Image credit: Eurogamer

"Maybe people won't like it. That's life," says Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 director and Sandfall Interactive founder, Guillaume Broche, when asked about the studio's yet-to-be-revealed sophomore game - its second game. "We didn't make the first game to please anyone, and I think that's why it worked."

Damn straight. The quotes come from an interview Broche took part in for Video Game Club on the Konbini YouTube channel, and they represent only the second set of hints towards what the studio will be working on next. All eyes are on the French upstarts after the runaway success of Clair Obscur Expedition 33, which won three BAFTAs, a DICE game of the year award, has probably sold through over 6 million copies at this point, and even received acknowledgement from the French president.

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It's a lot of pressure for the studio, for sure, but in an industry that increasingly feels strong-armed into following trends and chasing profits, it is extremely refreshing to see Broche so blasé - at least outwardly - about how his studio's next game will be received. So much of Clair Obscur's success was borne from the studio not really caring about what the wider industry was doing, instead making something personal and important to the creatives working away on the RPG. This grew into a bigger project than Broche and his co-founders anticipated, sure, but it never lost its way: citing Persona 5 (particularly the camera-work and UI) alongside Lost Odyssey and Blue Dragon (for their implementation of quick-time mechanics in turn-based battles), Clair Obscur set the industry alight when it launched. To all intents and purposes, it made turn-based battles in RPGs mainstream again (arguably after taking the torch from Larian - more on that later).

So what could come next? The only other thing we've heard Sandfall say when it comes to its second project was in an interview back at the very start of the year. After dominating The Game Awards 2025, Sandfall's chief operating officer and production director, François Meurisse, reflected that the resulting pressure is "not so important to us". Even at that point, the team had "some great ideas" which it was "excited to explore".

In the same interview, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33's lead writer Jennifer Svedberg-Yen began hitting upon what we've seen Broche say this week: "I've seen too many TV shows and books be swayed trying to please a lot of people, and in the process you end up losing the heart of what's there. So [we] feel like we need to trust our instincts and continue to trust the vision behind the studio."

I love it. We're hearing bold, unapologetic statements from Sandfall at precisely the same time Xbox starts its funeral march towards a 'big reset', which will likely end up with the platform holder shuttering studios and focusing on iterative brands that everyone knows: Halo, Call of Duty, Fallout, Gears, and so on. Elsewhere in the industry, things aren't looking any better - even seemingly successful studios like 007 First Light developer IO Interactive are losing staff as investments are pulled.

That a (technically) independent studio like Sandfall can find such resonating success while remaining resolute in the name of creativity feels like a tonic to the current wave of capitalist cynicism coursing through the industry. Sure, Kepler published Clair Obscur, but the studio retains its independence and has control over its projects. You can't help but wonder if the huge corporations forcing studios to chase after doomed trends let developers pursue their own passions, that we might not be in this mess.

I know that's a reductive thing to say, but with the success of ostensibly independent titles like Clair Obscur, Baldur's Gate 3, and even viral sensations like Meccha Chameleon, it seems plain that audiences hunger for studios to make new game experiences, or breathe new life into old ones. Maybe even the waning sales of Final Fantasy are part of this picture: younger audiences want new projects from new studios, as the appeal of the mega-franchise wanes. Total lifetime sales of Final Fantasy 16 are estimated to be 4.5m at the very highest - Clair Obscur has been out for less time and has at least 1m more sales. Go figure.

Whatever Sandfall Interactive does next, I am here for it. Personally, I'm hoping the studio does something with the sort-of dormant 'Active Time Battle' system that was first introduced in Final Fantasy 4, and was a mainstay of the series until it was retired in Final Fantasy 10. The idea of different characters with different gimmicks in an ATB setup, rather than a strictly turn-based one, fills me with glee. Broche has said, after all, that Final Fantasy 8 is his favourite game of all time - he's a man of impeccable taste and objectively correct, clearly. If we see something more in that vein, perhaps we may see thundaga strike twice.

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