Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 appears in Saros with a lovely Easter egg
Overview & Key Takeaways
Saros features a Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 Easter egg, drawing a connection between two popular PS5 games.
Saros is ultimately a game about dying brutally in the face of impossible odds, so it makes sense that it includes a nod to Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, Sandfall Interactive's breakout 2025 hit about... dying brutally in the face of impossible odds.
Released April 30 for PlayStation 5, Saros is PlayStation's first major exclusive of 2026. It's developed by Housemarque, known for incandescently neon bullet-hell games like Returnal and Resogun, and continues the studio's tradition of developing games that tee up uncompromising challenge. Saros ends up compromising that vision somewhat, though, by introducing a system called Carcosan Modifiers, which allow you to customize the game's difficulty.
Those Carcosan Modifiers form the basis of Saros' Expedition 33 Easter egg (first spotted by Kotaku). One of the game's achievements, called "Carcosan Cartographer," is awarded to any player who can successfully "Use the Carcosan Modifiers to embark upon and survive 33 expeditions." Personally, I'd have benefited if Housemarque created a trophy about the infamous Expedition 0, but naming a trophy after the titular Expedition 33 probably scans to a wider audience.
On paper, beating a challenging game with additional difficulty modifiers turned on — and doing it 33 times — sounds like a tall order. But in practice, there are ways to make it easier. Carcosan Modifiers offer trade-offs: You make the game harder in one aspect, yes, but in turn, you also get a buff that can help minimize friction. For instance, you could sacrifice how much in-game XP you earn but boost your defense as a result. By selecting the right Carcosan Modifiers, you can actually end up making the game easier, not harder. (In fact, that's how Polygon's Giovanni Colantonio accidentally made the game "too easy," blitzing through the final four biomes without dying once.)
As of this writing, 1.5% of Saros players have earned the Carcosan Cartographer trophy.
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