A deep dive into the characters and themes of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33

Family is complicated

This piece will be full of spoilers. You have been warned.

For my spoiler-free review of the game, check here.

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As you may already know, I got kind of obsessed with this game. This happens every once in a while. I consume some sort of media that affects me deeply and I can’t stop thinking about it. So instead of drowning in my own thoughts or talking my husband’s ear off, I decided to make it everyone else’s problem.

You are very welcome to disagree with me on any point, this is all subjective and my personal experiences heavily influences this analysis. Just try to be nice about it and don’t get all Reddit-y. The comments I’ve read on there… sheesh. You’d think a game that places love at its center would have a less toxic fanbase, but I guess it’s Reddit after all.

The characters. And Verso. So much yapping about Verso.

First of all, the characters are all incredibly well-written. All of them are complex and real. Maelle, Lune, Sciel, Monoco, Esquie… I enjoyed spending time with them and maxed my relationship with all of them. Monoco especially provided some much needed comic relief while being a complicated character himself.

I also accidentally romanced Sciel - I didn’t know you could romance people in this game! She is the best though, so no regrets there. I loved how straightforward she is, and how compassionate she was despite everything. Characters who can stay strong and kind-hearted despite having a tough past always have a special place in my heart.

And Gustave, oh Gustave. My honey-bean. My sweet-pea. He was too good. His parting moment with Sophie is one that will stick with me - and I didn’t even know them that well yet. The end of Act I is a shock to everyone, and I definitely wasn’t expecting it to go that way. I told my husband "Maelle’s situation is weird, is she gonna die? I’m sensing some death flags" literally moments before the end of Act I, after defeating the Lampmaster. Joke’s on me, I had sensed the death flags alright, but for the wrong person. Looking back at it now, the death flags are pretty obvious but I think I was in denial.

Right…

I loved Gustave and Verso replacing him almost immediately left a bad taste in my mouth.

But as I played through the game, Verso became my favorite among the cast. I’ve been reading some negative reviews on the game because I wanted to see all opinions, and a lot of people seem to be complaining that Verso gets introduced too suddenly and replaces Gustave.

That’s the point.

You are supposed to feel off. You are supposed to be wary of this shifty guy who just sneaks his way into the team after our beloved leader dies. I know that I was put off and said ‘‘who the fuck are you?’’ out loud. I know I made a face when I realized that Verso can use Gustave’s weapons and has a really similar skillset.

That’s exactly what the devs intended.

Liar liar, pants on fire

Verso is such an incredibly complicated character. The amount of attention they gave to his body language and facial expressions was insane. I found myself looking at his reactions during big moments even when he doesn’t say anything.

His reaction when you defeat the Paintress and Maelle ‘‘Gommage’’s her? He can't even look.

When Renoir shows us how Aline is suffering after the final fight? See that empty stare?

Or when he realizes that Maelle lied about staying in the canvas for just a little while?

Or in the optional quest when Maelle unpaints Alicia right in front of him? The only family he had left, and she’s gone in the blink of an eye, without even getting to talk to her. The look in his eyes as he looks at Maelle is chilling.

I think that’s the moment where he realizes Maelle is essentially a goddess there and can do whatever she pleases without feeling the need to ask anybody else and how dangerous it is.

And oh, how hyprocritical of him.

One of my favorite aspects of Verso is that he is so flawed. He lies. He lies all the time, keeps secrets, and betrays people’s trust, whether to protect others or to protect his own feelings. It makes him such an interesting character: despite the fact that he cares so deeply for others, he’s far from perfect.

Very far from it, in fact.

That moment in Maelle’s social link where she asks if he could have saved Gustave? It was a gut punch seeing the options. I put my controller aside for a moment as I took it in.

He could have saved him.

He didn’t. Because he was too afraid and couldn’t take chances.

God damn.

What a complicated character.

I did tell her the truth in the end. And as I am too familiar with the Persona series, I instinctively knew that a wrong answer might break the social link so I asked my husband to look it up. I was going to tell the truth anyway, but I needed to brace myself…

(Though I have to say, it did make me giggle that Maelle actually writes ‘‘Papa va t’en’’ on the Monolith after this scene. You continue seeing that on the Monolith for the rest of the game.)

