We need to talk about Expedition 33.

So uh..... i thought about writing this before The Game Awards but i'm kinda late for the party and this isn't a review on Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, i never played it but i'm just gonna spill out something that's been brought up before the patch kicked in just quickly at launch, and... look, i don't think E33 is bad, don't get me wrong! I think it's a beautiful masterpiece with all it's passion put in to it with colorful characters, great worldbuilding, evolved gameplay and the story is pretty wholesome n' heartwrenching to see. And above all JRPGs... this is a step-forward from any JRPGs and it was made for only $10M in a low budget as Godzilla Minus One and it even won Game of the Year and this is evidence that a video game doesn't need that high of a budget to make a best experience as the marketing make ya think and i hope more studios n' indies will take notes from this to improve their game even more!

But aside from all the greatness n' hype about Expedition 33, i uh... i kinda hesitated to play it because there's some hiccups pointed out that there was an AI placeholder asset pandered in either during development or at launch and... yeah... this is problematic that they crossed the line with this one out and this is also a bigger punch one of us couldn't forget, i mean... the screenshot doesn't lie. but all of that was patched out with real drawn newspapers, that a relief fix but still... there's a line, there isn't an official statement, no frequent answers, nothing, they just stayed silent after the patch and this is gonna bring up bigger questions than ever and not only that this is some kind of disrespect to any artists who worked on this. OH. Speaking of which... The concept art was found around ArtStation already exist and they think it's difficult to draw newspapers, then hire an artist who did the reference/concept so it would be no problem (they also use placeholders they find from other sources without ai via shapes, bitmaps, etc.) or especially use a different engine like Godot which it's free so there isn't any ai asset pack leftover in stores in unreal/epic, but damn... they just fumbled the ball this deep and this is much harder to forget.

Look... Sandfall team, i know you guys took development on this game since 2019, i get that you're new and escaped from Ubisoft to make your own passonate project based on France with a concept n' prototype and building up a team of people who cares and protect a big project you made in a cave (I'm referencing Iron Man, lol.) and i like how it turned out, but still, ya gotta keep using your human creativity on video games and pay the artist to get it done with their own reference or other sources rather than using or placing ai assets from unreal stores (i just don't get why people still use UE), also don't just quietly patch it and say nothing about it if people points out on it and move on without a guilt, ya gotta come out on this situation otherwise they'll push you harder cuz we have questions about it, i'm sorry but this doesn't work that way since one of you kinda done harm the environment and a lack of respect to a concept artist.

OH and there's also an article after a week ago stating that Sandfall is Anti-AI and will never use any AI junk in future titles, this made me chuckle because this doesn't bring the fact they've been caught using it themselves while working on this game. And then there was another article back in summer that they used some bits of AI. Hypocritical much...? I mean, pick one, are these guys Anti-AI or not...? If they used AI for other visuals across some places in the game and not just placeholders, are you guys trying to keep damaging the environment and not hire other artists to work it out??? This is... this is really confusing because i can't with the fact think if one of the devs or producers even care about making art without a machine learning hellfire that does damage to life on earth that most evil companies (especially USA) uses to screw themselves. And i can see why i was not surprised about the sweep winning several awards at TGA overshadowing Hollow Knight: Silksong, Hades 2 and Death Stranding 2 taking the gold home, i mean Best Art Direction doesn't cut it because of what i said before the last few segments ago for disrespecting the concept artists and Best Indie Game/Debut which if i remember this correctly there were like hundreads of people working on E33 and not 30+ so that doesn't even count as an indie game, eh... Game Awards is so controversal at times, especially Geoff.

After all the research n' sources i've rolled around throughout this post, i am definitely downright never playing this game... Look, i don't want to sound bidder about it and could take a wrong turn when bringing this up, i wanted to play this game when i heard hype and praise about it, i really did, but after what i saw... i'm still not even sure and i don't want to waste money and i still have to think harder when major red flags comes around when it comes to critically acclaimed video games.

I can't really speak more about this cuz i'm super tired, so if one of you are upset and even found out, then don't play Expedition 33 at all, one of us felt cheated and betrayed and i understand you've been burnt before and wanted a good game without any AI stuff pandered in, well... you can find something else to play that's worth your time or there's similarity to Expedition 33 then i would likely go with The Last Story (exclusively on the Wii if you have one), Final Fantasy 7 or 15, NieR:Automata™, or Metaphor: ReFantazio. That's all i can give it to ya from here n' out at least.

Well, i'll wrap this up for now, y'all have a good day and remember... support human artists.