Clair Obscur Expedition 33: Painting with Sorrow
This falls very much under the “other ephemera” category as far as this blog goes. As with popular music, and perhaps even more so, I like to make a case for video games as art, contra Roger Ebert’s famous assertion to the contrary (which, to be fair, he did nuance over the course of years), and so I’ll likely be talking about them a fair bit here. And where better to start than with a game that is itself about art in crucial ways?
It's worth saying that this will include spoilers from the off. Expedition 33 is very much a game in which the process of discovery is crucial to its impact, so if there’s any prospect of you playing it (which I would very much encourage – it’s perhaps the best game I’ve played this year), I would highly recommend not reading any further. It’s also worth saying that this is largely just a refinement of my initial thoughts about the game rather than any definitive statement. This is simply a game that demands to be written and thought about in depth.
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is, as ultimately revealed, a game about what it means to live with loss, and the meaning of art, and how these things intertwine. It’s a game that asks big questions: does art have the power to truly console in the face of unimaginable loss? What does a piece of art mean in the wake of the artist’s death? Does a piece of them remain in the art, or is there only ever a projection by the audience/viewer? More boldly, it withholds easy answers to these questions, forcing the player to sit with them and make up their own mind.
Indeed, it withholds the questions themselves to a greater or lesser extent for much of its playtime. From the prologue, the players follow the inhabitants of the Canvas; Gustave until the end of Act I, Verso thereafter, and Lune, Sciel and Maelle throughout. The nature of the Canvas as a fictional space is only truly revealed at the end of Act II, perhaps thirty hours or more into the game, causing the player to stumble as they realise the nature of the world they’ve been experiencing since the beginning. Of the five aforementioned characters, Verso is a fictional reconstruction of a dead person, Maelle is a fictionalised version of the real Alicia (albeit inhabited by Alicia herself, as a sort of avatar, very much like the player controls the character), while the other three are entirely fictitious within the world of the game. So even the existence of the characters is, to an extent, open to question.
I use these kinds terms – “fictitious/fictional” – advisedly, as the game never does. Within the world of the game, these appear to be living, breathing people with real personalities, hopes, experiences etc. Even Renoir, the closest the game has to a real antagonist, at the very least has some sympathy for them. But the nature of the Canvas, and the various members of the Dessendre family’s relationships to it, suggest that we should view them as such. Verso created it, Aline became obsessed with it in the wake of his death, Clea and Renoir also created aspects of it but have come to see it as an obstacle to moving on. For all of these people, the Canvas is something that exists as a minor part of their lives, something that can be entered and exited at will, for the most part. Esquie and Monoco, the fictional Verso’s friends, are implied to be childhood creations, perhaps based on toys (which explains their exaggerated personalities, one of the main sources of the game’s unexpected but effective streak of humour). As compelling as this world and the characters who inhabit it are, we’re not allowed, at least in the game’s final act, to forget that they are, in important senses, not real.
Because this is, at base, a game about living with grief, and how we choose to confront or deny it. The central conflict of the game turns out to revolve around this question – the apparent antagonist, Aline, turns out to be trying to preserve the world created by her son. Aline, and later Alicia, sees preserving the Canvas as a way to remain connected to Verso through his creations, though there, regardless of the player’s sympathies, a suggestion that Aline at least has gone too far with this in her creation of false, distorted versions of her family inside the painting. For the real Renoir, though, the Canvas has become a sort of trap – Aline has become lost in it, in a state of melancholia, unable to move on, and he fears the same may happen to Alicia.
The game presents the player with this conflict in what first appears to be a one-sided manner. We play as Alicia/Maelle, in her determination to persuade or force Renoir out of the Canvas so that she can recreate its inhabitants, who have all been dissolved at the end of Act II without Aline to protect them. Any doubts about this course of action go unvoiced through Act III (whose length is largely up to the player – the final level/fight is available from the off, though it will be very difficult without levelling up in some of the many optional areas that become available ). Even Verso, who chose to help defeat Aline out of his own desire to disappear, largely goes along with Alicia to the end.
