Cannot wait to get straight to the action with Clair Obscur Expedition 33? While the story and cinematic moments are key parts of the experience, not every player wants to sit through every cutscene, especially during retries or subsequent playthroughs. In this article, we’ll go over whether you can skip cutscenes in Clair Obscur and what your options are if you’re looking to fast-forward through the narrative beats.
A growing number of players are voicing their frustration over the inability to pause or skip cutscenes in Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. Whether it’s a repeated boss attempt or just wanting to breeze through scenes on a second playthrough, the lack of basic playback controls is baffling in 2025. It’s a beautiful game, sure, but being forced to sit through the same dialogue or cinematic over and over, without any option to pause or skip, feels like an oversight.
Clair Obscur Expedition 33: How to Skip Cutscenes
Some players have found themselves confused by the lack of clear instructions on how to pause or skip cutscenes, with many assuming it simply isn’t possible. This has even led to several discussion threads popping up on the Steam forum, where players are actively sharing tips. Anyway, if you’ve found yourself hammering the ESC, Enter, or Right-Click keys in desperation, trying to skip a scene, the solution is surprisingly unintuitive and easy to miss. Here is what you need to do!
Skipping and pausing cut scenes
To pause a cutscene, you’ll need to press the F key (or the interaction button on your controller) during the cinematic. This is the same key used for interacting with objects and characters in the game world. Once pressed, the game will pause the cinematic/cutscene. Now, if you’re looking to skip the cutscene entirely, you’ll need to first pause it using the F key as mentioned. Once the scene is paused, hold down the ESC key to bring up the skip option. This might feel counterintuitive since ESC is usually the go-to key for skipping immediately, but in Clair Obscur, it only works after you’ve paused the scene with F. For console players, the equivalent button to “F” is likely your standard interaction key. Typically X on Xbox Controller or Square on PlayStation Controller. After pausing, use the Start/Menu button or equivalent to access the skip function.
This workaround is simple once you know it, but unfortunately, the game doesn’t communicate it. Hopefully, in a future update, the developers will make the process easier by allowing players to simply press the Escape key once to pause and hold it down to skip, as seen in many modern titles. This small quality-of-life feature could make a big difference. Until then, we’ll have to make do with the current workaround, but it’s certainly a feature worth keeping an eye out for in upcoming patches.
And there you have it! That is all you need to know about pausing and skipping cutscenes in Clair Obscur Expedition 33. We hope your doubts on this matter were cleared, and for more such guides, check out DigiStatement! You can also click here to find out the way to change the difficulty level in the game.
