the “good” ending debate on expedition 33
so ive heard a shitton of arguments about what ending of expedition 33 is the “good” ending and why you’re a monster if you chose the other ending. aside from everyone involved in the game saying that there’s no true or good ending, im just gonna throw out there that neither is good and both are goddamn tragic.
but i didn’t think that until i had watched both all the way through
i chose maelle’s ending first. and at first i was thrilled. then i saw verso at the piano.
relevant background on me: when i was a kid, my mom’s cousin and her husband came to visit and stayed with us for a few days. i was probably 7, 8 years old. the cousin had had a stroke. she could barely talk, walk, or feed herself. i don’t remember much about her visit, but i remember my mom saying afterwards “i don’t want to live like that”.
fast forward to my mid-twenties, and my mom took me with her to see her estate planning lawyer. when we got to the medical proxy stuff, she said that she didn’t want life support if she had a stroke.
fast forward to last year, my mom has dementia, is a fall risk and goes into a skilled nursing facility to get more intensive physical therapy, bring her home when her balance and strength are better and she’s not so much of a fall risk. she kept trying to leave. she waited until no one was looking, fell and fractured her hip. she’s not a candidate for surgery, so she’s not allowed to put any weight on her hip for 3 months. she declined. i’m presented with a reality check. if my mother’s heart stops for any reason, i have her checked to receive cpr. if my mother receives cpr, her rib cage will shatter, and she will not recover from that. do i want to change her dnr form. i remember her cousin. i remember my mom saying she didn’t want to live like that. i consider that my mom can no longer walk, talk or feed herself. i change her dnr form.
three weeks later, she’s refusing all food and drinks. i ask for iv fluids.* a few hours later she’s groaning. in pain. i ask if she can have morphine. since she can’t drink on her own, iv fluids are considered life support, and she can’t have morphine (which is hospice care) and life support at the same time. she came home for hospice care the next day. she died two days later. (*editing to add, we were already planning to bring her home for hospice care and her transport was the next day. i had promised my mom over a decade before that she wouldn’t die in a hospital, and i had promised her entire stay at the facility that she would come home. they asked if i wanted to give her fluids and i said yes because i was afraid of breaking my promise to her and didn’t know yet that iv fluids would be considered life support, and that would prevent her from having comfort care.)
fast forward to this year. i start playing expedition 33. i finished act 1 on july 31st. on the one year anniversary of my mother’s death. needless to say, watching gustave’s death one year after watching my mother die hit pretty fucking hard
so i chose maelle’s ending. tears of joy. gustave is alive again. everyone is alive again. everyone is happy. and then verso.
“i don’t want to live like that” and “i don’t want this life” sound pretty similar huh?
another example i can use that’s much more broadly experienced. i had a pet rabbit for 8 years. in april he wasn’t acting like himself. i took him to the vet. he was in kidney failure. can he be treated? weekly injections and daily iv fluids. at some point, every pet owner has to ask if they can justify extending the life of their companion. and it always comes down to this: can i justify extending this life? what is the quality of life going to be? or am i going to force them to linger and suffer so that i feel better?
so i could say that maelle’s ending is a good ending. i could say it with my whole chest. if she had let verso die like he wanted. instead, she displayed the characteristic selfishness of her family and forced her brother to keep living while he was suffering. does that make maelle a villain? no. but she’s prioritizing her feelings and wants over someone else’s wellbeing.
so do i think verso’s ending is good then? am i gonna justify genocide for wiping out every living person and creature in the painting? do i think it’s great to destroy the painting and throw maelle out to deal with disability, chronic pain, and war with no guarantee of a good support system? no.
both endings are tragedies in their own ways. people will talk up this game’s story nuances and then scream at each other that one ending is “the good ending” and ignore that nuance that they were just praising.
i could go into questions about maelle’s ending, whether she’d stay in the canvas until she died and whether that would start the whole damned cycle over, whether she’d be able to repaint people that she never knew, how would she be able to find their chroma, whether she could capture their essence, but that’s not as important to me as the resonance of two statements:
“i don’t want this life”
“i don’t want to live like that”
