Sandfall Interactive’s Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is, undoubtedly, art. While the game did controversially made use of AI placeholder assets during development, the full game is an entirely human-made project that has also become one of the best-rated games of all time.
In a prior interview, game director Guillaume Broche confirmed that Sandfall’s next title will not use AI at any point during development. “Everything will be made by us,” he said after explaining that using AI “felt wrong” even when it came to placeholder textures.
Now, half-a-year after that, Broche has discussed the exploding popularity of AI tools yet again. Speaking to Konbini, the Clair Obscur lead explained that “everyone’s a little scared, though, of the road ahead, of how things might turn out”.
The Expedition 33 creator explained that lifelike AI-generated video has already become terrifying, but video games are currently safe from full AI replacements. “With video games, we’re still somewhat protected,” he said, “because, technically speaking, it’s a different ballgame.”
Broche pondered what will happen when AI can “churn out a game in 5 seconds with a prompt”, a future that AI companies are hoping for. “Will it be a good game?” he asked. “I hope not. But I think everyone’s asking themselves that question, and admitting that it’s a little scary.”
The game director argued that there’s no point to using AI in the creative process if you love doing what you do. “Even if we’re not doing things the best way possible, we don’t care,” he said. “Our approach for the creative side of things, no. I feel like it takes away some of the joy of doing creative things. So, why change? We had so much fun making our first game that we’re doing to do the same thing.”
While Sandfall may have quickly spun up AI-made textures when the tech was fresh, and replaced them with human-made works afterwards, that’s not going to happen for whatever the studio creates next. “The artists at Sandfall love to draw and do 3D work”, he said, “so we’re sticking with that.”
However, outside of art-led aspects, some tools may be used. “When it comes to administration, and even the code itself, it depends,” he said. “It’s hard to say how the industry will evolve. In any case, one thing’s for sure: the way we love making games is by creating”. Broche concluded the discussion by saying, “we’re going to keep doing it this way”.
Right now, Sandfall hasn’t announced what it’s next game will be, but the team has teased that it may not be another turn-based RPG. The team has explained that it doesn’t “want to be constrained” into a genre, despite their love of turn-based games. With this in mind, Sandfall’s next title could be anything.
