In a new interview with Automaton about the inspiration behind its hit turn-based RPG, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 developer Sandfall Interactive was asked about the potential for the game to hit Switch 2 in the future. Answering questions were Guillaume Broche, the game’s director, Tom Guillermin, CTO and co-founder of Sandfall, Alan Reynaud, lead character artist, and Alexandre Breton, lead technical artist at Sandfall. The official company stance? “It’s too early for us to announce anything.”
The majority of the interview focuses on how Sandfall believes limitations are what bring out the best aspects of game design. Naturally, this segued into a discussion about the Switch 2, which has more limited hardware specifications compared against the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X. Answering the question about a Switch 2 port directly, Broche commented, “We are interested in looking for a way to do it, but it’s too early for us to announce anything at this point.”
Elaborating further, Guillermin added, “It’s a big technical challenge because we tried to do something beautiful with the game, but of course, the Switch 2 is not as powerful as the PlayStation or the Xbox Series X. So, it’s an important thing for us to consider, especially given the size of our studio.” Broche mentions that “A lot of features [of Unreal Engine 5] don’t work on Switch 2.”
If you’ve been following the development of Unreal Engine 5, you’ll know that Epic Games has introduced some new features which are aimed specifically at Switch 2 development. As Reynaud brings up, “They’re [Epic Games] introducing features like Lumen Lite now, which is easier to run than the standard Lumen, but these things take time to roll out, so we’ll have to consider the updates coming from Unreal Engine to determine what to do.” Backporting that into Clair Obscur would be a bigger task than simply flicking a switch and being set.
All things considered, it doesn’t seem like Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 will be hitting the Switch 2 anytime soon. While Sandfall probably doesn’t want to overlook the opportunity to bring its game to a wider audience, it might not be technologically feasible given how integral UE5 features were to the game’s look and design.
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Written by Peter Glagowski
Peter has been a freelance gaming and film critic for over seven years. His passion for Nintendo is only matched by the size of his collection.
