Why did I choose [spoiler] ending

I recently finished Clair Obscur: Expédition 33, and it being a very story rich and emotional game, I was very engaged in choosing the ending. After playing the game for 85h and being so engrossed by its intricate narrative, I needed a satisfying or at the very least compelling ending. And I was not disappointed, as there is so much to the ending, whether from a human, emotional or even philosophical point of view. The ending being a very personal thing, and the two choices being both kinda grey endings, without seemingly a clear good ending is what makes it so interesting and makes me and others think and discuss about it.

However, I forgot how much of a reach this game had, and how uncritically a lot of people go about appreciating some works.

This article obviously contains major spoilers so do not read it if you haven't played and finished Clair Obscur: Expédition 33 (thereinafter referred to as E33). And if you don't care about spoilers, I also forbid you from reading this article because it is a great game with a lot of soul, passion, rawness and vulnerability that you would be doing yourself a disservice not playing. This article will also make no sense if you haven't played an finished the game, and I will make no effort to clarify anything. I'm making this article for myself so really: don't read it.

Why this article

There are four things that made me want to write this article

Marco and I played the game at about the same time, with him finishing it about a week before I did. Obviously as soon as I finished the game, we talked about it. The first question he asked was about what ending I had chosen, but the way he posed this question told me everything I needed to know. He said: “I hope you picked the only correct ending, right?”. You see, Marco in my eyes is, when it comes to art, a serial bad-takes-haver. And with his propensity to have some reddit-pilled takes as well, I knew not only what his preferred ending was, but also on what grounds he would oppose my decision. I am not on reddit or any social media anymore, but it is so easy to predict the takes that people will have on any piece of media that I responded: “I did choose the only right ending for me, but I don't think we agree on the right ending”. I was correct and so allegations of “being clinically insane”, “smoking crack” and other ad-hominem were thrown from both side, and we had a “healthy” albeit completely unproductive disagreement about the ending, before returning to our honour playthrough of Baldur's Gates 3 where we kidnap children and turn them into unpaid interns.

If you have read any of my articles about video games, it will come to no surprise to you that I enjoy the videos from Daryl Talks Games, whose one of my favourite and best video-essayist talking about video games on youtube, with Crimes New Roman. Well Daryl released a video about E33, titled “How Expedition 33 Exposes You”, and I completely disagreed with his characterisation of the world in E33, of the ending, but also of the people who choose the Maëlle ending and their reasons to do so. Honestly, even the rhetorical questions he posed in the video pissed me off. But he is not the only one to have a characterisations of the ending I disagree with...

If you've finished the game (why would you still be reading this otherwise 🤨) and seen both ending, it is obvious that one is painted as the sad but right ending. Let me be clear, neither endings are portrayed as optimal or even good, but one is clearly softening the blows of its bad parts, while the second has its worst part emphasised. In the Verso ending, every person that Verso erased from the painting is sorta cool with being killed. Maëlle cries a bit but is comforted by Verso and goes in peace. Esquie and Monoko just hug Verso as he erases them without protesting. Sciel has a comforting hand contact with Verso as she withers away, with no protest. Sure, Lune stares at Verso with murder on her mind, but her only form of protest is to sit down. None of them fight, there are no cries, no tears, no rage. It's depicted as sad but necessary. He takes the little piece of (real) Verso's soul (a little boy) and walks into the sunset, setting it to rest. And in the epilogue, we see the Dessendre family around (real) Verso's headstone, finally dealing with the grief cause by his death, and begin to heal, it is a hopeful ending. Credits roll.

In the other hand in Maëlle's ending, as soon as she beats Verso, he collapses on the ground, repeating “Unpaint me, unpaint me, I don't want this life, I don't want this life”, begging to be killed, which is a heart wrenching moment. So super bad vibes here. When we get back to lumière, we have a super brief part where we see a couple of people that Maëlle saved from either Verso erasing them, or her father's previous mass murder. It's only a teeny tiny part of this ending, and straight away things start to feel weird, with Maëlle's smile being unnerving. Verso enters the frame, the picture goes black and white. He is a shell, Maëlle puppets him. Every movement he makes feels like he is dragging himself through life involuntarily. He sits down, his hands tremble. Jumpscare, Maëlle's eyes are fucked up. More depression. Credits roll.

The artistic direction for the endings is not equal, with one clearly being depicted as darker and more wrong. One is bittersweet and trying to make you feel good, the other unnerving and trying to guilt trip you. I disagree this that, even if the intent of the authors was to show us that the Verso ending is the good one, I disagree with this. I don't care what the authors intents were, they are dead and I am now the interpreter of their work.

With the dichotomy of how I felt, and how Daryl, Marco, and the game were telling me I should feel, I thought I might have missed something, so I looked online in the forums and in the youtube comments to see what people's take were. I had forgotten how insanely stupid any form of conversation is on the internet. Everyone was using the most stupid analogies that don't even make sense but because everybody is using them then they feel they don't have to justify their repeated uses either; repeated ad-hominem attack towards people who chose a different ending; straw man; pseudo-realists that see the thing as it really is (right...); removing every single nuance from the topic; oversimplifying everything so much it looses all meaning and interest. It's a fucking cesspool and nobody is actually trying to have interesting conversation.

Both ending can be argued for. I can see anyone with a sane mind choosing one ending over an other. Exploring how people reach the conclusion that they'd rather choose one ending over another is interesting and worthwhile. Trying to portray one as the only someone should choose, and doing armchair psychology on why people who chose X ending actually are immature and if they were more intelligent they would choose the other is stupid and utterly uninteresting.

