Clair Obscur: Expedition 33

[errant wedge]

Rolled credits.

||Maelle really knows how to aura farm.||

Not done with it of course. I need to go back and ||do the Verso ending|| and then ||go exploring the rest of the stuff on the Continent|| and 100% the game.

||The 'final battle' at Lumiere was clearly balanced for people mainlining the main story, even on Expert, and who go there straight after Act 2 without doing anything else. The zone is intended for ~level 16-20 weapons, not ~level 25-29 weapons and similarly scaled Pictos and Lumina point totals. Hence why Renoir phase 2 got 1shot by a single 756k damage Stendhal while he only had ~720k HP for that phase's healthbar. Still I don't mind it. The visuals flashing with massive lighting-altering red and clue chroma, the ghost army of Expeditioners fighting Nevrons left and right, the music getting ridiculously hype... it was cinema.||

||And then, the actual ending. "Please. I don't want this life." storming acting. And then creating another old-man Verso and then suffering netrunner burnout was, yeah. Yeah.||

||I need to go back and see the Verso side, destroy-the-Canvas outcome too.||

[errant wedge]

Endings ||Watched the Verso ending as well, that basically was what I expected would happen with the only extra detail being the reveal that child-Verso was basically being kept from actually dying by the stasis effect of the Painter magic.|| ||I do like the Maelle ending better if for no reason other than the key drop and cut to burnt out eyes was such peak drama.||

||Next task will be to find out wtf actually happened to the nudist Expedition at the base of the Monolith.||

[halcyon elbow]

||The other detail you may have missed: Verso's death date was December 33, 1905. What does December 33 mean? Big RAFO'd by Sandfall. Interestingly, it also puts him at 26, when you might otherwise have expected him to be 33 like so many other characters||

[errant wedge]

I did see that. I just thought it was a cute 33 reference that doesn't necessarily mean anything.

||Him being 26 and that Epilogue taking place in 1905 means that time in the Canvas is definitely not 1:1 with time in the Outside.||

[halcyon elbow]

Endings ||They have confirmed that it is not and that they have an internal ratio||

[pulsar citrus]

Ending || Maelle || || I think it means that this was the same Verso just aged up by Maelle. She seems to talk to Verso before he was dead by asking "If you could grow old, would you find a reason to smile?" So I think Verso agreed to the deal but turns out he is still unhappy.

||

[slate ginkgo]

act I complete

wow

[exotic ember]

Welcome to peak

Well, I mean it's peak from the beginning

So welcome to the continuation of peak

During your stay here you will continue to be served peak

[errant wedge]

I love how searching gifs for 'peak' went from like 40% One Piece memes and 40% other anime characters saying 'it's peak' to just lots of gifs of the actual climbing game Peak.

[exotic ember]

https://tenor.com/view/avatar-the-last-airbender-atla-iroh-uncle-iroh-its-so-peak-gif-2764984715376821932

[errant wedge]

Postcampaign ||this boss set the new record for longest time taken, beating the Paintress, however, was just the one pull... Monoco spamming Shields like crazy bought a lot of error room to learn his moveset from Dodges transitioning to Parries. And Sciel healing and buffing, and Maelle just refusing to take damage because Defensive Stance. I kept thinking "next pull I'm gonna put Breaking Rules on Maelle, it's taking so much of the AP that I don't have to shoot through this guy's Shields", but I was also determined to not die. So I kept going slowly.||

||Parrying the "eats all AP and explodes" move was the single most satisfying parry of the game so far.|| ||It's purely audio based but the audio involved is such a cool sound effect. Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom Boom. Boom Boom Boom. BoomboomboomboomPARRY, Expedition 33 Counters. mwah ||

||Also swept the map of 4 Chromatics, and a pair of weak Mimes who were in an Act 2 accessible location that I had just not explored. Now I've landed up at "The Canvas", next to the Monolith and will see if this is the place Expedition 60 were on about.||

[pulsar citrus]

You know what we call continuation of peak? Plateau

Clair Obscur is a plateau

[exotic ember]

Or it’s a mountain range

[rancid vessel]

Act 3 ||I am in frozen heart and I am so, SO lost. I still haven't figured out how to get to the picto back on top of the train and I am way beyond it now lmao||

||also I've run into an issue where the game is only giving me grandiose things... And I still need resplendent for the weapons I'm using ||

[wheat reef]

Iirc you can get a good amount from merchants

[pulsar citrus]

Bro saame

Act 3 || I had so much trouble getting Resplendent compared to Grandiose. It doesn't help that unlike every other decision which you can undo this is the only thing that is permanent. ||

[dawn spindle]

youtube algorythm has decided that if I am listening to warframe OST I must want to listen to E33 and it's just now alternating between the 2 while at work and like

For once, youtube is doing something right

[errant wedge]

Spotify has begun recommending Yamato Kasai who honestly does seem to be stylistically similar to Lorien.

[errant wedge]

TIL it is actually possible to Act 3 ||get Int64.Max damage in this game if someone were to spend an extremely long time stacking either only Sun or Moon cards with Sciel, because the Twilight multiplier is not capped. But in reality people have only gotten into the trillions because they've only spent hours farming Moon cards and no one has had the MMO player dedication to devote weeks. Yet.||

[halcyon elbow]

Weak

[errant wedge]

https://tenor.com/view/warframe-bnp-pathetic-mirage-pathethicc-gif-20541359

||Maelle can theoretically stack endlessly through Burning Canvas but the slope of damage gains to real time invested is much much lower.||

What this game really needs is the ability to save loadouts.

Also photo mode.

But loadouts more so.

[dawn spindle]

Yeeeessssss, I like to see you use these

[errant wedge]

I was somewhat of a Mirage player myself, once upon a time.

[dawn spindle]

Oh Skrimit have i shown you my mirage? 👀

onto warframe

[halcyon elbow]

Common request

[wheat reef]

||I didnt find that there was any additional damage done with 10k stacks as opposed to say 1k, what are the gains supposed to be?||

[errant wedge]

||Burning Canvas has what looks like an infinite linear scaling with # of burn stacks, but Idk if it actually has a cap after a certain number of stacks. I'm seeing conflicting info online.||

[halcyon elbow]

My guess is that it is bugged

Burn damage has already been bugged in association with Maelle, and this would square with that problem

[errant wedge]

Of course this is just silly optimization for "damage per screenshot" because for stacking Twilight ad infinitum you also need to dodge/parry the enemy ad infinitum.

||I need to find where tf this Energizing Shot Pictos actually is that enables all these wacky gunslinger builds.||

[halcyon elbow]

Its good

Gunslinger fun

[wheat reef]

||That would make sense, especially as stacking the burn to whatever the cap is should be pretty quick so i think if it worked you would see ppl doing some insane numbers with it. Now i want to fire up the game when i get home and find the cap although im sure ppl already did it||

[errant wedge]

lol it's in one of the last locations that still has a DANGER warning at my current level (~75).
||Flying Manor||
So that's gonna be basically the highest level dungeon in the game.

I mean, fair enough. ||Energy Master|| that I got last night should bake out to another substantial power gain.

||Cheater|| is definitely the biggest power jump I've seen so far apart from obviously ||Painted Power||, it was very silly ||seeing a crap version of Cheater for main quest only players in Lumiere||.

[wheat reef]

IDR where exactly it is but you can usually do a bit of sneaking/running to loot a place

[rancid vessel]

Ngl I was kinda expecting to find that feature after coming back for a few months

[halcyon elbow]

They have one (1) UI guy

[errant wedge]

1 guy quarterbacking a team from a contracted studio.

This game should honestly be taught in like business school as a shining example of how to outsource. Sandfall is basically 30 baller veterans coordinating a bunch of contract studios from across the world as force multipliers.

[halcyon elbow]

It isn't even that

They have like 5-10 veterans, and most of the other actual Sandfall employees are relatively new talent

[errant wedge]

A neat video on not specifically E33 but which spends a good amount of time on it: https://youtu.be/AVqujLv6wr8?si=tCPVtHLXs99ASiXj

A tiny talented team with a shared vision who also knew how to find and work with very high quality contract studios, from Korea, Poland etc.

Regarding the capital, it seems Guillaume Broche('s family) may be independently wealthy (possibly a nepo baby, but that doesn't preclude him from having talent) so possibly didn't need to secure (most of) the funding from external investors with investorly demands.

[halcyon elbow]

That certainly isn't how he tells it

Broche and Svedberg-Yen both say they completely reworked the game (including the original title, We Lost) after partnering with Kepler and Kepler bringing a ton of funding with them

That was also when the Victorian flavor was dropped in favor of the Belle Epoque flavor

I do think Broche had the freedom to work for himself and maybe pay an additional salary or two in the early days before they had Real Funding

I have heard several of the early employees talk about having a conversation with Kepler where they were encouraged by Kepler to take another look at their game and imagine where it would go if they had real money behind it as opposed to whatever it was they'd managed to scrape together previously

Charlie Cox' and Andy Serkis' inclusion was part of this as well, actually

Kepler took their paychecks out of the marketing budget, rather than the development budget, something I expect to see more of in the near future

[errant wedge]

Broche's official stance on the game's budget seems to be "no comment, we will say some day". in the SkillUp interview

[halcyon elbow]

You may be interested in seeing the full interview SkillUp cites several times from Dropped Frames

https://youtu.be/0W-G2oGTQ-I

I don't remember if he's there for the full episode or not

[errant wedge]

This is what I was watching: https://youtu.be/mXLOLgC2V2Q?si=BFIV15rIJtbZvmzm

[halcyon elbow]

Yep

In that video, he shows footage of the video I shared a couple of times

[errant wedge]

If they win GoTY they're gonna be what esports fans would call 'royal roaders', i.e someone who wins a major tournament the first time they enter it.

If they don't it's gonna be TGA's biggest L since 2020 (when TLOU2 won Geoff's award and Hades won everyone else's).

[halcyon elbow]

From what I can tell Death Stranding 2 is good enough that Geoff's love affair with Kojima may be enough to tip the scales

(That said, I've seen a lot of people also revise their opinions of Death Stranding 2 down after having spent some time away from it, so who knows)

DK Bananza and Nightreign are also obvious contenders, it is a hot year

[errant wedge]

I haven't watched a Death Stranding 2 movie yet so my opinion will be provided by Jebus.

