Clair Obscur: Expedition 33<\/em> has become so special to players that some fans are sending out wedding invitations to its cast.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n That\u2019s according to Rich Keeble, the voice behind Gestral warrior Monoco and plenty of other characters. \u201cI’ve just had an email forwarded to me that people want to invite us to their weddings and things like that,\u201d he told Polygon over a video interview. \u201cI mean, funny if it was just me turning up and we were like, \u2018Oh yeah, typical. Rich Keeble wanted to get a free meal.\u201d<\/p>\n Keeble knew the game would be a good one while he was working on it, but not quite this popular. He\u2019s met \u201call these lovely people\u201d at conventions who call Expedition 33<\/em> the game of the decade and get tattoos to celebrate it. (Not all have extended him a wedding invitation, however.)<\/p>\n Keeble never thought he\u2019d be in a position like this. He came to acting relatively late, in his early 30s. He carved out a niche in voice work with his deep voice and comedic background, while still pursuing on-camera work as \u201cbald ginger guys with glasses, or sometimes not glasses.\u201d He\u2019s still taken by surprise more than a year after Expedition 33<\/em>\u2019s launch, though even the game’s success hasn\u2019t quite calmed all the nerves he gets when in the recording booth.<\/p>\n \u201cLooking back, it\u2019s just been crazy with the awards, and then we’ve just got BAFTA as well, Best Game,\u201d he said. \u201cI still think it hasn’t really sunk in.\u201d<\/p>\n Keeble got to meet some of his costars, like Ben Starr (Verso) and Kirsty Rider (Lune) before they started recording, which he describes as unusual: \u201cYou don’t often know who the cast [members] are until the game is out.\u201d<\/p>\n Like all of us on the outside, Keeble watched Expedition 33<\/em> skyrocket in popularity in real time leading up to the game\u2019s April 2025 launch. As developer Sandfall Interactive and publisher Kepler Interactive put out various trailers promoting it (including a Monoco-specific one), he noticed a steady uptick in the game\u2019s following online.<\/p>\n \u201cI started to get a bit nervous,\u201d Keeble said. He met Starr for coffee and asked for Starr\u2019s take on the growing spotlight. While Starr thought it would do well, he tried to temper Keeble\u2019s expectations, saying some people might not click with the turn-based combat. (Oh, how he was wrong.) According to Keeble, Starr said, \u201c\u2018I think it’ll do well, but I don’t think it’s going to be a Baldur’s Gate 3<\/em>-style movement.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Starr just wanted to manage expectations, but, \u201cof course, he managed them the wrong way, because the game was a phenomenon,\u201d Keeble said.<\/p>\n While Clair Obscur: Expedition 33<\/em> is a rather serious game that centers around grief first and foremost, it\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n Keeble\u2019s Monoco brings a much-needed levity to the game, and that\u2019s never more apparent than his introduction. After defeating a Nevron (and yanking its foot away), Verso tries to recruit his Gestral friend. \u201cWe are heading for Old Lumi\u00e8re,\u201d Verso says. \u201cOK, bye,\u201d 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.<\/p>\n \u201cActually, Ben did say to me, to be fair, people will clip that and you will see that a lot,\u201d 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. \u201cI love the way that even though [Monoco] hasn’t got a face, he\u2019s just so expressive still. It’s genius.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cOf course, he managed them the wrong way, because the game was a phenomenon.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/section>\n When Clair Obscur: Expedition 33<\/em> was released and Keeble got to see it all together, he was as shocked as players were by some of its twists and turns. \u201cWhen 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.\u201d<\/p>\n He had a character bible for Monoco to read while recording, but \u201cit was very hard to understand some of it.\u201d (Anyone who\u2019s played the game can say some elements of the lore are hard to understand even after<\/em> rolling credits.) The bible wasn\u2019t fully comprehensive; Monoco\u2019s backstory was just about his life in the canvas and didn\u2019t include the context of the world outside it. \u201cMaybe it would’ve confused me to know that he was actually a dog, and I get confused easily,\u201d Keeble joked. \u201cMaybe they chose to hold that back.