Maddy Myers has run Polygon’s games section since 2020 as deputy editor. She has worked in games journalism since 2007, at Kotaku, The Mary Sue, and the Boston Phoenix.
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is the breakout hit of 2025; the turn-based RPG has fantastic combat design and great writing for its ensemble cast. But one member of that ensemble cast has stood out for a specific reason: Lune, the dark-haired sorceress of the group, is barefoot for the entire game.
Now, there are some collectible outfits you can find that will put Lune in a pair of shoes. So it’s not like you have to put up with this if you don’t like it. But by default, Lune is barefoot.
Let’s get one thing out of the way: Perhaps the most well-known fetish of all is the foot fetish, so naturally this means Lune has been subject to quite a few jokes and posts about that online. That’s fine; it’s not related to my argument personally, but if that’s a perk for you, great. In this post I would instead like to address the idea that Lune’s bare feet are unsanitary or gross.
People, she can fly! Lune spends much of the game floating around with her magic powers. Her run animation looks extremely cool because of this. She does also just stand around on the ground sometimes; she isn’t always floating. But she has the ability to magically heal herself (and her friends), so it’s not like we need to worry about whether she’s received a tetanus shot.
The fact that Lune is barefoot also helps underscore her magic abilities and their importance to every part of her life and how she lives it. She has tattoos all over her body, too, including her feet; the tattoos seem to be connected to her magic powers as well, although this is Clair Obscur so no one’s ever going to explain that directly.
This artistic choice also makes her seem a little bit like a weirdo, but that’s cool, too. It tracks with the way she sees herself and how others see her. For example, at one point roughly halfway through the game, Lune and Sciel have a conversation about how, back in the day, Sciel had tried to become Lune’s friend and Lune just kinda ghosted her. This is one of the few things we learn about Lune’s life before the events of Clair Obscur, and her entire visual aesthetic fits with that sense of being a little separated from other people. Her tattooed feet are another piece of that picture, adding up to someone who’s otherworldly and mystical — but who ultimately, like the rest of the cast, turns out to be only human and just as vulnerable and clueless about how to proceed as everybody else. It’s a cool choice, and if you ask me, it works.
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