Clair Obscur is clearing the path for its Game Awards sweep with a major win at The Golden Joysticks

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, a fan-favorite and an incredibly successful AA production, has won its first major award at this year’s Golden Joysticks. It’s an overture to The Game Awards, set to take place some 20 days from now, where the game is expected to sweep through the categories.

The award: Ultimate Game of the Year. Expedition 33, which came seemingly out of nowhere, took home the biggest award The Golden Joysticks have to offer, setting a precedent for its soon-to-come sweep of The Game Awards.

It is the most-nominated game in the show’s history, and could theoretically win them all, though I believe the judges will probably think “that’s enough” after a certain point and allow some of the categories to go into another’s hands (unless Geoff wants us to listen to Sandfall’s devs on stage for literal hours).

With this crowning achievement at The Golden Joysticks, Expedition 33 has proved that a game does not have to be a billion-dollar venture, nor a live-service attention-span-reducing “product” that is a video game in name only. All you need is a good story, compelling characters, and an aspiration to create substantial art, art that does not rely on the eye of the beholder but yearns to achieve and inspire something great in anyone who observes it.

From the music to the style to the France-inspired setting, everything in Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 carries artistic value, which no doubt explains why so many people felt enchanted by it.

And, being a video game, it still needs considerable gameplay and a fun loop, which it provides by all means. It’s an evolution of the JRPG genre, which is taken in its base form and transformed into something both recognizable and new, fast-paced and tactical, action-packed and emotionally charged.

It’s as close to a perfect game as they come, and JRPG powerhouses are going to need to have a long, hard think about what they need to do to make their games competitive in the genre again (though for some companies and fans, yearly regurgitations seem to do the trick, unfortunately).

I congratulate Sandfall for the win, and can’t wait to see how the game fares in the upcoming, biggest award show of the year (in gaming).