Same here, I am in love with that game and I can’t stop listening to the 8h soundtrack or watch YouTube reactions videos of streamers crying in front of it.
Being French probably doesn’t help me from loving it… I finished the story 4 days ago and instantly reloaded my save to explore everything in the end game, unlocking every picto, every skills and Steam achievements.
Those Gestral beach mini games are annoying on purpose as they are a reference to final fantasy mini games. The platform parts are hopefully not very present, and I feel lucky to have killed that chromatic boss you’re talking about on the third try with full parry/counter.
Some few/nice advices, spoiler free but I’ll tag them anyway:
Tap for spoiler
Grosse tête (Big head) is another boss with tons of attacks, but easier (psa: kill it with Monoco in your team).
Once you can, go see the dragon flying in the sky (the serpenphare, snake + light house) and try to do a “Zelda TOTK” by riding it.
Do not go to the final part of the story with a too strong party, around level 60 would be my maximum. And do not equip the picto you get for finishing act 2. Otherwise you’ll be too strong and miss very cool content on some story boss fights.
After the story is done you can load the auto save and build a totally broken team to destroy everything. This is also how you can access the NG+ option.
I keep listening to Lumière over and over, it’s such a good song as is the rest of the soundtrack! I was just telling my brother the last night that I like that it’s a French game, its exposed me to a culture I don’t usually get to appreciate.
The French inspiration throughout the game is a nice change from the usual English/Japanese inspired RPGs IMO, I especially like how Esquie refers to Francois as franfran with a French accent! (Although everything about Esquie is awesome tbh).
The French swear words are a nice touch as well, although I have to ask, is tabarnak not a thing in France? If not, what’s the equivalent in France? I only know that word because I’m a Habs fan and a lot of them frequently use that word in reddit game day threads when they’re playing like shit haha.
I’ve heard Quebecois French and France French (wording? sorry) is a fair bit different, but I don’t speak the language so I only have an outsiders level of knowledge at best.
Ha that makes them a bit more palatable but they’re still really annoying just like a lot of those old FF minigames were. Thank god for save states!
Lumière, Alicia, déchirer la toile, une vie à s’aimer… I have so much little green hearts 💚 next to Clair Obcur titles on my Spotify.
I agree that it is very refreshing to see French inspiration, we are not very used to that in video games and they embraced it to the joke level. The baguette outfit were, quote from Guillaume Broche (CEO & Art director, creator of the project): “A joke we had on our internal discord and it went too far”.
Clair Obscur is an art style, the game takes place in the Belle époque (late 1800s early 1900s) and you can see plenty of references to that time, for example the pattern on the robe of the first flower seller in Lumière, just after the red and white tree.
This time period is never explored in games so that is also very cool to see.
Esquie is the best friend indeed, and he has a perfect French as the voice actor for English and French is the same. But all voice actors are amazing, English and French, it’s funny that you can hear the English ones struggling a bit with the French swearing (they tend to say “poutain” instead of “putain”).
And no, no Tabarnak, this is exclusive from Quebec and very much not a thing in France (or any European French speaking country). It doesn’t really have an equivalent as they use it for various emotions. I’d say it’s the Quebec F word, so the French P word (putain).
The game was made by French from France, so no Belgian or Swiss specific French language, only the one from continental France.
It shows after you meet François, in both languages Esquie says:
Ahahah François you got smashed
Ahahah François qu’est-ce que tu as pris cher.
“Prendre cher” is very very French street language and means something like “pay dearly” but always in a bad way. You got hurt doing something stupid? Tu as pris cher.
It started from the city of Lyon I think and like plenty of French slang has Arabic influence, this one being the word “Cheh”.
Cheh is a Moroccan (and probably Algerian) onomatopoeia for “serves you right”, so if I hurt myself being silly, I will hear a little and discreet “cheh” from my Moroccan wife in the other room. One magical onomatopoeia to say “I told you so, that serves you well”.
For French language differences, France, Belgium, Luxembourg, Monaco and Switzerland are very close and we can understand each other without strong complications. Same goes with Northern Africa and most of Africa. It’s mostly an accent change and most vocabulary stays the same.
It gets a little bit difficult with the Caribbean French and other far away islands as they often use their own local language mixed with French.
Then you have the final boss, the endgame, Québécois. Oh Canada… You have strong accent + different vocabulary + slang. Dudes from Quebec HAS to make efforts to be understood in France (or Switzerland or whatever) cause we won’t understand them if they don’t 😁
Maybe we could with a little training, but as a famous languages school said in an add: “Time to learn French, because they won’t learn English”
I am considering picking up the game when it’s on sale, and you seem like a good person to ask: Is it better to play the game in french or in english, I’m fluent in both so I don’t have a preference.
The final version of the script was in french. I can try to find the interview if you want. Basically, the lead writer of the narrative has English as her first language, but the co-writer of the script is french (as is the studio at large). The script went back and forth between English and French multiple times during development, but the final script ended up being in French.
Performance capture was done by the french actors, but speaking English (for motion/facial capture), so technically both languages are dubs, and neither has perfect lip synch.
Both casts are absolutely great. I prefer some voices in English and some in French. However, there are absolutely some parts of the script where it’s obvious it was written in French, with wordplay or double meanings that don’t translate to English.
It’s a hard one, both are very good and I will do both (first playthrough in French, new game+ in English).
We don’t really know which language is the original one. Plenty would think it is French but the main writer doesn’t speak French and the motion capture for the lip sync was apparently made for English.
But the creator won’t answer on that question, when asked on a French livestream he said “I’ll let you decide which language is the OG one 🤷🏻♂️”
Same here, I am in love with that game and I can’t stop listening to the 8h soundtrack or watch YouTube reactions videos of streamers crying in front of it.
