Nothing extends a game’s longevity like a good ending – doubly so if there are diametrically opposed choices right before that ending. Just like anything divisive, if you set it up right you will prime the audience for conflict, and therefore engagement. Expedition 33: Clair Obscur ends like this, and I don’t think this is manipulative on the developer’s part – I just think it’s a testament to the stellar writing. People are still arguing whose ending is the right one. And people will continue to argue it to the extent that the material compels them to! We still debate whether Joel did the right thing saving Ellie, and that one wasn’t even a choice for the player to make. Introduce player’s choice, and now you’ve got an investment – you chose this, so now you have to be responsible for it. (This goes to the extent that some of us will even reload an old save to pick the other ending if we feel like “we didn’t mean for THAT to happen!”).
Well, I wouldn’t be a writer if I didn’t want to offer my own two cents. Clair Obscur’s endings are phenomenal. But first, let’s define some lore for those who want to spoil themselves on the game. I’ll throw in some Tolkien too, as a treat!
If you’re unfamiliar with the world of Expedition 33, see my review for a basic summary. Initially, we start the game as expeditioners seeking to destroy the Paintress, who we think is responsible for the cycle of death that afflicts Lumiere annually. As it turns out, the Paintress is actually trying to protect us from someone destroying the whole world – her painting the number on her monolith is her warning of who has one year left to live. But wait, there’s so much more! Not only is the whole world slated to be destroyed, it turns out it’s not real – at least not in the way you and I would normally define. All of the Continent is actually contained within a canvas, and each creature in it was painted by a member of the Dessendre family. Halfway through the game, we take an interlude outside of the world as we know it and walk as Alicia Dessendre. The Dessendres are painters, who have the ability to truly create when they paint. They can enter their paintings as (essentially) gods. Within the canvas, these creations live, move, and will things all their own. In the real world, Verso, Alicia’s brother, recently died saving her from a fire. Utterly distraught with grief, Verso’s mother Aline takes refuge in his canvas, where the last portion of Verso’s soul remains. There she further creates, pretending to live a life with him still in it. Renoir, the Dessendre patriarch, recognizes Aline’s grief, but knows all too well how dangerous it is to remain within the canvas and delude yourself into thinking it’s reality. He goes in the canvas as well and tries to forcefully remove her by erasing whatever parts of the painting he can. Their fights are cataclysmic and reshape the whole world. Alicia eventually falls in the canvas as well, but is overwhelmed by her mother’s power and is reborn as Maelle, forgetting her life as a Dessendre.
Maelle has grown attached to this world after traveling with the other expeditioners. Having regained memories from the real world, she now knows that in real life she has no voice and has a disfigured face from the fire. But none of this plagues her in Verso’s canvas – here she is strong, capable, and fully able to accomplish what she sets out to. Painted Verso, Aline’s recreation of Verso, becomes aware of the truth of his world and that he’s only a mimicry. Made immortal by Aline, he’s lived for what’s felt like 100 years and died many deaths, only to keep coming back. It’s easy to see how he grew disillusioned with the canvas. He wants to fully die, be grieved, and for everyone to move on. This is where the endings come in.
SUBCREATION
A Tolkien tangent before we get to the endings: those who have read my articles before have heard me talk about subcreation before. Subcreation was defined in Tolkien’s lecture On Fairy Stories as “the power of making immediately effective by the will the visions of fantasy…Art [is] the operative link between imagination and the final result, Sub-creation.” For it to be fully effective, it must have an “inner consistency of reality”, or else the enchantment will break and we will be ejected from the fantasy.
But usually when I’m talking about subcreation, I’m using it in a meta sense: the developers making a game or writers making the story. In a story, the writer can say what they want, but subcreation only occurs on the mental plane, using your imagination as the medium. The Dessendres still use art as the medium, but it effects creation. It’s not just crushed pigments and oil on a canvas; they are building real worlds, with people very comparable to real people. (There is a key difference, but more on that later).
While the effects of subcreation are supposed to be very similar to creation (in that they have an inner consistency of reality), Tolkien never meant that humans in our fallen state ought to be able to create ex nihilo. This faculty is reserved for God alone. To understand why, let’s dig in to the endings.
A LIFE TO PAINT
Ultimately, the final boss of the game is your father, Renoir Dessendre. He wants Maelle, his Alicia, to leave the canvas, so that all that remains of his family can be together. But Maelle has strongly objected to Renoir’s destruction of this canvas; she loved her foster brother Gustave, and has grown to love this world as she’s explored it. She felt like an outsider in Lumiere, but now that she doesn’t have death looming over her, this whole canvas could be a loving home for her in a way the Dessendre Manor has not been for a while. Additionally, within the canvas she is powerful and capable; in reality, she is disfigured and mute, unable to affect things as much as she’d like. So when Renoir wants to take Maelle back to reality, it feels more like punishment to her than reunification.
