joycemessier

[joycemessier]

A life to paint.

CLAIR OBSCUR: EXPEDITION 33 developed by Sandfall Interactive

[joycemessier]

Verso

[joycemessier]

Tomorrow will still come.

[joycemessier]

Clea can keep pretending not to give a fuck about the Canvas but I’m gonna be honest I don’t think anyone cares about it more then her

She painted half this world with Verso. She painted the strongest turtle ever, gave him overpowered abilities and made him her best friend. They sang and they danced and ever since she left Francois was never the same.

She helped paint the landscape, together they made the endless tower. He was scared of the dark so she painted her Lampmaster to fuck with him. She fought with Verso, Monoco, Noco and all the Gestrals and traded words with the Grandis, helped Esquie find his rocks.

After the Fracture she could’ve made her Nevrons anything, an army without soul to end her families madness. She doesn’t. She adds stalacts in the cold, she adds over a dozen mimes, she adds her Nevrons that do not attack they simply eat the mountains their on. She adds her dancers, her sky and sea serpent. She adds things that belong in this world, creatures who match their position in the Painting.

She paints over Painted Clea. She was content to let Aline stew in her grief, but she draws a line at this false representation of her. She has Simon kill her Axon. She is already in this painting. She is the Fading Woman and the Lady of Sap. This whole world is her work, all of it her representation.

Her family is fighting over Verso’s memory like dogs with a bone and they have destroyed her world. She painted half of this Canvas, a Canvas wrecked during the Fracture. His Gestrals and Grandis were misplaced, the land split.

Clea does not want to destroy this Canvas. The last piece of their brothers soul. But her brother is dead now, and her sister has been maimed and her mother is running from it and her father is too content to run right after her. The people who did this still breathe, something Verso can’t do and Alicia can only do with pain.

War is on their doorstep, and she can’t protect Alicia and her parents are too busy to be useful, her mother lost her spot as head of the painters council. Destroying the Canvas is the only way to get that semblance of her family back because Aline will never stop and Renoir will never stop chasing her.

They all tackle their grief differently, and Clea’s method is revenge. I imagine it’s no help that the only way she’ll have support in this war she singlehandedly wages is if she destroys the world she built with her deceased brother.

One day Clea woke up and not another person in her house made a sound. Because Verso was in the ground, Alicia was robbed of her voice and her parents have lost their minds.

[joycemessier]

Have my only Clair Obscur fan art, had to get this out of my system.

[joycemessier]

GUSTAVE Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 (2025) dev. Sandfall Interactive

[joycemessier]

what if we knew not that we were not. and we were both girls

[joycemessier]

CLAIR OBSCUR: EXPEDITION 33 (2025) dev. Sandfall Interactive

[joycemessier]

oh your sister took away the one thing you wanted in the end? she took it away and doomed you into a life of irrelevancy because of one decision in the palm of her hand that had your entire world in the balance? my good friend kendall roy could relate

[joycemessier]

'Please. I don't want this life.' 'Stop saying that.'

CLAIR OBSCUR: EXPEDITION 33 || dev. Sandfall Interactive

[joycemessier]

Listening to Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 soundtrack

[joycemessier]

finished clair obscur: expedition 33. spoilers.

i lovedddd the endings they gave us. i like creators when they're a bit mean to their audience; no placating happy ending, no "objectively" good ending, no morally correct choice (and even then, it might be a matter of perspective).

just two endings: hollow and bittersweet.

it was hinted at in the act 2 renoir boss fight but it was unnerving to only fully understand the context of the world we've been playing in after 40 hours once we've explored The Reacher, Renoir's Drafts and The Flying Mansion.

understanding Maelle as a disabled child, wanting autonomy and to be loved and protected in a world she could create for her own comfort and escaping drowning guilt for being the cause of her brother's death and the ending choice of being able to rip it away because it was not healthy because it wasn't real.

understanding Verso as a shadow version of the real dead man, outliving his actual existence, searching for peace and wanting Maelle to leave before she succumb to an addiction, but how could he decide the wiping of the Canvas when there are characters that were real enough just because he wanted to die so badly and willing to lie and omits crucial information to further his agenda.

who gets to decide who or what was real anyway? for characters in the canvas like Sciel and Lune and Verso and Monoco and Esquie with dreams and trauma and quirks and humanity? was it only reserved for characters who live in the higher plane of existence - Maelle/Alicia, Clea, Renoir, and Aline who are gods in this canvas? but what hypocrisy is it that if we zoom out: it would be us, the players, who get to decide.

while i understand that siding with Verso is healthier for Maelle in the long run, i could not blame Maelle for choosing to do what she did - to live in a world where she has her voice, autonomy, a talent, and a family that does not know death. but the game has emphasized the nuance that even if the characters are back, perhaps like the gestrals, each time they're reincarnated, they're not the same anymore.

the game frames Maelle's ending as the worse one, much like the ending of a horror movie (a beautifully poignant one still!). but it's interesting that if the perspective shifts to Lune or Sciel - was this a horrible ending for them? or would their viewpoint not matter since they're not real? again, we hit the moral quandary.

i also love that Alicia has hinted a third ending in her letter to Maelle that Verso read at the Lumiere pier, a possibility of a mediation between Verso and Maelle's spectrum of endings. but in grief, Verso lets the letter go...how Sciel said that grief can blind us...so that elusive maybe even happier ending is now something we can only dream about forever and ever...

it's so excellent, i don't think the devs should add that third ending (if people are asking for it and if they do, then they do not have taste!). to me, the game would not be as affecting if the current endings weren't so upsetting and heartbreaking. it seems rifed for discussion and analysing different perspectives from a myriads of player, im looking forward in reading abt them!

[joycemessier]

friends are not distraction

[joycemessier]

Gustave Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 (2025) dev. Sandfall Interactive

[joycemessier]

That son was a stranger.

[joycemessier]

CLEA DESSENDRE in CLAIR OBSCUR: EXPEDITION 33

[joycemessier]

A small collection of court augur being a complete freak (complimentary)

Bonus: