Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 has taken the gaming industry by storm, with excellent reviews and a $50 price tag when other games are asking for $80, but most importantly, a fantastic story. That fantastic story, which follows Expedition 33 as they make their attempt to journey to the Monolith and take down the Paintress, in order to stop her from killing people over a certain age, in this case 33, every year. It's a tale of grief, perseverance, and what it means to make sacrifices to make the world a better place, even if you might not live to see it. Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 has also served as a great starting point to get into turn-based games.

However, Act 3 shifts the narrative focus, and while the new focus is not bad by any means, it feels deflating. The choices made take some of the importance of the early parts of the game away and replace them with a story that requires you to reinvest in a shorter amount of time.

How Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 ends

Let's talk about Act 3 and both endings

Act 3 of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 reveals that the world you exist in is simply a magical painting created by the real-world version of Verso, who died in a fire. Maelle is revealed to be Alicia, the real one, who was burned badly during that same fire and has felt guilt over it since. She entered the painting because her parents had been fighting in the painting, with the Paintress actually preventing Renoir from wiping everyone out via Gommaging.

You head to fight Renoir and take back control, bringing everyone back in the process. He warns that Maelle will get lost in the painting, having spent so much time there already. You also find the core of the painting, where a fragment of real Verso is left. Painting Verso wishes to free him, wanting to put him to rest, while Maelle wants to save him, and keep the world inside the painting alive. Verso's ending is the happy one, where Maelle is sent back to the real world, to her real life, while Maelle's world is shown to be shallow, making it a bad ending. That decision robs much of the experience of its emotional weight, and it robs Maelle of her agency, something that the story paints as a bad thing when it's done to her by other characters.

Maelle's agency being robbed from her feels wrong

Maelle deserves to make her own choices

My first issue with the ending is that Maelle's agency is taken from her. When she regains her memories and relearns that she is Alicia, it's shown that she made the choice to go after her parents, despite everyone in her family expecting her to do nothing post-fire. Since she was burned, and she is being partially blamed for the fire, her life feels out of her control. So she goes into the painting, befriends those people that are conscious and experience life, and helps them fight their battle. While the game centers itself around Gustave/Verso when you go to camp, Maelle is clearly the main character from the start, in a way that makes not choosing her ending feel bad.

Maelle in the real world was having her existence dictated by her injuries and her family's judgment, so for the "good" ending to revolve around Verso forcing her out of the painting and destroying it, takes away Maelle's agency. It doesn't feel like she is going to return to the world empowered by her journey, but instead emotionally devastated that she ultimately couldn't save the people she cared about.

The real world elements flatten the emotional journey

The entire world being fake makes all of the sacrifice fell unimportant

So much of the emotional investment in the first two-thirds of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 comes from the world inside the painting. You see so many characters, including our beloved Gustave, bite the dust on this journey. That's important, because the themes of guilt and building for future generations hang on in these emotional moments. So, Act 3 revealing that none of this is real, in the context of the game, and that these characters can be brought back by Maelle easily, takes away from that impact. I understand that the characters were never real, because it's a video game, but I bought into the narrative. Taking me out of that, and trying to get me to care about the "real" world instead of the painting world just doesn't work, especially with how short Act 3 is.

It's hard to feel the grief of a real-world Verso we never met, when it comes at the cost of the weight of every other character's death. It's, unfortunately, a maneuver that just can't get me back to the same level of investment I was at before the reveal, taking the wind out of my sail.

Only living in the fantasy world is an issue

It might not hit, but Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is making some valid points

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 does make some interesting points with Maelle's ending. Its clear that her living in a fake world, where she can force a fake Verso to perform for her against his will, is bad. I do think there are points here about grief, and that while holding onto people we have lost is important, we also need to let them go and move on with our lives. The people that Maelle has chosen to live with clearly no longer have autonomy, making it clear that Maelle is ultimately just comforting herself with a fantasy world. It's a bad way to handle grief, especially when Verso made it clear that he doesn't want this. I'm not arguing that this should be a good ending, but it frustrates me that Maelle gets undercut like this.

The allegory doesn't work with the fiction

These are people with their own minds

While it works as an allegory for people in real-life hiding themselves in fantasy worlds to avoid real grief, the comparison doesn't fully work. In real-life, I cannot go inside a painting, and the characters in the fictional world can't speak to me nor can they live and exist outside the world's set story. For Maelle though, these are real people. She has spent 16 years with them, was raised by them, and experienced all sorts of emotions with them.

Maelle does not change how she treats people when she regains her memories of being Alicia. In fact, she brings them back and vows to free them before exiting the painting. Up until you choose her ending, Maelle does not view these people as toys she can force to keep her company, so the shift to that in the ending feels out of character. It also reduces characters like Lune and Sciel, who have incredible depth and personalities, into set dressing.

A controversial ending for an excellent RPG

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is an excellent RPG, with a strong narrative and some of the best written characters of the year. That high quality defines the first two acts, which makes it easy to dislike Act 3, despite it still being good overall. I don't fully hate the ending and I do think much of the story still successfully resonated with me, but the narrative shift in Act 3 and Maelle having her agency taken away one final time feels bad.