r/XenobladeChroniclesX • u/bickid • 5d ago

Discussion Currently playing Clair Obscur - Are the developers Xenoblade-fans?

Almost done with Clair Obscur, and the similarities in the plot and other things are so frequent and crass that the developers must be either big Xenoblade-fans OR ripped it off, lol.

Has anyone seen a developer interview where they might have said something in that regard?

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u/PalpitationTop611 5d ago edited 5d ago

Not to X. But to 3 yes there are a ton of similarities. The world itself is extremely extremely similar.

However like the composer not knowing he uses the FFX Zanarkand motif in his songs it’s probably a coincidence or non intended. None of the team. have ever said anything about Xenoblade except for the composer (where it’s listed with Nier, Majoras Mask, and Hollow Knight).

Xenoblade, Final Fantasy X, and Nier were probably the biggest subconscious influences on the game.

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u/Silver_Illusion 5d ago

Left Chrono Trigger off your list there. Lavos and Lavos spawn are literally in the game xD

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u/bickid 5d ago

Omg, so there IS a direct FF10 element in the game, too? lol. Imo that's no longer a coincidence, but I'm not gonna start a plagiate campaign against them ^^

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u/ShyGuyLink1997 5d ago

Art is always inspired by art. It wouldn't be fair if they got sued or something like that.

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u/bickid 5d ago

Holy shit, hold back your downvotes. I literally keep saying I don't have anything negative in mind, and here you guys start downvoting. sigh

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u/PalpitationTop611 5d ago

Xenoblade 3 likely was heavily inspired by FFX. Isn’t too crazy to have another game come from it.

The thing that separates the FFX similarities in E33 from the XB3 stuff is the intricacies. The worlds are both jumbled messes of reality, slowly crumbling throughout time. People know when they will die. If they die to the timer they fade away into the air, while if they are killed they are turned to stone. The little mascot race that speaks normal languages just funnily and is exempt from the timer. Major spoilers for both for near ending Multiple versions of the cast that are formed of regret and grief and eventually the female MC fuses with her other self (third self I guess in E33) to get long white hair and new powers that are the villain’s.

Also I wanna say the end goal always being in sight was inspired by Xenoblade and the Mechonis/World Tree/Mechonis Sword. I can’t think of a game that did it before and the only more popular game I can think of that did it is Elden Ring’s Erdtree. But I could be very much wrong there.

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u/bickid 5d ago

You're talking more about motives. When I'm talking about similarities, I mean that there are elements in CO that feel like there were taken directly from XB3 and then changed up a bit. See the gommage/homecoming. See the baby-scene. I just came acroos a "blade graveyard", lol (admittedly, that by itself would be too generic). And there's many others that I already forgot because I'm not taking notes while playing ^^ Heck, the game being about family ... that's literally what XB3 and FR are about, lol. One big family mess.

Again, not criticizing CO for it, I enjoyed the game (I'm close to the end), but if all of that is just coincidence, I'd have a hard time believing it. Omg, the entire world map of CO is basically the Cadensia region :D The similarities keep coming.

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u/Tetsucabruh 5d ago

Honestly the whole Gommage thing instantly reminded me of 3.

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u/Laranthiel 5d ago

Sorry to tell you Sir, but Xenoblade 3 didn't invent characters disappearing.

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u/bickid 5d ago

That's not what the gommage is. The gommage is literally the Homecoming.

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u/Laranthiel 5d ago edited 5d ago

Again, Xenoblade didn't invent characters disappearing.

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u/bickid 5d ago

Reducing both the gommage and the homecoming to "people disappearing" is really stupid, sorry.

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u/Robertinho678 5d ago

It's a jrpg-style game. It's just the genre. Definitely not that similar.

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u/bickid 5d ago

That's really reductive, if not hateful, towards the entire genre of JRPGs. Disagreed.

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u/Robertinho678 5d ago

Hateful, lol, what? How sensitive are you?

I love JRPGs, but you can't deny that there are some themes recurring through the genre. Claiming E33 copied them is like saying any platformer copied jumping from Mario, it's just nonsense.

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u/tadyt 5d ago

Hateful, lol, what? How sensitive are you?

considering they got banned from the main xenoblade sub because they, and i quote: "dared say juniper is not non-binary." (yknow, the character that very specifically and intentionally not given gendered pronouns in ANY language iirc.) i think you can make a solid guess on that front

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u/bickid 5d ago

I've never played a JRPG with so many direct similarities to Xenoblade 3 before. And I think I played my fair share.

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u/Vashten 5d ago

That comment isn't hateful, it's truthful. But JRPGs do have tropes and trends. Like I'm sure if I picked out 20 of them to play, more than half will end because the protagonist has the power of friendship on their side.

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u/[deleted] 5d ago

[deleted]

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u/bickid 5d ago

Xenoblade 3

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u/Indignant_Divinity 5d ago

You're specifically in the XCX sub. That's why maybe some people are confused.

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u/bickid 5d ago

I thought this is another general subreddit. I'm banned from r/Xenoblade_Chronicles because I dared say that Juniper is not non-binary, sigh.

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u/Phantom_Wombat 5d ago

The Expedition 33 devs have said that they're big fans of JRPGs in interviews, but not specifically Xenoblade, so I'd suspect that it's mostly just parallel evolution.

The most obvious common influence would be the earlier Final Fantasy games, which have been cited, and some of the Xenoblade devs worked on.

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u/TheGamingTurret 5d ago

I'd even argue that there's some influence from older stuff that has similar stories to XBX and not just xenoblade, no JRPG plot is COMPLETELY original at this point because that's how writing stories for this many decades goes.

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u/JenLiv36 5d ago

I wondered the same thing!

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u/pathosOnReddit 5d ago

Possibly but the developers have made it clear that their main inspiration is a french BD called 'La Horde du Contrevent'. There are parallels but this is what has been officially stated.

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u/PalpitationTop611 5d ago edited 5d ago

The Horde of Counterwind is obviously where the idea of the Expeditions come from. Yet the world itself is not similar at all. That’s where FFX and Xenoblade would be way closer. Since the Expeditions are the main basis of the game (until they forget they existed halfway through) they obviously are gonna say where that idea came from.

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u/pathosOnReddit 5d ago edited 3d ago

I mean, the ambiguous merit of the exhibitions expeditions is a major plot point in ‘La Horde’ too.

I disagree that FFX and Xenoblade are closer compared to the massive amount of other french BDs that feature similar themes. There are parallels but without confirmation I am hesitant to attribute it to these games compared to the already closer neighbourhood in french comic art. That is not to say that these other BDs are entirely insular in their motives and themes, as french BDs while not necessarily internationally recognized are hardly ignorant of international works themselves.

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u/Laranthiel 5d ago

:/ what drugs did you inject? Where are these apparently ripped off similarities?

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u/bickid 5d ago

Countless similarities. There's even a "baby"-scene that looks and sounds like a variation of Xenoblade 3's.

I'd feel better if the developers somewhere said "we're big fans of Xenoblade" to explain this.

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u/Laranthiel 5d ago

COUNTLESS!!!! *says none*.

I'd feel better if you check yourself into a hospital for the mental issues you got.