Clair Obscur: Expedition 33

[Cipher]

Needless to say, I disagree with Rusty claiming above that by JRPG standards this story is decent. Its just as soapy, juvenile and overly dramatic as any run of the mill JRPG. But at least (good) JRPGs are honest about it instead of being pretentious.

I have a lot of things I could say because I disagree with a lot of things said in that post, but I honestly can't be bothered. I'm too ******* lazy and I already had too many conversations about this game online and IRL at length so I'm sick of repeating myself. And I know I won't change anyone's mind, nor care to.

For the record, your opinion is still dogshit, but your opinion about Spec Ops: The Line is based and correct.

Then, by your own logic, my opinion of this game is based and correct as my entire post was how this game tries to do the same thing that SpecOps did. So, thanks so much for agreeing with me and saying that I am correct. I magnanimously welcome and embrace your humility and honesty and reward it with my praise and acknowledgement.

[DemoGraph]

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Also, it is completely stupid that the dad just gives up at the end of the boss fight after everything he has done to try to free his wife and daughter from remaining in la la land by denying the reality of their family tragedy.

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You should try being the dad first.

[rusty_shackleford]

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Also, it is completely stupid that the dad just gives up at the end of the boss fight after everything he has done to try to free his wife and daughter from remaining in la la land by denying the reality of their family tragedy.

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You should try being the dad first.

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The husband and father should persist, not relent.

[DemoGraph]

► Show Spoiler

Also, it is completely stupid that the dad just gives up at the end of the boss fight after everything he has done to try to free his wife and daughter from remaining in la la land by denying the reality of their family tragedy.

► Show Spoiler

You should try being the dad first.

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The husband and father should persist, not relent.

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Yes. But it is the flaws that backlight an interesting character.

Unless the flaws are lolrandumb. I'd say it's not the case here.

[Cipher]

► Show Spoiler

Also, it is completely stupid that the dad just gives up at the end of the boss fight after everything he has done to try to free his wife and daughter from remaining in la la land by denying the reality of their family tragedy.

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You should try being the dad first.

Spoilers for E33

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You assume that I am not.

But regardless of that, with the story as presented it makes no sense. If you are trying to push the angle of "he just loved his daughter too much" then he wouldn't have done anything in the first place. That's why it doesn't make sense for him to give up. Remember, Darth Vader didn't knew Luke existed until Empire. That's why his change of heart is believable. Renoir's entire character motivation is to save his wife and daughter from basically saving them from heroine addiction. If you equate living in the canvas as shooting heroine and spending 12 hours a day tripping to avoid feeling sad about your son/brother being death, that's basically what is going on. So, as he SHOULD, as any good parent SHOULD, he sets out to save them from their addiction to escapism. If you have ever dealt with addicts you know there's no other way around. They have to be cut off from their vice. This is why rehab centers exist, to ween them off slowly due to the physical dependency their bodies have developed and to avoid potentially life threatening withdrawal symptoms. He spent YEARS in canvas time trying to do this and then somehow he just gives up because the addict told him that they really really like to be tripping on heroin all the time?

No. That's not "being a dad" that's ********. If you are a dad, I genuinely wish that you never have to deal with someone in your family struggling with drug addiction. But, if that comes to pass, then I truly hope that you do not give up in your attempts to save them.

And for the record, my family has never struggled with drug addiction but there was a point in my youth were I worked in an environment that dealt with such cases. So, I have seen it with my own eyes.

[Cipher]

► Show Spoiler

Also, it is completely stupid that the dad just gives up at the end of the boss fight after everything he has done to try to free his wife and daughter from remaining in la la land by denying the reality of their family tragedy.

► Show Spoiler

You should try being the dad first.

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The husband and father should persist, not relent.

THIS is the correct opinion on this matter.

[traxtan]

Actually, the real meaning of the story is

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ShadowCUTE's voice actress sounds C U T E. Nobody cares about anything else.

Isn't she a lesbian

Lesbians aren't real

She isn't real

[rusty_shackleford]

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You should try being the dad first.

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The husband and father should persist, not relent.

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Yes. But it is the flaws that backlight an interesting character.

Unless the flaws are lolrandumb. I'd say it's not the case here.

