Expedition 33 actor reveals the lousy advice he got from Ben Starr

Image: Sandfall Interactive/Kepler Interactive

While Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is a rather serious game that centers around grief first and foremost, it’s also a very silly game at times. Characters get mime-like outfits complete with baguettes tied to their backs. Gestrals goof about. A journal entry recounts past expeditioners who were naked and jacked.

Keeble’s Monoco brings a much-needed levity to the game, and that’s never more apparent than his introduction. After defeating a Nevron (and yanking its foot away), Verso tries to recruit his Gestral friend. “We are heading for Old Lumière,” Verso says. “OK, bye,” Monaco promptly deadpans and turns away. The two then engage in a very fun back-and-forth where Monoco is ultimately convinced to join because there will be a lot of fighting.

“Actually, Ben did say to me, to be fair, people will clip that and you will see that a lot,” Keeble said. And Starr was right; within a few days of the game being out, Keeble saw a clip on social media of that scene that already had over five million views. “I love the way that even though [Monoco] hasn’t got a face, he’s just so expressive still. It’s genius.”

When Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 was released and Keeble got to see it all together, he was as shocked as players were by some of its twists and turns. “When I was doing my stuff as whatever character [I was recording], I always fully understood the context of what that character knew in that moment, but I definitely didn’t understand the whole thing until it came out.”

He had a character bible for Monoco to read while recording, but “it was very hard to understand some of it.” (Anyone who’s played the game can say some elements of the lore are hard to understand even after rolling credits.) The bible wasn’t fully comprehensive; Monoco’s backstory was just about his life in the canvas and didn’t include the context of the world outside it. “Maybe it would’ve confused me to know that he was actually a dog, and I get confused easily,” Keeble joked. “Maybe they chose to hold that back.”

Image: Sandfall Interactive/Kepler Interactive via Polygon

The feet-obsessed Monoco wasn’t Keeble’s only character. In fact, he voiced 11 of them — 13 if you include two characters that he recorded for, but his lines weren’t used. When asked if it was a struggle to come up with all those different voices, Keeble brushed off the question: “Let’s be honest, I mean, a lot of the voices are quite similar to each other. I think we’ll all agree.”

Four of them were featured in the prologue, including the iconic Trash Can Man, whom he tried to get renamed as Bin Man. Keeble didn’t realize they’d all be so close together until watching streams of people checking the game out. “I’m there going, ‘Oh my God, they all sound the same and they’re all next to each other.’” Keeble credits the characterization of his different prologue roles, like the painter Nicholas and the drunk Maxime, for helping distinguish them.

Keeble didn’t set out to voice 11 Expedition 33 characters. All those roles, in a way, came from him being constantly nervous while recording. “I like to cover up my anxiety by messing around a bit in between takes,” Keeble said. “I just do silly voices and it ended up becoming a thing where they go, ‘Rich, do you fancy voicing another character?’” Try to mask your anxiety enough times and suddenly you’re in the credits 11 times.

“I’m constantly dying inside and just worrying what people think of me. I think a lot of actors are the same,” Keeble said.

Image: Sandfall Interactive/Kepler Interactive

With the success of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 comes plenty more roles. You can hear Keeble as Two-Face in this year’s critically acclaimed Lego Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight, for instance. You can also catch him on the convention circuit, as he makes plenty of appearances these days. “I get a lot of people coming up to me at the convention saying, ‘Well, I’m really nervous,’” Keeble said. “I’ll just say, ‘Look, I just pretend to be confident. I’m really, really not.’”

Even the most successful of actors need to find a little confidence in themselves sometimes. That includes Keeble’s mismanager of expectations, Ben Starr. After all of Keeble’s pre-release nerves, he had a humbling moment with Starr at a panel after the game launched to universal acclaim.

“He was just like, ‘Yeah, I was wrong,’” Keeble said.