Clair Obscur's Endings, and a question of perspectie [SPOILERS!]

So, last time I wrote about Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, I covered the first hour-ish of the story, a whole lot of mechanics, the art, the music, and of course Lune's feet. Don't worry, I don't have anything more to say about that, haha. Other than I am a bit disappointed by how blurry the mid-combat screenshots ended up being. I later had the realization that in lieu of a photo mode, I could have tried setting the game to resolution mode, and maybe that would've produced better screenshots.

Oh well!

Anyway, this is about the Expedition 33's endings, so please, don't keep reading if you haven't finished the game. Yes, I have some frustrations with the endings, but most people seem to like them, and regardless of where anyone falls on them, they should be experienced in their proper context, not in someone's writeup about them.

I also know that the split on these isn't perfect, as I wrote about the intro to the game last time, so I need to recap something. Part of what leads to my frustrations is a bit of a question of perspective. In a game that lets you swap the “walking around” character at any time, most of the time, it does start to beg the question of who exactly is the protagonist?

Despite the fact that the game begins from Gustave's point of view, eventually it becomes clear the story is focused more on Maelle. Things happen to and around her that the others don't see, often involving a mysterious young woman who looks similar to her... Plus, being Gustave's younger sister, in a way it's natural that the protagonist torch should pass to her.

At the end of Act I, Gustave dies, and the game commits to him being dead and gone... Yet, it then introduces Verso, who has Gustave's same moves (minus the Overcharge), and uses the same weapons. Anyway, it felt to me that Maelle was the focus of the narrative, but that if anyone should lead the Expedition with Gustave gone, that would fall on Lune. She's the first to join Gustave once the game proper begins, and the one that most feels like a natural leader. Both Maelle and Sciel look to her in a way that felt like, “well if somebody has to lead us, it isn't going to be me, so...”

Lune was already the one I used the most when in running around mode, because games are still so dude dominated that it's nice to embody lady characters when I can. Even still, in the year 2025! But I would swap between her and Gustave while he was around, because again, I like Charlie Cox as an actor, and Gustave as character. Regardless, with Gustave gone, somebody needed to take up the mantle of protagonist/lead “The Disaster Expedition,” so in my mind, Maelle and Lune were the two that fit best.

But here's the part where I started scratching my head: the character swapping. In the overworld, and in levels, you can swap between the whole party, even ones who aren't in the active/combat party. Except in the camp. That's where you can hang out with the others, upgrade weapons, etc. In Act I, you can only control Gustave at the camp. Which is fine, I didn't have any issue with it, just a bit odd to have that difference between it and the rest of the game.

So, when he died, as I said, I started wondering who was going to be the player character in the camp. Maelle or Lune, right? I've already illustrated all the reasons why they each felt like they'd make sense, so I won't repeat myself. Which means you can imagine my surprise when next I had control in the camp and I was playing...

Verso?

The new guy?

The new character who, as far as I remember, had not appeared previously, and I still didn't even trust, was now being put forth as the playable character, thus the implication that he's the protagonist, even as the story still felt like Maelle was the focus. Then the game adds a Social Link equivalent between Verso and all the other characters, which even includes both Lune and Sciel flirting with him. To the point where they both pretty clearly want to have sex with him, but the player has the option to turn them down. Which I did, haha. I sincerely doubt the game has sex scenes, and for all I know maybe picking the other options just results in a joke outcome, but I don't know.

And to be fair, while I didn't trust him for a lot of the game, I do think Verso is hot, and Ben Starr's gravelly performance is sexy. I would be flirting with him in their shoes too! Or...lack there of for Lune. It just feels weird when it's in a game like this. I don't mind games where the other party members are “player-sexual,” but at least usually in those they make you work for it. You need to make the right decisions across the bulk of the game, not just stumble into it like when Sciel wants to get it on after she talks about her dead husband.

Again, I get it, people have desires, and I would never shame any real people for “hooking up” in a situation like that. And I wouldn't shame the game for having sex scenes in it, at least so long as they're not embarrassingly bad, haha. I try not to be a prude. It just felt weird in the moment. And I know, based on fan art, and people sharing screenshots, that I'm not the only person who wishes the game had done more with the scene where Sciel rests her head on Lune's shoulder. I'm not going to go so far as saying the game was queerbaiting, more because I don't know if this game knows queer people exist! There were a pair of men in the prologue that seemed like they could have been lovers, but they also looked similar enough that I'm not sure if they were instead supposed to be brothers or something.

Okay, enough of that tangent.