(I didn't play the first game either but I loved the "movie" of it.)

[analog tiger]

it's going to be donkey kong

though I guess there's a world where something else wins (probably Death Stranding 2) because Astrobot took it last year

but if things stay sane this year's is donkey kong's easily

[exotic ember]

I’d be genuinely shocked if it’s Donkey Kong. I know plenty of people have been loving it but idk, I found it to be just mind-blowingly mid. Immense downgrade from odyssey and doesn’t hold a candle to Astrobot either imo.

I’ve never swung so hard from excited about a game to “wow, this is it?”

I think it’s honestly the most underwhelming game I’ve ever played

The thing is I wish I enjoyed the game too. Like I just spent all this money on a switch 2 and then $70 on DK. I absolutely adored Odyssey and Astrobot. But I’d rather do just about anything else with my time than jump back into DK, despite the sunk cost.

Anyways thanks for coming to my ted talk. Happy for everyone who finds the game fun. And if it wins GoTY, good for it and for those who want to see that.

Maybe one day I’ll open it up again and try to force myself through more of it to see if it gets better. But that day is unlikely to come any time soon

[merry lance]

DKB definitely felt like it put its worst foot forwards for me. Once you leave the tutorial zone it feels a lot better, and it can absolutely devour my afternoons/evenings, but I feel no real pull to return to it

[exotic ember]

Yeah I at least played through zone 102 I think? Got the first bananza power and all that.

And yeah agreed on having no real pull to return to it. I think it’s like social media in that way. It’s easy enough to continue because it’s not entirely devoid of enjoyment, but I also likewise wouldn’t describe it as fun or enjoyable? It just feels like aimless, mindless fluff.

[wheat reef]

Game made by 0,33 people and 1 dog

[sullen quartz]

I've had "Une vie à t'aimer" stuck in my head all day.

That's not a complaint, it's a gush. That song is sooooo epic.

I wish I could play this game 😢

[wheat reef]

It is SUCH a great track, gets stuck in my head often

[rancid vessel]

Act 2 ||in two entire playthroughs i have managed to miss the joy vale TWICE even though it's not hidden or anything. I just, didn't know it was an area
The entire time I figured that was the part the previous expedition took out so I just never thought about it until I was looking up how to find Resplendent catalysts LMAO||

Act 3 ||also, my builds are much better than last time I played, last time beating Chromatic Gold Chevalier was a Herculean task, this time it was mid difficulty. Still working on Verso and Sciel but they should be next up next time I play for putting together||

[errant wedge]

https://www.reddit.com/r/expedition33/comments/1mnlq9i/i_tried_this_build_so_you_dont_have_to/

(no real spoilers)

Act 3 ||I am gonna theorycraft an actual Auto Death build for Verso tho I think.||

[rancid vessel]

Act 3 ||AH EMOTIONALLY BLIND SIDED ON THE SECOND PLAYTHROUGH
When Sciel tried to drown herself, it was ESQUIE WHO SAVED HER
THE FORESHADOWING WAS THERE ALL ALONG
😭 😭 😭 😭 😭 I LOVE THIS GAME||

||and I'm just expected to ERASE EVERYTHING? ugh, I just can't
I know Verso's ending is better for the Dessendre family but... I chose Maelles ending in the first place because I've come to love this world as well, and extinguishing all these lives is just... Hard to do, even if I know it causes the last fragment of Verso pain||

[granite sage]

Ending ||That's sort of why I chose Maelle's too, but I can kinda sorta duck responsibility for that in Verso's ending just because Renoir has already erased most of them by the end of the game. Maelle's versions of them at the end don't seem to be exactly the same people? Something about her ending just feels faker than the rest of the game, and I believe that was intended, but it's possible to interpret it another way.||

[errant wedge]

I have sold this game to 2 friends. All it took was spamming the soundtrack.

[halcyon elbow]

Guillaume Broche says he was confident that even if the game was a flop that the music was going to take on a life of its own anyway

[rancid vessel]

Ending ||oh it was absolutely intended. I get the impression that Maelle went a bit god mode more or less forcing everyone to be happy
There is no good ending to this game, and from what I understand that was completely intentional||

[errant wedge]

Favorite way to Lumina convert Pictos in Act 3 ||just have someone on an Auto Death Bomb setup and the other 2 party members have the Pictos that need converting, and fly Esquie into low level mobs and bomb them. Don't even need to press a button.||

I think I've collected all the Pictos I want from miscellaneous locations / random Chromatics. ||the Chromatic Clair Obscur in the Paintress' arena, the Crow dude, the Dark Gestral Arena, + picking up some Pictos from revisiting old locations with new exploration tools||

||next up I think I'll do Sky Island, Dark Shores and then Endless Tower||

I'm going to try a setup where ||Monoco is on Auto Death Bomb + a whole bunch of Death-triggered Luminas and Second Chance, he instantly brings the enemy to breaking point when the fight starts, Sciel breaks with Phantom Blade and buffs the team with Grim Harvest's rider effects, and then Verso using Seeram rapidly reaches Rank A and End Bringers. And then keeps Combo Attacking and End Bringering every turn he gets. This keeps the enemy Stun locked until they can get 2 turns in a row, which, with the Expedition having Greater Rush constantly from Sciel + her Delaying Slashes, should not come soon enough before they take massive damage / die.||

[errant wedge]

Well I got confirmation that Attack on Titan was a big inspiration for this game's worldbuilding, something I've been theorizing with friends since I first picked it up.

Guillaume is indeed a big fan.

I've also thought this world feels very Virtuosity-coded but of course Yumi came out after the development for Clair Obscur was well underway, so that's more of a parallel than an inspiration.

[errant wedge]

Searched the thread to see if this had been shared yet, but here is Guillaume Broche trying to get someone from reddit to voice act the demo video that would eventually be shown at GDC: https://www.reddit.com/r/RecordThisForFree/comments/g5a6e8/game_ambitious_aa_game_project_looking_for_3/

This was a day after DOOM Eternal and that Animal Crossing game had just come out simultaenously, like a month into COVID lockdowns in the US.

And then almost a year later, after the game had just gotten the Kepler funding injection, trying to hire people on reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/gameDevClassifieds/comments/lfcpx6/new_studio_sandfall_interactive_is_hiring_full/

[errant wedge]

Postcampaign ||Endless Tower is done. 33 fights seems about right. Painted Love was neat, it was actually 2 entities with separate Break bars, Burn counters, etc. sharing a health bar like the Four Kings from Dark Souls 1.||

[errant wedge]

||Stunlock Verso cooked hard, made this a pretty chill affair overall.||

||After Monoco completed his feet collection, Lune took over the bomber role. Since every single fight was multi-opponent her Elemental Genesis spam and Sky Break nuke roasted fools. At no point did I use Maelle tho, Sciel was too indispensable with her buffs and ability to pull Verso ahead in the turn order to keep the stunlock going.||

||Only a couple of really squirrelly dudes got out of the stunlock. One of the Chevaliers in the Steel/Gold/Ceramic trio got out because I couldn't tell which was which in the turn order images. The Chromatic Clair Obscur and Creation in the penultimate battle both got out but took a ton of damage before they could.||

||Against Painted Love I could only really keep either Renoir or Aline locked, so I chose Renoir because storyboss Curator Renoir got 1shot so I have no idea what his moveset is, and Aline I just dodged. Verso has infinity AP and was doing millions of DPR, plus I could just let Lune die on purpose to re-stun and have Sciel rez her. All in all a very lazy no-parrying night. ||

Next up: ||Flying Manor, Painting Workshop then Renoir's Drafts last. I know the final 2 bosses are Painted Clea and then someone who is just called Simon, which is just ??? - no mention of this guy ever yet. And then just collectibles after that to 100% the game.||

[wheat reef]

Endbringer aka ”i would like to remove the parry/dodge aspect of the game thank you”

Mechanical/backseat spoiler for endbringer
||Did you know it stacks? I used it twice on a boss with rage and both actions got denied, i assume you can apply it twice and it will leave them stunned 2 more normal turns as well||

[errant wedge]

It's got really solid mult as well.
End Bringer is 21.6x2 (you're not going to Rank S, so no x3) = 43.2
1HP Berserk Slash Verso build is 14.3x3 (they are going to Rank S) = 42.9
Maelle Stendhal is 15x3 (Virtuose being the x3) = 45

Most power abilities used 'correctly' have their mults land in the 40s.

Elemental Genesis eg. is a 24 but it's intended to be used on multiple targets (as Lune specializes in) so on a pair of enemies that's a 48.

Old pre-nerf Stendhal base mult being 25 was insanity.

Actually I'm overestimating Berserk Slash here because the Rank C specific damage bonus is in there, which obviously it's not getting on Rank S... it's actually not that high.

It's about 28.5 on Rank S. Still it's intention is cheap sustained damage so a Verso that does 28.5 twice will be doing more sustained DPR than a Maelle alternating between a 1 (Swift Stride) and a 45.

[errant wedge]

So, I've come into possession of 200 fresh lumina points thanks to ||a friendly Nevron and friendly Gestral||.

It's time for the next level of DBZ power scaling. ||Since stunlocking works, I'm divesting from all forms of healing, and juicing damage output and speed. Verso and Maelle are getting the majority of the points for damage amps, and Sciel is going to lean even harder into support (except, without the healing part any more, that is so Act 2)||.

It's time to clair some obscurs.

[errant wedge]

I uh... hwat. Alright then let's try the other obscur.

||The pictos stack multiplicatively. That's wacky.||

[halcyon elbow]

It is at this moment that you may be interested to know that the lead balance designer was inspired by Path of Exile

Among other MMO-style games, but he's mentioned PoE specifically several times

He wanted the game to be breakable-with-effort-and-understanding

[errant wedge]

||Blud survived long enough to get 1 "Simon is Stunned" turn at least. What a FromSoft reference tho. This guy is literally carrying the Moonlight Greatsword and Clea is speaking to him like he's living in The Lands Between but actually he's living in The Abyss as in the one from Dark Souls except there are swords in this one.||

It's not all DBZ powerscaling today tho, ||Monoco fought this trader fair and square 😤||. 😤

[halcyon elbow]

It is worth juicing up the HP and redoing that fight just to see the whole thing, it is a real spectacle

[errant wedge]

Perhaps, but for now I must collect music records and journals and figure out where to grind XP to reach level 99 because that is an Achievement.

