I watched (in a second screen sort of way as I tended to some work) the Game Awards last night. I’m not interested in talking about what the ceremony means—it’s a pretty vapid affair—but the powerful sweeping of awards by *Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 *was interesting to see. it also left me feeling a bit… odd.

Before I say anything, I wanna say that I’m happy for that team and think they made a very cool game. But while I’m often interesting in talking about games, I’m also interested in how we talk about games. This is what made Horsesinteresting to me and it’s draw me out to write again. Because as the night went on and Geoff Keighley talked about the power of indie games like Expedition 33, I couldn’t help but feel a bit uncomfortable. Something felt off, y’know?

In watching Expedition 33 get subsumed into Keighley’s machine and the narrative picture he wanted to paint about 2025, I couldn’t help but frown. 2025 might be the year where indie games and alternative sub-genres outshine a flagging AAA space but I think we need to be honest about what drew Keighley to Expedition 33 into the narrative he was building. Because when Geoff Keighley mentioned “indie games” what he really means to say is “indie games of a certain scale and aesthetic.” This is what many people mean!

So I want to talk about RPGs and I want to talk about budgets and I want to talk about respectability. Because for as impressive a story I think Expedition 33, it hardly a mistake that the indie RPG that supposedly redeems the genre is one which, national identity or not, chases so hard after AAA games and Hollywood…

Talking about JRPGs can be weird because people like to over-complicate what the genre’s “deal” is. Because there was a time, particularly after the death of adventure games, where JRPGs rose up to almost solely occupy a space as “the games that tell stories” there’s a kind of romanticism that comes up when some people talk about the genre. That’s understandable but it perhaps overplays the depth of the stories that are told in JRPGs and really in video games generally. Most games stories are pulp and hardly revolutionary.

It’s fine to admit this. Good, even, to understand that you could have gone to the movies at many points this year and probably watched something with a bit more meat to the bone than whatever video game you were playing at home. That’s just the truth and it doesn’t make games less beautiful. Still, a lot of people in games (players or developers) struggle wen confronting this truth.

We all agree that games are art but when some of us confront the fact that very often there’s just better shit happening on our bookshelves, it can lead to a paralyzing fear. Throughout the 2000s, video games have grappled with this fear, seeking all kinds of ways to invite praise and seeking a a kind of respectability. Mostly, this means intimating films many years after they’ve done something.

Children of Men pioneers long camera shots and twelve years later, *God of War *boats about never taking the camera of Kratos. So it goes on and on… indeed, that Sony prestige model is the perfect touchstone for the kind of anxiety I’m talking about. the ongoing quest for “playable cinema” that fails to understand that how oxymoronic of a term that is. and yet we seek it insatiably.

This is the snag with Expedition 33, I think. For all the craftsmanship and all the ways I see, in the artists who made it, kindred spirits… I cannot help but also see a game gripped by this yearning.

You might think that unfair of me to say but I’m not really talking about Expedition 33 the video game. I am talking about the cultural object and what i see first and foremost is a game of certain luxuriousness and richness. people have grasped that quality and made it a kind of rallying cry. see? see? even with less budget we can still make One Of These and have it feel suitably AAA.

That last part is where I stumble. Yes, this is an “indie” game insofar as it wasn’t backed by a major publisher but its sensibilities, the kind of production it is trying to emulate and embody is distinctly that of a high budget, mass market AAA product. and much of the conversation about the game has not really been about the story itself but how a “small indie team” managed to create what was nominally a AAA game. because that is what *Expedition 33 *is.

again, this is not about the story or anything. that’s a different kind of blog. but Expedition 33 is a game of suitably lush stylisms… though not too lush that we can have a bit of photoreal alpha-graphics… whose story is backed up by the performances of many skill actors, a few of them Hollywood figures, all underscored by a highly *produced* orchestral score. many people were drawn to this game not because it was an RPG but because it looked so much not like what their mental image of an RPG was. this was “respectable.”

I have been playing Trails of Cold Steel in my spare during this holiday season and in general I don’t think this game, which is far from the best Trails game even, is doing anything much worse or better than Expedition 33. they operate on a same kind of broadness even if they are telling different stories. and in this, I actually commend Expedition 33. for all the anxiety I see in the game’s production design, the tone and feel does match other RPGs.

but again, that’s the snag isn’t it? when you boil it down, it’s just another RPG. fun and broad and within that broadness I think there’s a very real kind of humanity to be found but you can find that same humanity here in Cold Steel. I found great reserves of it within *Octopath Traveler 0*recently! RPGs kick ass. it’s just a good format and in embracing the genre, Expedition 33 can be inspiring. most 7/10 or 8/10s will put any prestige action game to shame.

but Trails of Cold Steel looks and feels “of the genre” whereas Expedition 33 does not. it looks like the Big Boys, carries itself like the Big Boys. and so I cannot help but read, to some extent, the conversation around that game and the resulting awards adulation through anything other than a sort of respectability politics lens.

a lot of people turn their noses on JRPGs! I outlined a recently example of this in my Horses blog mentioning how Ian Bogost, a kind of model games academic, often colors his criticisms of video game story telling with a kind of Orientalism. and I think many people feel this way. there’s a kind of embarrassment with RPGs (particularly Japanese works) for their broadness and brighter aesthetics, for their tropes and forms. so many… though not all… people coming to Expedition 33, I think, are folks who felt chagrined by RPGs but by virtue of the game’s AAA qualities. it felt safe to them.

take that with all the implications you can. what made it felt safe? well, it was like a movie. it was more obvious western even though it was working in the same emotional space as the rest of the genre

If you look a certain way, embody certain aesthetic markers of “quality” people fundamentally treat you differently. this is true not just in life but with art. Last night, as Larian revealed their new Divinity game’s trailer, I watched a scene of highly detailed gore. Flesh teared, snapped, burned. Lusciously, gorgeously and on the main stage there was a moment where folks at the Game Awards simply watched animated torture. meanwhile, visual novel makers or art game developers have their games banned from storefronts.

but that’s okay, they don’t look quite so good anyway y’know?

This is the same thing that catches me with Expedition 33. looking a certain way, meeting a certain kind of quality, made it an easy choice for awards but also a game that Keighley could not ignore sucking into the machinery of his prestige celebration. it’s undeniably a good game but it also looked the part. and because it looked the part, it’s not just an RPG anymore but *the* RPG that’s redeeming a genre which is not particularly in need a redemption.

and so the attempt to escape pain, to escape the pain of being locked in a genre… creates more pain. the art exists but another thing is also birthed. help, i’ve been turned into a marketable plushie! help, I’m not longer just a decent RPG but an object lesson about production. thank you Unreal Engine 5, I couldn’t have done it without you.

finally, I can be the thing I’ve always wanted to be. I can finally be “one of the good ones”