It’s stuff like this that makes the game incredibly charming

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Verso is very much a morally gray character. He lies through his teeth, lets Gustave die, keeps up his walls at all times, is willing to destroy the Canvas even if it means that everyone in it will be erased, keeps the fact that he had Esquie’s flying stone all along…

But he also protects Maelle and the others by making himself catch on fire when Aline burns them; Aline only stops because Verso catches on fire when he hugs Maelle. He splits himself in half (very painfully!) to make the team laugh when they’re feeling down. He banters with Monoco and stores ungodly amounts of wine in Esquie.

Insane scene, by the way

Like I said, what a complicated character…

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I love it when a character’s skill gives us information about the character. A significant part of Maelle’s moveset being based upon Burn damage, for example. Or even Burn damage being the most relevant status effect in the game.

But the skill that made my stomach drop was Verso’s Burden skill: Removes all Status Effects from all allies and applies them to Verso. This skill gives us information about Verso as a character without being overt about it. And then I learned about what happened to the original Verso and it made a lot of sense.

What a selfless skill for a character who does such selfish things.

How human.

Verso is one of the most intriguing characters I’ve seen in my years of gaming. What would happen if the child from Omelas would want to end the world to ease his suffering? Verso’s motivations are not as ‘‘simple’’ as that (as we’ll explore further in), but his story reminds me of it.

I’m thoroughly fascinated by this sad disaster of a man.

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Some musings about the themes and endings

When I first heard the name Dessendre, I immediately thought it made sense. The pronounciation is nearly same as the French word ‘descendre’ - as in ‘to descend’. Descending into grief or madness. A very apt name for the family that got lost in their grief and put everything in motion.

(I didn’t initially realize it but I read later that the name is also homonymous with ‘‘Des Cendres’’, which means ‘‘from the ashes’’. Yeah…)

In JRPGs, it is usually a given to fight god at the end of the game. There is always a god at the end, but that god is usually distant, uncaring for its subjects, or downright cruel. Killing that god saves the world, and we get our happy ending.

Expedition 33 manages to subvert our expectations. The gods here are normal human beings.

This blew my mind when I first realized it.

It’s very much like a Greek mythology, in a sense. Just as how gods in Greek myths don’t care about the people they punish, the Dessendre family doesn’t really care about the crossfire that the Lumière habitants find themselves in.

They wreak havoc in Verso’s childhood canvas. A canvas that was supposed to represent the child in Verso, a canvas that Verso and Clea painted creatures in to play with, a canvas that Verso, Clea and Alicia played in, that they found joy in…

Child Verso created Esquie, who is known as the ‘strongest being in the universe’ because of course your favorite toy would be the strongest.

Child Clea created François, who uses the ‘strongest ice attack ever’ because of course you would use such an attack against your brother when you’re playing.

Child Verso painted drawing figures with paintbrush heads, who just love fighting because what boy doesn’t like play-fighting?

What was once full of whimsy and childlike wonder was filled with pain and grief. Its inhabitants living in constant fear and oppression, surrounded by death.

Which brings us to the one point I will talk about a little negatively: Act III and the endings. Don’t get me wrong, it was still incredible. I loved that neither ending is the "good ending". You are supposed to feel confliced.

But my complaint is that Lumière, its residents and its future take a backseat in Act III in favor of the Dessendre family.

The final choice

We are forced to choose between letting Maelle live in the painting, letting her potentially go down the same path as Aline and letting Verso suffer a life he did not ask for nor he could end; or destroying the painting in hopes of saving Maelle and letting the Dessendre family work on their pain and letting everyone in the painting - the people that we came to love and care for - die.

I chose Verso’s ending after much deliberation, and it was not an easy decision. What helped me make my mind was the heavy implication that Maelle will continue suffering in the cycle of grief, and thus becoming like Aline.

The game beats you over head with this implication. There is a period of time where you are led to believe that you might save both the Dessendre family and Lumière, but when you see - through Verso - that Maelle lied to her father about staying in the Canvas for a little longer and not forever, you realize that there is really no happy ending to this story.

I saw this question a lot in discussions: Why does Verso fight against Renoir? Especially after everything he did to end this canvas, shouldn’t he be siding with Renoir? After doing some thinking and reading about it, the answer was clear to me: he thought there was finally a third choice. With Aline out of the Canvas, he thought that it was going to be okay. That they could keep the Canvas, that Renoir wouldn’t feel the need to destroy it, that Maelle would not lose herself in the Canvas like Aline.

Until he saw how Aline was suffering.

Until he realizes that Maelle lied to Renoir about staying there ‘‘just a little longer’’.

