Spoiler warning for Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 up until Act Two.Clair Obscur: Expedition 33is a very sad game. This is established fromits excellent opening, where we see Gustave and his ex Sophie reconnecting in Lumière on the day she dies. She’s killed in something called a Gommage, where an entity called the Paintress paints a number and everybody above that age dies. There is a celebration for the lives of everybody doomed to be erased from reality, andGustave watches as the woman he loves disappears. It’s a horribly tragic start to a horribly tragic story.
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 Is Incredibly Bleak
Right after, we see Gustave and a group of volunteers embark on an Expedition to the continent, where they’ll attempt to kill the Paintress before she repeats the cycle next year. Most of them don’t make it very far. Most of the Expedition is killed almost immediately by an old, white-haired man leading an army of terrifying creatures.
After being knocked out in battle, Gustave wakes up separated from the group, and after a bit of exploring, encounters a massive pile of bodies, recognising the faces of his friends among them. It is gory, and terrifying, and hopeless. Realising that he cannot complete the Expedition on his own, and believing that everybody he travelled with is dead, he sits against the mountain of corpses and puts his gun to his head. He is only stopped by Lune, another survivor, telling him that they have no choice but to go on.
These opening hours set the tone for the rest of the overarching story. There is a lot of death – the bodies of previous Expedition members are scattered all over the place. The scale of the horror can be so vast as to feel incomprehensible. You start to ignore the bodies you step over, because there’s so many of them that they stop feeling real. AndGustave himself dies in a shocking twist at the end of the first act, in such a horrifying and senseless way that it sets Maelle on her own journey to seek revenge.
It’s an incredibly bleak game, one full of heavy moments, violence, and death. So why does it make me chuckle so much?
Clair Obscur Means Chiaroscuro Means Balance
Expedition 33 is very sad, but it’s alsoveryfunny. I’ve gotten through most of the second act, which means I’ve been treated to quite a lot of comedy. One of my favourite moments is when Gustave screams a password at a Gestral, only for the Gestral to balk at his aggression and Gustave to apologise profusely.
Monoco is one of the game’s funniest characters, from his deadpan humour to his sobbing hysterically in the ruins of a building when he hits it too hard and separates the group. Esquie is hilarious as well, from his absurdly floppy movements to his childlike sensibilities. Some of the journal entries are giggle-worthy as well, especially Expedition 66’s about Esquie feeding them some poisonous mushrooms and crying out of guilt.
You can also put every character in a swimsuit or stereotypical French fits complete with baguettes.
This strange confluence of incredibly dark themes and moments of levity might seem strange, considering the overall tone of the game. At first, I even found it a little strange – it didn’t seem to gel quite right, especially early on, when so much of it had been so sad.
But the more I played, the more grateful I was for the humour. Without it, Expedition 33 would have been miserable throughout. That kind of game has its place, but a little absurdity and joking around made the minute-to-minute experience of playing it much more exciting. The bleakness even made it funnier, since you’re never really expecting it to make you laugh.
Clair Obscur is a French translation of the word chiaroscuro, an art style that focuses on the contrast between light and dark. Tonally, Expedition 33 pulls this concept off to a tee. There’s a lot of dark, but there’s also a lot of light, and they play against each other to create a game that’s thoroughly enjoyable, even as it punches you in the gut with its twists and turns.
