Clair Obscur JRPG
Image: Push Square

The success of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 has sparked all kinds of conversations surrounding turn-based RPGs, with many onlookers suggesting that Japanese developers could learn a lot from Sandfall Interactive's debut.

Of course, Clair Obscur director Guillaume Broche has been outspoken about his appreciation for Japanese RPGs; the game simply wouldn't exist as it does without taking inspiration from, er, those that came before.

But Broche believes that there's still a kind of stigma surrounding the genre. In an interview with Automaton, he hints at some lasting frustration: "I could talk about the prejudice [towards JRPGs] forever (laughs)."

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He continues: "Personally speaking, I think Japanese turn-based RPGs were super popular up until the Xbox 360 era. But around the time open-world games started getting more popular through gaming media, [JRPGs] started being considered “uncool” (laughs).”

We do get where he's coming from. We vividly remember reading old PlayStation magazines back in the early 2000s, and writers would often be totally dismissive of any Japanese RPGs not called Final Fantasy, reducing them to 'anime nonsense', for lack of a better term.

"While they do still sell a large number of copies, with the Persona series as a prime example, I feel like the prejudice against turn-based RPGs isn’t completely gone,” Broche expands.

And on that note, he explains that the team's intention was never to try and escape the "uncool" tag of other turn-based titles by incorporating action elements into Clair Obscur's combat.

"It’s not like we added the parry system and built such a narrative experience because we wanted to avoid our game facing prejudice. We just did it because we wanted to do it."

For what it's worth, we do think JRPGs, or at least anime-styled RPGs, have shaken off a lot of the aforementioned negativity over the years. We're not saying that something like Persona is mainstream — in the true sense of the word — but that type of experience is much more readily accepted than it was 10 or 20 years ago.

What do you make of Broche's take? How do you feel about modern JRPGs and turn-based RPGs? Tell us all about what you think is uncool in the comments section below.

Do you think modern Japanese RPGs are uncool? (372 votes)

  1. Yes, they're super uncool9%
  2. Yeah, they're kind of uncool4%
  3. Eh, it all depends on the game's tone26%
  4. Nah, I think they're cool28%
  5. No, they're the coolest of the cool33%

[source automaton-media.com]