Following the incredible success of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, Game Director Guillaume Broche was featured in a series of interviews to discuss the game’s development. For example, he revealed that he started working on the project due to his boredom while working at Ubisoft. Then, he opened up to a potential Nintendo Switch 2 port for the game.

Now, in a new interview with the Japanese website Denfaminicogamer, Broche discussed the influences of previous classics in the JRPG genre. Out of all of them, he singled out P-Studio’s Persona 5 as the best game when it comes to combat visuals and user interface.

I grew up playing games, especially JRPGs, since I was a child, so I can’t really say which elements of which titles influenced me. After playing a variety of games, I had my own ideas of “this part is interesting” and “this is what I think is the most interesting turn-based RPG.” That was my final vision. What I wanted to focus on was sublimating my own view of JRPGs that I had developed since childhood and adding my own originality to it. In terms of specific titles that have influenced me, the list is endless, but they include Final Fantasy series VI to X, Shadow Hearts, Suikoden, the Atelier series, Lost Odyssey, and the Persona series.

In particular, I think that “Persona 5” is the best game in the world in terms of battle depiction and UI creation. I was greatly influenced by the dramatic camera changes every time the player operates, and the production unfolds like watching a movie. I further changed the camera work to suit my own work and added my own particular touches to it, which is what I did with Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. I still haven’t been able to fully incorporate the good parts of Persona 5, so I’m still working on improving the UI.

By the way, while the gameplay is influenced by JRPGs, the way the story is constructed was influenced by the French novels I’ve read, so I think the story is French.

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is likely to be a strong Game of the Year candidate, especially now that Grand Theft Auto VI’s massive shadow has moved to 2026. You can read Francesco’s enthusiastic 9.5/10 review here.