The climax of the Renoir/Alicia conflict turns out, unusually for a video game, to be one of reconciliation rather than force. True, Renoir is defeated in a fight, with some help from Aline, but it is in conversation with Alicia that he is persuaded to back down. It’s a magnificent piece of writing, and of performance (Andy Serkis as Renoir and Jennifer English as Alicia are among the game’s standouts), and it seems at first glance to be finding a neat synthesis for the central conflict: Alicia will recreate the world, but will not stay there, so as to avoid Aline’s fate.
But there’s a problem: Alicia is lying, and Verso knows it. Renoir seems to as well, but as he says himself (and Verso echoes), he wants to believe her. And so there’s a final stand-off between Alicia (or rather, Maelle, and the distinction is significant here – Maelle is the unscarred version of Alicia who can speak inside the Canvas) and Verso. And here the game takes a big swing. There have been some choices up to now, but they’ve been relatively subtle; a few dialogue options that alter Verso’s relationship with the other characters[1], some optional enemies and quests that change how boss fights go. But here the game hands the player a big choice: side with Verso, and destroy the Canvas, or side with Maelle and preserve it.
And this is no false, superficial choice – the ending is completely different either way. The player is asked to demonstrate their understanding of what has been happening – who is right? It’s a bold choice which is not only an excellent example of player agency shaping narrative, but also demonstrates a confidence in the strength of the game’s storytelling and themes. Whichever the player decides is the correct choice, must be so.
It's a choice that seems likely, perhaps designed, to inspire debate. And so it’s appropriate, in a way, that I consider Verso to absolutely be, on the game’s own terms, the correct choice here. Not because his ending is more interesting or aesthetically pleasing; if anything, Maelle’s may be more haunting. But that’s just the point.
So much of the game up to this point has been about the idea of dealing with death. In the first half-hour, Gustave has to face the impending and then actual death of his ex-lover Sophie, along with everyone else of her age. At the end of Act I, Maelle is forced to watch Gustave die, powerless to do anything about it. Sciel and Lune are both haunted by people they’ve lost; the former’s husband, the latter’s parents. And all of the members of the Dessendre family are, in different ways, dealing with Verso’s death; Aline through sinking into grief, eldest sister Clea through keeping busy, Renoir through attempting to save Aline. Alicia accuses Renoir of attempting to exert control in the face of the unknowable by destroying the Canvas, and he doesn’t deny it. But that’s just what Alicia is doing as well.
If the player chooses to side with her, the epilogue (“A Life to Paint”) sees Maelle sinking into fantasy. She sits in the opera house, surrounded by her friends, with a smiling Gustave taking the seat next to her, but her face is seen to be covered in paint and flaking, just as we earlier saw Aline’s and Renoir’s after they had spent too much time in the Canvas. Meanwhile, Verso too is trapped in a life he doesn’t want. He moves towards a piano, the instrument for which he has expressed love throughout (and by which the soundtrack is dominated), but never actually plays it. There is a subtle wrongness to this ending, underlying the smiles, which is extraordinarily effective.
The Verso ending (“A Life to Love”) is, on the surface, the sadder of the two. After Maelle is defeated, she crumbles away, followed by each individual member of Expedition 33, Verso last of all. The epilogue sees the Dessendre family bathed in sunlight at Verso’s grave, Renoir and Aline embracing each other, united finally in their grief. Alicia, scarred and mute again, is left alone by the grave, where she has a final vision of the Expedition members waving her farewell. By implication, she is left to move forward, but crucially, in the real world. The game’s recurrent image of falling petals is brought to fulfilment at Verso’s graveside, the experiences of the Canvas having been brought to bear in reality.
There’s a remarkable emotional and thematic complexity to all of this. That final choice turns on principle and ideas, but also on emotion – Alicia wants her brother back (and something else, which we’ll come to in a bit), while Verso just wants to die. Indeed, suicide is something of a running theme of the game – as well as driving Verso’s actions throughout, Gustave contemplates suicide after the near destruction of Expedition 33, while Sciel has attempted to drown herself after the death of her husband. The constructed versions of Clea and Alicia within the Canvas also ultimately choose self-destruction. There’s a sense throughout the game of the dangers of losing meaning to one’s life – after all, even if we think Verso is ultimately right, his actions do lead to the deaths of everyone around him, a secret he keeps up until the moment they all fade away at the end of Act II.
