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It’s been quite the year for Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 and developer Sandfall Interactive. After launching to critical acclaim in April, the RPG began to dominate award ceremonies such as The Golden Joysticks and The Game Awards. Its use of controversial generative AI technology, though, saw the game stripped of its Indie Game Awards wins for Game of the Year and Best Debut Game.
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 also won TheGamer’s Game of the Year. You can check out our full top ten here.
The announcement divided the gaming world, with some jumping to the defense of the stunning title, and others quickly lamenting it.
Now, for the first time since the controversy, the game’s director, Guillaume Broche, has spoken out, saying everything in the final game is “human-made” and that using the technology “felt wrong.”
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 Director Addresses Recent AI Controversies
In a new Q A, hosted by Kepler Interactive and transcribed by YouTuber Sushi, Broche detailed the studio’s thoughts and feelings around the recent controversies and AI in general.
“Yeah, we’re aware of what’s been going on with that,” he said. But I can say, everything in the game is human-made.”
He continued, “When AI first came out in 2022, we’d already started on the game. It was just a new tool; we tried it, and we didn’t like it at all. It felt wrong. We originally used it as a placeholder for textures we missed, but we took it out as soon as we found it. But yeah, the concept art, voice actors, everything is human-made.”
AI has become a hot topic in games over the last year. Some of the world’s most prominent developers, including Larian, CD Projekt Red, and Epic Games, have all come out in favor of the technology. Broche isn’t sure what the future of games looks like, but he can confidently speak for his own studio.
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“It’s pretty hard to predict what the future will look like, but everything will be made by humans from us.”
Much of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33’s success can be attributed to the game’s human feel and the developer’s ability to create what they wanted without a giant corporation bearing down on them. This will, inevitably, allow them to skirt AI in the future — while big companies push the tech, smaller ones will be free to avoid it.
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The use of A.I doesn’t matter. I can’t imagine discounting an entire game that costed loads of money to create just because they used A.I in some places of their development.
If one of the ideas is to support creators for their hard work and not use A.I, this is a massive contradiction. “You cut a corner in your development that costed thousands (and for some millions) of your own money, therefore I cannot touch your game”.
The reason A.I is so heavily used is because games cost too much money to create and so do consoles. We’re going to reach a point where cutting edge technology will be few and in-between just because it costs too much money to maintain and use. Anyone whose just hyper focused on the use of A.I and not asking why they’re using it, is apart of the problem with the gaming industry as a whole.
2025-12-24 16:31:52
Respectfully, MTX stated off with an innocent horse armor. Now look at it. Any studio that uses AI will never see a dime from me. You do you but know you are enabling the downfall of human creativity while also using stolen art assets.
Games have been made for decades without AI, don’t grovel and white knight AI companies, whether it’s in the final product or not. It was used, end of story.
2025-12-26 18:48:21
Not supporting Larian and now this company, among many others. Any AI is too much especially as it was trained on stolen art assets and takes away jobs in an already declining industry.
MTX started as an innocent horse armor and now we have dlc you pay 50 plus for on release day, AI will make things so so so much worse.
2025-12-26 18:53:17
The sensible thing to do. As alwqys, there will be folks watching their releases under a magnifying glass to check their claim. All the genAI-friends on the net must remember that not a one single company in existence is your “friend”.
Whether they produced your favourite consumer good or not.
I won’t play Clair Obscur because of this debacle. Maybe their next title. But definitely not on day one, of course.
2025-12-24 10:05:09
You won’t play an incredible game that uses zero AI assets? What’s your logic behind that?
And I’m curious what you are playing.
2025-12-24 16:24:24
Yes that sounds like a completely sensible thing for people to waste their time doing. In a similar fashion to people that continue to lurk a games forum being toxic, years after they claimed to have stopped playing. Very productive uses of time.
The reality is that here’s nothing wrong with using AI for certain things, it’s a wonderful innovation in certain applications. You’re not going to stop it, just like no one could stop factories automating tasks previously performed by humans.
Stop the futile struggle against the march of time and progression.
2025-12-24 17:10:23
I started playing recently and it’s amazing. Not playing cause of assets that aren’t even in the game is just sad. That’s your loss though I guess.
2025-12-24 20:06:50
Jordan
horse armor was the start of MTX, allowing AI to be used for any aspect of a game is wrong as it uses stolen art, takes human jobs away and leads to laziness.
you can support the next enshitifaction of gaming but don’t white knight / simp for companies like this, it’s sad to defend corporations bottom line.
2025-12-26 18:50:21