[halcyon elbow]

You are at the best spot unfortunately

At this level

All ||Just grinding out the drafts||

[ionic kite]

Okay it's finally time to do the (Act 3) ||Painted Clea|| stuff

[ionic kite]

Yeah uh
I don't think I can do this

[wheat reef]

I quickly abandoned the grind and did NG+ to get to 99 and at least it felt faster. Maybe just because it was more fun than just fighting the same normal mobs over and over

[halcyon elbow]

I agree, but Skrimit looks like he's mostly going for the achievement, and I assume will want a fresh NG+ some other time

[errant wedge]

Yeah I'll need to stay in NG for a bit to collect all the other stuff at least.

[ionic kite]

Act 3 ||I two shot Clea lmao. It took a while, I was still having trouble actually doing the parries, but then the cards aligned and I just did 9,507,702 damage in one hit lmfao||

[errant wedge]

All my notes from this here buildcrafting collected into one txt file:

[errant wedge]

All ||Ok I've given up on 100%ing lol. Strongest Sakapatate is simply beyond my capabilities. Yes I watched tips videos, took a break and came back. I've spent probably longer on it than I spent on Sigrun in God of War and there is no sense of improvement, the couple times I got to 18-19 felt like sheer luck. You can nuke or stunlock Simon but this omegachad is uncheesable.||

||Fighting a real endboss, like aforementioned Sigrun, is fun too, this guy just feels like fighting the controller. I recognize there is a rhythm to the attack input and if you enter it slightly early it will just eat the input and that's the run cooked. Doing that and aiming the cone properly is much more difficult than the pure timing of this game's normal combat parries. The pull back and then turn strategy take up way too much time with how slowly the character turns, and the left-right strategy can actually cover the left and right pretty well but then I get screwed on center. I can't just aim center because the collision boundary will turn the character to some random direction, and even if I leave a gap the attack animation itself pulls you forward a bit and then you hit the collision boundary. This is simply not worth the time to overcome. Skill issue maybe, but you develop skills at things you think are worth doing and I'm fine leaving this game unplatinumed.||

[errant wedge]

lmao apparently this isn't even needed for 100%ing.

[halcyon elbow]

Nope

[errant wedge]

||Just the normal Sakapatate who went down first try gets the Achievement.||

[halcyon elbow]

All ||Simon is supposed to be the Sigrun, that's just a meme||

||Only thing I can think of I haven't seen you mention is the last friendly nevron for achievements||

[errant wedge]

||Oh no I got all the friendly Nevrons already, they contributed to my Lumina bounty that let me juice my builds.||

[halcyon elbow]

That should be it then

Just collectibles

[errant wedge]

Well now ||I just feel like I wasted all that time for nothing. I don't use any of the swimsuits anyway, my characters are always formal af||.

I mean that was true either way.

||I will take my 2 runs to 19 as a consolation prize or something.||

[errant wedge]

Aight, we done.

[errant wedge]

https://x.com/michalnowakow/status/1957137806431506503

High praise from the CEO of CD Projekt Red.

Michał Nowakowski (@michalnowakow)

Finally managed to finish Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 and I am absolutely blown away. Seeing this game through to the end is a must if you decide to reach for it. I know everyone said it already but Sandfall Interactive really should be proud of the story they portrayed here.

X · Aug 17, 2025, 5:49 PM

[halcyon elbow]

https://tenor.com/view/predator-handshake-muscle-strong-man-gif-5783927

I remember CDPR being very positive about Horizon Zero Dawn as well, which came out right on Witcher 3's heels

[nova temple]

Good, good

[pulsar citrus]

Cone?

Act 3 || are you talking about the Dark Gestral Arena? ||

[errant wedge]

No those guys were pushovers. I was talking about a much stronger dude.

Looking through this here thread Nick was able to defeat him but Nick is also a baller (and probably on lower frame rates, I never tried capping my frames, apparently that helps).

[pulsar citrus]

Where is the guy located?

[wheat reef]

||Its the final enemy on one of the gestral beaches where you have to strike at projectiles it launches at you||

[pulsar citrus]

Ahhhh

[pulsar citrus]

I thought || it was an actual enemy or something. I don't give a crem about the Gestral beaches. Although the projectiles one is the only one I could actually finish. ||

[errant wedge]

Reminder that Lorien Testard & co will be performing at Gamescom tomorrow: https://x.com/geoffkeighley/status/1956355195287323133

Geoff Keighley (@geoffkeighley)

Games confirmed for @gamescom ONL on Tuesday:

- Call of Duty: Black Ops 7
- Resident Evil Requiem
- Ghost of Yotei
- Ninja Gaiden 4
- The Outer Worlds 2
- Silent Hill f
- World of Warcraft: Midnight
+ More

Plus Fallout Season 2 + Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 music performance.

X · Aug 15, 2025, 2:00 PM

[fallow geode]

worlds not wilds
dammit

[errant wedge]

Outer Wilds never had a 'The' in it either.

The first Death Stranding already lost GoTY but gave Kojima a Best Game Direction award, it would be pretty funny if its sequel did the same thing.

It's finally time to start on the hours and hours and hours of videoessays I've been tossing into Watch Later. 😌

[merry lance]

You can watch the Jacob Geller video where ||he demonstrates an impressive inability to say "Aline"||

[halcyon elbow]

Real The Ohio State energy

[errant wedge]

https://docs.google.com/document/d/13lIZ8AIBqVcyi74HTXcKUe3CLNW5QOFleflWHwg8iVs/edit?usp=sharing

All the lyrics!
The lyrics are spoilers!
Sadness!

[ionic kite]

Act 3 Drafts ||SIMON||

THIS FEELS LIKE A SUPERBOSS

Looks like I'm beating it first try, surprisingly

||Even with his shield stealing nonsense||

Cool ass fight

||Oh dear, is there a phase 2||

||OH YEAH THERE'S A PHASE TWO LET'S GO||

||WITH THE UNE VIE A T'AIMER?!||

[exotic ember]

This is very fun to follow

[ionic kite]

||THE DEAD ARE REMOVED FROM THE CANVAS||

yEAH

UH

THAT ISN'T HAPPENING

lmao

I ain't doing this yet

[halcyon elbow]

[ionic kite]

Really badass tho lmao

||I love how this dude comes out of nowhere
The only indication he exists is the god damn audio logs saying "SIMON"
I don't think he was referenced at any other point up to now||

[halcyon elbow]

All ||Only extremely indirectly||

[pulsar citrus]

Act 3 || Drafts || || Simon || || I love how he looks at all your gimmicks you had used upto now and have been comfortable in and goes nope. Not working this time.

Of course, you can absolutely One Shot him maybe with some cooky builds but to me the true fun is in just going through it like a true slugger and do some damage and survive his flurry of moves.

||

[errant wedge]

Act 3 ||Simon|| ||Yeah, he spits on the face of defensive builds in the name of making it harder to learn his moveset. You have Shields? They're mine now. You have Revives? No you don't. You have lots and lots of HP? Actually, you have 1.||

||The setup I was using... could stunlock him indefinitely, so it could theoretically kill 100x HP Simon if I wanted to experience tedium. But I think if I do another playthrough it would be more fun to just do a Basic Attacks and Parries only version of the fight, just ban all Skills.||

[pulsar citrus]

Okay that is but too much

[errant wedge]

Not really. You can build Basic Attacks and Counters to do a lot of damage.

[pulsar citrus]

Act 3 , just post game gen || Played the game again after some time.

After playing Hollow Knight for a while I just realised how much tedious walking in this game is. I would say that walking from one place to another in HK was also very bad at the early game but that was because of not unlocking any of the moves yet.

Compared to that, the reason I am just putting off getting some left over picto, bosses, enemies and stuff because it is just so much tedious.

Of course it is unfair to treat a metroidvania whose main draw is movement and platforming to a turn based combat game but for a turn based combat game they do make us have a lot of walking. I was just planning to fight Chromatic Clair Obscur at the top of the monolith but the amount of walking is just incredulous.

Though it might be the worst offender. Flag fast travel was a step in the right direction but post game I just feel so tired even attempt to explore much. ||

[pulsar citrus]

Okay conters included yeah doable.

Might get more tedious in NG+ though

[errant wedge]

Did flag fast travel not exist at launch?

It would be neat if the overworld had the ability to select an already explored location on the map and just go there.

[pulsar citrus]

It probably did

[granite sage]

fairly sure it did, but it might not be available immediately at the start of the game? Not sure

[pulsar citrus]

My wording might have hinted like it was a new thing but it wasn't

[pulsar citrus]

Yeah. I am just asking for this after you finish the game.

The Counter argument people give to my complaint is that the world of Clair Obscur is so beautiful that they have no trouble just wandering in the same place over and over again.

I would gladly keep looking at the same place. It just gets tedious when I actually have a goal/destination in mind and the journey is so boring. Endless walking. I am sick of all the characters walking/floating.

Act 3 || Drafts ||||| I know I opened the game to explore. I ended just going to Simon again anyway. ||

[granite sage]

that would be a very modern approach to doing things, which is valid, they were trying to make something a little more classic, some people believe that sort of fast travel makes the world/game feel small, I think the 'no minimaps' was part of that same analysis, people end up looking at the map rather than the game

[pulsar citrus]

I wouldn't mind this if the walking had a bit more quality of life though.

Or just a bit faster mode than just sprint.

[granite sage]

for the purposes of the 'overworld', that's what Esquie is for

[halcyon elbow]

And in dungeons, I think they do have to balance convenience against the idea that they are supposed to have some amount of Souls-style resource management

Which sucks in the endgame when you're trying to collect em all, but the collectathon is icing. Gonna get sacrificed at the altar of the gameplay they intend everyone to do 100/100 times

[wheat reef]

I think unlocking things that breaks various parts of the design of the game is completely fine for NG+. People already experienced it as intended, now let em do it their way

[errant wedge]

While it's probably not getting GoTY any more I do still hope Lorien Testard gets a music award.

