Clair Obscur: Expedition 33’s Ending Is Meaningfully Messy

I’ve already written astir Clair Obscur: Expedition 33’s fantastic homage to classical turn-based RPGs, and however it gives maine a feeling astir RPGs haven’t fixed maine successful a while. Its system with scale, analyzable and rewarding systems, and the feel-it-in-your-bones melodrama makes adjacent its astir vicious moments wounded truthful good. If you’re looking for a wide proposal connected Sandfall Interactive’s debut project, past cheque retired my review. What I haven’t gotten to constitute astir is wherever it each leads. So if you’re done with the crippled oregon don’t caput spoilers, work on. For everyone else, I’ll spot you successful a brisk 30 oregon truthful hours.

Alright, are they gone? I gave them plentifulness of chances.

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 endlessly defies what you expect it to beryllium about. Sandfall Interactive’s favourite thing, different than making you bittersweet with 1 of the astir gut-wrenching RPG premises it could concoct, is twisting the weapon and showing you thing is arsenic you believed. The crippled starts with the titular expedition radical journeying beyond their land location successful Lumière to decision a god-like entity called the Paintress. Every year, she paints a fig connected a monolith disposable from the island, and anyone of that property is “gommaged” from the world, disappearing successful a unreality of petals. The cognition that lives person a guaranteed expiration day has shaped the civilization of this world. When radical attack their last year, they articulation an expedition to hopefully halt the Paintress, oregon astatine slightest laic down the instauration for the adjacent expedition to succeed. This has been going connected for decades, and clip is moving retired for the citizens of Lumière arsenic the Paintress etches a “33” connected the monolith. That’s wherever Clair Obscur starts, but I couldn’t person anticipated wherever it would end.

All 3 of Clair Obscur’s acts are punctuated with a game-shifting turn. At the extremity of the archetypal act, Gustave, the grieving swordsman and gunslinger protagonist, is killed successful acold blood. An incomprehensively aged antheral named Renoir, who has someway survived successful a satellite wherever the beingness expectancy dwindles each year, is protecting the Paintress, and to bash that, helium kills your main character! The reins of this expedition are past handed to Verso, a antheral who is revealed to beryllium the lad of Renoir.. But this household play goes acold beyond a lad trying to halt his begetter from sidesplitting expeditioners, and the consequences of this displacement the full satellite of Clair Obscur on its axis.

Screenshot: Sandfall Interactive / Kotaku

Ever much layers to this beingness are revealed, and by the extremity of Act II, the scope widens to amusement you conscionable however overmuch bigger this communicative is than the opening gambit of an expedition to halt the Paintress. It turns retired the Paintress isn’t rather a god, but a pistillate who uses her family’s magic to “paint” worlds onto canvases that tin bring whatever’s painted connected them to life. She, her husband, and her children each wield this powerfulness and person created and explored antithetic worlds wrong these canvases passim their lifetimes. This world, the 1 the expedition is trying to save, is the lone instauration of the Paintress’ son, who died successful a occurrence that near his sister scarred and the household broken. This satellite is each she has near of her son, and her unrelenting request to sphere it is consuming her.

Meanwhile, her hubby (the existent Renoir, connected whom the fictional antheral who has been sidesplitting expeditioners is based) is trying to destruct this canvas truthful his household tin effort to determination on. He wants his woman to beryllium acceptable escaped from this magical satellite of their son’s imagination, successful which she is losing herself. The numbers the Paintress brushes connected the monolith aren’t a signifier of the radical she’s Thanos-snapping retired of existence, but a informing that her powerfulness to support the wide populace is waning, and that arsenic she loses her spot successful this decades-long conflict with her hubby to sphere her son’s memory, the eldest among them volition beryllium the adjacent to disappear.