It's one of those things, that for a story that feels like it should be focused on the women (or young woman in the case of the teen Maelle), to reinforce this random dude as the protagonist just feels...and I hate to keep saying it, but it feels weird. Like, is it just because the devs only wanted a guy as the main playable character? Were they worried about the worst people on the internet calling the game “woke?” Were they too sexist? Am I over thinking it?? It does something similar with the antagonist, where initially The Paintress is the main focus, but eventually it's revealed that Renoir (her husband) is the true force that needs to be defeated. Behind every evil woman is an abusive man, that's how the saying goes, right?

Eventually, after various twists and turns, Verso's place in the story is revealed, and of course he's not just some random guy. Turns out he's not only Maelle's biological older brother, he's actually a replica, as the original Verso died in real life. And it's revealed that the entire world Maelle knows is actually just a painting, one that people can magically enter. Meaning everything and everyone else, including Lune and Sciel...aren't real.

Or...are they? Based on what's revealed in this game, the world inside this painting has existed for generations. Even Maelle herself, she got lost in the painting, and reborn as Maelle. She lived a whole new life up to about the age she was when she entered. There's a whole host of questions about the how and why that this stuff operates by, particularly the passage of time relative to the real world, but the game doesn't attempt to explain any of it. And I'm fine with that! It's good, honestly, not everything needs to be explained, and stopping to spell out the rules by which magic paintings work would have just dragged down the story.

The point being that the people who lived and died inside this painting were, depending on one's point of view, every bit as real and alive as the people out in the “real” world. They were born, grew up, had friends, fell in love, fell out of love, had children, grew old (or as old as one can with the Gommage), and died, just like anyone else. I don't know at what point in the “history” of this world within the painting came into being, but even just assuming it began at the time of the first Gommage, it's been almost seventy years. That's generations of people, all with their own lives.

I know I just said that explaining how any of this works would bog the story down, but I'd be lying if I didn't say it also leaves me so curious about that world outside the painting. How many people have this ability? Is it just this family, or are there many more who can? And what about these Writers that appear to be their enemies? Do they have a similar ability, to literally bring worlds to life, just with the written word instead of the painted stroke?

And there's so much more here that could be examined, dived into. Like, as someone who fancies themself a writer, and often of the creative sort, of course I'm taken with the idea of being able to truly bring a creative work to life like this. I'm sure anyone who poured their soul into their work has, at some point or another, felt like they've brought it to life, like they created a living breathing world you could truly step into, and become a part of.

Back to Verso and Maelle. Outside the painting, the original Verso died in a fire, and while the rest of the family blames the Writers, the little snippet shown, to me at least, feels more like he started the fire? I don't know if it's supposed to be that he committed suicide, but it felt more like that than he died in arson. It's hard to explain, and I couldn't find a clip of just this scene, so I didn't rewatch it. Trying to sift through hours long YouTube videos when I'm not even exactly sure when in the game this very brief scene happened was...more research than I wanted to do, just to confirm how I felt.

Either way, Verso died, and Maelle (at this point known as Alicia, but given how much she rejects that name it feels like dead-naming to use it) was badly injured. Severe burns across her face, an eye missing, and she's lost her ability to speak, or really vocalize anything beyond a sad grunt. In grief over the loss of her son, Aline (their mother/The Paintress) creates this new Verso, and enters the painting. Renoir goes in to try to get her out, gets stuck, and etc. Eventually Clea (the middle child) is the only one not in the painting, and who knows what she's doing. Fighting Writers and not wearing shoes, I guess?

And this is where I still can't really figure out how exactly I feel about this game's story. Verso knows that he's merely a copy, a shadow of someone he never knew, and thinks he can't live up to. He's known all along, or at least since long before Expedition 33. All he can do is trudge through life, without any clear goal, or intent, just going through the motions. Making friends, getting up to hijinks, but to what end? You can say it's “about the journey, not the destination” all you want, that still presumes there is some end. But he has none, he doesn't age, and he can't die. He's just existing. At least until Maelle comes into the painting, then being as dutiful an older brother as he can be, he tries to watch out for her, even if that's mostly from afar before the Expedition sets sail.

After Maelle and the others learn the truth about the world, about Renoir's plan to wipe the canvas clean, Verso goes along with them on their attempt to save this painted world...at first. He's clearly conflicted about the whole thing, and only more so as they draw nearer their goal. He obviously doesn't want to lose his new friends, his old friends, or his reborn little sister, but he's also tired. Tired, and in so many ways, ready to move on. Ready to accept that he's just a copy, and not one worth holding onto if it means, at least in his mind, Maelle stagnating and fading away herself.

So, once Renoir is defeated, Verso splits from the group, and it's decision time for the player. Side with Verso, who thinks it's time to move on, or with Maelle, who would rather stay in this world, with her friends, and the life she's built. Now, my instinct, which has been that Maelle was the actual protagonist of this game since very early on, was to go with her. Not only that, but her argument is that there's no life for her out there. No friends, stuck in an oppressive family with nothing but painting, and with her injuries she feels she can't do anything to change that. Not when she can't even speak aloud.

