Clair Obscur Expedition 33’s soundtrack is secretly one of its biggest triumphs

Clair Obscur Expedition 33 is getting praise for its core storyline and gameplay, but there are other elements of the game that are pushing the boundaries of the medium as well.

Many players noticed that the soundtrack is a significant part of the game’s identity, with the emotional roller coaster of the first few hours being in large part defined by the way the music swells and dances with what’s happening on screen. It makes you really relate with the characters.

People sobbing after just the first 30 minutes of playing Expedition 33 is pretty common, especially if they went in blind with no knowledge of its premise. It’s one of the highest rated games of all time for a reason.

Whether or not the OST gets any industry awards at the end of the year is up in the air, but the sheer length of it has put Clair Obscur up there with some of the longest original video game soundtracks of all time. It is an absolute behemoth.

Does Clair Obscur Expedition 33 have the longest OST ever?

The exact duration of the OST is 8:09:33, meaning it’d take over one third of a day to sit down and listen through it in its entirety. Even as video games have grown to have expansive soundtracks featuring multiple artists and collaborators.

Clair Obscur Expedition 33

And, while games like Rock Band and Guitar Hero have huge track lists, the music isn’t original most of the time. The real feat here is that all of this music was made just for this game.

However, it isn’t the longest of all time, even for a single player RPG. Guinness hasn’t been tracking the record for a long time, so getting conclusive data on which game has the biggest OST is a difficult proposition. However, Xenoblade Chronicles 3 has a staggering 11 hour original soundtrack, with that not including the expansion.

Meanwhile, Final Fantasy 14 and Super Smash Bros. Ultimate both have soundtracks that are over 20 hours long. Though 8 hours sounds like it’s a lot, it has certainly been topped in the past.

However, the biggest feat with Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is how the OST stacks up in proportion to the game’s actual length. While you can stretch the experience out to be around 60 hours, it can easily be completed in around 30 hours if you’re just trying to get through the story.

While some of the music is tied to various side activities, the fact that there’s unique music for more than a quarter of Expedition 33’s baseline completion time is a ludicrous statistic. No wonder the music feels so uniquely tailored to each moment, the game was designed that way.

So, while it may not have the sheer length of some other titles, Clair Obscur’s soundtrack is still special. And don’t let it being beat out by other titles make you feel as if eight hours isn’t an extraordinarily long runtime for an original soundtrack.

Nier: Automata for instance, a game with a soundtrack so exceptional that its sold out entire opera houses to be performed live, is just under four hours in duration. Considering Nier’s OST is one of the most iconic and varied in gaming, it really puts into perspective just how huge an accomplishment Expedition 33’s original composition is.