That’s when he realizes that this cycle would never end.

I’ve seen people claiming that Verso only wants to erase the Canvas because he wants to die. This is only partially true and not even his biggest motivation. His biggest motivation has always been the family first. We see this tendancy with the real Verso and how he sacrificed himself to save Alicia. And now, he intends to sacrifice both himself and an entire world to save his sister, again.

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And there is the matter of the soul fragment of real Verso. The way the final choice is framed is very deliberate. The shot does not linger on either Maelle or Verso - it lingers on Verso’s soul fragment and what can be interpreted as the heart of the Canvas. This shot is interesting, because the soul fragment isn’t standing up and painting on a canvas, like you would in a normal situation.

He is painting while kneeling.

Us humans are very visual creatures. Even when we don’t pay attention, we take in visual cues subconsciously. It steers our decisions. Seeing the real Verso’s soul like this, his face out of view and hunched over in an almost pitiful sort of way, I felt bad. The in-game dialogue seems to suggest that the fragment actually enjoys painting and this world, but he is sad that his family is tearing the world apart. The ending makes it clear that he is tired of painting.

I could not let him go on after seeing this.

Considering that the fragment is a part of real Verso, I had a feeling this is not he would have wanted. If I were in this situation, if my family were tearing each other apart because I was gone and they could not move on, I would be devastated. Especially knowing that they are doing this out of love and not malice.

So that’s how I made my decision. What would make this a more difficult choice for me would be if Sciel or Lune were also allowed to weigh in at the end, as the representatives of Lumière. Lune especially. I knew she would not approve. Her cold look at Verso at the end was bone chilling, as she realizes that Verso broke yet another promise and doomed them all.

Then I played Maelle’s ending and it felt even more bleak than Verso’s. What does it mean when your god lives amongst you? Do you even have an input when she is able to change and paint whatever pleases her? It’s not like Maelle turns into some sort of villain, but the game makes it abundantly clear that living in a canvas is dangerous for Painters, which is exactly why Renoir wants them out of there. Aline is the prime example of this. Maelle’s ending seems to imply that this will be the case for her as well. Especially when the camera turns to her painted eyes and that creepy diminished chord plays.

Her continuing the cycle also means that the possibility of Renoir (or Clea) entering the Canvas again to force Maelle out, and causing another Fracture is really strong. Again, it’s a cycle.

Not even talking about the moment in the ending where Verso begs Maelle to "unpaint" him and Maelle refusing to do so. Heartbreaking.

Though both endings are clearly left up to interpretation. I just wish that the actual, living people in Lumière and their fate would have been brought up more prominently in the ending. They might be painted, but they are treated as sentient, real beings so I would have loved for them to be more relevant to our choice at the end.

I’ve read many discussions on the endings. It gets frustrating to read some of the analyses on this topic because some people treat it like the correct choice is set in stone and you are a monster for choosing another one. But it’s a morally gray ending no matter what you choose. It’s all up to you and how you interpret it.

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There is so much more I can talk about in this game. I could talk about how both the real Verso and Painted Verso’s last words to Alicia/Maelle is ‘‘You’re okay’’. I could talk about the different painting styles of the Dessendre family (Verso with his silly Gestrals and trains, Aline with her imitation of real life, Renoir with a more abstract and emotional view on art, Alicia with her still trying to find herself and Clea with whatever the fuck she wanted to create with those Nevrons). I could talk about how, during the ending, Maelle does not acknowledge nor interact with Verso’s soul fragment - a real piece of Verso is right there but she only interacts with Painted Verso, therefore solidifying her denial and how grief blinds her.

But I’ll leave it here for now. I heard that they are thinking of making Clair Obscur a franchise, à la Final Fantasy. But I don’t know if they will be able to meet the expectations for their next games. The mystery of the plot and the way it’s revealed is one of the strongest points of Expedition 33. And it makes a second playthrough incredibly rewarding, as I’m experiencing with my NG+ playthrough. I don’t know if they’ll be able to reach that high again in the same universe, but I’m still very much looking forward to the next one.

Maybe a game about Painter vs Writers? Something else entirely? I’m sure they have a few tricks up their sleeves. If anything, I’m sure we’ll get a banger soundtrack again. I hope Lorien Testard becomes the Darren Korb of Sandfall.

This was an incredible game that I will not be getting over anytime soon.

Thank you for reading.

Pour ceux qui viendront après.