After Renoir’s defeat, a portal to the inner workings of the canvas opens, and we see the last sliver of Verso’s soul continuing to keep the canvas in existence. Here the final choice remains: Painted Verso wants this all to stop, which would result in the death and destruction of all the painted creations within. Maelle wants to keep living a lie, escaping her grief and living in a place where she feels empowered. Not only that, but she gets to be with her dead brother in some way.
If you side with Maelle, you temporarily destroy Painted Verso and go on to resurrect all those who have been gommaged. We skip ahead in time and see all the expeditioners we lost at Lumiere’s opera house, where Verso performs on the piano. Everyone seems to have a joie de vivre that has been missing for the whole game. Once Verso sits down to play, the atmosphere shifts: a discordant note strikes, and we see Maelle’s face decaying in paint. She stayed too long in the painting, and has lost herself.
A LIFE TO LOVE
If you choose Verso, you succeed in ejecting Maelle from the canvas. Verso says goodbye to Monoco and Esquie, who knew all along this is what Verso wanted. Sciel is utterly befuddled, and Lune is silently furious. All they can manage before they perish are gazes that would haunt Verso for the rest of his life, if it weren’t the case that he was next. Verso, having died a thousand deaths and lived beyond his natural span, is finally given rest as the canvas dissolves from existence.
Outside of the canvas, Maelle is Alicia once again. Forced to come to terms with it, the whole Dessendre family mourns Verso with a funeral. Like those who gommaged, red flowers are left by his grave. As the rest of the family turns away, Maelle looks off into the sunset and sees a vision of all those she loved from Verso’s canvas, as they wave her goodbye.
Which ending is right? Well, they’re purposefully divisive. There is no secret 3rd ending where everything is tied up neatly and satisfactorily. But I do think Verso’s ending is better, and here’s why.
Verso lived his whole life outside of the canvas, and his soul is trapped here to live even further beyond natural means. I don’t see his desire to die as suicidal so much as it’s a desire to accept the death he experienced in real life. Being pro-life doesn’t mean just respecting babies in the womb; our goal is to protect the dignity of those living from conception to natural death. Artificially extending life beyond natural death violates that person’s dignity.
Well where does that leave the dignity of the citizens of Lumiere? They are created beings who possess free will. This is where things get dicey. An important question needs to be answered here: where does our dignity stem from? Well, it stems from our origins. For a simple example, if our father or mother had a dishonorable life, we would inherit the weight of that dishonor. But we are more than that; we are creations of God, who is perfect! No matter our failings, He dignifies us simply by who He is.
Aline is not perfect, and therein lies the rub. Her creations are by necessity lesser than her. If you’re made by a fallen god, your dignity is all the lesser for that. God’s perfection elevates us from our fallenness, but how can one man create another ex nihilo in dignity? It’d be the blind leading the blind. Aline is unfit to be a god, and so her creations must be even further beneath her.
That being said, the citizens of Lumiere do possess some bit of dignity. It’s not nothing. But creators still have a right to decide what is done with their creations. It’s unfortunate, but the citizens of Lumiere truly should never have been made.
There’s one more reason why Verso’s ending is arguably the correct one: breaking the cycle of grief.
A LIFE TO GRIEVE
When I was first presented with the choice of siding with Maelle or siding with Verso, I stared at the screen for five minutes, mouth agape in just…ping-ponging confusion. The expeditioners fought so hard for all this! They overcame so much so that they could have a chance to live free of the terror of the Paintress! They wanted to be able to determine their own lives. If I didn’t side with Maelle, what was all my fighting for?
And even more than that; how could Maelle make the choice to say goodbye to the last of Verso? I myself have been incredibly blessed; while I’ve grieved loved ones, I’ve not lost a parent or a sibling yet. I’ve never had to choose when to say goodbye for the last time to a loved one. That feels like an impossible choice.
And yet, it is one that has to be made. While I won’t go as far as others and say the people of Lumiere aren’t real, ultimately they are fabrications, not family. It’s not an appealing life to Maelle, but grief never is appealing. It’s unavoidable, much as people try. Maelle’s version of reality is one where everyone is happy, but it’s not how they really feel – they were all remade so she could maintain an illusion of happiness. But the only way out of grief is through it. It demands to be felt, and denying it only prolongs the cycle. To end the cycle of grief, you must let it in and be changed by it. There will come a point when it will no longer rule you even as it remains by your side. Only then will you have broken through the cycle of grief.
According to Tolkien, escapism is one of the functions of fantasy. But Tolkien was not one to deny reality in full; fantasy offered a reprieve, a respite, but never a rejection. Fantasy was a realm to bolster oneself and galvanize one’s strength, a place where hope is renewed and brought to our primary world. Ultimately, one cannot stay in Fantasy forever. One has to leave, use what they have learned, and move forward through this valley of tears. Aline is stronger for having been Maelle – now that she’s done escaping, she will get through this.
Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. What profit would there be for one to gain the whole world and forfeit his life? Or what can one give in exchange for his life?
Matthew 16:24-26
