Let's Talk About Expedition 33

There are games that are just good fun. Then there are games that leave you emotionally drained. And then there are games that do both but also leave you questioning nature of existence and search your own soul way way too much. Clair Obscure Expedition 33 is one of these soul wrenching category 5 hurricanes that can leave you gasping for air.

I don't think I was prepared for this one. Especially since the last game I tackled was Cyberpunk 2077 which left me also in a rather pondering and dour mood. That game had very few good endings to it's name and this one too twists that knife just a tad depending on how you choose to see things.

My initial expectation to this game was a heatfelt emotional joyrney to defeat the bad guy and save the world. Classic JRPG stuff. But as it seems to be a trend these days, this game pulls no punches as far as hitting you to the soul and giving you morally ambigious choices.

! What follows is major spoilers of the game so if you intend to experience this game yourself (a highly recommended on my part), come back here once you're done. !

The Story Recap

I wish to note that this recap will not do justice for this story but I hope it allows at least some partial understanding of the major plot points.

The story of Expedition 33 begins when you play as Gustave, an inventor and member of the aforementioned 33th expedition to the continent. Setting out from the city of Lumiere, the expedition has one goal: To defeat the Paintress. A giant entity across the sea that every year kills part of the populace of a certain age (an age that keeps getting younger and younger) and next year it is Gustave's turn to participate in this Gommage. The expedition begins their journey on the eve of the death of the current generation hoping to safeguard the next.

Upon arriving on the continent the expedition meets with a disaster. An old man (an impossibility in their reality) arrives and singlehandedly slaughters almost the entire group. Only few members survive: Gustave, Lune, Scien and Maelle. Together they endeavour to finish the mission or at least pave the way for the next expedition.

As they progress with their journey another disaster occurs just as they are ready to embark on another sea journey towards the Paintress: the old man makes a return and Gustave is murdered. The only saving grace is that a former expeditioner, Verso joins the group and prevents the old man from killing everyone and with his help (as well as another companion called Monoco) they eventually do reach the Monilith and manages to confront the paintress finally defeating her. Victory and freedom at last. But alas all is not as it seems, in more ways than one.

During the story it is revealed that the man who slaughtered the expedition and Gustave was named Renoir. The father of Verso and he has a singular goal: to protect his family and that meant no one could reach the Paintress. The full truth however turns out to be something else entirely.

Our heroes return to Lumiere in celebration only to see the entire city die before their eyes. A final Gommage to end all gommages. The architech if this destruction: Renoir. But not the one whom they had battled at the Monolith and destroyed. The real Renoir. Patriarch of the Dessendre family who has been trapped inside the Monolith for over half a century. It was by his hand the Gommage came to be while the Paintress attempted to fight him.

But what does it mean? The real Renoir? Amongst the Expedition there is only one who can understand this. Maelle.

Throughout the story various entities including Renoir were interested in Maelle but it is only after the destruction of Lumiere that the true reason for their fascination becomes evident. Turns out, Lumiere was not real.

The world where Lumiere resides is a painting. A magically constructed made by a young boy named Verso. The middle son of the Dessendre family. A living world that the resided in a dimension inside the painting. No one inside are real in the same sense as those outside the paintint. That is, almost no one. And it is these individuals who stand at the center of the conflict that plagues Lumiere. And the reason for the conflict is a tragedy of untold sorrow.

In the real world there is a group called the Painters. The Dessendre family is one of their leading members. There is also another group called the "Writers" who are bitter rivals to the Painters and amongst their crimes includes setting a fire that killed Verso and horribly maimed his sister Alicia.

The family was all but torn to pieces for this loss. Alicia, now mute and scarred, barely left the house. Verso's sister chose vengeance and spent most of her time chasing the Writers who took her brother. Verso's mother could not cope with her grief and instead entered Verso's painting in order to be close by the only existing piece of her son's soul still around since Verso had imbued the Lumiere world with a piece of his own. Over time Renoir became concerned and he too entered the painting in order to force his wife out of there, lest she dies. But their battle left the world fractured and the two in a state of stalemate. Both trapped. Both unable to leave or force the other one to do so.

