Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 First Time Playthrough Thoughts

Let’s see how far this can go. Added some afterthoughts after beating the game.

  • vocal title theme
  • flower petals, transience? with some white marks

Prologue: Lumiere

  • wow what an intro. with a light hearted bgm, describing a life ending Expedition. Our main guy Gustave unable to face his ex-lover Sophie. 34 from afar, interesting.
  • there is so much to look around. this just oozes another world. things are floating, the city is messy, theres roots crawling around, unnatural rocks covering most of the places. theres the red white tree. this is a dying world, but all the colours make it hanging on the last edge. really curious how do they plant stuff, and why do they have so many flowers.
  • The red looks like daisy and white looks like rose. Maybe look out for some flower language in this world? red flower = unconscious love or to be fully immersed and surrounded by love, white crysanthemum = symbol for grief, used in funerals
  • fitting tutorial into this part is a bit weird, but ok.
  • Maelle is the genki girl maybe.
  • Gustave and Sophie are just awkward, looks like they separated due to different paths, which Gustave wants to save the world. if sophie were to join the Expedition she would have not seen Gustave again and not disappear in front of him.
  • this town theme is probably a motif
  • its actually kind of weird that this “sending” is almost like a celebration.
    • like what is there to celebrate? the Expedition? theres barely anyone outside of the team at the night party. maybe they dont want to leave a sad memory for those who are going to die, maybe this is the only certain thing in their lives now. its sad.
  • theres a woman with hat sitting on a bench surrounded by flower pots hummming a tune, important? maybe she is one of them, want to die without being disturbed.
  • gustave destroying a balloon is enough to encourage someone to go on Expedition, very funny.
  • wild looking statue, its got eagles, men and women, horses, lion heads. very french
  • diegetic guitar, nier much?
  • Gommage? sounds like a kind of escape? no, once the paintress awakes and change the countdown, all person with that age just turn into petals. Gommage is a gentle, French-style exfoliation method that combines a chemical and a manual process to “erase” dead skin cells. The word is used as “erasure” in this case.
  • and that is how the 33 comes from, simple but creative concept.
  • the game does not leave much information on how a society under this condition works. a lot is on implications. the boy who lost his dad is not even sad.
  • gustave looks like a widower at the start, becomes a real widower by the end of day.
  • the quiz only asks up to the history of expedition and gustave is already the “expert”. really shows that this place has no history left.
  • sasageyo
  • im very curious about how this world even works, but its not the focus of the game.
    • this is actually a point, this world does not need to work on basic logic
  • overall all the scenes are very short and concise and sharp. this is consistent throughout.

