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I Don't Like the Ending of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. Here's why...
Let me be clear: Expedition 33 is an incredible game that deserves all of the praise it’s getting. It displays many of its RPG tropes better than just about anything else in the genre. The dialogue is tight and intelligent, the acting is phenomenal, the visuals are dazzling and the soundtrack may just rank among my top 5 of all time. I enjoyed the game immensely. I also want to express that regardless of the writing problems I'm about to address, the studio that made this game needs to be celebrated for producing something that so clearly has passion and love behind it. I applaud them.
For many, the star of the show is the storytelling, which is indeed very strong. Though I’ve become used to plotlines that constantly tease you with mysteries, I was still very intrigued to see where everything was going. At a certain point, perhaps halfway through, I said to my fiancé, “There are so many things here that will make no sense unless the answers I get are really clever.” My fiancé turned to me and said, “What if it’s all just a dream?” I laughed and told him the Expedition 33 writers are way too smart to do that.
Now I want to be fair: Clair Obscur’s revelation that the entire game takes place in a painting is more sophisticated and clever than it all being a dream. But I still felt cheated. Oh sure, this twist is constantly telegraphed and none of this comes out of left field, but it still felt like such an easy and cheap way to suddenly explain everything. However, sloppy writing, especially toward the end, is common when RPGs tread more ambitious and esoteric roads. No, this was disappointing to me for many reasons; most of all, however, was in execution.
Like all of the best JRPGs, Clair Obscur features a villain that constantly shows up to tease the player with mysteries. “You don’t know about the thing!” “If only you knew the thing I could easily just tell you about.” This isn’t a criticism, however, as its not even remotely exclusive to Clair Obscur. And indeed, I found the mystery quite intriguing regardless. The clues were there. I knew Gustave would die for the cycle of grief to go beyond just Sophie. I knew Maelle had to have been some form of the paintress. But there was still so much I did not know. I was so eager to find out that I rushed through what I thought was the game’s final dungeon, the Monolith. I don’t remember being that excited to see the payoff for an RPG in quite some time.
And then the third act started…
There will be many that love the final hours of Clair Obscur. It’s well acted, well animated and while this is absolutely a game that starts about one thing and then becomes about something completely different, the themes of grief, trauma, healing and letting go remained fully intact until the credits rolled. Despite it seeming effective on the surface, however, I believe it was done in a way that felt sloppy, rushed, bogged down in exposition, and worst of all: A betrayal of its main characters.
While it’s far from the worst offense, the exposition still dealt a blow to the dramatic tension of the third act. Suddenly, a game that executed showing and not telling masterfully had characters talking to each other in an awkward manner that felt like they were speaking to the audience itself. And it’s not surprising that this is the case given there are so many things that need to be explained quickly. Who made the canvas? Why did Maelle have no memories of her existence as Alicia? Who started the fire? Why can’t the mother simply re-enter the canvas after being pushed out? We get answers to all of this in incredibly rapid succession. The worst of all is a scene in the Lumiere courtyard where Maelle argues with her father and the two utter the word "canvas" about 47 times.
This begs the question of why the big revelation had to come so late into the game. I found this to be a mistake not just for pacing’s sake, but also regarding emotional effectiveness. Expedition 33 changes course so much in its final 10% that the events of the gommage, Sophie, Gustave’s sacrifice and the expedition itself almost felt like a different game to me by the end. I replayed the game to see how these incredibly powerful moments would feel with hindsight, and I was so upset to find that everything felt less effective.
The most obvious reason is that it can be perceived that our characters weren’t real the entire time, but it goes beyond that. So much of the focus shifts to the Dessendre family that the actual world we’ve been getting to know for 30 hours feels trite in comparison. I will reiterate that it was obvious we were moving in this direction, but I did not expect it to take over completely. Aside from Maelle and Verso, our main cast is completely sidelined. Lune and Sciel may literally have one line in the final confrontation against Renoir, to my recollection.
One of the major reasons I felt so winded and numb to the attempts of the third act is because in many ways, we are dealing with different characters than we’ve gotten to know for 90% of the game. Maelle may be the same person, but so much of her identity as Alicia eclipses her in the third act that it felt like a different character to me, and not the one I had actually come to care for. Renoir is even worse. The game’s final antagonist is not the one we’ve endured for most of the game in truth. The game took hours to establish a genuinely terrifying villain and imposing antagonist and then swaps him out for one that is almost the complete opposite.
Yes, this is of course the real Renoir we are dealing with in the game’s finale, but he literally has the opposite motive of the one created by the paintress, and I found that awkward. I couldn’t care less about this completely new version because he wasn’t the one I had come to fear. Somehow, Clair Obscur manages to execute the cliché RPG trope of a surprise twist villain at the end while still technically making it the same character. It’s almost fascinating, truth be told.