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I don't know enough about the story to say conclusively, but I went and read it up after I uninstalled to at least know the full story and basically he will eventually not only lose his wife but also his daughter to the painting if he doesn't stop them.
It's not a minor flaw, it's something he must do or perish trying.

[rusty_shackleford]

It's not that I think the game is badly written, in fact I think it has quite a lot of good writing, I just think the story sucks!
It's one of my least favorite kind of plot twists and yes it does make everything feel meaningless. And it's not because they're "fake" people, they're obviously real and killing them is mass murder. From what I can gather, the game sorta dismisses this and/or doesn't really engage with it?
Everything feels meaningless because the entire ******* story is a lie from the start and it was written that way. It sucks in the same way I thought the film M. Night Shyamalan's The Village was complete ******* ***.

To paraphrase Roger Ebert:

To call the ending an anticlimax would be an insult not only to climaxes but to prefixes. It's a crummy secret, about one step up the ladder of narrative originality from It was all a dream. It's so witless, in fact, that when we do discover the secret, we want to rewind the film game so we don't know the secret anymore.

[geftsu]

how this game tries to do the same thing that SpecOps did

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Debatable. The devs tried to make the moral dilemma ambiguous, at least so they claimed I think. If that is the case, they failed and clearly presented the Alicia's ending in an extremely ominous manner. But, if you look past the presentation and analyze the ending for what it is, then the only morally objectionable thing about it is Maellicia keeping Verso alive against his will, everything else has zero moral ambiguity.

As for why Renoir just "randomly gives up", my interpretation of the dialogue he has with Maellicia after the final boss fight is that he made a decision to let her choose how she wants to live her life, even if she desires eternal escapism. It's not that he can't come back and force her out since he is an infinitely stronger painter-wizard than she is, it's that he just decided not to. I also think it's clear from the same dialogue, his "I will keep the lights on for you" line and the acting in that scene that he doesn't actually believe her when she says that she will stay only for a moment and will come back. He wants to believe her, but he doesn't in a "I hope you change your mind and I will wait for you, even though I'm pretty sure it's futile" kind of way.

I fell for the bait, I know. But if you don't like the game, it's fine. You are still wrong about your criticisms, but whatever floats your boat man.

[rusty_shackleford]

I fell for the bait, I know.

RPGs are serious business, we don't post bait here mister.

[Cipher]

how this game tries to do the same thing that SpecOps did

► Show Spoiler

Debatable. The devs tried to make the moral dilemma ambiguous, at least so they claimed I think. If that is the case, they failed and clearly presented the Alicia's ending in an extremely ominous manner. But, if you look past the presentation and analyze the ending for what it is, then the only morally objectionable thing about it is Maellicia keeping Verso alive against his will, everything else has zero moral ambiguity.

As for why Renoir just "randomly gives up", my interpretation of the dialogue he has with Maellicia after the final boss fight is that he made a decision to let her choose how she wants to live her life, even if she desires eternal escapism. It's not that he can't come back and force her out since he is an infinitely stronger painter-wizard than she is, it's that he just decided not to. I also think it's clear from the same dialogue, his "I will keep the lights on for you" line and the acting in that scene that he doesn't actually believe her when she says that she will stay only for a moment and will come back. He wants to believe her, but he doesn't in a "I hope you change your mind and I will wait for you, even though I'm pretty sure it's futile" kind of way.

I fell for the bait, I know. But if you don't like the game, it's fine. You are still wrong about your criticisms, but whatever floats your boat man.

Spoilers for E33:

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And that's the problem. What's different? Why would he now suddenly decide to "let her choose"? Why go to all these lengths only to suddenly just decide to let her choose? Specially if, by your own interpretation, he doesn't believe she will leave the canvas on her own. That's entirely idiotic. Its a blatant case of "because the plot demands it". It happens because of drama, because then Verso can have his own idiotic moment and do a 180, agree wholeheartedly with what Renoir tried to do and challenge Maelle and you get the "choice" of bad ending or good ending as presented by the writers.

You may like how to story turns out but by your own words, you agree that my assessment of the story events is entirely correct. You never demonstrated how what I said wasn't true, only that you didn't dislike what happened.

