Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 development hinges on Unreal Engine 5, Switch 2 port stalled

Sandfall Interactive credits Unreal Engine 5 as essential to creating the award‑winning title Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. CEO and creative director Guillaume Broche highlighted the engine’s integrated tools—Blueprint visual scripting, MetaHuman, Nanite and Lumen—as decisive factors that allowed a small team of four programmers and dozens of designers to produce a large‑scale game.

The studio now faces a major technical hurdle porting the visually demanding title to the forthcoming Nintendo Switch 2. Broche explained that the Switch 2’s hardware cannot match the performance class of PlayStation 5 or Xbox Series X, and many UE5 features, including full Lumen global illumination, do not run on the console. Epic’s recent UE5.8 update introduced a “Lumen Lite” mode to reduce the load, but Sandfall says a full‑scale Switch 2 version remains a daunting challenge.

A post‑mortem on the game’s development was held in July 2026 in Yokohama by Epic Games Japan and Sandfall Interactive, confirming both the engine’s benefits and its limitations for next‑gen console ports.