Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 may go down as one of the best games in recent memory, and it’s not just for any one reason.
It doesn’t just redefine the turn-based RPG gameplay formula, or offer a star-studded cast, or just an incredible soundtrack, or just include an open world full of boss fights and discoveries, or just have an incredible and emotional storyline with unexpected twists and gut-wrenching reveals. It has all of those things, but we’re here to talk about the ending of the game and discuss what happened and what it means.
Here’s my interpretation and recollection of Expedition 33’s harrowing, emotional ending sequences. MASSIVE SPOILER WARNING: Do not read any further unless you wish to read about the ending of the game.
Expedition 33 ending spoilers
There are multiple endings in Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, but let’s save that for later. First, let’s discuss the game’s biggest twist: the end of act two and beginning of act three shock with the reveal that the world and most of the characters of Expedition 33 are creations inside of a magical painted world known as a Canvas.
In the real world, Painters and Paintresses with painting powers can use a Canvas as portals into their own painted, created worlds that can be lived in and explored for some time, but not for too long, because it will kill them. Lumière and most of its inhabitants, including Gustave, Lune, Sciel, Monoco, and many others, are just creations within the Canvas.
The game implies the existence of other Canvases that Painters can create and manipulate, but Lumière and the game world you play in, along with the characters within it, were all made by Verso, who is the real-world counterpart of the painted Verso we know and play as.
In summary, there are light and dark versions of certain characters. Clair Obscur translates to chiaroscuro, which is “the treatment of light and shade in drawing and painting,” and a large theme within the game’s story.
Much of Expedition 33’s story revolves around one family, their connections to the painting, and issues with each other.
Who is the Paintress in Expedition 33?
The Paintress is a woman named Aline Dessendre. She is the wife of Renoir Dessendre and mother of Alicia Dessendre, Clea Dessendre, and the deceased Verso Dessendre.
Within the Canvas, Aline and Renoir came to blows and created the Fracture, which sent Lumière into the sea, created the Monolith, and gave birth to the need for Expeditions in the first place. The Paintress’s motivations in the Canvas appear to be to keep her son alive, hence giving Verso immortality within.
When the Paintress is defeated, those created within the painting all disappear, including Lune and Sciel, who only exist within the Canvas.
Who is Renoir in Expedition 33?
Like the others, Renoir (played by Andy Serkis) has two versions in Expedition 33. There’s the one that players are introduced to early on (dark or “Obscur”), and then there’s his real-world counterpart, who you also meet in the early events of the game, known as The Curator.
The dark or “Obscur” Renoir created by the Paintress does not paint the man in a positive light, whereas the real Renoir is “much warmer.” His ambitions are to save what’s left of his family, including Aline the Paintress who has succumbed to the world she has created to deal with her grief of losing Verso.
Who is Verso in Expedition 33?
The Verso that we know in Expedition 33 is a creation by the Paintress. The real-world Verso died in a terrible fire, which also left his sister Alicia disfigured, scarred, and unable to speak. This event defines the tragic story of the game and the Dessendre family’s individual actions. Verso’s death and the grief those around him feel are the lifeblood and reasoning behind the game’s events.
The real Verso created the Canvas that the game takes place in, and he used it as a place to play, paint, and imagine fictional entities like Esquie, the Gestrals, and others. Some time after his death, Aline and Renoir entered the Canvas and fought as Aline dealt with the grief of losing her son by recreating him within the painting.
Who is Maelle in Expedition 33?
Maelle is the Canvas’s reborn version of Alicia, her real-world counterpart. In an attempt to retrieve her sparring mother and father from the Canvas, Alicia got stuck in the painting and was reborn as Maelle, living her own life within the painting.
After the events of act two, Maelle learns of her (Alicia’s) memories and abilities as a Paintress, and sets out on a path to save the Canvas from Renoir destroying it for good, which he aims to do to protect his wife and family from getting lost within it.
In the end, Maelle chooses herself over her real-world counterpart Alicia, who is blamed for the tragedy that befell real Verso. She’s seen as a pariah, disfigured by the fire that ruined her family, unable to speak, and generally just living a difficult existence. And so she attempts to save the Canvas and those within it by expelling her father, just like she expelled her mother, the Paintress.
