According to IGN, the lead game designer for Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, Michel Nohra, has publicly addressed criticism from completionist players who found the game’s final boss fight too easy. Nohra told Edge magazine, via GamesRadar, that he regrets not making it clearer that the boss is designed to be fought immediately for the intended challenge, not after completing all side quests. Lead programmer Tom Guillermin admitted the team was surprised players were doing “every single thing” before the final dungeon, as they were unsure how long players would engage with the world. The issue came to light following the game’s massive success and sweep at The Game Awards 2025. Nohra clarified he doesn’t regret the game’s design but wishes there was more explanation about the player’s choice in Act 3.
The Completionist Paradox
Here’s the thing: this is a classic, almost unsolvable problem in RPG design. You want to reward players for exploring your world and engaging with all the cool side stuff you built. But if you tie meaningful power progression to that exploration, you inevitably break the carefully tuned challenge of your main story climax. The Clair Obscur team basically fell into the same trap that’s ensnared countless games before it. They built a world compelling enough that players wanted to see everything, which is a huge compliment! But they didn’t anticipate that so many would feel compelled to do it all before seeing the ending. It’s a player psychology thing. Once the credits roll, that urgency to clean up the map often evaporates.
A Surprising Success
What’s really fascinating is the developers’ candid admission of surprise. Guillermin said they weren’t sure how long players would stick around once the final boss was accessible. That tells you a lot about development cycles. You’re so deep in the trenches, balancing systems and fixing bugs, that it’s hard to predict how your audience will actually behave. The fact that players loved the world enough to 100% it before finishing is a testament to the game’s quality, even if it created this unintended difficulty snafu. And let’s be real, for every player disappointed by an easy final boss, there’s probably another who felt epic and powerful steamrolling it. You can’t please everyone.
Looking Ahead
So, what’s the fix? Nohra mentions better explanation, which helps, but is it enough? Maybe future games in the teased Clair Obscur franchise will implement level scaling for the final encounter, or gate some of the most powerful rewards behind post-game content. They’ve already tried addressing the hardcore audience with a DLC full of brutal fights, which seems to have worked—I mean, someone spent eight hours parrying a boss 10,000 times. That’s commitment. The real takeaway is that this is a high-class problem. It’s the problem of building a game so good that players don’t want it to end, even if it means the ending itself loses a bit of its punch. Not the worst place for a new IP to be.
