“The prejudices have not disappeared” the JRPGs have a hard life, even when they are called clear!

News Game “The prejudices have not disappeared” the JRPGs have a hard life, even when they are called clear!

See Xbox Game Pass on Amazon

The creative director of Clair Dark is formal: the prejudices of the JRPG have a hard life

If you grew up playing Final Fantasy or to any other cult license in Japanese role -playing games, you have certainly been used to Turn by turn fights. But if this is not the case, this very special style could well disgust you before you even touch the controller. Indeed, it is not uncommon for players (and more particularly Western players) to prefer action games to those where you have to select their attacks and wait for your turn before you can execute them, unless we talk about a Pokémon game. An aversion that has managed to convince some developers to move away from their roots (hello Final Fantasy), but which did not do the French developers of Clear obscure: Expedition 33. In an interview with the site Automaton On the occasion of the CEDEC of 2025, the creative director Guillaume Broche explains:

I could talk about prejudices for hours. Personally, I think that the JRPGs on the turn were very popular up to the era of the Xbox 360. But when the open world games began to gain popularity in the specialized media, the JRPGs began to be considered “not cool”. I think they still manage to sell a lot of copies, as the persona series proves for example, but I have the impression that the prejudices against the RPGs in turn have not completely disappeared.

Clear obscure or the exception that confirms the rule

At the end of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, many players found themselves a little torn in the face of this proposal. The narration, the universe and the characters attracted them, but knowing that it was an RPG in turn by turn spread them. Fortunately, a few minutes of experience were enough to sweep away all doubts, especially thanks to A slightly more modernized combat system that classics of the genre. However, including a system of parades and dodges was not particularly a technique on the part of the developers of Sandfall Interactive to attract allergic to the JRPG:

We have not added the parade system and built a narrative experience because we wanted to prevent our game from prejudicing. We did it because we wanted to do it.

Guillaume Broche explains that The parades system was present from the first development ideaseven if its implementation was not easy. To achieve the result that we know, spindle was mainly inspired by Sekiro: Shadows Die Twicethe famous game of From Software to which he played a lot at that time of development. In short, when a game is made with passion and reflection, it can obviously overcome the most stubborn prejudices.