Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 draws heavy inspiration from an obscure French novel that most players have never even heard of.
Most Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 players probably think the game’s expedition concept came from typical JRPG tropes. They’d be wrong. The real inspiration comes from a French novel so “obscure” that it’s never been translated into English.
La Horde du Contrevent by Alain Damasio hit French bookstores in 2004 and became a cult classic. Twenty-one years later, Sandfall Interactive turned its core premise into what is now one of the most celebrated RPGs in recent memory.
The connection runs deeper than surface-level borrowing. This isn’t just about “numbered expeditions”; it’s about existential dread wrapped in beautiful prose.
The novel that nobody outside France knows
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Damasio’s masterpiece follows groups of warriors attempting to reach the source of an eternal wind that dominates their world. Every expedition fails. New groups form, push further than their predecessors, then inevitably perish in the attempt.
Sound familiar? That’s because Sandfall Interactive lifted this structure wholesale for Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, and the developers weren’t shy about admitting it either. François Meurisse, the game’s producer, explained the connection to CNET in a recent interview:
About the countdown, I think Guillaume woke up one morning and though that idea could be cool. But the expedition concept, the special inspiration behind it is a French novel called La Horde du Contrevent. It wasn’t translated in other languages, but it’s a cult classic now in French, published in 2004.
The honesty is refreshing. Most developers would dance around their influences or claim everything was original. Meurisse straight-up credits the novel as fundamental to their vision.
He continued by describing what specifically captivated the development team about Damasio’s work:
It’s a great novel about a group of warriors, like an expedition of 20 or 30 people that try to find the origin of the wind in the world, which always blows from west to east.
The parallel structure becomes obvious when laid out this way. Both stories feature large groups with specialized roles attempting to reach an impossible destination. The wind source mirrors The Paintress as an unknowable force that must be confronted.
Every expedition fails, and they send a new one. We loved this idea of like trying to overcome what the best group did before you, trying to find out which point they reached in the world, how they failed and will you succeed?
That cyclical failure concept became the emotional backbone of Clair Obscur. The Paintress erases everyone who reaches age 34, so Expedition 33 represents humanity’s final desperate attempt.
From French literature to gaming excellence
Literary adaptation without the usual Hollywood butchering. | Image Credit: Sandfall Interactive
The adaptation process reveals something fascinating about cross-media inspiration. Damasio’s novel works through internal monologue and poetic description, while video games need action, combat, and player agency. Sandfall Interactive solved this by keeping the emotional core while completely reimagining the mechanics.
The wind becomes The Paintress. The endless journey becomes turn-based combat with real-time defensive elements. What they preserved was the psychological weight—both the novel and game focus on characters who know they’re probably walking toward death but choose hope anyway.
That’s not typical video game storytelling. It’s literary fiction disguised as entertainment, and it works brilliantly because the developers understood what made the source material compelling beyond its surface elements.
The novel’s influence extends beyond plot structure, too. Damasio wrote each character with distinct narrative voices and specialized roles within the group, and Clair Obscur mirrors this with party members who feel genuinely different rather than cosmetically varied.
The untranslated status actually works in the game’s favor—players experience the story fresh without preconceptions about how it “should” be adapted.
What other untranslated novels deserve video game adaptations? Share your thoughts in the comments below!
