I recently finished Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 (or at least the story) and the short version of this post is, it's good, really good. if you haven't played it yet and you have any interest whatsoever in turn-based RPGs, then I would advise you to stop reading this and fix that before you get spoiled because the story is worth experiencing sight-unseen and as free of outside influence as possible. No, no, stop right there, even if spoilers aren't usually a thing that bother you, I would encourage you in the strongest possible terms to avoid them if at all possible if you have any interest in this game. That being said, consider this your spoiler warning, because I'm going to discuss plot details and themes in this post.
Here's how good this game is. I keep forgetting to cancel Gamepass, the upside of which is, I had access to this game for free. I bought it on PS5 anyway, because I felt more willing to support a game that is released at the £45 price point at a time the industry is pushing to price them at £80 minimum, and I didn't want my experience to be compromised in any way by the restrictions of cloud gaming. Basically, I paid 45 quid for consistent resolution because the art direction of this game is fucking sublime. Add to that the fact that the story gets going pretty quickly and the gameplay loop is basically immediately fun for me, and I knew within the first hour or two that I would not regret that decision.
Throughout my time with this game I see it wearing the development teams influence on it's sleeves. That overworld, and general structure of progression through the game just screams 90s era Final Fantasy, the dodge/parry mechanics put me in mind of a soulslike, as do the limited recovery items replenished by rest points (which, naturally also bring back the enemies in the area.) It has social links like Persona, the campsite reminds me, personally, of Dragon Age: Origins (I mention that one specifically as it's the only one I played.)
Yet, despite all these clear and often, disparate influences, it doesn't feel derivative in the least. Clair Obscur is a thing wholly unique to itself, any elements born of something else are seemlessly integrated into a whole that feels as cohesive as anything I've ever played. All of this to convey a story of exceptional quality for any medium, which makes it positively trancendent for videogame writing, and I wish that was saying more than it is.
This game has it's hooks in me in a way that I thought no longer possible. I could gush about the art direction, engaging gameplay or fun monster design all day, but that's not what I want to talk about. Suffice it to say that Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 represents a modern take on a tried-and-true classic genre rarely seen in this form anymore. If your favourite Final Fantasy is numbered Ten or lower, you'll love it.
Okay, so that's my glowing spoiler-free review of the game, spoilers beyond this point, you have been warned. If the above unadulterated fanboying has convinced you to give it a try, this would be where you stop reading, I'll leave some space below just in case, but from this point on, if you're reading I'll assume you already know the story.
Okay, so I've described the story of this game to a friend (in an attempt to get them to play it) as being "A bit Attack on Titan in a lot of ways". I liken the two mainly in terms of structure, both open by introducing us to a dwindling remnant of humanity at the mercy of a predictable, yet unknowable entity that has devastated the population and about which, despite repeated excursions to learn more, they still know frighteningly little to nothing. As we journey through this world we discover that the reality is far beyond the scope that the initial premise suggested, and eventually, that basically nothing is as we thought it was, and one of our number has a special link to the aforementioned unknowable entity.
That's about where those similarities end and I didn't even include that last part in my description to this person because I want them to be as surprised as I was about the twist. The battle with the paintress feels very much like a final boss, the area leading up to it being a facsimile of Lumiere, coupled with the fight with Renoir, the other antagonist, immideately before, the ascent to the highest point in the world of the game to fight her, it's all there. Only for the game to pull the rug out from under you immediately thereafter in a way that I had two completely contradictory opinions on in the space of an hour, before setlling on the latter, which I'll get to.
These kind of 11th-hour twists, are not uncommon across media, but one like this, could only really be done this well in videogames, for the singular reason that a game's runtime is indefinite, fluid, it lasts until you finish it. If this were any other medium, you'd be clued in by the number of pages, or amount of runtime left. This isn't even the first time this game takes advantage of the strengths of it's medium to surprise you. I'm talking of course, about Gustave.
Gustave is positioned, and presented as the protagonist, from the word "go." Everything an audience could be expected to know, not just about games, but about stories, would reinforce the notion that this is Gustave's story. So naturally, the game "Ned Starks" him at the end of act 1. I make that comparison because like Ned Stark, Gustave is, as things would transpire, a fairly minor character in the grand scheme of the story, presented as the main character from the beginning, which lends a lot of surprise and weight to his eventual demise, thanks to his relationship to the character whose story this actually turns out to be.
I'm not trying to make a point here in likening what this game's story does to other examples I've seen, the points of comparison just make it easier for me to talk about, and contextualise in case, for some reason, you're reading this without playing the game first, in which case, I think you've lessened your own experience but I'd still like you to be able to follow what I'm saying.
Videogames as a medium, and I would argue RPGs especially, are uniquely positioned to attach you to your main character more easily than more linear stories, or less interactive media. This is because that character is the avatar through which you experience the world. In essence, you are they, they are you, their journey is yours, and in the case of RPGs, you grow and cultivate their skillset yourself. it feels forever ago now, even though it's only been a week and a half at time of writing. But I distinctly remember the feeling of loss I had after Gustave died not just because I was close to learning the last skill in his tree, though that alone, is a pisser. But the other characters (all superbly-written by the way) make that sense of loss palpable, add to that the fact that he's never functionally replaced in-game. Verso, the closest thing to, can use some of his weapons and skills, but that's about it. Add to that the total number of five party members, the reserve team is always a man short, which I choose to believe is a decision made to remind us of his loss.
Incidentally, in the post-game, I like to put the reserve team up-front, functionally serving as a mini-boss for the enemy, so I can feel them out, and hopefully beat them, but if not, have the main party come in after to begin the real fight.
But anyway, I bring up the sense of loss, because this is, fundamentally, a game about loss, and it's here I come to what I actually want to talk about most. The strength of theme in this game is nothing short of breathtaking. It is my opinion that theme is the most important part of a story, character comes second, then setting, and then plot. setting and plot are close enough that you might switch them in the order of importance depending on the story, but nobody is going to care about either without strong characters to experience them through, and theme is that all-important guiding philosophy that makes the whole thing work. Without theme, you don't have a story, just a sequence of events.
All that to say, Clair Obscur is written to theme impeccably. Right from the off we're introduced to a world of loss, I'd be lying if I said the fact that these people are around my age didn't colour my experience somewhat. Seeing people not long out of their twenties coming to terms with their iminent deaths and those of their loved ones. The world immediately feels lived in and the characters relationships defined despite sparse dialogue outside the main three characters of the moment. We learn the fundamental difference that drove Gustave and Sophie apart was the question of children, and her refusal to bring them into "a doomed world."
I think that speaks to another fundamental difference in their attitudes, from that difference alone we learn that Gustave is an optimist who sees a future worth preserving, whereas Sophie has resigned herself to the situation. Gustave's optimism shines through in the prologue, even in the face of the loss of the one he loves most. Not only did he invent the mechanism your abilities come from, but he's volunteered, in his final year, to lead the expedition, from which no one has ever returned, expecting to be the one to kill the paintress and save Lumiere. So confident is he, he agrees to let Maelle come with him, who still has at least a decade left if he fails. But therein lies a question, is he really that optimistic, or does he simply wish to die among friends and loved ones on their own terms.
Obviously his confidence comes in part from ignorance, no one has ever returned from the expidition, therefore by definition, he has no idea what he's up against. To say nothing of the scope of the journey, or anything that making it means having to do. Naturally, when he makes landfall, his expidition is immediately decimated by Renoir, whose age, at least twice his own, immediately establishes that the premise we've been operating under is not absolute. It might just be one anomaly but it lets us, and Gustave know, that not only do we know next to nothing about this world, we can't even trust the little we thought we did know.
Gustave survives the encounter, but loses almost everyone. I could swear I saw Maelle among the dead at the time, but I must've been mistaken because Gustave doesn't seem to think she's dead when looking for her. But alone, among a pile of bodies, Gustave's optimism crumbles. He has entered a world of which he knows nothing and now, faced with just how far out of his depth he finds himself, he puts his pistol to his temple.
The contrast of Gustave being the most hopeful and then needing to be talked out of suicide by Lune is jarring in the best possible way, but it also betrays Gustave's naivety. He has been in the danger zone for all of about ten minutes, and he wants out in the worst of ways, as if he thought that Expedition 33, alone, would not only return alive from this annual expedition from which nobody in 67 years has ever returned, but that he would suffer no casualties in doing so. With how well realised the world of the game is, it would've been easy for Gustave's optimism to come off as ignorance, or stupidity. But I think it's something else.
Clair Obscur is fundamentally, a game about grief, the theme of loss is ever-present and woven into every facet of the story and its world. Cycles of loss are perpetuated every year, with the gommage, and so grief is a universal constant. Gustave, therefore, I believe represents, not optimism, but denial. the first stage of greif.
To expand upon this point, I'm going to have to fast-forward to the "ending" at which point, we learn the following things
Maelle is actually Alicia Desendre, of the Desendre family of painters, artists with the, actually kind of existentially terrifying, power to create worlds within canvasses.
The world we have been experiencing thus far, is one such canvas, belonging to Verso, who is not the party member from Expidition 0 by the same name, he is a facsimile of the real Verso, who died in a housefire to save his sister Alicia, who entered the canvas and was, essentially, overwritten by it, being reborn as Maelle in the process. (which, makes his canvas, which harbours a piece of his soul, the last thing that remains of him). it's implied, that the fire was the fault of "the writers" who are only breifly referenced, but it has me wondering what their beef is with the painters and how their powers might work differently.
Alicia and Verso are the son and daughter of Renoir, the real-life person who the Renoir we just defeated was a painting of, and Aline, the paintress we've been fighting to overcome since the get-go. It is revealed that the paintress wasn't killing everyone over a certain age each year, as we had assumed, she was keeping everyone else alive, and the declining number was due to her power waning. The reason for the gommage each year is because Renoir wants to destroy the canvas, for fear that greif, and the attempt to escape it in the canvas has consumed his wife, and may soon claim his daughter as well.
The elephant in the room here is that yes, that means everything in this game and every character in it, is a painting, and therefore, not real, which is a revelation my feelings went on a fucking journey about. Initially, I didn't like it, because I felt a little cheated for having got invested in this world, only to be told that nothing in it was real, and therefore, didn't matter. Don't worry, though, those feelings quickly dissipated.
I found myself thinking of two things, a little after that revelation, the first was a question posed by Randy Feltface after his famous "Bookshelf on Gumtree" story. "Why is it that we feel so cheated when we learn that a story we've been told didn't happen, and yet so satisfied at the end of a fictional novel?" I'm paraphrasing a bit there, that might not be the exact wording. But more than that I was reminded of Hbomberguy's video essay. "Pathelogic is genius, and here's why" where, during a deep-dive into the game, Pathelogic, he brings up a part (spoiler warning, by the way) where the entire game is revealed to be a game of dolls played by children. Then, at a later point, you can have a conversation with an avatar of the game developers, whose response to any potential disappointment in this, is essentially "you're playing a videogame, you always knew this wasn't real, what's the problem?"
those were the two points of reference that counteracted my getting annoyed with this reveal after a bit, not that they were necessary, because the game goes on to say yet more. Essentially, going onto establish that, in spite of the nature of their creation, everyone inside the canvas is self-aware, with their own inner-life and is therefore, in my opinion, every bit as real as anyone outside it. Which makes the power of the painters that much more terrifying but if I go too far into the existentialist portion of the games themes this post will never fucking end.
All this to say, that where Gustave represents denial, and not, the paintress, who I would argue represents Bargaining, Verso, represents Acceptance. (I think Renoir is anger, the painted Alicia is depression,) Maelle herself, in essence, replaces the paintress in the end/post-game, embodying bargaining through escapism into the canvas. I don't think it's any coincidence that Gustave is her guardian in Lumiere, nor is it coincidence that he dies as the painted Verso, who embodies acceptance, is introduced. After all, what is bargaining but the child of denial, and what is acceptance but it's death? (it is later established, during the relationship subquest for Maelle, that Verso could have saved Gustave, and chose to let him die. which, in my opinion, confirms this theory. As does Verso's ending.
