Clair Obscur director says flawed games beat perfect ones: 'A perfect game is boring anyway'

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 creative director Guillaume Broche isn't apologizing for the game's rough edges — he's proud of them. In a recent interview with YouTube channel Konbini, Broche laid out his philosophy: games that chase perfection end up hollow, and the ones with visible flaws are usually the ones people actually love.

Broche pointed to Devil May Cry's legendarily awkward line — Dante screaming "I should've been the one to fill your dark soul with light!" — as the kind of endearing imperfection he was inspired by. "You see their flaws and think to yourself, 'yeah, it's lame, but I don't care,'" he said. "A perfect game is boring anyway." He extended the idea into a broader theory: "Games that try to be perfect, that try to fix all their flaws — they're usually just really boring. My theory is that it's just like people. People who try to be perfect are boring because they have no personality. Whereas people who embrace their slightly weird side — in the end, are the interesting ones." On the game's deliberately maddening minigames, Broche was blunt: "We knew when we were making them: it was going to be unbearable, people were going to lose it, but it's part of the fun. We thought it was funny."

Broche also acknowledged that Expedition 33's core design concept raised eyebrows before launch. Mixing the reflex-heavy demands of action combat — dodging and parrying in real time — with traditional turn-based RPG structure was a combination many in the industry warned against. "Fundamentally there are a lot of design decisions that, from an outside or business perspective, make no sense at all," he admitted. That hybrid system was one of the most-discussed elements heading into release, with skeptics predicting it would satisfy neither action fans nor JRPG purists. It didn't pan out that way.

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 launched to widespread critical acclaim, with its blend of French surrealist aesthetics, emotionally brutal storytelling, and that divisive-but-distinctive combat loop winning over players who might never have expected to enjoy a turn-based RPG. Broche's comments suggest that unconventional, slightly chaotic design philosophy was never accidental — it was the whole point.