[rusty_shackleford]

My opinion on the matter is:
Not every story needs a happy ending, but you know, not every story needs to have 17 flavors of "wow this ******* SUCKS!" either.

[Cipher]

My opinion on the matter is:
Not every story needs a happy ending, but you know, not every story needs to have 17 flavors of "wow this ******* SUCKS!" either.

I admit that I prefer a happy ending but I like stories that don't have it. My problem here is that characters betray their own motivations for the sake of drama and because the writers "say so". I always try to engage with fiction in its own terms, meaning, no matter what kind of "hand wave" a story wants to have I accept it at face value. What I don't like is inconsistencies. If something has been established, then I assume it will remain so. Sure, character motivations can change, but the way its presented is not organic. Two very important characters turn their motivations completely in the opposite direction on a dime at the very end and the reasons presented for why this happens don't make sense given what was already presented.

To me, those are signs of terrible writing. And sure, no story is perfect and I can overlook such flaws depending on how much they impact the resolution/climax of a story. That's my problem here, since the entire climax is resolved because those two characters change their entire motivation up to that point 180 degrees on a dime just because the writers couldn't find another way to wrap it up. It reeks of "I already had the ending in mind and couldn't find a way to bottle necked what happened to the story up to that point". And I hate that and, to me, that's the hallmark of a hackfraud that doesn't know how to write.

I will take the most cliche happy ending that at least is honest and doesn't betray character motivation as established over some pretentious story that thinks its orders of magnitude smarter than it is by trying to "subvert expectations" or use shock and swerve and tries to claim it has "deep" themes or messages but is nothing but juvenile melodrama. And E33 is rife with that. The game constantly just tries to tug at your heartstrings so you don't think about what's happening for 2 seconds and realize those two characters changed their motivations on a dime and that the player was the bad guy all along.

[methoxetamine]

Actually, the real meaning of the story is

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ShadowCUTE's voice actress sounds C U T E. Nobody cares about anything else.

I play for Renoir's voice actually

[Marcus]

@rusty_shackleford this game was released 8 months ago. Why are you guys still using spoilers?

3 months after the initial release of a game sounds like a good point to stop using spoilers or do you guys plan to use them forever?

[rusty_shackleford]

@rusty_shackleford this game was released 8 months ago. Why are you guys still using spoilers?

3 months after the initial release of a game sounds like a good point to stop using spoilers or do you guys plan to use them forever?

Politeness

[Kalarion]

It's not a perfect game, and two common critiques around here are that the story before the plot twist is rendered completely irrelevant

It's only rendered irrelevant for people who completely fail at philosophy. Whether people of Lumiere or we as people of Earth live in a simulation or not is irrelevant to whether our experiences and relationships are real and to whether our lives have value. By the same token, assuming God exists, just because he created humanity doesn't grant him the moral right to arbitrarily kill people. Same as parents don't have the moral right to murder their children, because they misbehave or because their existence is inconvenient to them in some way.

This is actually what kind of kills the moral dilemma of the endings for me, because it's not really a moral dilemma and Maelle's ending is the correct one.

As for react prompts, skill issue.

Incredible that you completely fail at philosophy while accusing others of failing at philosophy. Hahah I'm just kidding it's not incredible at all.

[Marcus]

@rusty_shackleford this game was released 8 months ago. Why are you guys still using spoilers?

3 months after the initial release of a game sounds like a good point to stop using spoilers or do you guys plan to use them forever?

Politeness

It's impolite to people who have to fight their way through dozens of spoiler tags in a thread for a game that was released almost a year go.

[rusty_shackleford]

@rusty_shackleford this game was released 8 months ago. Why are you guys still using spoilers?

3 months after the initial release of a game sounds like a good point to stop using spoilers or do you guys plan to use them forever?

Politeness

It's impolite to people who have to fight their way through dozens of spoiler tags in a thread for a game that was released almost a year go.

Could add a button that just expands/unblurs all spoilers for a specific thread?

[DemoGraph]

So, as he SHOULD, as any good parent SHOULD, he sets out to save them from their addiction to escapism.

But it's not a clinical addiction.

he will eventually not only lose his wife but also his daughter to the painting if he doesn't stop them.