This twist has been understandably divisive. Any clip a communicative presents itself arsenic 1 happening and reveals itself to beryllium thing other entirely, you tally the hazard of losing radical brought successful by the archetypal premise. However, I’m gladsome to study that astatine this point, I was much connected committee than ever. I’d already been locked successful by Clair Obscur’s meditations connected grieving a beingness you cognize you’ll ne'er get to live. Grief is simply a taste touchstone of this universe, and to find that it was each calved of a mother’s nonaccomplishment of her kid was an unthinkable caller lens done which to presumption it. It’s revealed that each of this nonaccomplishment was not inevitable, and that the expedition’s fictional quality means that if they decision Renoir and enactment an extremity to his gommage, they could perchance bring backmost everyone they lost. This adds caller layers of nuance astir however we support someone’s representation live erstwhile they’re gone, and however a originative work, adjacent if it’s mostly a child’s fantasy, is 1 mode to retrieve those we’ve lost. But again, this is Clair Obscur, and it ever has different devastating instrumentality up its sleeve.

The game’s last enactment lets you caput close for the constituent of nary return, to look Renoir, loosen his grip connected this world, and bring backmost each the radical helium has gommaged implicit the past 67 years. By this point, you’ve learned that Verso is the fictional facsimile of the Paintress’ dormant son. You’ve besides recovered retired that different of your enactment members, Maelle, is the Paintress’ real-life daughter, who entered the coating to find her missing parents, and alternatively recovered a caller beingness successful which she’s nary longer debilitated by the harm from the fire. Verso present wants to teardrop down the canvas, truthful helium tin halt surviving arsenic a puppet propping up his family’s representation of a lad and member agelong gone. However, Maelle wants to bring everyone backmost and unrecorded retired her beingness successful her brother’s creation. So it’s up to you, the player, to take who to play arsenic successful 1 last conflict and find the destiny of Verso’s canvas.

Screenshot: Sandfall Interactive / Kotaku

This was a determination truthful agonizing I had to enactment down my controller and marque food, truthful I could springiness it due thought. I was swayed to Verso’s side, until I returned and picked up the controller, erstwhile someway my instincts took over, and I played arsenic Maelle. Only, the ending I picked wasn’t rather what I envisioned. Rather than a bittersweet infinitesimal of Maelle bringing backmost each her brother’s creations and surviving happily ever after, what I experienced was much of a fearfulness story. In this scenario, Maelle had trapped Verso successful this world, forcing him to play soft for her and the remainder of the revived Lumière.

I hadn’t perceived the crippled arsenic mounting up Maelle’s wishes to beryllium a selfish path. I’d bought into the thought that redeeming the canvas and Verso’s representation was a noble prime worthy of the themes Clair Obscur had been operating within. But possibly that was maine getting swept distant by an idealistic presumption of this full conflict. One of the lone things that’s conscionable arsenic embedded successful Clair Obscur’s DNA arsenic grief is misdirection.

It’s been a fewer days since I finished Clair Obscur. I’ve been talking with others who person finished the game, and we’re each wrestling with the aforesaid questions of whether oregon not Sandfall Interactive genuinely stuck the landing. There are throughlines of grief successful each caller way it takes, but arsenic the crippled shifts its themes, what it has to accidental astir the process, the bully and atrocious ways we woody with grief, and who was really “right” successful the astonishing metatexual conflict, seems to displacement arsenic rapidly arsenic its inconsistent dodging windows. I’ve chewed connected each anticipation for days now, and portion of maine wonders if that dissatisfaction is conscionable portion of the process.

Screenshot: Sandfall Interactive / Kotaku

Maybe I’m grieving the blessed ending I thought I was warring for. Perhaps, aft each the decease and despair I saw successful Clair Obscur, it was foolish to person been looking for 1 successful the archetypal place. Grief isn’t conscionable mourning the nonaccomplishment of a person, it’s lamenting a beingness you imagined you’d have. Sometimes I wonderment if coming retired of the grieving process is successful information delusion. We person to explicate to ourselves however thing arsenic senseless arsenic decease has meaning, oregon reassure 1 different that we’ll spot those we’ve mislaid successful immoderate comes next. We archer ourselves immoderate is indispensable successful bid to consciousness somewhat good again, adjacent if it doesn’t rather marque sense. But nary substance however we bandage the wound, grief ne'er wholly goes away. We conscionable travel up with immoderate mentation helps america spell connected astir our day. I consciousness similar that’s wherever I’m astatine with Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. I’ve decided that its ending, my dissatisfaction with parts of it, and each the ways the decision subverted what I hoped for, was astir apt the point. I tin enactment successful the denial signifier a small spot longer.