Act 1: Gustave

  • almost wiped out on the first moment of landing, really sets up how scary is this place. so effective
  • mysterious man with walking stick, interesting. my wildest guess is he is some shadow of Gustave, no evidence.
  • wake up coughing blood, not good
  • gustave despairs, sets up that he is just a guy, not the motivational hero.
  • lune is cool, fiercely goal driven. when one falls, we continue. post battle screen also use this phrase instead of a normal Continue.
  • convo with jar - painted with light, people lose chroma when dead, but not these people, they become like pompei
  • this gives me heavy aot vibes with the giants
  • after boss fight they found a message to head north, lune suspect is a trap cuz no sign, of course gustave is rushing in cuz “no other choice”, guess this game is not breaking the convention. but they turned this into a somewhat intense debate about following the rules.
  • camp scene - lune is so cool, managed to pin down gustaves irrationality, but she seems to not escape from survivors guilt as well.
  • flying waters - amazing
  • the manor - reunion with maelle, Gustave is still pretty bad with words. i am surprised there is no trick here, like a fake maelle or something. faceless man The Curator appears, seems not hostile.
  • Maelle likes to train, and she is kind and mischevious. i like her. she seems to understand people or non people quite well.
    • with a family like this, is she really as happy outside? maybe she would have stayed on even there is no fire
  • There are lighthearted moments in this game? we meet gestrals, a friendly magical species, lune is gap moe, this is so JRPG, we are so back.
  • questing with enemies - feels a lot like nier automatas androids relationship with machines
  • why are there newspaper on the expedition on the pillar? its preserved very well also, very readable
  • pre boss fight - red rose? boss is reacting to the flower. a direct callback to sophie. very likely these nevrons can inherit peoples memories.
    • this is never really touched upon, strange
  • maelles nightmare - woman and guy are fighting, she screaming at monolith
  • Gustave: that the insideous thing about Gommage, its predictable, its almost gentle, it makes Lumiere complacent and accepting but… the Gommage is equally violent and death is just as final.
  • the dynamics between Gustave and maelle is very sweet.
  • gestral village - poor man’s korok
  • somehow they have large signs written in human language, a bit immersion breaking but whatever
    • maybe past expeditioners put it???
  • chroma is like a soul, gestral can rebuild themselves
  • chef for chief - seems like they are emulating humans also
  • of course there is a tournament arc
  • sciel joins the party
  • sciel understands gustave well, knowing that he would give up if not for lunes appearance.
  • sciel camp scene - making a difference. does small improvement in current situation counts as a difference when it is unhelpful to solve a distaster?
  • maelles vision - the man can communicate through this method. maelle is important. 3x4 resolution is an interesting choice.
  • gustave is a science stream guy
  • esquie seems to know sciel. sciel has some kind of trauma about water.
    • this comes back at the point when you almost forget this part, it’s so simple but gets a reaction from me
  • the game knows humour
  • maelles nightmare 2 - is it the memories of past expeditioners? and i am sure that is a homage to ff7 (verso’s line)
  • maelle is probably not from this world. but he gets it as teenage angst. he might not fully understand whats shes going through, but he is for her anyways. that is family.
  • the mysterious man and woman maybe maelles parents?
    • so close yet so far
  • stone wave cliffs - dragon quest style fetch quests. they know
  • guys target is maelle. gustave fights to the end, rip. i can accept the nonsense talk now, you better have a really good reason for his death.
  • guy pushes her soul out of her body. why? do you have to kill gustave just for this?
    • after a rewatch he was ready to strike maelle down
  • who the heck appeared? this is so anime i cant even
  • so mysterious guy is also a family man
  • reaaally interesting choice to have esquie hug her but not the other girls.
  • lune copes by just changing her priorities and ignoring her feelings. sciel is there to balance.
  • so the old guy is renoir who wants to keep immortal, the new guy is verso, a member of Expedition 0. but theres still so many questions.

