The 5 Funniest Moments of Expedition 33

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is a depressing game. It’s epic and majestic, but undoubtedly bleak. Luckily, it also has some hilarious moments timed with comedic perfection, which somehow never feel out of place. It’s a credit to the writers, and the performances of the voice actors. These are my favourite funny moments of Expedition 33.

Monaco Joins the Party

The first time you meet him, Monoco has absolutely zero interest in joining you. He’s living the good life, he’s got his train station and wants nothing to do with the Paintress and your quest to kill her. But he’s also a Gestrel, and Gestrels love a bit of violence. A lot.

So Monoco belligerently refuses to help his old friend Verso for several moments, and you assume he’s never going to be convinced. But then this happens:

Verso: We’re going to old Lumiere.
Monaco: Okay, bye.
Verso: There’s gonna be a lot of fighting.
Monaco. Okay, I’m in.

And this game’s version of a blue-mage joins your party.

Oh, What Lovely Feet

Shortly after he’s joined you comes this hilarious realisation about Monoco: the guy collects feet. Whenever you kill a nevron with Monoco in your party, he adds a new foot to his ever growing, presumably stinking, collection of monster feet. It’s completely bonkers, but serves a very handy purpose, as each one grants Monoco a new ability.

From then on, you’ll often hear Monoco’s crooning battle cry as a new fight begins: “Oh what lovely feet…”

Esquie’s Noises

Esquie was a surprise hit for me. My first impression was that he’d be this annoying flamboyant fool of a character, but he grew on me pretty quickly. When you unlock his various abilities, you get to hear him chant and sing whenever he starts to run, goes swimming or takes flight, and it’s funny every time:

“I’m the fastest swimmer!”
“Wheeeee!”
“Flying through the sky!”

He’s charming, whimsical and a welcome joy in a game that is full of so much grief and sadness.

Get Out of My Way!

Before you can even meet Esquie, you have to get past his bodyguard, which is one of the earliest funny moments in Act 1. You’re given the password by the Gestrel leader Golgra. This moment is funny in itself, as she tells you the password is simply “get out of the way”, with the instruction that you have to shout it as loud as you can. But then the moment comes when Gustave actually does it, and the poor guard is so offended and upset that you yelled at him, he sulkily moves aside, explaining that he doesn’t even know the real password. “I never realised humans could be so rude.”

Gestrel Math

The Gestrels give you various challenges at beaches scattered around the game map, and one little twerp gave me an annoying math problem to solve. He told me his current age, then asked the hypothetical question that if he were a human, how old would he be when he gommaged? I spent a good five minutes calculating it, by adding up from his age, at the same time as counting down from 33, straining my brain, wanting to get the answer right first time. I gave him my answer, 17. And he goes, “You’re probably right. I can’t count anyway.” I cracked up.