Clair Obscur; or, the Obscured Protagonist Problem Paints an Imperfect Masterpiece

Most of the discourse around Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 has been centered around the turn-based gameplay involving dodging and parrying as key components. Unlike older turn-based RPGs where you take your turn, take your blows, rinse and repeat, this one forces the player to be more active. It was fine. I liked it sometimes, hated it other times. My big takeaway from Clair Obscur wasn’t the gameplay, it was the narrative.

Note: If you dislike spoilers, everything from here on will be a spoiler, so you shouldn’t read this. Sorry.

I suppose the sign of any strong narrative is that after the game was over, I had opinions about the game’s writing and was ruminating over it. Never mind that I finished it. If this were a mediocre game, that wouldn’t have happened. There are times where I loved it, and other times where I felt it was lazy or just not great. The game is very much an ‘AA’ title, as in a mid-budget one, and the parts of the game that are stunning remain stunning, while there are parts of the game that you can tell where the developers ran into constraints. Stuff like a bulk of the storytelling unfolding in basic cut scenes at the campsite, which never changes outside of how close the Monolith and Paintress are, or some parts of the game aren’t voiced. Or the levels themselves are gorgeous, but there are weird traversal issues, such as parts of the game look accessible but simply aren’t because it would require more hours put into development.

That’s fine, really. This game is a great example of what happens when a dedicated team with some backing is allowed to go out there and make the kind of game they want. We’re already knee deep in indie titles that do a ton on shoestring budgets, or are the passion project of a sole developer, and while those games can be great, we’ve been lacking in games with a wider scope. Clearly everyone agrees as this game blew up big time.

My big, persisting issue with this game is the writing, though. It’s… uneven. I’m not going to say this is what happens when you scoop up a writer off of Reddit after said person applied to be a voice actor, because that’s entirely unfair. There are parts of this game and the writing that are truly great, and the plot itself was ambitious. It wasn’t difficult to figure out some of the twists ahead of time, but they were handled relatively well and remained interesting. Some of the characters are exceptionally flat and lifeless (what the fuck is Lune’s deal at all?!), but only some are, while others are more fleshed out. Then there are characters like Esquie that shine throughout their time in the game.

If we want to get to the root of the problem, though, it’s a relatively easy problem to point out: Maelle is clearly the protagonist of the game’s story, but isn’t the protagonist of the game. The game starts off with the player controlling Gustave. Gustave is an affable, dorky, inoffensive older brother type of everyman and our controlled character. Yes, once more characters join the party you can swap who is the character running around, but that isn’t really a material impact. The first big plot twist (I mean, I suppose there being humans alive when the boat lands is a twist) is at the end of act one, the mysterious gray-haired man (who we later learn is Renoir) murders Gustave. Gustave is our protagonist! What a twist!

Then, in pure RPG-like fashion, the rogue archetype, Verso, joins the party and essentially takes Gustave’s place. Not only does he take Gustave’s place as the sword-wielding leader, but he takes over as the game’s protagonist. When you enter the camp, it’s all about Verso. Verso needs to converse with party members to raise their link so those characters can unlock their gradient attacks, and, well, a lot of the game’s exposition continues to happen in this sad little camp setting. Over time it’s also clear this is a family matter for Verso. Verso, Verso, Verso.

The point is, though, that Verso takes over in Gustave’s place while the story is so clearly about Maelle. As we learn throughout the story, Maelle is actually a reborn in-painting version of Alicia, Verso’s real sister that he died saving from a fire that left Alicia mangled… sort of. The story is at times convoluted, but the core is that they’re a family of painters with extraordinary powers. Verso died and the family descended into grief. Alicia, the sister, is covered in burns, while the mother escaped into Verso’s canvas, which is where the game takes place. Verso the character you play, is the version of Verso that exists within said canvas because it’s the canvas painted by real life Verso. We also learn that Verso preferred music to painting, but that doesn’t seem to come into the equation much. Esquie and Monoco and, hell, everyone, are creations within the canvas. So who really cares if you don’t get to know Lune’s deal, or if Sciel feels anemic outside of she uhhh was a farmer with a dead husband who fell overboard and drowned. It doesn’t matter because they aren’t real! Maelle is a version of Alicia born within the world to different parents but without all the burns, you see. The mother, who remains the antagonist throughout most of the game until it’s clear that Renoir, the father is the REAL bad guy (sort of!), was actually protecting all of these wonderful creations. It was Renoir that was trying to destroy the canvas from the inside, because it was his belief that destroying Verso’s canvas would free his wife from the hold the canvas has over her, and perhaps reunite his family.

Again, all the characters you’re supposed to care about are sorta just figments of an imagination, which is fine, really. The Verso you play as is also that, while Maelle sort of is, until she remembers she’s Alicia, and then she’s Alicia. Don’t get me wrong, I love the idea of the story itself, and how grief drives people to get lost in different ways. Then you tack in how fucking French this game is (it’s very French, or at least French presenting, don’t worry about it), and how it’s all about artists. Great, right?

