This contains Major Spoilers for Clair Obscur: Expedition 33’s story.
Table of Contents: Part 1: Thoughts on Clair Obscur, Part 2: WMG on Clair Obscur, and Part 3: Final Thoughts.
I beat Simon using Maelle’s extreme damage output strategy explained on Youtube, a few days ago and I did most of the extra content without reaching level 99. I had thought learning extra story content would perhaps change my views, but I still felt nothing after the Act III plot twist. I really don’t want to seem as if I’m hating upon this game though. I fear my explanations in the previous two entries may have given a skewed impression on my thoughts towards this game.
I absolutely loved the combat for the most part. The Pictos was a great feature that took me time getting used to; but when I got the hang of it, it was a fun blast. Some of the monsters were kind of overboard with the mechanics, but the fact you can strategize how to slaughter enemies quickly, efficiently, and with massive damage outputs to essentially break the game help to compensate for that and arguably make such gameplay mechanics intentional to encourage players to do that. I love how this game functions and the way it encourages such bonkers game-breaking exploits intentionally for fun and to make it easier to slaughter otherwise grueling bosses with minimal prep time. I love the sense of randomness in exploring places that seem to have their own lived in areas, but don’t always allow the player to take part due to the personalities of the gestrals that you meet. I actually like Esquie’s flying mechanic and flying around the world for the most part, it felt refreshing and unique enough. I love the music, I loved the first 2/3rds of the story and characters, and I really love the unique feel of the monster designs, the gorgeous dungeon designs, and most of the character designs. I love all of that.
Act III’s terrible plot twist is just about the only part that I actively dislike. There’s a serious narrative dissonance that doesn’t make sense for the players: Maelle is told to stop committing escapism to run away from grief, but also that the people in the painting are real with their own lived experiences. There’s a major problem with this for Maelle’s character too; Maelle learned to effectively grieve over Gustave’s death with the help of Lune and Sciel. Yet, in her own ending as Alicia, she clearly cannot process that the Verso she’s forcing into an immortal life is not her real brother and Alicia wanted to spend more time with him as a maladaptive coping mechanism. The first narrative issue it that the story wants us to accept both that Maelle is harming herself in an illusion by staying in the Painted World, but the story also informs us that the Painted World is a living and breathing world of people with real experiences. This is a tonal clash that doesn’t make sense. Are the Painted people effective AI NPCs in a virtual world, or are they real people just like the Aline, Clea, Alicia, and Renoir from the outside world? If they’re real people, then how are the Dessendre family not a bunch of bloodthirsty, selfish monsters without any sense of morals and an inflated sense of godhood? When Maelle kills Painted Alicia and doesn’t resurrect her, then she’s killing a real person, isn’t she? If Painted Clea is a real person, then the Real Clea essentially brutally tortured her Painted version into insanity, locked her in solitary confinement, and then lied to her lover to force her Mother out of the Painted World. If the Painted people are real, then Real Renoir’s solution is adamant support for mass genocide. I don’t think the writers of this game intended for that sort of message, but this is what we’d have to accept if we presuppose that the Painted people are as conscious, self-aware, and real as the Dessendre family.
The second problem is that if you compare Maelle from Act I and Act II to the Maelle of Act III, then she’s completely regressed as a person. It was difficult for me to piece why Maelle felt off until I compared her behavior between the Acts I-II and Act III. For the purposes of this portion, I’ll refer to her Acts I-II as Maelle and Act III as Alicia. The truth is that they’re completely opposite in behavior and morals. This is to the extent that I think Alicia was fully intended to be a separate character entirely because too many details and behavioral changes don’t make sense. Despite the foreshadowing, Maelle’s two childhoods as a plot twist came completely out of nowhere and she stops referring to her life in Lumiere after a brief mention to Verso in Act III. After that, her perspective is fully that of Alicia with the relationship conversation with Verso making no sense, because Alicia has god-like painted powers to resurrect Gustave whenever she wants. Furthermore, Alicia has experienced loss from Gustave’s death and Gustave was like a Father-Brother to Maelle, but she acts completely child-like and immature in her own ending when she begs Verso for more time with her brother as Verso keeps saying that he doesn’t want the life that he lives. The Maelle of Acts I-II slowly adjusted to the reality of Gustave’s death after questioning what the meaning behind all of it was, when Sciel and Lune talked to her and explain it is for the sacrifices of those who came before and for the future of those who come after. The crux of the problem is that Maelle of Acts I-II is far more mature, works out her grief in a positive way thanks to two of her close friends, and she has a vehement hatred of Gustave’s killer, Renoir. Maelle’s hatred for Renoir is a plot point that is effectively dropped when she’s revealed to be Alicia, despite her gazing briefly at the real Renoir in a flash of fear when he’s making weapons for her. When she becomes Alicia in Act III, it’s as if none of this happened and she acts completely different. She knows the pain of loss, but she decides to murder a suicidal Painted Alicia with a big smile on her face? If the Painted people are as conscious, self-aware, and real as the people outside of the Painting, then how is Alicia not a psychopath for doing this? I’m genuinely asking, because this narrative seems self-refuting and confusing as it argues two different themes that don’t mesh well at all. My point is not to hate on Act III’s Alicia or the Dessendre family, but rather that if we take at full value that the Painted people are real with lived experiences, then the Dessendre family would have to be accepted as completely insane on a genocidal level. The story of Alicia’s maladaptive grief over the real Verso’s death and never being able to properly cope with it doesn’t work, because Maelle has already lived, experienced, and worked through her grief over Gustave’s death.
