Clair Obscur - Expedition 33
I used to spend a majority of my time on the online game DotA. Things have since changed, with my interest pivoting to more story-based games. Clair Obscur - Expedition 33 is the the latest on my roster. I hadn’t heard of it at all before release, and was swept up in the hype.
I actually bought this for my wife since I thought this was more her speed. “The game is turn based, so the combat must not be as fast paced”, or so I thought. Watching her go through the first act, however, piqued my interest. So much so, that I ended up playing and finishing the game before she could finish Act 2. I have so many thoughts about this game, that I will first try to give my spoiler-free outlook, and after that some more spoiler-y stuff.
The first thing that the game has going for it is the incredible story. Right from the first 10 minutes of the game, I was hooked. The premise of the game is simple – the people of the island Lumière live under a constant sense of doom. Far off in the distance, a gigantic women, the Paintess, sits ominously under a large number, which serves a countdown. And every year, on the day dubbed the Gommage (or erase in French), the paintress erases the number on the monolith and paints on its predecessor. Slowly, the people on Lumière look on in horror as everyone on the island of that age and higher decompose into beautiful red and white petals. The game follows the actions of Expedition 33, the latest team to voyage across the ocean to reach the continent, and stop the Paintress. While incredibly engaging, the story seemed straightforward in a sense. There’s a big bad enemy, and the goal is to defeat her and stop the Gommage. And the continent probably serves as an exploration and levelling up game mechanic. But oh how wrong I was. I will go further into it in the spoiler section below.
As a big fan of combat-y games, I was extremely skeptical of a turn-based game. Of course, Baldur’s gate had recently won Game of the Year, but I never ended up playing it, prefering the fast paced combat of games like Sekiro, or The First Berserker Khazan. But I thoroughly enjoyed the combat. The game goes beyond the tradition turn-based games by including dodges and parries into the mix. Suddenly the combat felt more alive. In addition to the incredible build-crafting possible, learning the boss attack timings became a vital part of the game.
The music. Oh my god. I read that the team found Lorien Testard from soundcloud.com and he hadn’t worked on any game of this for before. What an incredible risk, that is now being touted as a music award contender at the Game of the Year awards. There are so many incredible pieces that form an incredible part of the story telling. I absolutely want to show a small sampling of the pieces that I loved.
I cannot put some of the best ones here, because the play at pivotal moments in the game, and I don’t want to spoil.
The character work (assisted by the incredible voice actors) is immaculate. Each character feels fully fleshed out and their motivations feel real and personal. Of course, replaying the game makes every interaction on an enitrely different meaning. Finally, I want to talk about the beauty of the game. Each location is so different, and the continent is so diverse it almost feels like a painting. I found a really nice youtube video that shows some of it.
Major spoilers. I highly recommend playing the game first.
The game is steeped in grief. Every section, every character, every act is dripping with death and grief. I mean, the game starts with the death of Sophie during the first Gommage. The game really makes you feel so deeply about every character, so each backstory you hear, and each on-screen death you witness, it absolutely rips your heart out. Of course, at the centre of it all, are the Dessendres, composed of the parents, Renoir and Aline, and their kids, Clea, Verso, and Alicia. We find out at the end of Act 2 that the entire world of the game is not real, but is in fact a painting. The Dessendres are painters, who can create living worlds and can inhabit them for extended periods of the time. The game world is one such painting, made by Verso Dessendre. We also find out that Verso is dead, and his death is the catalyst for all the actions in the game. The painted world contains the last piece of Verso's soul, and the characters and monsters we meet throuhgout the game are all creations of Verso. The underlying conflict in the game is between Aline and Renoir. To deal with the grief of her dead son, Aline enters the canvas as a escape from reality. However, this causes her actual body to decay in the real world. To save his wife, Renoir enters the canvas with the goal of expelling Aline from the canvas and destroying it. This emotionally charged conflict is at the heart of the story. A painted version of almost all of the Dessendres become part of our story. In fact, painted Verso is arguably the main protagonist of the story. Alicia, who was hurt during the fire that killed real Verso, is reborn as Maelle. So the entire story revolves around the Dessendres, a name we don't even hear till the end of the SECOND ACT. That's how incredible this game is.
To summarize, if you have any console that can play this game, I implore you to play this masterpiece. I honestly believe that video games are the best way to tell stories, far surpassing movies and books. And this game takes the metaphorical cake.