hi I'm Lara, I post rookie drawings on bluesky and talk abt games and other stuff I like
favs: dragon age, nier, baldurs gate, house in fata morgana,
clair obscur, umineko
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This post is about the final relationship conversation between Verso and Maelle, so it's got pretty big spoilers for the full game beneath the cut!
The reveal that Verso intentionally allowed Gustave to die is incredible.
First, on a narrative level, I think it's natural to feel like maybe Gustave's death scene was a little contrived. C'mon, you're telling me Verso showed up just in time to save Maelle but not in time to save Gustave? How convenient for the narrative, right?
That he did this on purpose completely recontextualizes the whole thing. It's not contrived at all. It's Verso being Verso.
Second: holy shit, the decision to have Verso, the player character, do something so incredibly unsympathetic is brilliant, as is the decision to wait to reveal it until we've already come to understand who Verso is and why he makes the choices he does. Gustave was a good man, full stop. He was kind, generous, brave, intelligent both academically and emotionally. He was mature, strong, yet gentle. The player likely has come to really love Gustave by the time he dies, and for good reason. He's just a legitimately really great guy.
And Verso let him die. On purpose. Because he thought Gustave would be an obstacle to his ultimate goal, a goal that he believes deep down is his only choice. And because he knew achieving that goal would lead to Gustave's death anyway.
Which brings me to the third point: Verso never knew Gustave, and if he did, he might have chosen differently.
Verso worried that, if Maelle learned the true nature of the Canvas before they fought the Paintress, and learned what the Paintress's defeat would mean, she would refuse to help save Aline because she wouldn't want to lose Gustave. And he's probably right about that.
But Gustave, I think, would have agreed with Verso.
This is a blindingly hot take, I recognize, but in Act I, I think we see Gustave's true priorities. In the really great "fuck the mission" scene, Lune asks Gustave if he still believes saving Lumiere is the most important thing, or whether he would choose Maelle over Lumiere. Crucially, Gustave never answers the question. He tells Lune he hopes he still believes that, but he never says he does.
And his decision to die to save Maelle was not about the mission. If he was prioritizing the mission, he would have fled with the Lumina Converter, even if it meant losing Maelle. But he couldn't do that: deep down, in that moment, he chose Maelle over Lumiere.
The most important thing to Gustave was his sister. If he knew staying in the Canvas was killing her and preventing her from healing from her trauma, I think he would understand Verso's choices and even support him. For both of them, their sister is the most important person in the world, and they would both do anything to make sure she's okay. I really believe Gustave would have made the same choice as Verso, and Verso will never know.
There's something just so poignant about it all.
And Maelle accepts Verso's answer. She accepts Verso, even after he admits the truth. (It does seem like she already suspected it, too.) It's probably not lost on either Maelle or Verso that, by this point, they have each taken a sibling from the other--Verso letting Gustave die, and Maelle erasing Alicia. They have also both contributed to the death of almost every single person in the Canvas, too, though only one of them did so knowingly. (It probably helps that Maelle believes she can bring Gustave back as long as she can kick her father out of the Canvas, too.) So she accepts Verso's actions without hate or even anger.
It struck me today how appropriate it is that Verso's artistic passion is music, not painting. Spoilers below.
Music, unlike the visual arts, is a fundamentally ephemeral art form. It is performance, where painting is the creation of a lasting artifact.
Music existed before musical notation did. We developed notation systems in an attempt to capture and document pieces of art that otherwise faded into silence. But these systems suffer from the same limitations as all human language: they are attempts to impose order on an immense and unruly universe. They can never capture everything about a performance—each time a song is played, it becomes something new.
Later still, we developed technologies to record music: for the first time, we could capture and "display" a musical performance exactly as it was played.
We can collect music now, just as we can collect paintings. To admire as and when we like.
But I don't think that changes the fundamental transience of music.
Verso, a musician, doesn't need to capture beauty to appreciate it. He can erase his canvas. He can finish his song, and when it fades into silence it is doing exactly as it ought. Its beauty isn't diminished by its impermanence—in fact, it is more beautiful because of it.
(Disclaimer: I'm not a musician nor a musical historian! Please feel free to correct any errors/misunderstandings.)
This definitely bothered me more than it should bc there's nothing in the dragon age fandom that I hate more than assuming everyone is playing the same character, the same kind of game and think of the same kind of post game ideas as they are. I definitely do not relate to that post with 11k notes yelling about how they know dragon age more than bioware does bc their heroes will not let the South fall bc none of mine have been in the South for over a decade atp.
So for those people whose characters are definitely not in the South to prevent it from being overrun by the Blight in Veilguard, I'd like to know why? What has happened to them? Where could they be after the credits start rolling in their og game?
It could be as simple as your HoF and Hawke are both dead or something more complex.
contemplating how all the Dessendres seemed to only Paint creatures/monsters when they created living things, and if Aline perhaps violated a major taboo when she Painted humans at all, let alone copies of real people
and if it is generally accepted to paint humans, what about works that intentionally explore trauma in a way where the humans in the painting go through terrible things? what about all the famous paintings we have that depict violence? is it okay to paint those as long as they're not a "canvas world"? if it is okay for canvas worlds to be violent, is there a line you can't cross? if someone made a canvas world and paints a copy of his ex to enact revenge on her, would that not be deeply unethical?
The thing about the way the narrative of Expedition 33 pivots halfway through is that while the focus shifts, the main idea remains the same. In the beginning, we're introduced to the gommage and the central question is "what do we do when our world is ending?" And it answers it right away. We continue. This idea is reinforced multiple times, like when Gustave and Lune are arguing about finding Maelle. Gustave wants to take her back home, and Lune has to remind Gustave that they must continue. Or after Gustave's death when they cross the bridge, Lune has to remind Maelle why they have to keep going, to both honor those who died to lay the path and to provide hope for those to come.
Then we move from a macroscopic scale to microscopic one. Instead of looking at a society's grief, we look at single family's grief. But the question remains the same. After a loss like the Dessendre family experiences, it feels like the world is ending, like nothing will ever matter again. The death of Verso shattered the Dessendre family much in the same way the Fracture shattered the continent. They were a family that, despite their flaws, clearly loved each other immensely. How do you heal from losing someone you loved so deeply? How can life ever feel the same again when they won't be around to share it?
Both the tragedy of Lumiere and the tragedy of the Dessendre family ask, "What do we do when our world is ending?" The game reminds you of its answer to that question at the end of every single fight. We continue. In the face of cataclysmic events, all we can do is continue. To try and do our best to make the world better even when things feel hopeless. In the face of grief, all we can do is continue. To try and do our best to move on even when a piece of your heart is missing. Sometimes we succeed, and sometimes we fail, but we must continue.
you, withering, arguing with shadows in your head: Veilguard doesn't even come close to the subtlety and nuance of Clair Obscur's writing. It's a superhero action spectacle. Where Clair Obscur dives into what it means to be human, Veilguard wants you to look at a cool explosion. Doth not the artistry bleed?
one thing about the Painter-Writer conflict is that it's not clear how, if at all, the Painters' power works outside the canvas so when Clea says she's seeking vengeance, does she mean like... with a gun
I hear the explanations of Clea Dessendre repainting her mother's painted version of her out of loathing, or rage, or as purely a tool for painting nevrons to assist Renoir, and I will raise you:
Maelle apologist not as in "she hasn't done anything wrong", because she has, let's be real, but Maelle apologist as in "man, the internet is once again a bit too readily slandering and villainizing this traumatized 16 year old girl huh"
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