Stellar Blade Director Gets Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 Platinum Trophy, Says It's Game of the Year

Eastern Devs and new startups in western countries will lead the way while the old guard crumbles

That’s pretty cool. I do agree, it is GOTY right now. I’m attempting to go for the platinum trophy as well. I’m at the end, and can fully explore the entire map. I’m trying to wrap up all side content before beating the game, but I’m actually struggling with the end-game content. I may save it for a NG+ down the line, but if I do, I’m going to max out all relationships first, find all the lost gestrals, and do their beach activities. I’ll save the combat oriented trophies for a second playthrough.

PS: Stellar Blade is phenomenal, and I got the platinum for that game.

How someone as busy as them manage to to play more hours than me, someone who has a lot of free time.

This is how you know which studio will make great games; the developers and bosses love playing games themselves.

Some terrible games really make one wonder if the devs have ever played their own game, let alone envisioning a good game.

@CutchuSlow then you dont have as much free time you think. Or you have multiple hobbies. I play games a lot, for past 7 years I average 2k hours per year. Some people are nolifers. Grinding 7hr+ at work and 6hrs+ at home

Always good to see a developer congratulate another, could be 2026 before I get around to it but looking forward to it at some point!

Death Stranding, Ghost of Yotei, Mafia, Crimson Desert- "GOTY?
Hold My Beer"

Clair obscur expedition 33 and kingdom come deliverance 2.monster hunter wilds.etc.a lot of competitions. Word up son

I love Expedition 33 (I gave it a 10/10) but I feel KCD2 has got pushed to the side lines now, people cannot deny it's one of the best made RPGs this gen.

GotY is going to be tough to pinpoint this year with so many hype games releasing.

For now it's my GOTY but there are still so many games coming and maybe some surprises we don't know about yet.

@CutchuSlow I guess if you sit there all weekend for 32 hours (16 a day) then it would take three weekends to get to 96 hours even if you don't play during the week at all. I once played MH World for 20 hours in one go but I don't think I could make a habit of that.

Good stuff, I want to play both games eventually.

It’ll be nominated for sure. But I’d hold out on anyone saying (if they are) it’s an actual GOTY lock. Death Stranding 2 & Ghost of Yotei will most likely be immensely popular and well-crafted games

Expedition 33 deserves all the praise it’s getting though. Well done, Sandfall (slick studio name too)!

There have been so many incredible games this year and still more to come, so it's going to be a tough choice, but Clair Obscur is definitely up there. I finished it over the weekend and was just completely blown away after it was over. It's been in my head since.

@ECharles been there done that. All the games you mentioned. COE33 is a live letter to all the games that inspired it, and then it made it all 10 times better. It is a unique work of art AND a very good game at the same time, with deep systems and game mechanics, and a multilayered multi allegorical story, superbly written well with zero pandering. No, dude, nothing else will come even close to achieving these heights for quite some time let alone in 2025.
Now, that's all about trying to critically look at it. No doubt there are great games coming that will be liked more by more players but that's a different subject.