[pulsar citrus]

Why is it not getting it anymore?

[errant wedge]

Skong

Is in the window for this year's TGA.

[merry lance]

Eh, that just means it'll be a fight

[pulsar citrus]

Oh yeah

[halcyon elbow]

Yknow what

This might bump Kojima off the Best Direction

GotY for Silksong, direction for E33

Goaty for Deadlock

[analog tiger]

skong is also not getting goty lmao

[halcyon elbow]

Assuming its good I think chances are extremely high

I don't even think it has to be great tbh

[analog tiger]

it's getting indie of the year probably and that's about it

probably gets a nomination too but we'll see

[dawn spindle]

I think Silksong has a chance even if the game's pretty mid

But I also think it won't be Silksong

I still think E33 has a pretty high chance

[scarlet trout]

Yotei could make a push if it’s good

[halcyon elbow]

To be honest I think Yotei is going to be lucky if it gets a nomination

It is a fairly stacked year, and it is a sequel that does not seem to be significantly innovating in a notable way and isn't made by Kojima

[errant wedge]

E33's only card to play in the metanarrative is its originality as a fresh IP while the other contenders are all sequels (KCD2, DeathS2, Skong being HK2, Yotei being Ghost2), but I don't think that carries much weight seeing as sequels have been pretty successful at TGA thus far.

The "small team" narrative is beaten by the fact that Team Cherry are much smaller than Sandfall.

[analog tiger]

GOTY is either DK or Death Stranding 2

guessing DK gets GOTY and Death Stranding direction

[halcyon elbow]

E33 also has the narrative surrounding it buoying it up

[errant wedge]

Yeah if they keep the limit of 6 nominees and Yotei is roughly the same quality as Tsushima, it's cooked in this environment. And Tsushima was a very good game, it got a nom in 2020, just, this crowd is stronger than 2020's.

[halcyon elbow]

I don't think it will be enough, but it has a Cinderella story element to it that I think does play well with the kind of people Geoff has on his shadowy cabal

[analog tiger]

honestly the only thing that might stop DK from winning is Astrobot lmao

[scarlet trout]

Honestly this is why I don’t take the game awards that seriously.

It’s like what a hundred unnamed people?

[halcyon elbow]

I don't know if he publishes a list but we have a pretty good idea of the kind of people who are on it from who's self-identified as being part of the cabal

[scarlet trout]

Also were wondering about sequels…. Every game from 2023 was a sequel

[halcyon elbow]

Like SkillUp

[fallow geode]

IIRC we know what companies they're from

[errant wedge]

There might be a list somewhere but I'm not gonna look it up rn.

[analog tiger]

nah the judges are good

[halcyon elbow]

Its just fun to call them the shadowy cabal because of how seriously some people take the awards

[analog tiger]

some of them are pretty whatever but there's some deep cuts in the crew

TGA published a list last year

[halcyon elbow]

Gene Park said he was approached and wanted to do it but WaPo said no that's a conflict of interest

(They also do not let their journalists do the Academy Awards or Emmys or anything similar so they are at least consistent)

[scarlet trout]

-# I respect gene’s opinions on games more anyways

[analog tiger]

https://archive.ph/uqhBb

that's the link to last year's on archive because the site deleted it

[errant wedge]

Are they somewhere not paywalled?

[scarlet trout]

Not…… unless you’re really good at finding gift links but he usually posts overall views on Twitter

[halcyon elbow]

He often puts gift links there as well

At least for his reviews

His Twitter doesn't always do justice to his opinions though, he eviscerated MindsEye more thoroughly in his review than I'd have guessed from his Twitter or his spot on Dropped Frames

Absolutely murdered that game

[scarlet trout]

Like Gene, Tassi, fightin’ cowboy , and sometimes skillup are the ones who like if they say a game is good or great I’ll move much closer to checking it out

[halcyon elbow]

Hilariously, both Tassi and Gene gave Starfield very good reviews that within six months they felt like they needed to revise down

[scarlet trout]

Yeah…..

[halcyon elbow]

https://fixvx.com/tylorhepnerart/status/1958608180470043072

Tylor Hepner (@TylorHepnerArt)

Sneak peek at an extra special new painting of Sophie!✨ #Expedition33

▶ Play video

vxTwitter / fixvx · Aug 21, 2025, 7:12 PM

[analog tiger]

who's Sophie again?

[fallow geode]

||Gustave's Ex||

[analog tiger]

ooo right that one

[unreal oasis]

https://youtu.be/RcWlGugeu-c?si=WY1JKfuebsIIWzwv

[ionic kite]

Listening to We Lost, and even though ||the lyrics are seemingly very similar to Une V'ie A T'aimer, the singers sound like they're singing it in a different way. Which makes sense, because this song isn't Renoir and Aline singing, it's Simon and probably Clea.||

[sullen quartz]

I decided that due to my inability to play the game, I am now watching a lengthy cutscene compilation that includes the story-relevant gameplay inbetween. It's not ideal, but my desire to experience the story, even vicariously, has outweighed my desire to wait forever for the chance to play it.

Thoughts so far:
Prologue ||I think it's really sweet that you can play as Sophie, even for a brief amount of time. Something about that just feels right, as sad as it is that this is all you'll see of her, yeah? ||

Act 1 ||I didn't know what to expect from these Gestrals, but I wasn't expecting them to be so darn adorable. They're just goofy little goobers and I love them already.||

The visuals are also absolutely stunning, goes without saying.

[errant wedge]

Act 1 ||the Gestral Village really threw me for a bit too, the game is so serious and dark until that point and then you have this whole village is full of comedic relief characters||

[halcyon elbow]

Have a little clair with your obscur

[errant wedge]

They also have one of the weirdest boss themes in the game, still a banger tho because every single boss theme is a banger in this game.

||https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qVaRBnuY2dA||

[sullen quartz]

Yeah, the Golgra theme in particular is a favorite of mine. I listened to the soundtrack already, so it's nice getting the context for the songs now. I'll hear one of my favorite tracks play, and I'm like "Hey, it's that one song! That's what it's for!"

[errant wedge]

I saw an interesting theory on Golgra recently that is very much not safe for where you are rn.

[sullen quartz]

I have a playlist of favorited songs from the soundtrack, and that alone is over two hours long, about a quarter of the game's soundtrack. 😅

[errant wedge]

I think it might just be my favorite video game soundtrack.

[sullen quartz]

Oh yeah, I'm at Act 1 ||Golgra Village boss battles.||

-# I say as if I'm playing the game and not just watching someone else's playthrough

[errant wedge]

Just like

of ever.

[sullen quartz]

I have too many favorite video game soundtracks to count, but this has quickly risen high on my list.

Act 1 + Thor; Ragnarok ||Haha, I got to the part where Sciel is reintroduced as the Gestral arena challenger and I could only think of Thor's reaction to seeing Hulk "We know each other! He's a friend from work!"||

||I suppose listening to the soundtrack kind of spoiled for me that Sciel survived their landing. I knew it was only a matter of when she'd turn up again.||

Act 1 [||Gestral Village||] ||I can't tell if those Gestrals around Golgra are bowing to her or doing push-ups, so I just want to guess it's both. 😆 ||

Act 1 [||After Gestral Village, I guess?||] ||Gasp! It's the girl from the album cover! Every time I see the album cover, I wonder who the heck she is, and now suddenly Maelle has a vision of her?||

||Whaaaat is going on? So this girl is the "Alicia" the first song on the album is about, and Renoir is suddenly here and I'm always glad to hear Andy Serkis' voice, but I am so confused at the story right now. I'm delightfully lost.||

||Okay, that's hilarious. Golgra's password is "GET OUTTA MY WAY!" but no one told the guy they're supposed to shout it to what the password was, so he think they're just being rude. ||

Act 1 [||Esquie's Nest||] ||All this Esquie/François stuff is hilarious. I didn't expect such comedy from a game like this.||

[pulsar citrus]

|| it has some genuinely funny moments in this game||

[merry lance]

There's a new Carbot! Act 3 ||Storming Lumiere|| ||https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-W7hVF_L4U||

[errant wedge]

The thumbnail lmao

[quaint gale]

That is not the follow-up video I expected :p

[nova temple]

Perfection

[ionic kite]

E33 act 3 ||Watching my friend play through act 2. They take down the masked Axon.
Verso: "That was Verso, wasn't it"
God, he just straight up says it. And I MISSED IT!||

[halcyon elbow]

Acts 1 and 2 of E33 are a wildly different experience the second time through

My personal favorite is when [Act 2] ||they are burying Gustave and Maelle says "you were the best brother I ever had" and it cuts to Verso and he very nearly flinches||

[errant wedge]

This is a good video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o1_XtkSwiNQ

[sullen quartz]

Act 1 Finale ||I called it right before it happened. Sciel and Lune jump onto Esquie and Gustave is standing there with Maelle. I know an Act 1 climax when I hear one. Maelle suggests throwing one more rock, Gustave moves to get one, and I'm internally screaming "Just jump! Stop wasting time! Renoir is going to get you because you stuck around!" And sure enough, just as I predicted, the tell-tale clack of the cane. Called it.||

[ionic kite]

Question

How much of Act 3 optional stuff do I have left?

[halcyon elbow]

What have you done?

[ionic kite]

I've done ||Alicia, Painted Clea, I reached Simon, I'm finishing up Endless Tower||

[sullen quartz]

Act 1 finale ||NO! GUSTAVE! AAAAAAGH! 😭 ||

||Now, this I should have seen coming, but I didn't want to expect it. Naming Act 1 after him seemed a dead giveaway he wouldn't live beyond it, but... dang it, it's not like I'm waiting for my favorite characters to die.||

[halcyon elbow]

That sounds like mostly everything other than world bosses

[ionic kite]

Mmk sick

I have a few of the overworld bosses still to do

I have the big guy in the water and the dragon thing that I haven't done

[sullen quartz]

Act 1 finale ||Gosh, a Renoir boss fight sounds scary enough, but mandatory 1 HP?||

[halcyon elbow]

Oh Sprong is like

Do that soonest

ASAPly

With haste

[ionic kite]

Oh really

[halcyon elbow]

Drops one of the most important Pictos in the game

[ionic kite]

Okay

Ahh

[dawn spindle]

Which?