Enter Alicia. Beckoned by her sister to break the stalemate, Alicia enteres the painting but is caught in the machinations of her mother's Paintress persona and thus Alicia's memories are wiped and she is reborn into the painted world. As Maelle. And when the Gommage happens and everyone dies, Alicia's full memories emerge as well as her Paintress powers. She decides to confront her father and brings back her Expedition team to do so.

Upon the ruins of Lumiere Alicia and her compatriots do battle with the real Renoir and once they prevail the father and daughter can finally have a heart to heart. Renoir, despite thinking the painting should be destroyed to save both Alicia and her mother, reluctantly gives up and leaves willingly, hoping against hope that his daughter chooses to return home.

At this point, the game forces upin the player a choice of endings: Maelle's or Verso's and both have their own bitter sweetness and sorrow to them.

Verso, the painted faximile of the brother Alicia had lost is tired of his existence. Of living as a shadow of a boy who once was. Neither living nor dead. An echo of a past now gone. He does not want that kind of a life. He wants to die. And he wants the fragment of the real Verso's soult find peace. And the only way to that peace? Oblivion. Destruction of the painting. Something Maelle desperately does not want.

So the pair do battle. And if you choose Maelle's side, Verso loses and the painted version of him disappears. What follows is seemingly a happy ending: Lumiere restored and everyone enjoying a piano concert by Verso, now brought to life again by Alicia's paintress powers. But the end shows Alicia's face beginning to see signs of decay. A sign that her choice has fatal consequences and despite her assuranges to her father, she perhaps has chosen not to return home.

Should you choose Verso's side, Lumiere is destryed again. This time permanently. Sciel and Lune and all the companions one by one disappear. Some do so with contentment. Other's with bitter hate. But in the end the canvas unravels and Verso's painting comes to an end. The game ends in the real world with the family standing over Verso's grave. While the parents seemed to have reconciled and accepted the loss of their child, Alicia, still scarred and unable to speak, is left to stand over her dead brother's memorial alone as the echo of the friends she made in the painting fading away in the wind. Lost forever. Leaving her. Alone.

And thus ends the story. Bittersweet and complicated. Dark and terrible some might say. A heartwrenching tale of loss, grief and worlds colliding and no easy choices available. For anyone.

Some Interesting Parallels

I cannot say for sure if the developers made connections themselves or am I reading too much into it but I found some interesting connections in this story to other tragedies of our literary history.

For one, the idea of Verso having the power to leave a piece of his own soul into the painting to me harkens to the story of Dorian Gray. A man who sells his soul to the devil for a life of immortality, eternal beauty and debauchery everlasting. And all the blackness that scarred his soul would transform the painting but not him. The story ends with a fire where Dorian dies and as the smoke clears in the rubble are found two things of interest: an old man dead and a pristine painting of Dorian Gray himself. No sign of mr Gray himself though or so it seems.

Another is the rivalry between the Painters and the Writers. It is said within the game that the reason for the fire was that Alicia trusted a Writer or the Writers hence causing the fire. I am reminded in this that of the story of Romeo and Juliet. Starstruck teenage lovers of two families hell bent on each other's destruction. Their rivalry ends up dooming the youth who just wanted to be together. Much like in this story, so too does the death and tragedy bring partly a peace to a broken world albeit in a more abstract nature.

A third example relates to Maelle or Alicia in the form of the movie Matrix and more particularly, Cypher. Cypher is a villain character who desperately wants to get plugged back into the Matrix and live a life there rather than the dark existence of the real world. To him, the virtual life within the machine world is appealing. To him, ignorance is bliss. And he is willing to betray anyone to achieve this. Alicia is somewhat in a similar mindset that she is willing to do almost anything to re-enter the world and live her life as "Maelle".

A child coming into a virtual world to save their parents does also bring to mind Tron Legacy if one wants to add one more pop culture reference to this mix. Which has some interesting implications if it served as inspiration but more on that later.

Who Is Right And Who Is Wrong

Since the game forces upon us a choice, there is a question that is begged: whose story is the right one? Who made the correct call? Ah if it only was that simple. And for some, it probably is.

