Reading:Clair Obscur’s narrative lead says while it’s ‘a painful process’ to write, AI has never tempted her: ‘The whole point of writing is to express what I have in my head’
Clair Obscur’s narrative lead says while it’s ‘a painful process’ to write, AI has never tempted her: ‘The whole point of writing is to express what I have in my head’
One of the most irritating facets of the AI hullabaloo—as someone moderately invested in making things—is the assertion that AI finally ‘unlocks creatives to make bigger, better things’ or some other codswallop.
Bah, I say—the truth being that creative arts like writing, drawing, painting, or acting are immensely complicated professions, and when I look at AI, I look at a very complicated Google search that fills me with about as much creative motivation as… well, a Google search.
It’s nice to see that sentiment echoed by the narrative lead of Clair Obscur, who spoke to our friends over at GamesRadar+ during GDC 2026.
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Jennifer Svedberg-Yen, who need I remind you put together a game that snagged “Best Story” in our very own Game of the Year Awards, tells the site that while she’s fascinated by generative AI from a technical standpoint, it’s not something she’s interested in for creative work:
“It is essentially multiple regressions with linear algebra and matrices and lots of data, which tickled my mathematical mind … but from a writing perspective, it is not really something that I find useful in my personal work. It’s not something that is part of my workflow.”
This is despite the fact (or, perhaps, because of it) that Svedberg-Yen finds writing a massive headache: “Writing is part of the joy. It’s also part of the pain. They say that there’s two types of writers: those who write and they’re inspired and fired up, and they enjoy it. And then there are writers who write through the pain. I think I write through the pain.”
The individuality Svedberg-Yen brings to her work, the culmination of her human experience (rather than the grey-goo amalgamation of the works of humanity AI has swiftly become) is what’s important: “It’s a painful process, but that process is incredibly vital to me as a writer.
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“To actually work through what the characters are feeling, work through what they would say, think through how the emotions feel within myself, and then understanding the characters and who they are, like translating that into their words, and finding the truth in that moment. I don’t know how to do that with AI.”
And then, she lines up the hammer and strikes the nail thoroughly on the head: “The whole point of writing is to express what I have in my head. Right?” There’s this belief, mostly held by people who do not make things (which is something I sympathise with, making things is hard) that AI has somehow unlocked their latent creative potential.
It really hasn’t. Making art is hard and complicated, and there are about a thousand small decisions that go into any piece of work like Clair Obscur that AI completely automates from the scraped grist:
“It’s meant to express our, as writers, our point of view, our understanding of the world, and relay something about our personal, lived experience channeled through these characters in this fantastical scenario. I feel that you risk losing some of that when it’s put through essentially a black box where you can’t necessarily understand all the ways that AI gets from A to Z.”
Mind, that’s not to say Sandfall Interactive is beyond suspicion. Clair Obscur, I’m sad to say, did get dragged through the mud for using generative AI in its production—which the studio claimed were for “placeholder” textures, though the more production and publicity blunders I see as a result of using AI for concept art and placeholders, the more I think Lorem Ipsum is the way to go.
But given the quality of Clair Obscur’s story, however, I’m more than willing to take its narrative lead at face value when she says she doesn’t touch the stuff.