[ionic kite]

"Do that soonest"

I'm literally almost done with everything

[halcyon elbow]

You can get to it in act 2 but should not really attempt it until act 3

[errant wedge]

||I realized you can fight Sprong in Act 2 but my actual Act 2 exploration on the left side of the map was remarkably lacking so I didn't know he existed til Act 3 starts and they drop you like 20 feet away from him.||

[halcyon elbow]

||Big chungus walking around in the water on the east side of the map about 2/3 up from Lumiere to the monolith||

[dawn spindle]

No I'm asking which pictos

[errant wedge]

Double yr turns

[dawn spindle]

I'm done with Sprong I just don't remember

ah gotcha

[errant wedge]

Extra Attack for the Expedition

[ionic kite]

Aaaaand I one shot it

lmfao

[errant wedge]

That is very Act 3

[dawn spindle]

yeah it's basically early Act 3 level

[errant wedge]

It's meant to be beatable under the 9999 regime if you're a bit patient.

[ionic kite]

Decided to beat the dragon thing too

[dawn spindle]

did you also oneshot it?

[ionic kite]

Nah

I almost did

[errant wedge]

It was probably the last boss I actually fought in my playthrough, everything else just got obliterated.

[sullen quartz]

Act 1 finale ||And now we're meeting this Verso guy I've heard so much about. I now realize I don't know what's going on, like at all. Truly, nothing is what it seems.||

I have two running theories now. ||Either this is some kind of time loop or time travel thing and Alicia is a future version of Maelle, or it's another case of "Everything is a simulation and nothing here is real" and that will be un-Masqued at the end of Act 2. I'm not super confident in either theory, but I'm grasping at straws here.||

[dawn spindle]

How'd you like Act 1?

[ionic kite]

Realistically, is Energy Master worth it?

It seems good on paper

But I could see it being not actually as helpful in practice as it sounds

I guess it depends on build

[errant wedge]

It is useful for gunslinging builds and certain other use cases, it's much more niche than Cheater tho.

[ionic kite]

Like ||my Verso doesn't need it because he gets to max just by basic attacking anyway, and it's definitely cheaper to do that then to drop the 40||

Oh hey

||My Monoco is only missing one skill||

Third row, last column

Which fight is that

It's possible I missed it ||cuz I had to switch to backline for a few of the Endless Tower fights||

[errant wedge]

||Gross Tete Whack. There is one in Flying Manor if you killed the one in Act 2.||

[ionic kite]

Mmk

I guess I missed that one

[ionic kite]

I love how often the characters just ||actually talk about the entire plot of the game, explicitly, and the only reason we don't understand what's happening is just because we don't have the full context. Like they're not even being cryptic, they're being fully forthright, it's just that the player doesn't have the context to actually comprehend what they're saying||

[halcyon elbow]

My favorite one of these is [all] ||Renoir asks Verso "you haven't told her have you", and the scene plays it as "you haven't told her I am your father" but on a second viewing it is clear what he means is "you haven't told Maelle she's really Alicia"||

[ionic kite]

I took that as ||"You haven't told her the plot of the game" or "the secrets you're hiding" or smth. Though tbf I always figured Maelle was special and related to Alicia in some way, ever since Alicia appeared to her the first time||

But yeah my friend just got to the scene where ||Renoir and Alicia show up in the camp right before you go to the Monolith, and he just. Outright states in no uncertain terms what's happening, that he's dooming the world and everyone is going to disappear if he goes to kill the Paintress.||

||But the player just doesn't get it yet because they don't know real Renoir's plan||

||And that you're just doing everything he wants||

[halcyon elbow]

Yeah ||Painted Alicia's monologue goes from meaningless aura farming to a meaningful statement of how she feels about her reality and Maelle||

[errant wedge]

Meaningful aura farming.

||"I envy them, those who can't see. Those who know not, that they are not."||

https://tenor.com/view/fire-writing-gif-24533171

[sullen quartz]

I wish I could say I enjoyed playing it, but as far as witnessing the story vicariously through someone else's playthrough goes, I am awed, wowed, joyed, and heartbroken. All the feels. Totally hooked. Really wish I could play it, but also glad I'm finally experiencing it.

[silver pawn]

Ahh yes. I attempted it in Act 2, and it uhhhh… did not go well 😅
I haven’t played in so long, so that’ll have to be one of the first things I attempt when I play again haha

[pulsar citrus]

Honestly? Act 3 || Flying Manor || || god job lobbying, Painted Clea without having fought Sprong yet. ||

[ionic kite]

||I one shot Painted Clea lmao||

Actually

Maybe I didn't

Wai tno

Yeah I did

I did have to level up a bit

I couldn't do it right away and I think I got a lucky crit

But I did one shot eventually

[errant wedge]

[pulsar citrus]

Oh with what?

Act 3 || Maelle || || with Stendhall or was it from some other skill? ||

[ionic kite]

Yes that

[pulsar citrus]

Yeah it do be that strong.

|| I did try to finish Clea with Burning Canvas based build and I was surprised how easy it was to work around her gimmick in that set up as her burns just growing and then breaking her doubles them. ||

Act 3 || Drafts || || I can't say the same for Simon. I have not yet figured out a good strategy to fight Simon yet with my other characters that does not fall in the "no chance" builds like Gunslinger Verso builds. ||

[exotic ember]

|| Oh my gosh…. I didn’t clock that ||

[halcyon elbow]

All (and then some) ||https://youtu.be/ll6Mhd7Nv_o ||

[sullen quartz]

Act 2 beginning ||I want to like Verso, but the timing of his introduction makes him feel like a replacement for my favorite character Gustave. I wish they'd gotten the chance to be side by side. And yeah, surprisingly, Gustave's my favorite character. I guess I kind of see myself in him, but not in a way I find unlikeable, you know? Anyway, this "relationship numbers" function makes me wonder if that will influence how the game ends.||

[errant wedge]

https://fixvx.com/kiasherria_kia/status/1959320852614537304/photo/1

Kia (@kiasherria_kia)

#ClairObscureExpedition33
(4H, 2B, and Blackwing pencil on 14 x 17 sketching paper)
This basically summarizes all my thoughts about Expedition 33. https://t.co/2XScla5FNp

vxTwitter / fixvx · Aug 23, 2025, 6:24 PM

[nova temple]

Some strong language in this one https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJL344jlBDo

[ionic kite]

Act 3 ||The last battle in the tower is beating my ass||

I don't think I can do this as is

lmao

I guess tomorrow
I go off to beat the final bosses ass
Or
Sometime this week anyway
Maybe not tomorrow
Wednesday for sure

[dawn spindle]

Today I shall do a bit more Act 3 cleanup 😌
-# If work doesn't kill me.

[silver pawn]

Indeed, I hope work does not kill you, and you get to do more Act 3 cleanup haha!
I need to do the same at some point… just keep finding other things to do!

[dawn spindle]

same

I don't find the cleanup super enticing tbh, like the game is fun but that's it

Like once I start playing I do have a lot of fun with the combat and the world is still just as beautiful but when I'm not playing there's nothing pulling me to it

[silver pawn]

That’s exactly how I feel now that the story is essentially done. I still haven’t Act 3 ||faced Renoir||, but yeah, like you said, just don’t feel pulled to it.

I will eventually! Just today is not that day haha!

[dawn spindle]

Same

Except today is the day I do some

[errant wedge]

I subscribe to the wisdom passed from Argent to Kon to me which is to beat the final boss' ass first and then go adventuring.

[sullen quartz]

Act 2 ||I should have known Monoco would be a fun character based on his theme song, and he didn't disappoint.||

[sullen quartz]

Act 2 ||Monoco swearing he'll never join Verso again and immediately switching up at the promise of fighting might be my new favorite funny interaction. ||

[pulsar citrus]

Act 3 || I beat them with Maelle in my team so I decided to not use Maelle next time and only Verso, Sciel and Lune. I had to sweat so many tries (my damage with them was not that great compared to Maelle either) so the battle was truly a war of attrition.

And I was so glad when I did win against them. ||

[pulsar citrus]

I have the exact same problem.

[sullen quartz]

Act 2 big plot point ||Was the revelation that Verso is Renoir's son supposed to be all that surprising? I wouldn't have thought of it or expected it, but I'm not exactly surprised either. It just makes sense.||

||I'm more concerned and intrigued at what's going on with Alicia and these "fading" people and the faceless beings like the Curator. What's their deal?||

[nova temple]

||It's kind of a medium reveal. It's not nothing, but it's not one of the big shockers of the game||

[sullen quartz]

Okay, I think I just got to one of those big shockers

Act 2 big plot point again ||First off, NO NOT NOCO TOO! 😭 Second of all: Verso just called Maelle "Alicia"! He dove to defend her and instinctively yelled "Alicia, move!" Like, what?! I predicted this?||

||Okay, that clarifies it. I called that a while back. But now I'm just wondering: how?! This really is a time travel story all along?||

Act 2 ||Really, Esquie? Florrie and Dorrie? Do you have any Morrie with that name?||

[sullen quartz]

Act 2 question for those who have played the game ||Am I to assume the Axons serve as a series of super difficult boss battles?||

Act 2 ||Visages|| ||With a name like that, I'm not surprised there are faces everywhere. Yet again, the incredible artwork of this game astounds me.||

||Yeah, this part's giving me the creeps. Visages, the Mask Keeper... bad juju.||

[sullen quartz]

||I realize now I was probably jumping to conlcusions. But I'm not saying there's not evidence?||

[ionic kite]

Uhh not necessarily

[analog tiger]

Act 2 all ||boss battles, yes. Difficult, eh. not really.||

[dawn spindle]

Not much, no. I think if anything they're just meant to be more gimmicky? But not much else.