Being French probably doesn’t help me from loving it… I finished the story 4 days ago and instantly reloaded my save to explore everything in the end game, unlocking every picto, every skills and Steam achievements.
Those Gestral beach mini games are annoying on purpose as they are a reference to final fantasy mini games. The platform parts are hopefully not very present, and I feel lucky to have killed that chromatic boss you’re talking about on the third try with full parry/counter.
Some few/nice advices, spoiler free but I’ll tag them anyway:
Tap for spoiler
Grosse tête (Big head) is another boss with tons of attacks, but easier (psa: kill it with Monoco in your team).
Once you can, go see the dragon flying in the sky (the serpenphare, snake + light house) and try to do a “Zelda TOTK” by riding it.
Do not go to the final part of the story with a too strong party, around level 60 would be my maximum. And do not equip the picto you get for finishing act 2. Otherwise you’ll be too strong and miss very cool content on some story boss fights.
After the story is done you can load the auto save and build a totally broken team to destroy everything. This is also how you can access the NG+ option.
I keep listening to Lumière over and over, it’s such a good song as is the rest of the soundtrack! I was just telling my brother the last night that I like that it’s a French game, its exposed me to a culture I don’t usually get to appreciate.
The French inspiration throughout the game is a nice change from the usual English/Japanese inspired RPGs IMO, I especially like how Esquie refers to Francois as franfran with a French accent! (Although everything about Esquie is awesome tbh).
The French swear words are a nice touch as well, although I have to ask, is tabarnak not a thing in France? If not, what’s the equivalent in France? I only know that word because I’m a Habs fan and a lot of them frequently use that word in reddit game day threads when they’re playing like shit haha.
I’ve heard Quebecois French and France French (wording? sorry) is a fair bit different, but I don’t speak the language so I only have an outsiders level of knowledge at best.
Ha that makes them a bit more palatable but they’re still really annoying just like a lot of those old FF minigames were. Thank god for save states!
Thanks for the tips!
Lumière, Alicia, déchirer la toile, une vie à s’aimer… I have so much little green hearts 💚 next to Clair Obcur titles on my Spotify.
I agree that it is very refreshing to see French inspiration, we are not very used to that in video games and they embraced it to the joke level. The baguette outfit were, quote from Guillaume Broche (CEO & Art director, creator of the project): “A joke we had on our internal discord and it went too far”.
Clair Obscur is an art style, the game takes place in the Belle époque (late 1800s early 1900s) and you can see plenty of references to that time, for example the pattern on the robe of the first flower seller in Lumière, just after the red and white tree.
This time period is never explored in games so that is also very cool to see.
Esquie is the best friend indeed, and he has a perfect French as the voice actor for English and French is the same. But all voice actors are amazing, English and French, it’s funny that you can hear the English ones struggling a bit with the French swearing (they tend to say “poutain” instead of “putain”).
And no, no Tabarnak, this is exclusive from Quebec and very much not a thing in France (or any European French speaking country). It doesn’t really have an equivalent as they use it for various emotions. I’d say it’s the Quebec F word, so the French P word (putain).
The game was made by French from France, so no Belgian or Swiss specific French language, only the one from continental France.
It shows after you meet François, in both languages Esquie says:
“Prendre cher” is very very French street language and means something like “pay dearly” but always in a bad way. You got hurt doing something stupid? Tu as pris cher.
It started from the city of Lyon I think and like plenty of French slang has Arabic influence, this one being the word “Cheh”.
Cheh is a Moroccan (and probably Algerian) onomatopoeia for “serves you right”, so if I hurt myself being silly, I will hear a little and discreet “cheh” from my Moroccan wife in the other room. One magical onomatopoeia to say “I told you so, that serves you well”.
For French language differences, France, Belgium, Luxembourg, Monaco and Switzerland are very close and we can understand each other without strong complications. Same goes with Northern Africa and most of Africa. It’s mostly an accent change and most vocabulary stays the same.
It gets a little bit difficult with the Caribbean French and other far away islands as they often use their own local language mixed with French.
Then you have the final boss, the endgame, Québécois. Oh Canada… You have strong accent + different vocabulary + slang. Dudes from Quebec HAS to make efforts to be understood in France (or Switzerland or whatever) cause we won’t understand them if they don’t 😁
Maybe we could with a little training, but as a famous languages school said in an add: “Time to learn French, because they won’t learn English”
I am considering picking up the game when it’s on sale, and you seem like a good person to ask: Is it better to play the game in french or in english, I’m fluent in both so I don’t have a preference.
The final version of the script was in french. I can try to find the interview if you want. Basically, the lead writer of the narrative has English as her first language, but the co-writer of the script is french (as is the studio at large). The script went back and forth between English and French multiple times during development, but the final script ended up being in French.
Performance capture was done by the french actors, but speaking English (for motion/facial capture), so technically both languages are dubs, and neither has perfect lip synch.
Both casts are absolutely great. I prefer some voices in English and some in French. However, there are absolutely some parts of the script where it’s obvious it was written in French, with wordplay or double meanings that don’t translate to English.
Did that help?
Yes! Thank you, I’ll probably play it in french, in that case.
It’s a hard one, both are very good and I will do both (first playthrough in French, new game+ in English).
We don’t really know which language is the original one. Plenty would think it is French but the main writer doesn’t speak French and the motion capture for the lip sync was apparently made for English.
But the creator won’t answer on that question, when asked on a French livestream he said “I’ll let you decide which language is the OG one 🤷🏻♂️”
So, 🤷🏻♂️
Insert why not both meme here