And while I’ve never cared too much about mechanical faults in writing, the rapid-fire nature of the answers we get In Clair Obscur and the simplicity of it all does present many potential plot holes. Why didn’t the fake Renoir just tell expedition 33 why they should stop? Why did the paintress have to paint a warning to its people instead of telling them that she was the one keeping them alive? Why could the floating paintress speak but not the curator? (Renoir) Did Clea just get lucky that Maelle happened to grow up to be an expeditioner who wanted to stop the paintress? How did the other expeditions get so far without the golden rapier and the curator’s help? If the paintress wanted to keep everyone, why did she have Renoir kill expeditioners? I admit that there may be answers to some of these questions, but they don’t seem to emerge in the main narrative.
The real issue I had with such a simple and broad revelation is how badly it cheapened everything else. Did Gustave’s death even matter? What does “For those who come after” even mean by the logic of the game’s ending? Ironically, the very title of the game, Expedition 33, feels so miniscule by the end. I was told to forget about all that transpired up until that point, because the well-being of this family mattered most of all. This was a family I had barely gotten to know, but I sure as hell got to know Lune, Sciel, Monnoco and Esque. I understand that the point is that regardless of my attachment to this world, Maelle had to give it up to overcome her grief, but this feels like such a simple and cop-out explanation that ultimately gave everything less weight. Act 3 shifted focus in a way I was praying the game would not. It centered the focus way too strongly on the Dessendre family.
Clair Obscur features some of the most beautiful, thought-provoking interactions I’ve seen between characters in a game. But upon replaying, these moments no longer inspired me because I knew where it was all heading. And where was it all heading? How about the ending itself? Clair Obsur features two endings, and make no mistake, both of them are sad outcomes. Now of course there is nothing inherently wrong with a sad ending, but I found both endings to be unsatisfactory and ultimately, more hollow than moving. If choosing to defeat Verso with Maelle, she eliminates the last thing standing in the way of her fantasy life. She remains in the painting, seemingly forever, and has created a new Verso to keep her brother alive forever. While many might argue this is a mercy given her real-world status, the game itself would beg to differ. As our heroes sit in the crowd and cheer for the new Verso performing a piano piece, a quick jumpscare moment showing Maelle’s face covered in paint implies she has now succumbed to her grief and will lose herself in a world that is also on a ticking clock toward eradication.
This is no doubt the “bad” ending of the game, though both have tremendous shades of grey in some way. The problem I have, however, is in how this is such a damning betrayal to the game’s characters and world. While many would argue that the world of the canvas and its inhabitants are real in a sense (and I think the game had a wonderful opportunity to fully explore that moral quandary) this ending would suggest that they are not. The only way the argument that Maelle has made a mistake can be made is by implying that this world is fake, and worse off. Sure, the fact that she has fallen victim to something similar to a drug addiction is tragic enough, but this world was so much more than that, and I was angry at Clair Obscur for suggesting otherwise.
It's ironic then that some of the deepest characters I have ever seen in an RPG are in fact, fake. And once that negative implication is made, then everything snowballs and the overall narrative suffers because of it. Our characters were not real. They are worth less than the real world. Their struggles are not as important as this one family that created them. By placing all of the final outcome on solely Maelle’s well-being, all of our other characters are betrayed. And in my second playthrough, I found I didn’t quite care as much since this is all a fabrication. I wish Clair Obscur was more willing to fixate on the massive moral implications here, but it does not as it only has a few minutes left in the runtime at this point.
Everything now retroactively feels like it matters less. In fact, one of my frustrations with this game was also in how insignificant earlier elements of it become over time. The gommage hardly feels like it matters in the grand scheme of things. Remember Gustave? Sophie? It honestly felt like a different game thinking back on that. While I do believe Gustave solely existed to give Maelle someone to grieve over to fit the game’s themes, he was still a fully complete character. “For those who come after?” I’m sorry, Gustave. This isn’t about any of that. We should only care about this one family. Expedition 33 is not a game about an expedition trying to stop a cycle from destroying them. It is a game about a grieving family. And while it’s perfectly fine to pivot like that, it’s bizzare that the only time we truly get into this is in the final 10% of the story. This is why I firmly believe the twist of who Maelle is and what is going on should have been revealed closer to the halfway mark.
So what about the second ending? In this outcome, Verso defeats Maelle and forces the full destruction of the canvas, completely eliminating our characters and the world we’ve spent so long in. This is no doubt the more thematically proper ending of the game, and perhaps even the happiest if we are to assume the real world is all that matters. If the Maelle ending is more of a cautionary tale on grief, this is the ending that places Maelle on top of it by the end, with the ability to finally move on. On the surface this ending should work. But just as it also sidelines the real world like the first ending, I also believe it is a major betrayal of Maelle as a character.
