Clair Obscurs mest straffende kamp kan spores tilbake til Elden Ring

Expedition 33's hardest boss is not encountered by most players, and the numbers show it. Fewer than 16 percent of players have defeated Simon, a hidden enemy tied to the game’s earliest expedition and one of protagonist Verso’s oldest allies. His design, structure, and behavior place him far outside the normal difficulty curve.

A recent Q&A with the dev has clarified why Simon was built directly from the team’s experience fighting Malenia in Elden Ring.

According to director Guillhaume Broche, Simon appears late and remains easy to miss. He joined the first expedition with Verso and later vanished from the main path. When found, he occupies a prison of glowing swords deep in the Abyss beneath Renoir’s Drafts. The encounter begins quietly. His movements are restrained, his attacks limited, and his presence understated. That restraint does not last. The fight expands into multiple phases, each escalating in speed, damage output, and attack variance. By the second phase, Simon becomes erratic and relentless, with long chains that punish hesitation and mistakes.

The result is an encounter many players never overcome. Simon’s health pool absorbs sustained damage, and his unpredictable patterns prevent simple memorization. Even optimized builds struggle to keep pace. This reputation led to speculation about his origins, now confirmed by Sandfall Interactive’s creative lead.

“When we played Elden Ring, Malenia had quite an aura, even though she had a simple design. We wanted to bring that simplicity to one of the hardest bosses,” Broche said. “The idea is that he is kind of downplayed in the beginning, he seems weak, and then becomes absolute hell in phase 2.” — Guillhaume Broche

The comparison to Malenia centers less on visuals and more on structure. Malenia’s fight in Elden Ring is known for misleading first impressions, sudden difficulty spikes, and punishing recovery windows. Simon follows the same logic. His early weakness encourages aggression, which later phases exploit. Players who commit too early find themselves trapped in long attack sequences with limited openings to heal or reposition.

Broche also explained that Simon’s role is rooted in narrative history rather than spectacle.

“We wanted to explore what an old expeditioner would look like. He’s an old friend of Verso’s from Expedition Zero.” — Guillhaume Broche

That history explains Simon’s placement outside the main critical path. He is not a required obstacle but a test for players willing to search deeper. His age, isolation, and transformation mirror the mechanical shift of the fight itself. The character’s design avoids excess detail, relying instead on motion and pacing to define threat.

Sandfall Interactive has since doubled down on this philosophy. A post-launch update celebrating the game’s awards added a new variant, Simon, the Divergent Star. This version amplifies every element of the original fight. Attacks are faster, damage windows more tightly, and survivability demands near-perfect execution. The studio positioned it as optional content aimed at players who already mastered the original encounter.

The addition reinforces Simon’s role as a benchmark rather than a gatekeeper. He exists to challenge mastery, not progression. His low completion rate reflects that intent. By basing the Expedition 33 hardest boss on one of modern action RPGs’ most infamous encounters, Sandfall Interactive signaled its willingness to include uncompromising difficulty for a narrow audience.

Simon’s design also highlights a broader trend. Developers increasingly reference shared genre touchstones not to imitate aesthetics, but to replicate emotional pressure. The tension created by an encounter that appears manageable before collapsing into chaos is deliberate. It rewards patience, adaptability, and restraint.

For players who never found Simon, his influence still shapes the game’s reputation. For those who did, the connection to Malenia now clarifies why the fight feels so sharply tuned. The resemblance was intentional, and the challenge was never meant to be fair in the conventional sense.