Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 (PS5, XSX, PC)

[Tyrath]

Were the endings supposed to be up to the player to decide which is better because

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Verso's feels objectively better than Maelle's.

Agreed. But you've got people claiming they're both equal lol

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also what do we think the timelines are here, Renoir and Aline weren't gone for 67 years. Maybe a year of canvas time for every hour of real life time? Is this brought up anywhere?

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They never specifically gave an exact conversion for real time to canvas time. But it's definitely years in the canvas to a small amount of time in the real world

[Gredival]

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also what do we think the timelines are here, Renoir and Aline weren't gone for 67 years. Maybe a year of canvas time for every hour of real life time? Is this brought up anywhere?

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Time dilation is confirmed

[Andalusian girls]

Were the endings supposed to be up to the player to decide which is better because

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Verso's feels objectively better than Maelle's.

the endings are by far the most debated thing about the game, there's a lot of conversation between everyone earlier in this thread you can peruse if you've the urge.

i see which one speaks to you as a kind of Rorschach test of one's own experiences with loss and grief and escapism and moving on and perceptions of 'human' value, as well as an overall damnation of the simplistic good ending vs bad ending dichotomy gamers have gotten accustomed to in their reception.

fwiw here's what the game's writer Jennifer Svedberg-Yen said about them

I tell everybody there is no correct ending. There is no canon ending. There is no official Sandfall ending. Both are there for a reason, neither is perfect, both of them are heartbreaking in their own ways. Both of them have parts that make you feel glad, parts that you feel like I want a happy ending for these characters, but they both also have their own cost and it is a reflection of reality as a lot of times some people’s happiness does come with its costs. Things are very rarely perfect.

We didn’t want to tell a story that was just good versus evil… the antagonist and the protagonist, they are all actually good people and they actually really deeply care about each other, and at the heart of it, it’s the fact that because they care, there’s conflict. One of the beauties of this being an interactive medium… players through their own life experiences, their own perspectives, they engage with the story and the world that’s around them. They interpret the facts as they are given and the relationships, and then the player can decide for themselves what is the right ending.

[Mertron]

that being said, the bad ending is clearly

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maelle. from rewatching the ending a while ago, look at her facial expressions while everything is going on. she’s very clearly forcing herself to enjoy what’s going on but knows it’s all bullshit.

16 year old maelle in the canvas had relationships with all of these people without having to assume it was reality, it was just reality to her. now knowing she lives in a canvas, that’s been taken away from her. her looking around in the opera house at the end screams “yes of course this is exactly what i wanted, i am definitely enjoying myself” to me

for all the “verso is a piece of shit, enjoy the piano bitch” jokes, painted verso wasn’t the one really suffering, verso’s soul is what was suffering. let his soul rest

(also I know everyone has made this point elsewhere but maelle can just paint her own canvas of lumiere, but with hookers and blackjack)

[Zealot]

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I took Verso's ending first and it was painful seeing him say goodbye to Monoco and Esquie, and to hear the sadness in Maelle's voice as she's gommaged, and Lune give up the fight. But in the end, the Dessendre family is actually together, putting their grief behind them, moving forward. Alicia isn't trapped in her body, she's a Paintress. She can create a new canvas world where she's whole again. Monoco is a real dog. Esquie is a real stuffed animal. They didn't disappear, only representations of them. Everything in the canvas was only sentient in so far as that it was a part of the real Verso's soul, and it was a soul that was desperately trying to move on. Painted Verso was a real bastard, but he was also the only person trying to look out for what the canvas itself, the sliver of Verso's soul, still wanted.

While it's happy seeing the people of Lumiere restored, including Gustav and Sciel's husband, Maelle is trapped in the fantasy and Renoir has to be consumed with grief outside knowing he basically consigned his daughter to die. Maybe Maelle dies in bliss (though I don't believe so, since she's aware of the state of the world now and that will always be in the back of her mind) but she still dies and then Renoir will probably destroy the canvas anyway.

Verso's ending is sad for everyone that we spent time with while playing the game, but at least it represents the Dessendres moving forward.

[Andalusian girls]

bad ending

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I took Verso's ending first and it was painful seeing him say goodbye to Monoco and Esquie, and to hear the sadness in Maelle's voice as she's gommaged, and Lune give up the fight. But in the end, the Dessendre family is actually together, putting their grief behind them, moving forward. Alicia isn't trapped in her body, she's a Paintress. She can create a new canvas world where she's whole again. Monoco is a real dog. Esquie is a real stuffed animal. They didn't disappear, only representations of them. Everything in the canvas was only sentient in so far as that it was a part of the real Verso's soul, and it was a soul that was desperately trying to move on. Painted Verso was a real bastard, but he was also the only person trying to look out for what the canvas itself, the sliver of Verso's soul, still wanted.

