When you’re as booked and busy as Daredevil‘s Charlie Cox, it makes sense you wouldn’t have much downtime to pull a Thanos and sit under a tree admiring your own work. But that hasn’t stopped gamers from bugging him about whether he’s played Clair Obscur: Expedition 33—the most-awarded game in history—in which he plays a major character, despite his open admissions that he’s not much of a gamer himself. Now, roughly a year since the banner RPG’s release, Cox has revealed that he’s finally played the game… kinda.
Speaking with GamesRadar, Cox revealed that he’s played “a bit of” the nearly 50-hour game. How much is a bit? Well, he told the site he’s “played the opening bit for a while and kind of walked around and met the people and garnered the information and all that kind of stuff.” Translation: he’s played the opening moments of the game.
To be fair, Clair Obscur‘s got a pretty great onboarding sequence—players are immediately hit in the face with the concept of the gommage, a phenomenon where a giant woman paints a number into the sky, instantly killing anyone of that age by turning them into a pile of dead rose petals.
That tragedy sends Gustav (Cox’s character) and his expedition on their quest to kill God and end their torment. But that moment is basically the first thing you do in the game, sandwiched between a combat tutorial and a bit of wandering around listening to very French NPCs lament their liminal existences. In layman’s terms: Cox has played about as much as you have, dear reader, if you were to click on the game’s launch trailer.
By now, you’re probably wondering why Cox playing even five minutes of Clair Obscur is newsworthy to gamers. Basically, it’s the punchline to an inside joke among the fandom and even the voice cast, where, despite his character being widely praised as the emotional anchor of developer Sandfall Interactive‘s debut title, Cox has spent the entirety of its press tour (he was absent for) downplaying his role in its success.
As Polygon notes, Cox has had to gently let down gamers who approached him in the wild asking for an autograph, proudly announcing they’d “platinumed” the game—a PlayStation achievement term he openly admitted he has no idea what the hell that even means, but he’s happy for them. Cox has even gone so far as to call himself a bit of a fraud when it comes to all the praise he’s received for the game, given he only spent around four hours recording his lines for a game that went on to become a phenomenon, according to Eurogamer.
@posta.entretenimiento ⭐️ #CharlieCox se fue de paseo a #LaHuasteca 😮 El protagonista de #DaredevilBornAgain compartió cómo ha sido su experiencia hasta ahora en #Monterrey y reveló cómo se siente con su reciente nominación a #TheGameAwards2025 🎮. El actor británico estará este sábado 22 y domingo 23 en 🤩. 📹: Mauricio Morales
And when Geoff Keighley’s Game Awards rolled around—where Clair Obscur absolutely swept—Cox was nominated for Best Performance. But, as PC Gamer pointed out, instead of basking in the accolade, he redirected the spotlight to Gustave’s motion-capture performer, Maxence Cazorla. Basically, Cox is an incredibly humble guy who just thinks it’s neat that gamers like the thing he was in, even if the hobby isn’t really his jam. That doesn’t mean Cox doesn’t play any video games at all, though. In fact, he told GamesRadar that his rotation includes FIFA 98, Mario Kart, and Goldeneye 007—all fun, low-commitment classics he admits don’t exactly demand the narrative investment or time sink of Clair Obscur.
“I’m not very good, because obviously, it’s a skill set, but I’ve played it,” Cox told GamesRadar.
When asked how it felt to control Gustave in the brief window he actually played in the game, Cox described it as an out-of-body experience.
“It didn’t feel like me… I didn’t really think of it as me, I thought of it as Gustave,” he said.
Truer words have never been spoken.
Time will tell whether, a year from now, headlines will announce he’s finally completed the parry-heavy, turn-based RPG. Until then, fans can look forward to Hollywood’s upcoming film adaptation of the game. Should Cox be tapped to reprise his role as Gustave, he can rest easy knowing he’s at least got a head start on the source material.
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