\u201d<\/p>\n The feet-obsessed Monoco wasn\u2019t Keeble\u2019s only character. In fact, he voiced 11 of them \u2014 13 if you include two characters that he recorded for, but his lines weren\u2019t used. When asked if it was a struggle to come up with all those different voices, Keeble brushed off the question: \u201cLet’s be honest, I mean, a lot of the voices are quite similar to each other. I think we’ll all agree.\u201d<\/p>\n 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\u2019t realize they\u2019d all be so close together until watching streams of people checking the game out. \u201cI’m there going, \u2018Oh my God, they all sound the same and they’re all next to each other.\u2019\u201d Keeble credits the characterization of his different prologue roles, like the painter Nicholas and the drunk Maxime, for helping distinguish them.<\/p>\n Keeble didn\u2019t set out to voice 11 Expedition 33<\/em> characters. All those roles, in a way, came from him being constantly nervous while recording. \u201cI like to cover up my anxiety by messing around a bit in between takes,\u201d Keeble said. \u201cI just do silly voices and it ended up becoming a thing where they go, \u2018Rich, do you fancy voicing another character?\u2019\u201d Try to mask your anxiety enough times and suddenly you\u2019re in the credits 11 times.<\/p>\n \u201cI’m constantly dying inside and just worrying what people think of me. I think a lot of actors are the same,\u201d Keeble said.<\/p>\n With the success of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33<\/em> comes plenty more roles. You can hear Keeble as Two-Face in this year\u2019s critically acclaimed Lego Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight<\/em>, for instance. You can also catch him on the convention circuit, as he makes plenty of appearances these days. \u201cI get a lot of people coming up to me at the convention saying, \u2018Well, I’m really nervous,\u2019\u201d Keeble said. \u201cI’ll just say, \u2018Look, I just pretend to be confident. I’m really, really not.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Even the most successful of actors need to find a little confidence in themselves sometimes. That includes Keeble\u2019s mismanager of expectations, Ben Starr. After all of Keeble\u2019s pre-release nerves, he had a humbling moment with Starr at a panel after the game launched to universal acclaim.<\/p>\n \u201cHe was just like, \u2018Yeah, I was wrong,\u2019\u201d Keeble said.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 has become so special to players that some fans are sending out wedding invitations to its cast. That\u2019s according to Rich…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":47342,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[3622,1329,5848,5254,4251,535,21415],"class_list":["post-64533","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tech-gadgets-reviews","tag-actor","tag-advice","tag-ben","tag-expedition","tag-lousy","tag-reveals","tag-starr","wpcat-32-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64533","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=64533"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64533\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/47342"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=64533"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=64533"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=64533"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"best](\"https:\/\/static0.polygonimages.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/best-monoco-build-clair-obscur-expedition-33.jpg?q=49&fit=crop&w=825&dpr=2\")
\n <\/picture>Image: Sandfall Interactive\/Kepler Interactive<\/small><\/figure>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n![\"Verso](\"https:\/\/static0.polygonimages.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/expedition-33-verso-build.jpg?q=49&fit=crop&w=825&dpr=2\")
\n <\/picture>Image: Sandfall Interactive\/Kepler Interactive<\/small><\/figure>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n![\"Clair](\"https:\/\/static0.polygonimages.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/clair-obscur-expedition-33-prologue-screen-1.jpeg?q=49&fit=crop&w=825&dpr=2\")
\n <\/picture>Image: Sandfall Interactive\/Kepler Interactive via Polygon<\/small><\/figure>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n![\"clair](\"https:\/\/static0.polygonimages.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/clair-obscur-expedition-33_2025-01-23_006-scaled-1.jpg?q=49&fit=crop&w=825&dpr=2\")
\n <\/picture>Image: Sandfall Interactive\/Kepler Interactive<\/small><\/figure>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n
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