… but the game is about Maelle/Alicia learning to live her life again after the loss of her brother and her own disfigurement. The whole game is about that. At the end of the game you’re given a choice: you fight as Verso, who will confront the colorless boy he now knows is the last remnant of his soul, and let the boy stop painting, thus ending the whole damned thing; or you fight as Maelle, who fights to keep everything inside the painting the way it is. Nobody gets to move on, Alicia never confronts her grief and learns to live in the real world and… somehow this is presented as two good options? Yeah, I don’t know.

As the game approaches the end it does sort of feel like an effort was made to give Verso a bit more importance as a character, but it doesn’t erase the fact that for a bulk of the game the player is controlling a character who has all of the answers to every fucking mystery within the game’s plot, and he acts like he’s discovering much of it alongside the cast of the game, or just willfully obscures things. There’s a fine line to walk when writing something like this, and having your point of view character have all the answers but never disclose them is never a great option. On the other hand, if Maelle was the protagonist, Verso’s elusiveness, intentional obscuring of the truth, and interior motives remaining as they are make a lot more sense. Maelle is a creation of the canvas, and doesn’t know she’s Alicia until very late in the game and makes a conscious decision to jump back into the canvas. She learns about it as we all do, which, you know, makes narrative sense. All of these reveals telegraphed by Verso being our protagonist who already knows all of this is poor storytelling.

What’s the point of Maelle mourning the loss of Gustave if as soon as Gustave dies he’s replaced by a similar, if not cooler guy, and nobody skips a beat? If we go through all of this for Gustave to simply be a construct, along with Sciel, Lune, Esquie, Monoco, and everyone else, what’s the point? Everyone just gommages anyway, then are brought back because Alicia is a Paintress and can control things inside the canvas. The concept is great, it works very well, but c’mon.

There’s also the problem that you’re told the characters in the game don’t really matter to anyone, they’re just creations of some sort of process to flesh out this canvas world for this wealthy family to live in with their grief and terrorize. It’s not like Gustave is the Dessendre family’s gardener, Lune is the tutor, Sciel is the maid, Esquie is the beloved pet and Monoco is, I don’t know, the carriage driver. None of these people have a real world equivalent like the family does. We’re doing the Wizard of Oz just not making any of the emotional connections. Alicia, when presented with the option of living a real life or living a life of grief in a wonderland like her mother, is simply given two very bad choices.

Although you’re presented with two options at the end, it feels wild to choose Maelle’s option. It also feels wild that Renoir was the big baddie until he wasn’t. Verso has to make a decision that is essentially echoing his father’s talking points, down to speaking them aloud. That makes it feel like perhaps not a great option, but also the correct option. It’s the option that forces Alicia to confront her grief and trauma, learn, grow, and move on. Again, why is Verso the game protagonist when the story is about Alicia?

In a way, it feels like the game was originally conceived with male protagonists, perhaps even the male protagonist swap at the end of the first act, and then the game changed a lot when a female writer came on board, they ditched the zombies and whatever else, and the game became what it was. I think it’s a great game for what it is, and while I have qualms with some of it, there’s still enough good in it that the game deserves the praise and attention it’s getting, and can perhaps pass a baton forward to other game devs to follow in these footsteps. I wouldn’t even mind a follow-up game. Perhaps Alicia moves on and has children of her own, they find Verso’s canvas in the attic all covered up, and ~something happens~. Something like that without the baggage of what this game was originally supposed to be bleeding over into what the game became could make for a better overall experience.

Clair Obscur being a flawed masterpiece is perhaps the way it should be. It was a wake-up call to the industry in a lot of ways about what can be done with passion, a budget, and time. Even if they got the protagonist wrong. If the game were merely flawless, or as close as possible, it could be seen as an impossible task to replicate. Instead, it’s a great game with some big flaws, which keeps it very much within the realm of attainable. It also shows that gamers want more options and are willing to overlook flaws just to play something that’s taking artistic risks and provides a different experience from the abusive crunch-driven AAA slop executives are frothing over the possibility of charging $100 for.

Because what this game proves is you can find a writer on Reddit, find a musician on SoundCloud, take a few dozen experienced devs, grab some funding, and come up with something that people genuinely want. Talent isn’t some elusive, magical thing in the game industry. It’s everywhere and not all devs excel within the big studio system. Much like Witcher 3 surprised the game industry by becoming a smash success, Clair Obscur is proof that games can feel big outside of being based in some IP prison, with a team of hundreds who can’t go home to see their families or else they miss a deadline and ruin some big company’s quarterly earnings forecast. Yes, I believe there are serious problems with this game, but I also think it’s the best thing that’s happened to gaming since indie titles became relevant.

Check out my latest book, Iconoclast: or, the Death and Resurrection of Lazarus Keaton. It’s good. You should buy it.