Sure, here’s the rewritten article:
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So, writing a novel… yeah, mostly it’s just you hanging out with your thoughts, right? And screenplays, well, they’re just like, 120 pages max. Unless you’re Scorsese, then who knows? But video games? Oh boy, you gotta stretch those words into hours and work with other folks. Sometimes it feels like chucking spaghetti at the wall at 3 a.m. But hey, brilliance happens.
And then there’s Clair Obscur. It’s got all these French intricacies, but Esquie? He’s snagged the players’ attention big time, especially with this ridiculous convo about François with Verso. François went from “Wheeee!” to “Whooo.” And why did Esquie even care? You even get to choose your “whee/woo” path. It’s silly, absurd fun.
“That was totally a 3 a.m. brainwave,” Svedberg-Yen laughs. Like, “I gotta pump out seven whole dialogues for Esquie!”
She spills how Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is like 800 pages long, and that’s just the script! NPC backstories, lore, the whole shebang. She pulls tidbits from around her life. The character Monoco? Yeah, totally influenced by her dog. When her dog was a shaggy mess, she’s like, “Perfect! Monoco’s getting a trim.” Couldn’t resist telling her pet he looked like an “overgrown mop.” And bam, it’s in the game.
That “whee whoo” bit made zero sense at dawn, but it clicked.
“I just wanted to talk about joy mingling with sadness,” Svedberg-Yen goes. “Words failed me. So… ‘wheeeeee!’”
Authenticity’s her jam as a fantasy writer. Characters gotta feel real, even if they’re from some wacky dimension. She rolls with her gut feelings, bizarre as they are. Clair Obscur isn’t all doom and gloom ’cause, you know, that’s just life being life. “Did I overdo it? Maybe sometimes. But if I’m at a loss, I’m like, what’s happening inside me right now? And I drop that into the story. That’s real—totally me.”
