(Maybe) unpopular opinion: I am not a fan of the ending of Clair Obscur: Expédition 33
BIG SPOILERS DOWN BELOW, OBVIOUSLY!
Okay, so before anything, I must warn you that any variation of the "it was not real" trope is something I deeply dislike. It always makes me cringe, because it usually means nothing mattered from the get go. In my opinion, the only ways to make it work is either to leave it ambiguous (Inception did this, and the Lego Movie to an extend) or to make it clear from the get go so you understand the stakes.
As I arrived at the end of act 2 of Clair Obscur, I thought they were about to show me a third option.
67 years. 67 FUCKING years of expedition after expedition trying to stop their own from getting erased every years. 67 years of their motto being "Tomorrow comes". 67 years of strong, albeit wavering hope that somehow, someone will make it so that they survive. Then, during the entire game, interesting characters, whose stories, personnalities, motivations and trauma you learn from talking to them. You see traces of former expeditions, laying the trail for those to come, making your progression easier, understanding their other motto "when one falls, we continue". Hell, "We continue" is even what's written at the end of a fight instead of just "Continue".
The first act and a half has this atmosphere of desperate but hopeful "last ditch effort" to save humanity, to give it a future. Lune, Sciel, Gustave, Maelle (before she remembers) and even Monoco play a huge part in setting this ambiance. You want Lune to find answers, Gustave to make sure his apprentices grow old, Sciel to find hope, and Maelle to find out somewhere she belongs. You want Monoco to get the chance to reconnect with Noco once he is reincarnated. And even though you get the feeling that there is more to this, you want Verso to finally get to see an expedition through, after all these years of seeing every single one die. You will save these people, you will give them back the time they were robbed of. You fight the Nevrons, those monsters who are trying to kill humans and absorb their chroma, and every fight makes you stronger, more hopeful.
But then you reach the Paintress. Hints have been spread from the very beginning that this might not be her fault, that she is trapped also, but you defeat her nonetheless. And you can feel something is wrong. Celebrations follow, but there is this... hint of eerieness. This is confirmed as literally everyone is Gommaged on the spot and then... Alicia.
You learn who she is, you learn about her dead brother Verso, wait what do you mean "dead"? And her father is Renoir, but not the one you just fought, and he is fighting her mother Aline, to get her out of a... Canvas? Apparently it's Verso's Canvas, and she's been in there way too long. Clea, Alicia's sister, has been tipping the balance in Renoir's favor, which allowed him to slowly erase Aline's... oldest creations? Wait, the monolith, the number!
Everything makes sense now, this was a World-Canvas created by a family of Painters, humans with the power to create realities in their paintings, and then that world was shattered by their grief.
This is where my instinct went off a bit. It very much looked like the trope I dislike. But then I though, no, the people in this Canvas are still real, their lives matter. This is not just a painting. Maelle, who now fully remembers both her lives but embraces her new name, aims to stop the Canvas from being destroyed. The third act starts and the objective is clear: Defeat Renoir, bring everyone back. Great! It might be a pocket universe of sorts, but their lives matter, you should still save them!
And then the endings. Either you do save them by siding with Maelle, but she becomes corrupted, puppeteering an unwilling version of Verso so that she can live in her perfect world, or you side with Canvas-Verso and the canvas gets erased, along with everyone in it. Turns out the only thing holding it together was the last bit of the real Verso's soul, painting forever. The "good" ending is to set him free and let the world you spend nearly an entire game in just... fade away.
So yeah. An entire world you cared about destroyed because a family can't go to therapy to get over their grief, and the game saying at the last minute that it's the right decision because it's held together by a tired soul. And I just think it sucks. No word about how the will to survive of the people of Lumière is literally what allowed Renoir to prevail. Their lives either become Maelle's fantasy world, or they are sacrificed, and I think it just... sucks. In the end, the lives of those people you grew to love is nothing more than a plot device. They matter little in the grand scheme of things, which as it turns out is ONE family of French metahumans.
I can't help but feel like there was something else that could be done. I mean, EVERYONE in Lumière is used to grief. Literally Lucien at the beginning is cheerful despite the loss of what must be hundreds of people hours prior, because it happens every year anyway. Nearly everyone in that city could help the Dessendre overcome their grief, as thei had to themselves... And you're telling me the only way to get this family of essentially gods to move on is to destroy a world the one they grieve created so that they aren't tempted to get in it? C'mon... It just sucks that the same gief that shaped the lives of the people in the Canvas for so long needs them to be erased to be overcome.
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