At the end of the game, Verso goes through a portal, to an area that I could only describe as the core of the canvas, and attempts to convince the last vestige of his counterpart's soul to stop painting, which would erase the world of the game and everyone in it.
He is confronted, by, and in turn confronts, Maelle, who persuaded Renoir to let her keep the canvas, and stay a little longer, on the condition that she come home soon. Verso revels that he knows she was lying, and has no intention of leaving the canvas, which she does not deny. in the real world, Alicia is disfigured by burns, unable to speak, and, as she sees it, treated like a burden by her family. But in the canvas, Maelle can actually live, as opposed to "merely existing" outside. Therefore, unable to trust that Renoir, or Verso would not simply destroy the canvas when she leaves, she decides never to do so, even accepting that this will eventually kill her.
It is here the game presents the player with the decision of the ultimate fate of this world, Verso and Maelle have come to an impass, and you choose who to play as in what will be the final duel. I believe that the player is guided by the game towards choosing Maelle, at least initially, for several reasons. Firstly, that saving this world, has been the goal since minute one, which Verso's ending runs counter to. Secondly, throughout the story, Verso has lied to the rest of the cast, a lot, and it seems odd that the narrative would elect to make him "right" to have done so. Thirdly, and this is a small thing, when the option is presented, the default choice being highlighted is Maelle, the player has to move it off her to choose Verso, which, I grant you, is a tiny detail, but I do think it betrays a certain level of expectation
I don't think either ending is intended to be 100% good but I do think Verso is intended to be the right decision here;
If the player chooses Maelle, she rebuilds Lumiere, and resurrects its people, including Verso, despite his clear reluctance, but when he looks to her, he sees the signs of decline on her face. A clear indicator of the consequences of her decision.
Verso sees what I think I needed to see the other ending to fully understand. The grief of the paintress has corrupted Verso's canvas, it's no longer an escape from the loss, it has become an embodyment of the bargainning stage of grief, as was the Paintress, and later Maelle. From the beginning we're introduced into this world of cycles. The annual tradition of the expedition and the aspiration of breaking this cycle of loss, but the world itself being all that's left of Verso's soul, reframes the paintress's attempts to keep it going as a refusal to move on, which the Maelle ending confirms. her refusal to move on will consume her.
The Verso ending, by contrast, carries an uncertain, but ultimately hopeful note, we're meant to be sad in saying goodbye to that world, (I have my thoughts on the implications of an entire world and it's people being created and subsequently reduced to a therapy tool for a grieving family but that's another subject for another time.) but I think it is presented as the right thing to have done. The Maelle ending is entirely in black-and-white, and carries an unsettling tone to it, even apart from the colourlessness. Whereas the Verso ending sees the family standing together in the real world, coming to terms with his death, as Alicia sees, for the last time, the cast of characters from the story as they wave her farewell, and disappear.
In choosing Verso, the player chooses acceptance, and lets the real Verso rest in peace, in choosing Maelle, we choose to bargain for more time in this world, knowing what the cost will be. Verso's ending is bittersweet, but Maelle's is haunting, and I kind of love that both choices are completely understandable. Ultimately though, the implication is clear, choosing Maelle would just perpetuate the cycle of greif all over again, as the canvas consumes and kills her, at which point, the world she's chosen will be lost regardless, and her family will have one more member to mourn. Only by moving on can she live, despite her insistence to the contrary.
There's a big message about the value and dangers of escapism here, but this post is plenty long enough
God, I fucking love this game. It's served as a reminder of what I love about videogames in the first place and I think it deserves a place among the ambassadorial titles for the medium. Especially of the RPG genre. "are games art?" is not a question worth asking, the answer is yes, all games are art, but if you need an example of artistic merit in the medium, I think you'd be hard-pressed to find a better one.
If you've read this far, thanks, it's been a while since I've been enthusiastic enough about something to write about it. Sometimes art is good.
