Sure thing. Here’s your reimagined article:
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Okay, so writing a novel is pretty much a solo gig most of the time. You just wrestle with your thoughts and hope for the best. And scriptwriting? 120 pages and you’re done, unless you know, you’re working for someone like Scorsese who probably wants a sequel before you even finish. But writing a video game? Whoa. That’s next level. Endless words, fitting them into this whole interactive thing, and usually a pack of writers all crowding around the same keyboard. Deadlines? Just throw whatever at the wall. It’s 3 a.m., and your brain’s mush. Genius can pop up then. Or not.
And oh, Clair Obscur. The game’s all Frenchy vibes—everyone’s digging Esquie. Especially this one chat where Esquie goes on about François with Verso. Verso thinks François is a grump, but Esquie’s like, “Nah, Franfran used to be this bundle of ‘Wheeee!’ Now he’s all ‘Whooo.’” You even pick your own whee/woo adventure. It’s wild. Can’t make this stuff up.
Svedberg-Yen, the brain behind it, laughs, “Yeah, that was me, late night craziness. I was cranking out seven dialogues for Esquie!”
And get this, the script for Clair Obscur: Expedition 33? A whopping 800 pages! And then there’s the NPC chatter and pages of lore that didn’t even make the cut. Svedberg-Yen was grabbing inspiration from everywhere. Monoco, some character in there, is basically her dog. Seriously, her dog needed a haircut, so, boom, it’s in the game. “He looked like a mop,” she says—actual dialogue right there.
The “whee whoo” bit? Bonkers at dawn, but it just clicked. “I had this message—it’s deep, right? Joy tangled with sadness. But my mind was mush, so I went with ‘wheeeeee!’”
Svedberg-Yen’s first rule? Keep it real. Even if it’s out of this world, they gotta feel like they popped out of somewhere real. Authentic vibes. Does she overdo it sometimes? Sure. But when words fail, she asks herself, “What am I even feeling?” and just shoves that right into the script. Now that’s real talk—messy, but real.
