Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 and Baldur's Gate 3 share quite a lot of similarities, one of them being how they both propelled relatively niche genres into the mainstream eye. JRPGs and CRPGs have their loyal fans, but they're nowhere near as common as shooters and platformers when it comes to massive blockbuster successes. Even big JRPG franchises like Final Fantasy cast off the genre for real-time combat.
Former Dragon Age writer David Gaider put it best when he said that Clair Obscur is "to JRPGs what Baldur's Gate 3 was to CRPGs, and in a recent interview with GamesRadar, he went a bit deeper into those comments and what he actually meant.
In the interview, Gaider talks a bit about how publishers shouldn't treat certain audiences as a "finite number of people", and that they should be more focused on making games like Clair Obscur and Baldur's Gate 3 that do a good job of "expanding the audience" instead. He also talks a little bit about "mass appeal", and how publishers can sometimes take the magic out of games by trying to cater to everyone.
Clair Obscur is a French game made by a French team, and that dynamic...