If you separate Maelle of Acts I-II with Alicia of Act III, then you see a clear problem. They’re completely opposite people to the point that it seemed to have been intentional, but then cut for time and budget constraints. Maelle of Acts I-II has learned to properly grieve Gustave’s death with the help of Lune and Sciel who implicitly take over the role as caring older sisters, Maelle vehemently hates Renoir and adamantly seeks to murder Renoir as ruthlessly as possible in revenge for Gustave’s death, and she doesn’t care for or trust Verso compared to her love and trust for Sciel and Lune. She felt exploited by Verso at one point, when Verso tried to use her to get the Manor door to Aline to open. Alicia of Act III hasn’t been able to properly grieve Real Verso’s death because Real Clea treats her like shit and blames her for Real Verso’s death, while her parents ignore her. Alicia thinks highly of Renoir to the point that she naively misjudges his intentions and Verso is proven right that Real Renoir is more of a monster than Painted Renoir. Alicia is fixated on keeping Verso close and with her all the time; Alicia doesn’t pay much attention to Sciel or Lune at all. Maelle gazes morbidly at the sacrifices from the dead bodies of all those who came before her after Gustave’s death; Alicia has a big smile as she murders her Painted self without any concern for how her Painted self is suicidal or Verso’s feelings on the matter. Do you all see the problem? One acts like a mature survivor in an apocalyptic world, the other acts like she’s in a virtual reality styled video game to play with superpowers. This was clearly a regression of the character’s development from Acts I-II. Curiously, the music soundtrack cover has Painted Alicia’s face; why was a miniscule, barely existent character who is only around to act mysterious made the cover art of the game’s soundtrack? Also, does anyone else think that the battle between Alicia and Painted Alicia in front of a Painted Aline in the extra dungeon looks like a scrapped final fight eerily similar to Verso versus Alicia in front of the Painted Verso? Why exactly is that randomly introduced Painted Aline never referenced or talked about, ever again? Finally, Maelle’s name means princess and she has red hair, while Alicia is grey-haired and has god-like powers. I haven’t read the works, but it seems to me that the themes and motifs are a homage to Alice in Wonderland and its sequel, Through the Looking Glass. Aline as the violent Queen of Hearts, Renoir as a mix of the King of Hearts and the White King, Verso as the Mad Hatter (the Mad Hatter’s conflict is that he’s perpetually stuck in the same time at 6 o’ clock which is most similar to Verso being stuck with immortality and watching over a hundred years of people living and dying while feeling stuck), Real Verso’s remnant soul as the White Rabbit, Alicia as Alice, and Maelle – at least originally – seemed to have been a homage to Alice’s rival, the Red Queen (which is not to be confused for the Queen of Hearts). There seems to be a deliberate narrative juxtaposition between Maelle of Acts I-II and Alicia of Act III to the point that their behavior can clearly be seen as stark opposites. In effect, all the evidence seems to point to the prospect that Alicia and Maelle were suppose to be the final ending choice due to a growing hatred for each other; not the random and rushed Alicia versus Verso conflict at the end of the game.