[analog tiger]

well I think they are intended to be more challenging than the other bosses

[silver pawn]

Or you can play on Story mode like me, and every boss is a walk in the park 😎

[dawn spindle]

I don't actually think so.

It's not like the devs weren't aware the story stuff was way easier

[pulsar citrus]

They are just cool

Difficulty can honestly depend on your capacity.

I have seen playthroughs where people had struggled where I haven't and seen many breeze through where I sweated.

[wheat reef]

In my experience its a pretty common thing that the story tries to hype up story bosses in JRPGs. It can fall flat on its face if it doesnt live up to the hype but in the case of this game i think the spectacle of Act2 ||the Axons|| makes it work regardless of the difficulty of the bosses

[dawn spindle]

Act 3 ||Sunless Cliffs|| ||Is there a point in killing this red eyed mime multiple times? 🤔 ||

[merry lance]

Act 3 ||Sunless Cliffs|| ||Have you killed it with more than one person?||

[obtuse pond]

https://www.eurogamer.net/clair-obscur-expedition-33-is-not-the-end-of-the-franchise-director-confirms

||Clea game please||

[merry lance]

||Clea Opaq||

[dawn spindle]

No, I'm asking if I should

[merry lance]

Act 3 ||Sunless Cliffs|| ||There's an unlock for everyone||

[dawn spindle]

||the hair or other stuff? Idk that i care about the hair||

||i already got the pictos||

[nova temple]

||Yeah, it's the bald look for each character||

[dawn spindle]

Gotcha

Thanks to both

[sullen quartz]

Act 2 nearing finale ||The fact that fighting the Paintress is the Act 2 climax is pretty telling of that "nothing is as it seems". Here's hoping that the end of Act 2 will finally start answering questions instead of just piling on more questions. Because I'm pretty confused by... pretty much everything. 😅 ||

[nova temple]

You are entering the "we'll tell you everything" part of the game 😛

[sullen quartz]

Almost there...

[sullen quartz]

Act 2 closer to finale ||I've seen the name "Aline" pop up a lot... is that the Paintress' name? Or the name of someone affiliated with her? And what's the deal with white hair here?||

||Yo, I can't believe the "I like trains" boy made it into E33, crossover of the century right there.||

Act 2 climax? ||Ah, so this is where we hear "Une vie à t'aimer" plays. Awesome. One of my favorite songs on the soundtrack. Makes me wish I knew French.||

Theory time ||So there's a family, yeah? Just found out the family name is "Dessendre". Renoir and Aline were the parents, and the children were Verso and Alicia. Why they have so much narrative significance, I cannot tell. I don't even know if that picture I have of the story is correct.||

Act 2 climax ||Did Renoir just get... Gommaged? How did Maelle and the Curator do that? Agh, still so confused.||

||Verso really be doing that "Be honest and tell the whole story" Challenge (IMPOSSIBLE)||

Is Act 3 shorter than the first two? It kind of seems like it.

[dawn spindle]

||I believe story-wise it is, yes||

[nova temple]

Earlier I thought you were further in the Act, which is why I thought answers are imminent 😅

[lavish hornet]

Just began the game and it's so pretty and I'm mildly obsessed with the soundtrack

[sullen quartz]

Okay, I'm pretty sure I finished Act 2. And now I am not okay.

And I think Act 2 is over because [big spoilers] ||next up is an EPILOGUE?! What?! And an Alicia flashback to boot? I'm still quite confused. I'm still reeling from the revelation that the Paintress has been fighting to prevent the Gommage and killing her means it now affects everyone uninhibited. Terrifying. And also, uh, how can there be more of the game if everyone is blipped into flowery oblivion? But if it's still happening, that means someone else is causing it. Who? Who is this "he"? Is it Renoir? Who even is Renoir? So much has been answered and yet I'm still quite confused.||

||This epilogue is quite confusing. Their bodies are unfinished forms? What does "inside the canvas" mean? Why aren't the parents moving? Who is Clea?||
||-# And why is she so hot?||

[silver pawn]

https://tenor.com/view/evil-smile-evil-evil-laugh-gif-10865501938883882879

I’m loving your reacts Firerust!

[sullen quartz]

New theory time post Act 2 ||Now I'm guessing that the entire world we just saw is "inside the canvas". None of them are in reality, and everything we saw was a creation of the Paintress or someone else, existing within a painted world within the real world. Ooh ooh ooh, and what if the Gommage... is them waking up? The end of their existence inside the canvas wakes them up in the real world? Or did they only ever exist inside the canvas and now they just don't exist anymore? My brain is breaking.||

[silver pawn]

I felt much the same as you at this point!

[sullen quartz]

||GASP. Oh, and when we see black-and-white masked Alicia, it's the real her stepping into the painted world! The Verso we got to know was modeled after the real Verso, and Maelle was modeled after Alicia. So my theory about Maelle and Alicia being the same person was both right and wrong, if that's the case.||

[sullen quartz]

I'm glad to both have a place to gush and to provide entertainment for those in the know 😁

Post Act 2 ||Now I feel like I need a whole bunch of lore and story clarifications for the real world this takes place in. While magic is clearly a very prominent thing in the painted world, it's clearly a thing in the real one too.||

||In a meta sense, I love that this gave the developers all the excuses to design the world and creatures with so much beauty, nuance, weirdness, and creativity. Because all of them in-world were meant to be expressions of creativity, of delving into art.||

||Ah. So Renoir was the one who erased everything and Gommaged everyone. But was it a painted Renoir or the real one? And either way, why?||

||What's going on now? A Painters vs Writers conflict?! I don't even know who any of them are! Stop breaking my brain, E33!||

Still post Act 2 ||So we saw Alicia in the painted world because she stepped in from the real world to help Renoir end everything. But she kept appearing to Maelle because she was shocked to find that someone in this world looked just like her. And before the fire, at that.||

||ANOTHER BIG GASP. The Curator! If the Paintress is how the mother manifests in the painted world, the Curator must be the father! Is that the real Renoir? The one who caused the Gommage? I still don't know if I'm getting all this right, but my head is racing and there's barely an hour left of the playthrough.||

||Confusion. Again. Alicia did enter the Canvas, but upon being siezed by Aline's chroma, she... became Maelle? Then how does that explain us seeing monochrome Alicia herself, existing separately from Maelle? And who even is Aline? Is that the Mother/Paintress' name?||

Act 3. Finally onto Act 3. ||And just as I predicted from the start, it's named for Maelle. No surprise there.||

I think I should stop there for tonight. I'm overwhelmed enough as it is.

[nova temple]

You've got one notable thing wrong (that has been explained, I think you just read it the other way - and it should become clear in a moment anyway; you could go through a couple of scenes before you click on this) ||Maelle is the real Alicia who entered the Canvas and was overwhelmed by Aline's chroma. The monochromatic masked Alicia you see is a part of the Painted family Aline created for herself||

[sullen quartz]

Oh

Okay, that makes sense now.

Whoa. Okay, I'll continue tomorrow. 😅

[sullen quartz]

Here we come, Act 3. My questions have mostly been answered. All that's left is to see what happens next.

Act 3 beginning ||Haha! I knew it! The Curator was Renoir all along.||

||Esquie! Monoco! Maelle can reverse the Gommage! And Renoir is still the antagonist. As ever.||

||I'm honestly not sure who to root for now. It seems Maelle's desperation to stay in this painted world is still a form of losing oneself in their art to cope with loss. Much like her mother. Is it so wrong for Renoir to want the dream to end?||

||Sciel and Lune are back! Maelle is in control now. But if that's the case... why not bring back Gustave? You'd think that would have crossed her mind. Unless you can only bring back the gommaged. Gustave's death was more... final of a death than that, I suppose.||

||Is it accurate to call this painted world a Canvas? Like, a Canvas is a whole world in itself? And I guess I got my answer as to why she doesn't bring more back. It's all about the chroma.||

||So now the quest is about gathering chroma from Expeditioners killed by Nevrons. Does this mean the next leg of the journey is to retread old ground and retrace the steps of past expeditioners? That would explain why it seems there's so little story left but room for a lot more gameplay. It would also explain why there aren't many tracks left in the soundtrack after the Act 2 finale. Retreading old ground means relistening to old tracks, yeah? Not much more to add outside of plot-relevant cutscenes, I'd reckon.||

Still early Act 3 ||"The cycle we needed to break wasn't the Gommage. It's your family's cycle of grief." Well said, Verso. There's the crux of the game. And there's the Aesop: art is not an escape from grief. I should have known there'd be an anti-escapism message here.||

Same tags ||Gotta love the detail of all the corpses of the lost Expeditioners being Chekov's Guns with later importance in the story.||

I love hearing the "Lumiére" track in-game. One of my favorite songs given context.

Act 3, uh, nearing the climax? Maybe? ||Now that is a powerful scene. Renoir has an army of Nevrons... but Maelle came with an army of her own. Seeing a potential boss encounter pop up only for the other Expeditioners to dispatch it immediately is cool. It's all so epic.||

[nova temple]

||She didn't have his chroma. She probably could've painted a new Gustave, but that's not what she wanted||

Act 3 is just this one area, by the way. So you can finish the story (you'll get a save just before the final bit) and go back to clear the map, or you can put this on hold (and potentially outlevel it) and go do side stuff

[sullen quartz]

Ah. I see. Well, I'm at what I believe is the finale or close enough to it.

And ||How did Verso step through the Canvas? He's a painted replica of Verso, not the real one. Painted people can't step out of a Canvas into the real world... can they? This changes things.||

||The faceless boy! That's Verso, isn't it? The real one! They're in Verso's Canvas, after all. But I thought he was dead. So this is just the last sliver of him remaining within his own Canvas.||

Finale ||And Verso is the final boss. Of course he is.||

||No wait, what?! You play as either Maelle or Verso?! Gah, of course this game has multiple endings. And it all depends on who you choose to play as and what choice you want to make for the Canvas. Hmm...||

Epilogue ||So the Maelle ending brings everyone back. Gustave, Sophie, Pierre... but this is immersion, escapism... at what cost? Does this game even have good endings? I get the feeling it's a sad ending either way.||

||It looks like Maelle is... forcing all of this? Forcing Verso to keep existing even when he doesn't want to? Painting smiles on everyone's souls? Also, painted face jumpscare. Yeah, I don't know what to feel about this. It doesn't feel right. But what's the alternative?||

Can someone say "emotional overload"? I feel like I just got Sanderlanched.