In all of this, Expedition 33 makes for a striking companion piece to its nearest rival for the title of best game I’ve played this year: Metaphor Re Fantaszio[2]. Both games are, in large part, about the function and role of fantasy, but where E33 is about the compensatory function of fantasy, Metaphor deals with it as a way of imagining possibilities, particularly in rebellion against a tyrannical status quo. In both, fantasy is overwhelmingly powerful, but the former deals with it on a personal level, where the latter thinks about it on a wider societal level. It is a trap in the former and an inspiration in the latter. Both, of course, are true, which gives each game a new power when considering it in light of the other. After all, the hope kindled by fantasy in Metaphor could always turn out to be an illusion, just as the fantastical world of the Canvas could become an inspiration.
There are other parallels, notably with the Persona series, spoken of as an influence by the developers: Persona 3 (which shares a director with Metaphor) is likewise about the idea of coming to terms with the reality of death, while Persona 5 Royal (my favourite game of all time, incidentally) culminates in a choice between an idealised fantasy and imperfect reality. But E33 approaches these ideas very differently, perhaps most notably in its implication of the player.
As already mentioned, the player is given that final choice, the thematic heart of the game: the choice between confronting reality and remaining in fantasy. And it’s a choice that strikes at the player themself. The player has been choosing, over however many days or weeks it takes to finish the game[3], to keep stepping into this fantasy world. They have, in a very literal sense, driven Verso towards defeating the Paintress and erasing the Canvas, and then Maelle towards confronting Renoir to preserve the Canvas. They are now forced not only to reckon with those actions, and deliver their judgement, but to consider their own position as player. You too have been choosing to step into this finely crafted world, devoting many hours to it. Have you been ignoring or denying reality to do so?
There’s an implicit mechanical element to this: the game has a substantial postgame, almost certainly experienced after defeating Renoir and seeing either ending, with numerous difficult bosses and areas to fight through. So even after choosing to confront reality, the player may choose to dive back into the game, to keep Verso imprisoned, to keep Alicia from returning to her life. These are not real people, of course; there are no actual moral implications to this. Just like Alicia’s own choice, then; the people in the Canvas aren’t real either, much as she experiences them as such.
There’s one other element of Alicia’s choice and motivation that should be taken into account here. As mentioned, after the fire, Alicia in the real world is left scarred, missing an eye and unable to speak (though she does appear to be able to communicate somewhat with Clea, at least). Part of the reason she wants to stay in the Canvas is because there she can remain able-bodied, as opposed to what she describes as her “shell of a body.” Maelle is, in some ways, Alicia as she wants to be: unscarred and free. The painted version of Alicia created by Aline within the Canvas, meanwhile, covers her scars with a mask, and is able to speak. This Alicia is largely passive, spending most of her time with the painted Renoir. Like him, she’s a distorted version of the real person, who hides away, suggesting that this is how Aline sees her.
All of which, naturally, raises the spectre of disability, and how the game deals with it. Once again, this is left to the player’s choice: is Alicia right to want an undamaged body, or should she value her body as it is? These are big questions, and not abstract ones; plenty of people in the real world live with disabilities of one kind or another. And yes, some of us play games in which our avatars can do things we cannot. I’ve spent some time since finishing the game trying to figure out whether or not I think it justifies Alicia’s desire to escape her disabled body. In the end, I think it allows the player to decide, in line with its general philosophy. It’s a reasonable position, although one might question whether a firmer line might be necessary on an issue like this which has the potential to devalue the lived experience of many real, living people.
At its root, Expedition 33 is a game designed to leave the player with questions. Is Renoir right to want to erase the Canvas? Should its inhabitants be regarded as real? Does Verso really remain in the world he created in any meaningful way? Rather than give easy answers, it allows the player to sit with these questions, and supply their own answers if they can. It’s designed to sit with the player, to haunt them, for a long time. It’s an extraordinary, complex piece of art, challenging in many ways and mature in its exploration of big ideas. Video games are still a relatively young art form, but this is a solid reminder of just what they can do.
[1] For instance, the player chooses whether or not he lies to Maelle about an important past plot point, a nice touch of characterisation which has no real plot stakes.
[2] Metaphor actually came out late last year, but I played it in January.
[3]It took me some forty-odd hours to finish the game, over the course of a couple of weeks, for context.
