I am weary of exposition in video games. Don’t get me wrong — I love when a game has well-developed world-building and lore. But I don’t love getting into a conversation with an NPC who doesn’t talk like a real person and just monologues at me about their fictional religion or place of birth like they’re reading from a Wikipedia entry. It’s been a refreshing change of pace to play Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, the debut game from Sandfall Interactive that’s out today. I’m 15 hours in, and I have yet to run into any extraneous exposition.

I haven’t seen anything I would describe as “exposition” at all yet, as a matter of fact. Clair Obscur requires you to put together the plot based on context clues. And the experience is very disorienting, especially because it’s a video game and this is a medium where I’m so used to being spoon-fed story beats and world-building facts to the point of boredom. Even something like Death Stranding, known for its unique and bizarre world, is chock-full of characters explaining exactly how it works every step of the way. (Now, actually understanding any of those explanations is another story, but they’re........

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