If you accept the premise that the world of Lumiere is nothing but a fantasy, a make belief with zero value or reason, then Verso's choice seems the right one. Allow Alicia to live rather than escape into a fantasy forever and probably in doing so kill herself. Also allow the supposedly tired soul of Verso to find peace from his long toil. But as the player and as Maelle, it is very difficult to accept that premise.

Of course one must consider Verso. A fragment of soul, trapped into a painting like a Horcxrux? Is this a choice on Verso's part? Is it a haven or damnation? The faximile Verso claims the soul is tired but that is coloured by his own sad, defeated and depressed existence so not entirely reliable. So is the choice giving Verso succor or is it condemning him to slavery in toil to keep Lumiere alive?

You spend as the player the entire story learning about this world and building relationships with the characters only to find that they did not matter? That the father daughter relationship between Gustave and Maelle means nothing? That the friendships formed along the way are... meaningless? That in the end you must choose destruction over... what?

Then there is Alicia herself. Her face is burned, her voice is gone. Her ability to create meaningful connections and relationships in the real world is damaged to almost beyond repair. Especially when her support structure is too busy with their own grief to help with hers. What is there for her in the real world? Loneliness and darkness. She can never trust again since trusting cost her her brother. She can never truly live again. Granted, perhaps she can gaing some semblance of control in her life in the art of painting as her parents do. She is very young still after all so the pieces of her life maybe can be put together. Many have in this mortal coil we inhabit. And many of us remember how utterly doomy and gloomy we were when we were teenagers and we got over it all. Some more scarred than others but still.

But Lumiere is not just a book or a painting or dare I say, a video game. Not in the context of this games rules. It is a vibrant world with people there with their own hopes and dreams. The paintress did not give Gustave his moustache or second arm or Lune her passion to learn everything about everything. She did not paint the story of Sciel as she in her desperation over the loss of her husband attempted to drown herself. Even Verso emerged not as a clone of his real life counterpart but a person of his own aspirations, dark though they may be. And as Maelle, Alicia already spend sixteen years living with them. To her, they are as much real as her family outside the painting. Equally as much time for her has passed. In Lumiere, she can be happy. Perhaps a full life's worth of happiness. And if it happens that the painting does claim her life, what of he soul? Will it be, like Dorian Gray, trapped in this world forever? And if it is so, would it be so bad?

There is one wrinkle of course. Alicia is now aware. She knows what she is: a Goddess amongst humans in a world with a sense of real different from hers. And that changes things. She controls everything. Can she fully live and grow, knowing she can literally wave her hand and change reality? And can she form true meaningful attachments when the people know what she is? In time, perhaps her immortality becomes a bitter pill and she ends up but a shadow of her former self. Trapped in the painting like a insect on amber, ever endeavouring to draw her perfect world. Or perhaps her soul exits the painting and just leaves. We do not know. But that is where the bitter choice resides and one must ask, what is real? And do the people in Lumiere have souls?

Or is the lesson here to recognize that loss and grief should not be escaped from but faced head-on? That in the end facing the truth will heal the wounds and there is in fact, hope for the future outside Lumiere? Is there a message here for the rest of us to, as the kids these days say, get outside and touch grass? To look around and live the real world instead of this virtual life that so seductively calls us to adventure?

We Mortals Are But Shadows And Dust

There is a theory out there that claims that we, the people, the world, this universe, is just a simulation. Computer or otherwise we exists only as shadows and dust (as Proximo from Gladiator proclaimed) or smoke and mirrors. A figment of someone or something else's imagination. And should that power deem it that ours is an existence that must end, do we matter afterwards? Did we ever matter? Will our experience have a meaning? Or do we fade into nothingness out of memory and time into a void? What if we are Expedition 33 and someone else is playing us right now? Or perhaps we are playing ourselves in some pod somewhere across the... whatever all this is.

I certainly feel real. I can touch things. See things. Smell things. I feel pain, happiness, joy, sadness and anger. But with the increase in our ability to fabricate virtual worlds and sensory experiences like Expedition 33, those senses begin to lose their foundational meaning as far as defining reality is concerned. Or is this just fantasy? Caught in a landslide and just an escape from reality? No I am not about to sing, worry not. But I reckon this little snippet from a song decades past illustrates how these questions remain unanswered to this day and how my little philosophing here is not really breaking any new ground. Despite our supposed understanding of the greater universe, there are still doors we cannot peek in. Much like the people at the cave, we too still gaze at shadows and do not notice the people walking above who create them.