The fact is, Maelle did not overcome her grief or even open herself to it. She was forced to do it. Verso eliminates her canvas self in an attempt to help his sister finally move on. This means that Maelle, our main character, is completely stripped of her agency in the ending of this game. She does not choose to change; She simply has no other choice. And while we see a small sign of catharsis in her real-world’s face as she looks upon Verso’s grave, this is not at all a character arc. What truly would have blown me away is if Maelle had some sort of character arc about trying to let go of the canvas. I can only imagine how immensely powerful a conclusion where she changes and willingly says goodbye to her friends she has come to know and love could have been. Maelle had the potential to, I believe, showcase an incredibly evocative transformation. In fact, the multiple endings would have also been more effective as the player ultimately reaches a conclusion that has Maelle either overcoming her grief, or submitting to it.
But instead, it’s Verso’s show, and it’s clear the whole game that he’s always planned what he does at the end. It is not as though he changes into that person. That could have worked conversely, but we didn’t get it. Verso forces his sister into changing, and Maelle has no say in the matter. It’s understandable where Verso is coming from of course, but this cheapens everything to me as it removed Maelle’s ability to become one of the most profound characters I’ve seen in a game. But as this game sparks conversation in the future, I do not believe one can truly say that Maelle has a character arc if they get this ending. She gets memories back, sure, but that is not the same as an inner transformation. Verso knows what is best for his sister. Maelle will simply have to trust him.
Now, I do still believe this is a more powerful ending as it at least says a lot about grief, but we haven’t even gotten to the moral ramifications, and they are downright absurd. Verso is actually a pretty selfish guy in the end. While yes, he is in an understandable amount of pain, and simply wants it to end, he genocides an entire population to do it. Would this game really suggest that regardless of Maelle’s health, what he’s done is a horrible thing? Were our characters truly worth nothing? And if not, then this means that the game at the very least would once again suggest that this family’s grief is all that matters in the end. Poor Lune and Sciel, the characters we’ve spent the last 30 hours falling in love with, get absolutely no say in this. Lune’s face says it all: Verso is a selfish and horrible man. His sister’s well-being is more important than the feelings of the characters who have expressed their feelings the entire game.
Expedition 33 tells us at every turn that we should care about this world, and what they are after, and then in the final moments wraps up its thematic angle on grief by saying that this world is expendable to achieve catharsis. It in no way makes the journey we set out to achieve feel worth it in the end. Every other plot point is ultimately pointless when compared to the grief this family is feeling. It makes sense, thematically, but it’s so simple and convenient to simply say it isn’t real. It frustrated me. It felt dumbed down. Maelle overcoming her grief over Gustave was 100x more powerful to me than the actual final punchline of the whole game.
This is why I find both endings to not just be downers, but ultimately hollow. One suggests a world we’ve come to love is a poison on its main character, and the other strips her of all her agency and forces a change rather than letting it emerge. Is it uplifting? Is it tragic? Well, it can certainly be both but what we are left with are so many moral implications that it’s ultimately a big boring ball of grey with a muddled message. I cannot stress enough that a single scene in the Guardians of the Galaxy game featuring Drax having to let go of his family achieved this message on grief far better. And I found this incredibly surprising given the rest of Expedition 33 is written so beautifully.
The game certainly has a message, and it’s loud and clear. But how it goes about achieving that was something I found to be awkward and unsatisfactory. It’s no doubt a tragedy story, but it’s lacking the vital materials for it. I can only imagine a powerful scene in which our heroes knowingly let themselves go for the good of Maelle’s soul, and a Maelle that ultimately manages to accept that it’s the right thing. But Lune, Sciel, and the others simply die and we are left to feel that this says… Something. Maybe it’s worth it to save Maelle’s soul? Maybe it’s simply tragic on all fronts and neither message is the right one. Maybe I no longer care because I don’t know by the end.
There are redeemable qualities in the third act. Clair Obscur has one of the best final bosses I’ve ever seen, with a theme so incredibly good that it stands toe to toe with the best of them all. The acting is also superb as always, and the presentation never falters. All of it is there on the surface, but it’s the writing that ultimately drops the ball. Why couldn’t we have gotten to know the family better? Why did this all have to happen in the final two hours? Why couldn’t Maelle have reached a point of decision rather than being forced into one? And most of all, what is the value of the entire world we just spent time in if this family overcoming grief is what truly matters? Hell, maybe the game could have been really brave and dared to say Maelle staying n the world is a good thing, as she has nothing left to go home to. Her family clearly treats her poorly, and even blames her for Verso dying. What if it was them who had to let go? The game’s early hours, and especially its campfire sequence, feature some of the most sophisticated and thought-provoking dialogue I’ve seen in an RPG. But the payoff for all of this is an answer that so simply and easily explains everything and weakens the entire journey.
Many will love this ending, and Act 3. I imagine the shock of the twist alone will blow people away. The sweeping and emotional music will make events seem to have more emotional gravitas than I believe they do. And many will argue that the ultimate fate off the Dessendre family is what matters since it speaks to the themes of the game. But in this girl’s opinion, while Expedition 33’s story is a beautiful one, it ultimately fumbles in its pivotal moment.
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