Vaspaan Dastoor is an Editor for TheGamer. Previously worked at IGN India and constantly tries to get people to make time for an LOTR marathon. He can be found giving hot takes for cold responses at @DastoorVaspaan
Nobody could have predicted how Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 ended. In fact, very few of us could have imagined a narrative even close to what Sandfall Interactive put out. While Maelle, Verso, Gustave, and the others are part of the main crew, the adorable and often silly Gestrals were the soul of the story.
Not only were they whimsical creatures, but each of them were unique in their own way. The same could be said about the Nevrons, the game’s enemies. Not only do they look strange, but also have unique names. While they may not make sense to most of us, French speakers will spot certain references in the names. It turns out that the devs also made little notes in the game’s code so that localization teams get the context.
Nevron Names Now Make Sense
If you ever found yourself wondering why a certain Nevron was named something, all you had to do was learn a bit of French to understand the reference. Since that’s easier said than done, Sandfall devs included short notes and even Wikipedia links alongside files for each character, including the Gestrals and Nevrons. Suddenly, their names make a lot more sense.
Thanks to a Reddit post by Responsible-Race-575, we can see some of these notes in Clair Obscur’s source code, with each entry including a name, gender, and context. For example, the Gestral Ono-Puncho is a reference to One Punch Man, and the context includes a Wikipedia link to the anime character.
Sandfall Interactive has added an almost limitless photo mode to Clair Obscur: Expedition 33.
There are some other interesting entries in the code, like the context under Volester is “Vol = Fly. It’s a flying enemy. Rest of the word has no specific meaning.” For Abbest, the context reads, “Abbe means abbot. It’s a theme shared with the Evêque that means bishop”. Others are rather simple; Licorne means unicorn in French, while Potier is just an enemy that uses pots.
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Everyone’s most hated Petank contains a Wiki link to a French game called Pétanque. The aim of the game is to score points by throwing ‘boules’ close to a small target. It sounds a bit like the Petank from Clair Obscur.
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