Which leads one to wonder, if there is no clear difference between perception of a thing and the reality of a thing, can the thing be real by perception alone? If you believe something is real, can it manifest as real? And even if it isn't, if the emotion is there, the experience leaves you with something, maybe that is real enough. I am biased of course since I spend much of my time experiencing stories and find value in them but hey sometimes it gets you thinking things like whether we are all just someone's painting :D. Stories after all, are as old as humanity itself. We thrive on the mystical, the fanciful, the farcical. Imagination is the single most driving force in humanity and for many of us, stories sustain us and gives us comfort when so many other things fail to do so. And like Alicia, no doubt many of us want to or do delve deeply into those worlds. And if it makes them happy, who are we to deny them as long as they do not harm anyone else?

Real is truth from a certain point of view. The aforementioned Matrix took a gander at this concept showing us that "real" is not as solid a concept as you might think and if you tell a story well enough, it finds a life of its own and perhaps it has equally as much relevance and right to be considered real as our fleshy shells. After all, when we feel when experiencing a story, is it a lie we feel or simply a different reality we choose to experience?

A Potential For A Sequel

To end this rather cryptic and confusing tale, let's do some speculation as to the future of this game. More of a fun brainstorming to end things in a more... grounded level.

The focus of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is almost exclusively within Verso's Painting and the world of Lumiere. Even when the truth is revealed we are quickly back into fighting Nevrons. We know very little about the world or people outside the painted landscape. But we do know something.

This world seems to be an alternative Earth. The eiffer tower is there. Mentions of Paris might have come across at some point. But this alternative world has magic in it and those who can wield it. In this case, two sects of magical people: the Painters and the Writers. Both seems like organizations with magic in them and both control their magic via their respective monikers: Painters paint while Writers put words on paper and through that, make manifest realities and worlds but unlike ours, theirs have more substance and power. And we know the two groups are some form of rivals.

Should this story continue, there are multiple avenues to explore. For one, Maelle could return from Lumiere to find her "real world" in a war and she must now step up to fight. To be Alicia once again. Or perhaps her sister forces her out due to desperation. Perhaps she recruits her friends from Lumiere to help and somehow brings them to her home. Much like Tron Legacy ended with one of the Iso's manifesting in the real world. Or perhaps it is a war of the worlds. Painter worlds warring against Writer worlds. Two gods playing with their chess sets with the people of these manifest realities caught in the middle.

Another possibility: the painted worlds bleeding into the real one and causing problems and strife and now they must be contained. Much like in Lumiere different personas took root, perhaps Alicia too fractured and broke in an attempt to sustain her realm. And driven insane and her soul trapped in the painting is attempting to escape thus becoming the villain of the next game. Her opposite would be her sister who is still waging her own war against the Writers and now must either contain or destroy what is left of her sister. Since the writers of this game seem fond of bittersweet tragedies, this eventuality would be on par.

Of course the next game might have no connection at all to Expedition 33 but instead another "realm" within the Clair Obscur universe. Game developer wise it would be a blank slate since one could write such rules as how one wishes. Much like the MCU started out with loosely connected invididual stories, so too could this one begin a universe of its own with perhaps bringing them all together for one joined venture.

Outro

Clair Obscure: Expedition 33 is an excellent story and told excellently. No matter what you feel how the story ends or how it was supposed to end. Despite feeling forlong and drained, I do not regret the experience. It gave me new insight. Put my reflexes and brains to the test. And of course like all of these properties, gave me a few hours of escapism a day for a couple of weeks. Perhaps I too am motivated once again to explore other stories and paint my own worlds. Or perhaps I will sit gazing into the void for hours on end. Either way, it was an experience. One worth the time, effort and the money.

If you got this far, thanks for reading. If you happen to be one of the developers of the game, thanks for creating this wonderful story although next time, please make the ending happier. I am getting a little too much doom and gloom these days :).