Act 2: Verso

  • im 50/50 on the use of black white text as a transition. is it necessary
  • maelles grief - this scene is even more powerful than the actual death in some ways.
  • forgotten battlefield - looking for a place to bury Gustave’s arm
  • maelle lashing out a bit, stopped by sciel
  • best boss so far, unreal aura
  • a closure on gustave - this does not hit as hard as it should for me. using the split perspectives and cut ins, i think this can definitely be directed better. their individual speeches are good, but it doesnt have the effect of continuing a same topic with different people, since maelle has such a deeper bond with gustave compared to others.
  • camp
    • maelle-lune heart to heart - sharing of perspectives, lune drops the femme fatale persona a bit
    • verso-lune 1 - verso remains evasive. lune gives no crap.
    • verso-sciel 1 - verso remains evasive.
    • lune-sciel - a renewed friendship. this is how they do characterization despite not having arcs for them. lunes ability of chroma to sense souls leads to her closing her feelings, sciels affinity to stars and moon relates to her bonding with dad over night sky. there is definitely some mythology behind their abilities.(nope lol)
      • its reasonable for them to not too close with maelle due to age difference. this is very different from a typical jrpg where very distinct people must mix together, sometimes it works like berseria, sometimes it doesnt work like vesperia. but their relationship with maelle is still just like a friend’s adopted daughter, not even a sense of comradeship here. or maybe they will play it straight afterwards, because this is a jrpg afterall.
  • verso-esquie 1,2 - lighthearted moment. verso understandably has trust/detachment issues with other expedition teams in his position. esquie is said to seems to know everyone, surely this is not a throwaway joke.
  • maelles acceptance - yay happy maelle is back. she uses expedition as a form to escape, not very wise, but such is youth. verso receives the 33 badge.
  • monocos station
  • monoco is a blue mage, nice
  • there will be a lot of fighting there, done deal
  • shes our only shot, not imposing at all
  • camp
  • verso-maelle 2 - exchanging poetries
  • verso-lune 2 - verso was betrayed before
  • versos magic - very funny
  • old lumiere
  • monoco is actually childish, unlike his voice suggests
  • what a way to force monoco into the party
  • verso is going to “betray” us? yeah i have seen this before
  • well he does full on betray all lumerians later, no way around it
  • renoir is versos dad, wow
  • wow that is a cutscene, renoir just warped a manor
  • cant break paintress heart now, of course there is another way, as in all jrpgs
  • maelle still doesnt know anything
  • visage
  • sciel pulls a persona 4 moment, its probably relevant?
  • camp
  • piano scene - sweet, its so obvious that verso is related to maelle, and by association renoir
  • sirene - the illusion land
  • this should be lunes location?
  • yea she last through the mental attacks and ended sirene
  • maelle see another vision
  • maelle “the prince/ss” receives a magical sword
  • im really not sure if having romance in this game is a good idea at all.
    • this is even weirder when you consider verso’s identity
  • short funny scene about esquies wine to balance out the mood
  • monolith
  • got over the barrier
  • burning faces, matches with all the faceless figures along the way
  • its ff5 the rift
  • verso is definitely still withholding information, dont trust this guy
  • renoir fight was epic
  • we didnt learn much about the truth of this world still
  • curator is maelles dad, paintress is her mom? not exactly? paintress is alicias mom, alicia is versos sister, so paintress is versos mom?
  • man this mystery is a bit overblown, its probably way less complicated than this.
    • it kinda is, but it is not simple by all means
  • some of paintress moves is just bs
  • we actually returned as heroes wow, i didnt expect this at all
  • wow just wow

Epilogue: Alicia

  • so many things there
    • pretty much everything here flies over my head at that time and i dont want to think too hard about it to spoil the fun later.

Act 3: Maelle

  • i dont think this is how acts work but sure
  • “verso” and “maelle” - maelle/alicia is the real paintress all along
  • gustave is killed physically so he cant get revived, fantastic
  • renoir and family are stuck in the cycle of grief
  • how do you convince the stake when you know this is a fake world?
    • apparently most people would have invested themselves fully into the painted world, maybe i am not as immersed
  • alicia rebirth into this world as maelle, to rescue the world from being erased by renoir, is this an allegory to Jesus? this is a wild thought
  • lots of stuff happens in the bonding
  • lunes got a really good arc about living her parents legacy
  • sciel-esquie - that line about swimming way back in act 1 is just damn cool
  • maelle-verso - wow thats something, setting free from a curse, verso has been in the shadows for maelle all along.
  • damn you video game, dont let us choose whether to lie on this topic
  • verso worries the presence of gustave will affect her choice to help him. thats why he has to die
  • a dad who wants to help the family to get over grief
  • a mom who misses her dead son too much
  • a little sister who wants to live a happy life
  • they are all not wrong, but too extreme in their methods. only their methods clashes which creates conflict. good stuff
    • i should add now and a puppet brother who really wants to end it all.
  • lumiere
  • maelle summons dead expeditioners. cool
  • thats a cool walk to final area
  • phantom verso is playing the piano in the opera, calling back to his story in lunes hangout
  • why is gustave theme here? for those who come after?
  • short and concise cutscene to deliver renoirs point, incorporating sciel and lunes story
  • that twilight princess stab, i approve
  • renoir finally understands alicia
  • it’s time to stop painting
  • verso ending
    • “you’re okay” love this line
    • sciel embraces her death. lune just sits there angry
    • a life of love - this seems to be the more suitable ending for the theme
  • maelle ending
    • “i don’t want this life” is probably the most painful line in the game
    • a life to paint - woah that was creepy. maelle lives in her dream forever until she lost herself.