[nova temple]

Correct!

^ ||I wouldn't say that Maelle is forcing or changing anyone... except for Verso. She needs the little boy to continue painting because that's what's sustaining the Canvas. So I think what she is doing here is twofold - she is keeping the last sliver of the real Verso's soul alive, so the Canvas can continue existing, and she is keeping Painted Verso alive, because she wants her brother alive and with her||

[sullen quartz]

||Even though he clearly doesn't want to be there.||

||Well, to the other ending, then.||

[nova temple]

Yep!

[sullen quartz]

Ooh, I think I made a French connection.

All spoilers ||One epilogue is called "A Life to Love" in English, which is close to "Une Vie à T'aimer". And the other epilogue is called "A Life to Paint", which is English for "Une Vie à Peindre" or close enough. But there's one more song in the trio: "Une Vie à Rever". An English equivalent to that would be "A Life to Dream". But there's no epilogue of that name.||

||Is there?||

Epilogue ||This Verso ending seems... better. Everyone living their real lives in the real world, the family back together. Overcoming their grief together. The only bad I can see in this is that Alicia can't go back and we'll never see the other characters we grew attached to again. Maelle's ending is the pain of refusing to move on, and Verso's ending is the pain of letting go.||

It's easy to say I'm done, but we all know this means I'm just going to dive into lore videos now. 😅

||Neither ending is happy. Someone still suffers no matter what. We're left to pick their poison. But Verso's does seem better, relatively speaking.||

[nova temple]

||Good observation on the Life to Dream, but there isn't much to it. I think you are safe to listen to this bit of Q&A specifically: https://youtu.be/yB-nPIBW-Ks?si=VvPQinsKqbgOs-bs&t=3160||

Well

Actually

You went from Act 2 straight into Act 3, right?

[errant wedge]

Act 3 ||Une Vie a Rever was Painted Alicia's boss music iirc.||

[nova temple]

He hasn't seen that 🙈

Or

Wait

Right?

Yeah, that's post-Act 2 side content

[sullen quartz]

Yeah. Unfortunately, I have no means of actually playing the game. I watched a lengthy playthrough instead. Robs me of some of the experience, but better than never experiencing it. It was like watching a really long movie. Or a limited series.

[errant wedge]

Did the movie do sidequests tho?

[sullen quartz]

Hmm, I don't believe so. It seemed to be limited to the main story.

Act 3 was pretty short.

[errant wedge]

Act 3 is arguably entirely sidequests.

Kind of like Cyberpunk tbh.

They should've included some of those conversations and cutscenes at least.

[sullen quartz]

What makes this fun though is that even if I can one day get and play the game, I can still go through it all again with a fresh understanding of the story and context to fill in the blanks. The experience would be altered, not lost. Replay value, you know?

But man, Clair-Obscur is beautiful. Gorgeous. The story, the visuals, the music, the game design, the voice acting... all marvelous. S-tier quality.

[merry lance]

E33 all ||So... The magnitude of the sufferings gets a little deeper depending on how you stand on one of the running themes; what is a person? There's a very strong argument to be made that the inhabitants of the Canvas are just as much people as the painters running amok within it, and by letting Verso have peace and erasing the Canvas, you're basically committing omnicide on the inhabitants.||

[nova temple]

Most of the games I consume I do through let's plays, you don't have to explain yourself 😛

[errant wedge]

||Is self-aware Investiture capable of being a person?||

[sullen quartz]

Haha, thanks. I may have felt like I'd be judged for not actually playing it, considering all the praise it gets as a masterpiece. 😅

[errant wedge]

Ending ||I'd say the Painted people are so indistinguishable from being people that they are real lives. And Renoir and then Painted Verso did commit genocide because Aline irresponsibily created a whole civilization in her grief.||

[merry lance]

||It all gets squicky in a good way, and there's no real "good" ending, just endings that are less worse for different people.||

[nova temple]

I mean, I don't think there was ever any judgement. Just a sentiment that it's better to experience it for yourself, if you can, but if you can't, then living vicariously through others is still miles better than not at all

[sullen quartz]

||It really makes you think, doesn't it. Either you rob Verso of his agency or you rob Maelle of a life she loved. Either you block out the real world and refuse to move on, or you commit omnicide upon the Canvas. Neither is truly a good ending. A Life to Love only felt marginally better to me because it felt like a choice most everyone could agree upon in the end and there's room for recovery in the real world for the Dessendre family. Really makes you wish you could take a third option.||

||Like all great art, it makes you feel and think and wonder. It's a beauty in itself.||

[merry lance]

Did your watch through include boss fights?

E33 all ||Before the game there was a third option, letting the canvas continue, but leaving it. Unfortunately Aline proves it could never work by returning to the Canvas during the last boss fight; the only way to keep her from wasting away like she was seems to be destroying it.||

[sullen quartz]

Yes, it did. Truncated versions, sure, but all included. And clips of world traversal and conversations of non-cutscene dialogue between characters.

Well, I suppose some boss fights were probably left out, as it only included the story-relevant parts of Act 3.

[analog tiger]

Epilogue ||better so long as you ignore that all the other characters (and everyone in Lumière) were people who all died so this family could move on from their grief||

[sullen quartz]

||Yep. Truly, no good options remained.||

[analog tiger]

there was very direct judgement by people here lmao

[errant wedge]

Endings ||Personally I consider the Maelle ending to be better because I don't really give a rat's arse about the Dessendres. They are rich and powerful people in their own world and obviously gods to the Canvas, they'll be fine. Lune's look of rage in the Verso ending really sums it up, the realization of being a powerless simulated nothing, that tomorrow isn't coming, that your whole civilization was built on a grieving god's whim and all of you will be killed to help them move on. Even if Maelle dies and some fragment of child Verso has to suffer (and from the Flying Manor dialogue, I don't think he's suffering at all), the continued powering of the Canvas is a less bad outcome to me.||

||If it turns out we're in a simulation and our gods appear and start arguing about whether to secure funding to run it for one more day then by heck I'm on the side of the one fighting for my ability to exist.||

[analog tiger]

like very explicitly

[sullen quartz]

Well, I'm at least grateful to hear that there are those who aren't directly judging me for it 😅

[analog tiger]

mmm that is a good point

[merry lance]

I think playing the game is probably a better experience than watching it, but if you can't, you can't, and it sounds like you've found a good compromise.

[analog tiger]

Endings ||people see themselves as the Dessendres, but not as the people of Lumière because of course their existence is guaranteed, there is no other way it could be, they are people after all||

Endings ||I don't like Verso's ending mostly because it feels like it makes the entire game pointless. We spend the whole game with these people and then surprise they are nothing, there's exactly one person in the party who matters||

[pulsar citrus]

Yeah I did the same with modern GoW games. Technically even GoW 3 I never played

[sullen quartz]

I've thought about the endings again. All ||And I think I prefer Maelle's ending. It's still wrong that she's forcing Verso into basically an endless hell of no escape, but... my favorite character is Gustave, and I want what's best for him because he's just the best.||

||This really is a "pick your poison" scenario.||

[merry lance]

E33 all ||That isn't Gustave, or at least shouldn't be the original Gustave. His Chroma is gone and scattered. The person in Maelle's ending is someone that she created that she thinks looks and acts like Gustave.||

[pulsar citrus]

Act 3+ ||I don't know if there is enough information to support that, we might be using our meta knowledge of stories where a similar trope has occured into it.

The only reason Maelle wasn't bringing Gustave and rest back during Act 3 was because Renoir being present. It could be that this Gustave not ours but it could as well be. ||

[ionic kite]

Act 3 ||My friend got to the last Renoir fight. GOD the dialogue hits so different when you actually understand what it is they're saying.||

[halcyon elbow]

This is maybe the game's biggest success in its storytelling

[errant wedge]

https://fixvx.com/portilho/status/1961881666127056930

porti (@portilho)

this is insane LMFAO @expedition33 @pax

vxTwitter / fixvx · Aug 30, 2025, 8:00 PM

[halcyon elbow]

[halcyon elbow]

https://x.com/bricky/status/1961977227664609352

Bricky 🧱 (@Bricky)

For a lot of it I was like "Wheeeee" but now I am VERY much like "whoooooooo" :(

X · Aug 31, 2025, 2:19 AM

[sullen quartz]

The beauty of ✨ replay value ✨

Which is why I can still hold out hope for playing the game one day and still appreciating the narrative anew even after knowing all of it already.

[quaint gale]

I didn't play it either. I watched bits and pieces as a friend played it, then a (long) 'movie' video of it, then a whole bunch of other videos for the parts that one missed. 😅

It's one of my favourite videogame stories, despite not having played it :p

[exotic ember]

It’s the dog in the front row for me

[dawn spindle]

Finished Act 3 ||Painting Workshop||

[ionic kite]

Alright let's finish

[ionic kite]

Final boss time

I don't think 10X health multiplier was enough
I nearly one shot them lmao

[wheat reef]

Act 3|| Random thought because of how much people talk about the final boss being too easy: they should have made beating Simon lead to Renoir powering up. Justification? I guess because beating Simon allows him to absorb the chroma or something like that||

||Actually you could do the same for other enemies like serpenphare and painted love too ||

[ionic kite]

I didn't even do that lmao

[wheat reef]

oh fair

[ionic kite]

Oh boy

||Final choice||

||Choosing Maelle||

[nova temple]

I did the same

[ionic kite]

Interesting ending...

