by
William D’Angelo
, posted 8 hours ago / 899 Views
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 creative director Guillaume Broche in an interview with Automaton believes there is still a prejudice against turn-based RPGs despite the increased sales in the genre.
“I could talk about the prejudice forever,” said Broche. “Personally speaking, I think Japanese turn-based RPGs were super popular up until the Xbox 360 era. But around the time open-world games started getting more popular through gaming media, [JRPGs] started being considered ‘uncool.'”
Broche says Persona is one of the more successful examples of the genre, but says turn-based JRPGs have a long way to go to regain the popularity it once had.
“While they do still sell a large number of copies, with the Persona series as a prime example, I feel like the prejudice against turn-based RPGs isn’t completely gone,” said Broche.
He added, “It’s not like we added the parry system and built such a narrative experience because we wanted to avoid our game facing prejudice. We just did it because we wanted to do it.”
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 sold over 3.3 million units in 33 days. The game released for the PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, PC via Steam and Epic Games Store, and Xbox Game Pass on April 24.
A life-long and avid gamer, William D’Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012 and taking over the hardware estimates in 2017. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel. You can follow the author on Bluesky.