My hope was this ending would be Maelle living a happy productive life in this world, that just because it was created by a person, that doesn't make it any less “real” than the “real world.” Yet...I didn't really believe that was what I was going to see. Of course it wasn't. Instead I got a dark and depressing ending with Maelle living in a shallow dream, where everyone is smiling but you still see the sadness behind their eyes.

Or at least Verso's.

Not that Verso's ending is happy either, but at least it's a healthier sort of sadness. Maelle back in the “real world” with her biological family, all grieving at Verso's grave. This is clearly the intended ending, and I imagine the one most people will probably see. I don't have any major problems with it, and honestly if this was the only ending in the game, I might not have felt the need to write about it at all.

Talking with a friend about the endings, she did point out that Renoir is kind of a monster, and in the end gets basically everything he wanted (aside from his actual son back from the dead), so that...doesn't leave a great taste in my mouth either. Not that I think every story needs to end with the antagonist getting their comeuppance, but that also doesn't mean I need to be happy about it.

Still, on the whole, I'm not mad they left the painting and tried to move on, it's just some of the particulars that irk me. This still isn't a healthy family, and I find it hard to foresee anything but more grief and frustration for them in the future but... That'll be left for the sequel. I hope not, though, I want the next game from this studio (Clair Obscur branded or otherwise) to be a fresh break, its own thing.

Anyway, here's where my problem lies. Maelle never actually accepts her grief over Verso, she doesn't choose to move on. Her older brother has to beat her in a fight and force her to leave the painting. I get it, Verso's story ends with his realization that he needs to sacrifice himself for the good of his sister, and in a vacuum I like that. That his palling around with Monoco, Esquie, and his new girlfriends (I still hate it, haha) isn't worth his sister losing what he sees as her real life.

What I hate about this is that it strips Maelle of all her agency in the story. So much about this ending, in individual pieces, I really like. Verso's sacrifice for his sister is really touching, especially as someone with younger sisters myself. As a creative person, I understand what it's trying to say about becoming too attached, becoming lost in the worlds we create. As someone who's lost people I care about, just like everyone has at some point in their life, I feel what it's saying about the need to move on. To not just wallow in that despair for all time, or pretend things are the way they used to be, when clearly they're not, and never can be again.

And as someone who has at points in my life, just been so, so tired that I have felt the desire to just...let go and want to move on like Verso, whether the replica, or what I think happened with the original, so I feel what this game is saying.

It just bothers me, really genuinely bothers me that Maelle doesn't come to this decision on her own. A story about accepting grief and moving on is completely undercut if the character in question never actually accepts the grief! Even if it had to be she and Verso fight, and she comes to this realization from the fight, I'd be fine with that. I've watched so much anime in my life, I could accept this game operating under anime logic at the very end. They duke it out, and either Verso finally convinces his sister that the healthy thing to do is move on, or Maelle wins, but in doing so kills this replica of her brother. She realizes this is leading her down a destructive path, and...etc. Any number of different ways this scene could have played out.

But it doesn't.

She doesn't.

Rewatching the lead up to the ending choice, it really comes off as the men in Maelle's life, her father and her older brother, just telling her how wrong she is while she desperately pleads to finally have some control over her own decisions. Pleading to let her have something, just a little slice of something that lets her feel happy, but no. Renoir insists that the canvas must be erased, and with it everything and everyone she cares about. They could simply not erase the canvas! Just make sure Maelle doesn't stay in too long, maybe only go there on the weekends to visit or something, I dunno.

I kind of hate it, the more I think about it.

But like I said, thematically I like a lot of the pieces so...I still am not really sure what to say. All these thousands of words, and I don't feel any closer. I hoped thinking, writing, and talking about it would get me to an answer, but no. The parts I like I appreciate even more, and the parts I don't I dislike even more!

I guess the best I can say is, I can't think of another game's ending that left me conflicted like this, so that's interesting. Not everything needs to be clearly “good” or “bad,” I don't need to explicitly “like” or “dislike” everything. I am glad the game got me thinking so much, I just...I'm not really sure the game is supposed to make me feel conflicted. I don't know that the devs thought they were telling that sort of story, or if they just believed it was a “good” ending.

If I were to go back through the game with a fine-toothed comb, keeping notes and really trying to pick apart what the game is saying throughout, I could probably get at least a little clearer of an answer. But I'm not doing that! I had my experience with it, I felt what I'm gonna feel, and like the game says, it's time to move on. Maybe my feelings on it will change over time, maybe not. That's not for the me of this moment to contemplate.

Of course, if/when they patch in a photo mode, if I haven't uninstalled the game yet, I'll probably load it back up just to get some better screenshots for game of the year season, haha. Again though, not for me right now to worry about!

Thank you for taking the time to read this!