Who is Clea in Expedition 33?
Clea is the sister of both Alicia and Verso, and daughter of Aline and Renoire. Clea’s motivations are to help Renoir defeat Aline within the Canvas because she has been in there for such a long time, and Renoir’s efforts are to rescue her.
Now that we know the main players of the overarching story, let’s discuss how it all ends.
Expedition 33: Act 3 and multiple endings explained
After the revelations to begin act three, the Expedition comes together on one final mission. Maelle, using her Paintress powers, paints Sciel and Lune back to life, and they regroup with Verso, Monoco, and Esquie to take the fight to Renoir, whose plan is to destroy the Canvas and get his family back.
Using the Chroma from defeated expeditioners before them, Maelle raises an army of them to launch an attack on Renoir and his creations in some of the most epic scenes in the game.
Eventually, the group reaches Renoir. Before they battle him, he explains his stance that his family has been shattered by the tragedy of Verso dying, as Aline has lost herself in the Canvas, Clea is all by herself, and Alicia has become a ghost.
The fight begins, and Renoir enlists the help of the massive Axons from the story to aid him in his fight, but the Expedition is also aided by Aline (the Paintress), who returns to even the odds.
Renoir is defeated, and he shows what his real life on the outside is like as Aline is sick and dying from too much time spent in the Canvas, a side effect of the Painters’ and Paintress’s powers to create worlds within them.
Renoir pleads with Maelle to come home, but she has chosen her life within this Canvas as opposed to her “life of loneliness in a shell of a body” in the real world. “Destroying the Canvas won’t help us move on,” she tells Renoir, “it’ll just deny us the one place that helped us feel again.”
“Since the fire, our family has crumbled,” Renoir says, lamenting that he “cannot spend another day with living corpses” such as Aline and Alicia. He wishes not to lose Alicia, but Maelle explains that his feelings towards his family are how she feels towards her friends within the Canvas, like the painted Verso, Sciel, Lune, Monoco, and others. She has fallen in love with this fictional world she has lived in and refuses to go back to her painful real life.
Renoir reluctantly leaves Maelle behind and returns to the real world. But there’s one final stab in the gut from Expedition 33. Verso attempts to leave and put an end to the Canvas himself so that Maelle can continue living and existing in the real world, and his decades of immortality and sadness can come to an end with it.
Expedition 33: Destroy or Save the Canvas?
The players are met with a final choice. In the last battle, you must choose to play as Maelle and save the Canvas, or as Verso and destroy it. The choice is yours to make, but here’s what happens in both.
If Verso destroys the Canvas, the Dessendre family returns to the real world, mourns the loss of Verso, and then moves on for good. Alicia/Maelle waves goodbye to her Canvas friends, and the credits roll.
If Maelle saves the Canvas, she goes on to re-paint all of her friends and those who were lost within the Canvas, bringing back everyone, including Gustave, Sophie, Sciel’s husband Pierre, and others. They attend a concert where Verso takes the stage and plays a song on the pain,o when it’s revealed that Alicia/Maelle is slowly degrading and dying in the real world, just like her mother before her.
In the end, there is no real happy ending, just varying degrees of sad with a choice to be made by you on which you prefer. Destroying the Canvas allows the family to move on and properly grieve in the real world, but at the loss of everyone inside the Canvas. Saving the Canvas means Maelle gets to live a version of a peaceful life within it, but the pain and sadness of the Dessendre family persist in the outside world as Alicia/Maelle degrades and dies from using her powers to reside in the Canvas.
Once the credits roll, you can go back into the Expedition 33 world to finish out the map and complete optional quests and boss fights, or you can even begin New Game Plus.
There are still a few things I’m not totally sure about, like the exact reasoning or motivation of the 100 countdown theatrics of the Paintress, unless I missed it in a cutscene at some point. Sound off below and let me know what else is important about how the journey comes to a close for the “Disaster Expedition.”