While it's happy seeing the people of Lumiere restored, including Gustav and Sciel's husband, Maelle is trapped in the fantasy and Renoir has to be consumed with grief outside knowing he basically consigned his daughter to die. Maybe Maelle dies in bliss (though I don't believe so, since she's aware of the state of the world now and that will always be in the back of her mind) but she still dies and then Renoir will probably destroy the canvas anyway.

Verso's ending is sad for everyone that we spent time with while playing the game, but at least it represents the Dessendres moving forward.

this is all perfectly legitimate. indeed me and a couple rl friends tried to see what the game's writer was saying by doing the debate team training exercise of arguing for the position you oppose, and i used several of your same arguments. but to give food for thought:

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the great immorality of Verso's ending is Lune and Sciel and everyone else eating another horrific betrayal from a man they trusted, ending an existence they were desperately fighting to preserve. i think people who easily dismiss the Maelle ending easily dismiss their humanity, often contradictorily because they care about Painted Verso being kept alive against his will, and that is an old argument going to the type of sheep of which androids dream.

for me the humanity throughline through all fiction, and soon to be this life nay, is are they capable of full interiority, agency, autonomy, and acts of creation latent in the human heart. the Painted pass this Turing test, and thus i value Lune's life as much as i do Renoir's. thus the destruction of it gives me as much pause. thus the well-being of the Dessendre family, which i deeply desire, does not innately supersede the well-being of the people of Lumiere.

as to Maelle, she is terribly and permanently disabled in the waking world, disfigured, mute, in constant pain, and it is her desire to end her days with the people she has come to love. it may be a simulation or a lie, an unhealthy one analogous to addiction, but it is what she chooses. and when a long-suffering person is presented with such terrible options i think there is something to be said for allowing them to choose how to end their days (though this obviously violates Painted Verso + Verso soul fragment's autonomy).

[Gredival]

I think I said it before but

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Maelle's ending is what you think you wanted all game, but gets tainted because you realize Maelle is doing it for all the wrong reasons. Verso's ending is what you were trying to avoid, but turns out to be right because Verso was doing it for all the right reasons.

So the question is... are you the type to care more about the means or the ends?

FWIW,

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if I was Maelle I'd totally do the same thing. Why do I want to go back to a "real" world where I'm cursed to live in agony? The truly bad part of her ending was the fact she re-animated Verso against his wishes. She was fine gommaging painted Alicia because she was suffering, but she dooms Verso to keep living in the canvas because she wants a happy ending that is inherently incompatible with what he wants.

[Andalusian girls]

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ye Maelle's hypocrisy is ASTOUNDIN there, and perfectly mirrors Verso trying to save painted Alicia's life, simply because he loves his sister, when Maelle accepts her request to end her suffering.

these characters are messy and let their emotions overwhelm their judgement and are traumatized and self-serving and trying to live up to impossible ideals, and they are written mighty fine.

[Zealot]

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Absolutely agree with the idea that if I were in Maelle's shoes I would have done the same thing she did and I state my opinion on her ending from the lofty position of outside observer with no stake in the outcome save the hours I spent playing the game. But from such a pedestal, I know her choosing the blue pill means perpetuating the cycle of grief an already devastated family is going through.

Although honestly it's hard to place the blame squarely on Maelle for living out the remainder of her life in the Canvas when if her mother was capable of moving on then her father wouldn't be so hell-bent on destroying the thing. In a world where Aline copes better with her grief, Maelle keeps her word to her father and leaves after restoring Lumiere, possibly visiting now and again, because the Canvas is in no danger and lives as a memento of their deceased son. But since Aline will seemingly kill herself to live inside it with the painted Verso, Renoir has no choice, Maelle knows that, Renoir knows Maelle knows, and we end up with Verso being forced to try and find meaning in a life he doesn't want.

It DOES look like Verso is aging in Maelle's ending, so it could be that he'll eventually pass away naturally, but the real Verso's soul will still be stuck painting and we know that's not what it really wants.