Yes, but Clea (the cynical sister) once directly states that in the past both father and mother did stay in paintings for much longer than it happened during events of the game. It's not like characters are fighting for the last chance to get the family members out unharmed.

From what I can gather, the game sorta dismisses this and/or doesn't really engage with it?

Yes. I too think that "the problem of paintfolk" is probably the weakest aspect of the plot. OTOH the main family of painters definitely considers them expendable. The plot is very melodramatic in a sense that it's centered only on the painters.

[DecadeRiptide]

Good video about how "idie" this game is:

indie*

[Marcus]

Politeness

It's impolite to people who have to fight their way through dozens of spoiler tags in a thread for a game that was released almost a year go.

Could add a button that just expands/unblurs all spoilers for a specific thread?

Hm, I dunno. Not all spoiler tags are used for actual spoilers. Some are used for posts with a huge text of wall so that people who aren't interested in it don't have to scroll endlessly. Others are used to deliver a joke, and so on.

So, I stand by my opinion that it would be best if spoiler tags should longer be used three months after a game's release.

[logincrash]

So, as he SHOULD, as any good parent SHOULD, he sets out to save them from their addiction to escapism.

But it's not a clinical addiction.

Gambling is not a clinical addiction and it's one of the most destructive addictions out there. Gambling addicts have horrifically high rates of suicide.

[W1llus]

This is the panel of those awards btw

Look at all these *******... disgusting

[Cipher]

So, as he SHOULD, as any good parent SHOULD, he sets out to save them from their addiction to escapism.

But it's not a clinical addiction.

Then, what is the "theme" of the game or the "message" according to your interpretation?

► Show Spoiler

If its not an "addiction" to escape into the canvas to avoid IRL, then what's the problem? Why not just let Maelle live in the canvas like she was playing a VR game where she is not scarred and mute and her brother lives?

It is clearly framed as an addiction, as a vice that consumes you. The entire motivation for Renoir is to help his wife and daughter leave the canvas so they can focus on moving on from Verso's death. They can't move on because they are willingly living out a fantasy inside the canvas where Verso is still "alive" of sorts. This is why the Maelle ending shows that she ends up like her mom and is framed as the "bad" ending and why Verso fights her in the end, as he realizes its wrong.

[Cipher]

So, as he SHOULD, as any good parent SHOULD, he sets out to save them from their addiction to escapism.

But it's not a clinical addiction.

Gambling is not a clinical addiction and it's one of the most destructive addictions out there. Gambling addicts have horrifically high rates of suicide.

Exactly and that's why I made the heroine addiction comparison to staying in the canvas as heroin addicts shoot the junk to trip for hours on end, wasting their life away. Alcoholics that are drunk for more hours than sober are basically doing the same. Escaping real life through the vice. Because they don't want to live in reality due to their life sucking. Now, this could be petty, like someone just not liking his life and becoming a junkie or understandable, like a mother getting drunk on wine because she lost her son.

The thing is that you can't let the vice control your life. That's why grief should be a period, a time frame that ends. At some point, you have to continue your life and move on. Specially if its related to loss. In this example, for E33: Verso wouldn't want his mom and sister wasting their life away in la la land that's precisely why he fights Maelle in the good ending. Which, again, means that Renoir was 100% correct, was the actual HERO of the story and Verso was an idiot for going against him only to realize at the eleventh hour that he was right all along.

The more I think about it, the more it just beats me over the head what a piece of **** this story was.

[rusty_shackleford]

[W1llus]

About to start this game. Any useful tips to make life easier?

[Cipher]

About to start this game. Any useful tips to make life easier?

Uninstall.

But more seriously, this is a Parry and Dodge game. Pictos (the gear system) and levels help, but Parrying is the way to go. Dodge first to learn the patterns and once you start getting Perfect dodges (you'll see the PERFECT word popping up) then that's the sweet spot to Parry attacks.

Healing is mostly useless. It may have a purpose early game but soon enough you will find that you get one shotted so its not a worthy investment. Build glass cannons and dodge everything. As you gain confidence and learn the patterns, start to Parry. But even without it, just dodge away and you will win.

Good luck. And may God have mercy on your soul.