Clair Obscur: Expedition 33's photo mode is creating pure nightmare fuel

'Our goal was to give players as few restrictions as possible'

Oblivion Remastered's player-made faces are total nightmare fuel, but they've got nothing on the monstrosities Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 developers created while testing the game's new photo mode — or the horrors players have created since gaining access to it.

"In many games we tested, Photo Modes often felt restrictive, which could quickly become frustrating," QA coordinator Naja Dalmagne said in a recent dev blog. "So, from the very beginning, one of the key goals we all agreed on was to give players as much freedom as possible. It was really about letting players express their creativity without getting in the way."

But player freedom sometimes comes with unexpected side effects.

"During development, the QA team ran into some unexpected and sometimes quite funny issues," Dalmagne explained, sharing images of characters with their heads misaligned and their jaws literally on the floor. "One of the funniest, but also one of the most severe, involved characters whose heads or torsos could become displaced or deformed when opening the Photo Mode if they hadn’t been visible on screen for a while during exploration."

This freedom also allows players to peek behind the curtain during cinematics, and the results aren't always pretty.

"When we started working on the photo mode, our goal was to give players as few restrictions as possible and that’s what I was in charge of coding: infinite camera distance, the ability to pass through collisions, lots of customizable lights, many (weird) filters, and more," explained senior gameplay programmer Florian Torres. "Of course, that comes with its challenges, but in the end it allows players to see a lot of things we don’t want to show during normal gameplay. The photo mode became a way to peek behind the scenes of each cinematic or environment, and sometimes even see how we have created the entire game. Ever wondered what happens outside the camera frame? Here’s an example (sorry cinematic team, I love you)."

Torres shared images from the game's cinematics, featuring characters with partially missing limbs and strange facial expressions.

These glitches are tame compared to the shots taken by players once Photo Mode was released. The team at Sandfall Interactive shared some of their favorite images from players, which largely consist of extremely zoomed-in shots that create the illusion of an oversized head/face.

But despite all the awards, accolades, and hilarious Photo Mode shots, Sandfall says its work on Clair Obscur isn't yet finished.

"We are continuing to work on fixes for ongoing problems," said Photo Mode consultant Ludovic "Shinobi" Helme. "Keep an eye on the Steam bug thread and socials to stay updated on the latest."