[arus2001]

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I kinda see Maelle's ending as her unintentionally becoming a jackass genie. She gained the power to literally change the world, sure, but that didn't come with the implicit understanding of everyone's motives and desires. Bringing Gustave and his girl back may seem like a reward for his contributions to the Expedition, but it is also very easily a selfish expression on her part. What happened with Verso could also be seen as her thinking he really, really wanted to play piano at a young age, and so she "let" him, but much like other childlike whimsy, it's possible Verso came to hate it in this re-imagining of himself that didn't get age locked and she basically became Aline 2.0 locking him out of some other life choice as he wrapped being their little monkey on stage. She may want to believe she gave everyone a happy ending, albeit with potential memories in flux, but I'd say Verso's hesitation is a solid sign she fucked up somewhere. As an isekai slut, I 10,000% get her wanting to stay in the painting as the world she came from sucks and she could find something resembling content here, but it's still something inevitably tempered by the mind of a teenager who's been through some shit. This ending also doesn't implicitly rule out an eventual abdication of the painting and a similar end to the Verso choice. It just may take a bit longer to get there as she says goodbye on her own terms.

Given the implications from the devs there are some things in the game people have yet to find, I'm also wondering if there's a very specific third ending (like not killing the Paintress in her final phase and just stalling some arbitrary number of rounds because the Gross Tete fight proves they can be that kinda mean). However, I don't know what degree of data mining has been done to rule that out.

[Tyrath]

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ye Maelle's hypocrisy is ASTOUNDIN there, and perfectly mirrors Verso trying to save painted Alicia's life, simply because he loves his sister, when Maelle accepts her request to end her suffering.

these characters are messy and let their emotions overwhelm their judgement and are traumatized and self-serving and trying to live up to impossible ideals, and they are written mighty fine.

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I think I could've gotten more on board with Maelle's ending if she didn't also force Verso to play the piano lol

[Mertron]

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”you have this incredible gift to paint. you’ll never have to suffer a life you don’t want”

get the fuck out of my painting. paint your own canvas. with blackjack. and hookers.

also, what’s the point of her living in this version of lumiere. the fracture still happened and hasn’t been fixed. the Eiffel Tower is still fucked up and the town is littered with broken buildings. how about you paint a construction crew and some bricks

if you really cared about gustave and lune and sciel you’d paint them some god damned infrastructure. WHAT HAVE THE ROMANS EVER DONE FOR US

[Melena]

I took Maelle's facial expressions in her ending as

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Telling Verso to play and to stop fighting. You can tell she's barely holding everything together as everything outside the opera house also looks like it's destroyed and falling apart, and if Verso somehow resists and doesn't play, everything will end

[Andalusian girls]

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if you really cared about gustave and lune and sciel you’d paint them some god damned infrastructure.

[Mertron]

any of you defending that ending are sad people

[Anoat]

Initially went with Maelle ending because

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I had basically turned her into a walking WMD at that point and wasn’t sure if I could beat her with Verso

[Mertron]

also regarding a point AG made about the BAD ending.

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do any of these people in lumiere actually have agency? verso sure as hell doesn’t seem to. what else is maelle controlling? everyone was dead after the rapture at the end of act 2, these are all her creations. she probably has the ability to modify or change anything she deems undesirable! o lumierans! the maelle that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider, or some loathsome insect over the fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked. her wrath towards you burns like fire. she looks upon you as worthy of nothing else, but to be cast into the fire. she is of purer eyes than to bear to have you in her sight. you are ten thousand times more abominable in her eyes, than the most hateful venomous serpent is in ours

[Drai]

also regarding a point AG made about the BAD ending.

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do any of these people in lumiere actually have agency? verso sure as hell doesn’t seem to. what else is maelle controlling? everyone was dead after the rapture at the end of act 2, these are all her creations. she probably has the ability to modify or change anything she deems undesirable! o lumierans! the maelle that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider, or some loathsome insect over the fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked. her wrath towards you burns like fire. she looks upon you as worthy of nothing else, but to be cast into the fire. she is of purer eyes than to bear to have you in her sight. you are ten thousand times more abominable in her eyes, than the most hateful venomous serpent is in ours

I don’t think that’s true tbh, cause

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If Maelle could just control everyone then Aline would have presumably been able to just stop them from attacking her and sending them right after Renoir

Also I’m pretty sure each member of the Dessendre family represents one of the stages of Grief

Aline is Depression clearly, trying to escape in a fantasy world
Clea is Anger and is taking those feelings into her war
Alicia is Bargaining, trying to get more time with her brother
Renoir is denial because he wants his family back as they were
and Verso is acceptance, the only one of them ready to move on.

[Andalusian girls]

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agree, i think it apparent the Painted maintain their autonomy. Verso is trapped in a life he does not want to live, but he is playing that piano because what else is there for him to do. it's a mockery of the life he dreamt of as a child but it isn't quite enslavement.

also that's p good mapping the 5 stages of grief onto everyone

[Melena]

any of you defending that ending are sad people

Definitely not defending it. Both endings essentially had winners and losers.