

Not the rankings when you're doing like projections on, like the financial shit. Whatever. It's looking up for this game.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah. Oh, okay. Yeah.

[Barrett Courtney]

You know what I mean? Yeah. Like stocks. The stocks. Yes. Thank you. Yeah, the stocks in this game are looking up right now for me.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah, it's now most anticipated for sure.

[Barrett Courtney]

Exactly.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Nice, Barrett. All right, well, ladies, gentlemen and enbies, we won't have to wait long. Of course. Claire. Obscure Expedition 33 is coming out April 24, 2020, 2025. Meaning that we'll be covering it a lot more here on Kinda Funny Games. If you didn't know, we are all about live talk shows, usually about video games. So you can catch us when we're yapping over on Twitch TV. Kinda FunnyGames YouTube.com Kinda FunnyGames podcast services around the globe. No matter where you get the Kinda Funny Games cast, please consider picking up the kinda funny membership. $10 gets you all of our shows ad free and a daily dose of me in a series we call Gregway. Of course, this is just the halfway point of our day. We are far from done with shows. Right after this, we are moving over to do the review. That's right. Alien 3 in review as we continue. Continue. Alien versus Predator in review. And then of course there will be the stream of Mike and Nick in the afternoon. For now though, that's the end of the gamescast. Until next time, it's been our pleasure to serve.