The game I chose is Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 by Sandfall Interactive, a turn based action RPG. Expedition 33 is intentionally vague about how its world functions, at least in relation to the mystical and supernatural aspects. And that is a good thing. The characters in this story either were very young when the disaster/inciting incident struck, with years to live in this world. They wont go on a lengthy exact explanation of how things work, because they all know it already. The game doesnt even give a 3rd person omnicient narrator exposition dump as many games with complex worlds and extremely important back stories do. It throws you into the lives of these people as the events take place, and there is careful effort to make sure feels like it is you watching the story, not the story playing out for you. This lack of direct exposition does a few things, with the first being to spark the curiosity of the player to how deep the complexities of this system goes. That leads to the player thinking about the given information and to deduce what things mean with thier knowledge of language and the context around words. This also leads with the building theme the entire game takes around colors, art, and painting. The players interest is crucial for a game to thrive, as without it, the likleyness that a player will continue playing a game signifigantly lowers. Cultivating the curiosity and not giving a lengthy explanation that would probably overwhelm players with so much information or bring them out of their immersion of the game. Since that interest in the world is fostered, it is the foundation for the story to build itself into the players mind. As someone who is invested in learning about the world will in turn most likely become invested in the characters that inhabit it along with the story. That foundation of the story is a wonderful thing for this game as one of the parts that makes it such a critically acclaimed game is its wonderful story. The characters powers arent really explained, the system of energies is left up to context, and that is what allows this game to pull so many parts of the players interest. Its combat has great feedback and the exploration loop is quite nice, the story is tragic and wonderful, and the bow on top that ties it together is a world built and revealed in such a way as to invoke the curiosity of the player to draw them deeper. The lower level direct worldbuilding of the level design is crafted in a way to maximize the players ability to explore their world. Enemies serve as directional arrows, often set in lines of where the player is being directed in the story. This also sets up the part where if there is a branch in enemies, there is often a direct obvious path that is correct. That is seperated from the less brightly lit, or smaller path where. It is set up early on that these side paths host sometimes stronger enemies that drop new loot, or just have extra loot sitting there as a reward for the player exploring. This is then used throught the game to give player agency in exploration that is otherwise linear. The added choices that dont actually change anything in the story but still give resources for the player to use and get stronger make it so it doesn’t feel as point A to point B as it is.
The general worldbuilding of Expedition 33 has a strong french cultural theme, with the names and accents being most obvious. That however is most probably due to the developer biases and identity with them being french themselves. This is because, after doing some very quick internet lookups I found that the beings and system doenst have any direct tie in with any mythology that I could find. Another majorly influenced factor of the game is the soundtrack, with it being very orchestral or opera like. Which is generally in line with classical music and its strong ties to France and Italy. The mechanics have their own specific subversion of existing genres and systems to give a unique gameplay experience, but other than conditions that get in the way of engaging with the mechanics of the game or video games in general, or how accessing the game can be a challenge with it requiring a PC, or console to run it on along with a digital license to that game and internet to download it I cannot think of any ways that the mechanics have any harmful or positive societal affect. The cast is reasonably diverse, and the “bad guys” arent depicted as a version of a real world group in any direct way that I can think of. The capabilities of the characters dont have any connection to their cultural identity in a way that implies that thier actions or cababilities are inherent to them or their identity. Those being considered I cannot think of any other factors that could be generally negative.