To be clear, as I mentioned before, I think that the Act III plot twist was always meant to happen, but not that it was connected to the Maelle of Acts I-II who had a fully developed life history. I think it was originally supposed to be six characters with Alicia coming in late. Unfortunately, I must admit that I do despise that the Dessendre family were ever added to the story, I don’t care about any vague plot point concerning the Writers who killed the Real Verso, and I don’t care for the Dessendre’s family drama in the slightest. I really tried, but I cannot get over the fact that a more mature and even far more fun story in Acts I-II was then trivialized by this worthless bullcrap called the Dessendre family. If they all get burned alive in a fire like their moronic son, I will feel happy. In fact, if the Painted World is a real living and breathing world, then the Dessendre family completely deserve it. I hate every last one of the Dessendre family members and hope they all die horribly in the cruelest manner possible for ruining Acts I-II with the abject trashtier writing that is Act III. I’m tired of family dramas and family grief stories, I don’t give a fuck about them. They’ve been done to death to the point it bores me and I don’t care for it anymore. As I was finishing up the game, I stumbled upon a journal entry of a previous expedition dying and the person sorrowfully commenting that perhaps sticking together as they die trying to make the world a better place might just be enough in terms of meaning and how the togetherness fills them with purpose despite the inevitable death that will take them all. Yet, if we follow the Verso ending, which is portrayed as morally correct, then their lives don’t matter and their last outcries meant absolutely nothing at all. This compelling narrative got thrown into the back burner for a shitty, forced, worthless, and asinine family drama of moronic Dessendre family shitheads who deserve to be tortured and killed in the most ruthless and horrific manner possible just as they tortured the Painted people for over a hundred years. Literally, that’s what they all did for over a hundred years within the Painted World’s perspective of events. Therefore, brutally torturing and killing every last member of the Dessendre family is morally justified and should happen in any sequel game; at least as background information. They tortured millions of Lumiere’s people for over a hundred years and the narrative tries to argue both that these Painted people are real and that Alicia is stuck in a fantasy world of escapism and needs to leave to live in the real world.
This was the studio’s first game, so hopefully this’ll just be a good learning opportunity insofar as narrative. They really nailed down the music, graphics, gameplay, and so on. I’m eager to see what’s next and what the next Clair Obscur’s story will be, or whatever they come-up with in terms of turn-based RPGs. I refuse to call it a JRPG on the basis that calling it a Japanese RPG obviously makes no logical sense since it was made by French developers and it is therefore a French RPG. Instead of calling it a JRPG, it is probably better to refer to the fact that a game is a TURN-BASED roleplaying game; so just call it a TURN-BASED roleplaying game then. That’s obviously not the developers’ fault, of course.
Anyway, I’m glad this game got three million in sales as of writing this piece; I hope to see the premise of the next Clair Obscur not be completely undone with a self-refuting plot twist like this game’s plotline. If not for the failures of the broader gaming industry in recent years, and perhaps with time when newer games and likely Sandfall Interactive’s future games, then I think the Act III twist would have been judged more harshly. I think over time that Expedition 33 will probably be reinterpreted as the current generation’s version of Star Ocean III: Till the End of Time. That is, an amazing Act I – Act II and a bad plot twist that ruins the latter portion of the story. If this game gets a sequel or spiritual successor, then I hope they do a full commitment to life-or-death / do-or-die civilizational struggles as that was vastly more compelling to me and it felt far more mature as a narrative to me. This game is absolutely worth playing regardless. The gameplay, music, character development for at least the first two Acts before Act III completely ruins the characters; and yes, they are ruined. Lune goes from a serious, inquisitive, and curious scientist who is doing the utmost of putting the mission over any individual and then turns into someone suffering from melodramatic family problems of feeling her life was controlled by her parents, not even questioning Maelle about her identity or the fact that her entire life’s research was utterly pointless, and the very boring final conversation with Verso about not really knowing what to do with her life. Sciel goes from someone suffering grief over the loss of her husband and child to someone who just has to follow Maelle so her husband and child can be magically resurrected. The entirety of the stakes and tension is just gone with Act III’s garbage plot twist. I’ll still play future titles for the gameplay, but I’d prefer if they did a more straightforward civilizational struggle story; you can still have deities, magical creatures, magical races, and so on since the fantasy elements are fantastic… but the “it’s not the real world” twist just incontrovertibly ruins everything about it. If there’s any further “it’s all not real” twists, then I can wait for a sale. If it’s an actual commitment to a civilizational struggle and having two opposing and mutually exclusive goals with equal pros and cons.
That all said, I’d rate this game as an 8 / 10 and I genuinely believe it is worth playing, regardless of the story. It was the studio’s first game, so hopefully this is a learning curve in which they can improve upon. They mostly did fantastic work with this one.