How Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 Exposes the Challenges of Keeping the Anti-Woke Movement True to Its Goals

In every meaningful movement, there’s a moment when temptation sneaks in — that urge to bend the rules just once, to brush aside a principle for the sake of a fleeting win. For the anti-woke gaming crowd, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 has become a striking example of that tug-of-war — and the fallout that can follow when lines get blurred.

The Hidden Flaw Beneath the Surface

Launched to widespread praise, Clair Obscur wowed players with its visual splendor, polish, and tight gameplay. It whisked gamers into a lush reimagining of La Belle Époque Paris, an era steeped in nostalgia and romance.

Renoir’s famous painting Bal du moulin de la Galette shows what middle class Paris was like during that era. As you can plainly see, there are no black people there and the citizenry is wearing culturally appropriate attire.

On the surface, it felt like a rare win — a modern game that sidestepped the usual traps of DEI box-checking and progressive sermonizing that have weighed down so many recent titles.

But as it turned out, the shine masked deeper cracks.

Yorch Torch Games was among the first to point out a jarring detail: the background NPCs in Clair Obscur’s Paris included an oddly large number of unexplainableblack characters.

Historically, that’s off the mark. Belle Époque Paris had a tiny black population, mostly students or immigrants from African colonies — a few hundred among millions. This mismatch wasn’t just artistic license; it smacked of modern DEI ideals slipped into a setting where they jarred against historical reality.

Even the attire for is horrendously wrong. Black woman are depicted as bald fashion models and wearing what appears to look like stableboy attire.

The Fracture Within the Movement

When the purists in the anti-woke camp raised alarm bells, they didn’t find the solidarity they expected. Instead, some of their own turned on them. Influential voices who had once heaped praise on Clair Obscur snapped back, dismissing the criticism as nitpicking or purity spiraling. Suddenly, the racial distortion was waved off as “no big deal.” A few even spiraled into cursing and emotional tirades — classic signs of cognitive dissonance, when uncomfortable truths collide with prior attachments.

Leaderless and Vulnerable

Part of the problem is the anti-woke movement’s amorphous nature. Like Gamergate before it, it has no central leadership, no coordinated strategy, no formal organization. Into that void step figures like YouTuber Endymion, a relative newcomer to these battles, who’s tried to stake out leadership by tossing around sweeping declarations and publicly clashing with people who’ve called out the developers for this pandering. It’s a recipe for tension — and fragmentation.

The Lessons of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33

This rift offers hard-earned lessons for any movement hoping to stand firm against ideological drift:

1. Excellence Clouds Judgment. A gorgeous, well-crafted product makes it tempting to overlook flaws that would otherwise spark outrage. In gaming, top-tier execution can blur critical lines. But if even small ideological tweaks slide by unchecked, they pave the way for bigger ones.
2. Emotional Investment Dulls Objectivity. Once someone’s gone public with praise, walking it back gets harder. Pride and reputation get tangled up, shifting the focus from defending truth to defending ego.
3. Immersion Depends on Internal Coherence. Belle Époque Paris lives in our cultural memory — in paintings by Monet, Degas, Renoir, in old photos and postcards. Those artists captured their world as it was, not as a 21st-century sensibility wishes it had been. Changing that backdrop for ideological aims cracks the illusion, pulling players out of the experience.
4. Movements are Most Threatened not by Outside Enemies, but by Errosion from Within. Small compromises, brushed aside in the name of pragmatism, pile up — until the original cause becomes hollow. We’ve seen it in Gamergate, in revolutions, in countless social movements. Without a clear-eyed, principled core, rot sets in.

Conclusion: Holding the Line

So where does that leave things?

The anti-woke gaming community needs to double down on its core tenets: authenticity matters. Ideological distortion — no matter how pretty the package — is still distortion.

Criticism should be calm, focused, and clear. This isn’t about race or gatekeeping for its own sake; it’s about maintaining immersion, honoring consistency, and respecting history.

There also needs to be room for course correction without humiliation. Allies who misstep shouldn’t be torched; they should be welcomed back if they’re willing to acknowledge the issue.

And perhaps hardest of all, the community must be willing to take the short-term hit — to sacrifice a win like Clair Obscur — for the sake of long-term integrity.

In the end, this debate isn’t just about one game. It’s a test of the anti-woke movement’s backbone. Will it stay true when it’s inconvenient? Will it have the grit to guard against even small breaches? Or will it, little by little, surrender to the allure of half-truths?

The price of preserving a movement is eternal vigilance — not just against enemies outside, but against the temptations within.

—Wolfshead