Making my case

The main deciding factor — that I actually saw very little people talk about — for choosing an ending over an other, is the metaphysical question: “Are the people in the canvas real beings?”.

There is no objective answer to this, and therefore, there is no objective “correct” ending in E33. So, now that we are done stating the obvious, we can get to the interesting part, exploring why I chose one ending over the other.

The not-so-hidden central question of the game. The people of the painting/their ancestors were created by the painters. We were shown that they are sentient, can feel and decide for themselves. They do no abide by a set of instructions, an algorithm or anything, as far as we know in the game, everything stems from just regular human biology/a simulation of it. They can be born and reproduce without their/their ancestor's makers intervention, and it doesn't matter if their/their ancestor's maker is dead, they keep on living. They can even affect “real” people in physical ways, like when the mostly painted crew took out Aline and then Renoir, forcing them out of the canvas, or when when painted Verso defeated Maëlle and forced her out of the canvas. They have their own thoughts, fears, aspirations, feelings... This for me would be the description of a real being. That the painters hold the power of live and death over them, or have something akin to reality altering powers in their world (the canvas) doesn't change anything. That the painters can evolve in their own world and also into the canvas doesn't change anything.

The choice then becomes: kill everything and everyone in the canvas to prevent Aline and Alicia from escaping into the canvas to grief, or let the canvas be and Alicia stay for as long as she wants.

I want to talk about perspectives a bit. Even from a bird's eye view I consider the people of the canvas to be real people, let's step into the shoes of the people in the story. I would get the argument that from Renoir, Cléa, Alicia... any of the painters' perspective, the inhabitants of the canvas are not on equal footing and their lives are not comparable to the life of one of the member of the Dessendre family. I understand Renoir's point of view, he'd rather sacrifice everything and everyone in the canvas not to — in his point of view — lose his wife and child. Shifting perspective, the inhabitants of the canvas feel that they are real. They feel themselves and their world as real, the canvas is their reality. It's just that there's another universe outside of their own that also exists. But they would absolutely not want to be erased just because of some discord in the family of their creators in that other universe. I think if we had the gestral, the inhabitants of Lumière and other sentient being take a vote, they would choose not to be erased.

Which brings us to You the player, are you a inhabitant of the canvas, or are you one of the gods of this world? Is it legitimate for you to associate with the Dessendre family? You start in control of Gustave, a painted person, and inhabitant of Lumière and the canvas. You gather another companion, Lune, as a painted person and can switch who you control between the two. Then you get Maëlle, a member of the Dessendre family who lived her live thinking she was a painted person. She is kinda of the bridge between both worlds, the Lisan al-Gaib if you will. The rest of the members of your party afterwards are only painted people. Verso being a painted person, not a god of this world, who was painted to be the dead son of the Dessendre family. It is the portrait of a dead man, but still a painted person. You start the story as an Expeditioner. The frame of reference shift toward the end when you see things more through the eyes of Verso and the narrative focuses more on the Dessendres, but you are still not a god. The only person that has any legitimacy and moral ground destroying the canvas that you can put yourself into as the player is Alicia, and she is the one trying to save it. Verso has no legitimacy destroying it and is just a class traitor. So from a perspective point of view, as a player, you are either a painted person wanting this world to endure, a painter trying to save this world, or painted person trying to end your world. As a player you are therefore not legitimate think of the people of the canvas as not real and disposable, and to destroy the canvas.

Why is the solution destroying the canvas? The Dessendre dealing with their shit in a healthier way and leaving the canvas and its inhabitants alone is a much better solution. But we are forced to make a choice “life keeps forcing cruel choices”. The fairest choice is Maëlle ending — letting the canvas live, saving the people in it from their previous eradication and having Alicia living in it. How is it the responsibility of the people of the painting that their gods cannot grieve properly? How are they responsible for anything that happens outside of the painting? Why should they have to sacrifice themselves for the possibility of maybe having the Dessendre family dealing with grief a bit better? It does not concern them, they and the player are entirely valid in fighting for their survival. On the other hand, do the painters not have a responsibility towards their creation? They created sentient beings that feel and think and have been hurting them for decades. Using them and deciding to erase them once they become inconvenient is unbecoming. The painters are unworthy of the powers they wield. Destroying the canvas is almost nonsensical. It will not bring Verso back, Aline is already out of it, and there is no indication that Alicia is going to grieve in the same way as her mother, and even if she did, so what? Is she not allowed to choose for herself?

Those are the main crux of my argument. There are some little things here and there that I could talk about, and some of it is just debunking so claims made by the Verso-choosers but I don't think it's that interesting to explore. As you can see there's a big philosophical and even political dimension to explore with the ending of E33. What I've written above is the divagations of someone who care way too much about the ending of a video game. It's not really well put together, but I needed to get it out. This really more of a “I get myself and it's not really the point for anyone else to understand me” kind of article, I ripped that shit in a couple days and there is not going to be a second draft. This is definitely more of a going back to my rambling roots. This entire article was also an excuse to be able to use the word “thereinafter”.

Me getting so invested in a video game should be a testament to how good or at least interesting it is. But you should already know about it since if you've read this article you should have played it. If you have played E33 and would like to discuss the ending I would be more than glad to.

Thank you for reading my logorrhea Eddie – Award winning author