Uhhhhh

||How do I get the other one||

nvm

[ionic kite]

And finished with Expedition 33
Definite GOTY contender, it won't be mine but I would not judge anyone for saying it is
I will say, I definitely get why people dislike the ending
||The choice feels completely needless to me. Like, I get what they're trying to do. They're trying to encapsulate the whole game in a single fight, they're trying to make you decide if you think Aline or Renoir was more right. But I have a few issues with the way they handled it.
First of all, to me, it felt like Verso's agreeing with Renoir came out of nowhere. I didn't feel that he agreed with Renoir at any point until the end.
Second, I feel that this could have absolutely been just. Talked about by the characters. I get that the whole point of the plot is that none of these people actually talk to each other, but I feel like by the end of the game, it would have shown that yes, a dialogue is possible.
And tied into that, my third point is that there is absolutely a middle ground that makes everyone happy. It doesn't have to be "Maelle just becomes another Aline" or "Verso destroys everything". There CAN be a third option that the game just refuses to give me, because the characters refuse to talk despite seeing that the entire plot happened because Aline and Renoir refused to talk.
Fourth, I don't like that it paints (HA!) Verso's choice as the obviously correct one. Like that one ends significantly more healthily than Maelle's. And I get that the point is that it's showing that Aline's way is unhealthy, which it is. But if you're going to make a moral decision at the last minute, why would you make one obviously better than the other.||
(Nier Automata + E33 full) ||And fifth, it's clearly taking inspiration from Automata for this choice (like a lot of this game does for Nier), but it misses the point of Automata's final choice. Automata's final choice happens because the two characters have completely incompatible morals. They spend the entire game avoiding each other, which is what makes the choice work. These two cannot work together. 9S refuses to see past his biases, he simply hates A2 and wants nothing more than to kill her. Maelle and Verso do not have this relationship with each other. They work with each other the whole game, they both want what's best for each other, and they like each other. The ending just doesn't work with these two characters like it does with 9S and A2||

[halcyon elbow]

E33 ||I think for points 1 and 2, Verso did not at any point agree with Painted Renoir. I think what tipped him was Maelle lying to real Renoir about her intent to die in the painting, and to that point I don't know how useful a conversation Verso can have with someone who won't be honest about her motivations, either with Verso or with herself||

||And I don't think Verso's choice is presented as being correct. What Verso does in his ending is truly monstrous, and I don't think that punch is terribly pulled. Lune's face in that ending is nearly as haunting as Verso's "I don't want this life" is in Maelle's ending||

[ionic kite]

I'm not talking about ||Painted Renoir||

||I'm talking about real Renoir||

[halcyon elbow]

||I don't know that Maelle's ending can be presented as truly self destructive if the alternative is not less self destructive||

[ionic kite]

||I think it felt like it was presented as more correct, because it fits the clear theme that the game is going for and it ends with the family clearly coming to a resolution in a healthy way, rather than with Maelle forcing Verso to continue living and losing her face like Aline||

[halcyon elbow]

E33 ||The game is also about saving Lumiere, which is full mission failed in Verso's ending||

[analog tiger]

E33 ending ||I dunno, from what I've seen in this chat a lot of people seem to assume that Verso's is the better/intended ending||

E33 ending ||I've noticed that when the truth is revealed people don't really see themselves as the people of Lumière, only as the Dessendres||

[ionic kite]

||It's because the story is about the absolute State™ of the Dessendre family||

||And two of its three main characters are Dessendre's||

[scarlet trout]

|| idk I think living as a god making your friends dance for you, so you can shut off your grief is bad ||

[exotic ember]

E33 ending || I think both ending are “bad” in the sense that both are terrible choices.

That said I did find myself preferring Verso’s ending initially because Maelle’s felt like a horror ending in a sense - with it so focused on perpetual torture of Verso.

That said, there have been very valid points made about how Verso’s ending is effectively genocide, which I think is arguably far worse than living as a god making your friends dance for you so you can shut off your grief. Both are definitely bad ||

E33 || I think they did a good job with the split ending stuff and it’s all interesting even though both choices are terrible ||

[errant wedge]

Life keeps forcing cruel choices.

[scarlet trout]

|| they’re not real though! ||

[errant wedge]

Yes they are.

[scarlet trout]

|| there is no proof they exist outside the mind of the painters||

[errant wedge]

||There's no proof you exist outside the computer simulating our universe, or the mind of god, or whatever.||

||Their world being created doesn't make them less reals, and they're not puppets to the Painters, otherwise Aline wouldn't have been yeeted from the Canvas by her own painted son and some other painted chucklenuts.||

[scarlet trout]

|| 🙄 argument to absurdity. ||

|| this is not the real world. This is a story where we literally know who created it and how. There is not mystery. The comparison doesn’t hold ||

[errant wedge]

||The entire game is spent humanizing the "fake" people and showing how their lives and feelings are very much real despite their universe being a hellscape created by and manipulated by capricious grief-addled gods.||

[scarlet trout]

|| and we read books where characters exist and feel real. It doesn’t make them real ||

|| an LLM can feel real ||

[errant wedge]

Whatever. I am not going to agree with you.

[ionic kite]

I do agree with Skrimit

[analog tiger]

E33 post game stuff ||found Clea's alt account lol||

[ionic kite]

But at the same time ||Maelle's ending is painted as more negative still despite that.||

[analog tiger]

E33 all ||it does feel like the point of the game is that these people are indeed real||

[scarlet trout]

I firmly disagree

[analog tiger]

E33 all ||but then again I'm not sure how much of that is intended from the devs||

[errant wedge]

||Yeah I don't think Maelle is a particularly good person or that her behavior is correct or responsible. She is a very sad 2x16 year old after all.||

[ionic kite]

My ultimate opinion of it right now is just. ||I just wanted a happy ending. I don't see a happy ending as impossible. I get what they were going for, and I can certainly accept an unhappy ending, but this one just doesn't feel right to me.||

Hey quick question

||If you do NG+, can you see all those skills Gustave had locked? Or is that just there to hide the fact that he dies in Act 1?||

[errant wedge]

||Apparently the tiny skill tree is all he has and the rest is a troll move to hide his death.||

[ionic kite]

Nice

I figured it was that

Persona 3 ||Meanwhile P3 gives Shinji a whole ass actual moveset that you can use for all of. Like two months maybe?||

[halcyon elbow]

E33 ||I think the telling here is that the story treats them as real. Real Renoir, the person most given to destroying these people, treats them as real. So I don't know that getting lost in the weeds on whether or not they'd be real if the whole story was real is worth it, when the story is saying "assume for sake of argument that they are"||

||Part of the horror of the whole situation to me is that Aline, and then Maelle in her ending, choose to play god to a group of people knowing somewhere in their hearts that they have an expiration date on the whole experiment||

[errant wedge]

||Sad magic woman irresponsibly creates entire civilization to distract herself and play god. Sad magic man willing to commit genocide to save his wife and daughter. Hence the tragedy.||

[analog tiger]

E33 ending ||I don't mind the ending per se, except that it feels forced for tragedy's sake. It feels like Maelle and Verso (and Renoir tbh) both regress in their character arcs to force a bad/bittersweet ending either way. It's something that feels like there should be a 'golden' ending if you maxed out the social links||

E33 ending ||I think it would work better without the relationship building stuff tbh||

E33 ending ||which tbf is barely there anyway||

[sullen quartz]

E33 all ||Yeah, I have to ask, what is the point of building up relationship points when the game just ends one of two ways anyway? How exactly does it affect narrative and gameplay?||

Also, different topic but same tags ||If we encounter painted versions of Alicia, Renoir, and Verso as a result of Aline creating this whole painted world as a form of coping with her grief, why is there no painted Clea? Why is she just left out of it? Did Aline just not care enough to include her? Did Clea do something to prevent that? It seems odd that if Aline was trying to recreate her family, she'd be leaving out one of her daughters.||

And the most important question: (same tags) ||Why is Clea so hot? ||

[scarlet trout]

|| there is a painted clea ||

[halcyon elbow]

Hm looks like your playthrough didn't cover all the endgame stuff

[sullen quartz]

😱

Hmmm... all the more reason to play one day when I can, then!

[halcyon elbow]

E33 general ||Each of the characters' limit breaks are gated behind the relationship system, which is pretty generally regarded as one of the game's clumsier choices||

[sullen quartz]

E33 gen ||Silly me, having to Google what a limit break is to make sense of that. In that case, I'd consider the real value of that system to simply be the interactions themselves.||

[halcyon elbow]

Oh yeah whoops ||E33 calls them Gradient Attacks but they're copy pasted out of Final Fantasy||

[analog tiger]

E33 all ||I assume it was intended to be more of a mechanic but devs ran out of time/money before fully realising it||

E33 all ||got downscaled into a vestigial feature after concept stage or smth||

E33 ending ||I'm like 90% sure that a golden ending was planned by having max social links and maybe some other stuff but got cut for reasons||

[ionic kite]

||You missed her. She is here. Real Clea pretty much kidnapped her when she left and made her keep painting the Nevrons in her place||

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OsO3A5tsyW4&list=WL&index=1
Watching this video and it's definitely a good explanation of the ending. It makes me a bit less mixed on it

[wheat reef]

All || This is what i thought until I saw the Maelle ending where it felt like they kind of lost their peopledom under Maelles control. Not like i felt that for sure but it made me start doubting it ||

[ionic kite]

I think there is not enough information to make that call

[errant wedge]

Yeah you missed some important stuff.

[dawn spindle]

I had NOT missed this

why

always

always

[scarlet trout]

Where’s your fancy parrying now!?!??

[dawn spindle]

Well, right there actually

got her spit immediately thanks

the power of so much break on my fancy parries

[exotic ember]

If E33 ever launches on switch 2 I’m pretty much guaranteed to buy it a third time and replay it again.

Still very well may replay it again before that

[dawn spindle]

I don't think I'm replaying this again once I'm done with it

which I'm inching into

though I'm sure some sky bosses are giong to take me a while

[exotic ember]

Totally fair! Nothing wrong with that

I don’t typically replay games myself. Though there are definitely exceptions

[errant wedge]

If I ever NG+ I'm limiting everyone to 100 lumina points.

[exotic ember]

I think it’d be fun to mess with different strategies and playstyles whenever I do a replay

[dawn spindle]

I think discovery is too much of a factor for me to enjoy replaying games much

[sullen quartz]

I still need to do a play

That would justify a replay

Gotta get that Act 3 content I missed in my watch-through.

[dawn spindle]

in your case it's fully justified

the discovery of doing it yourself already counts

On a side note I was expecting this was gonna take me a bit but first try!
Act 3 clean up ||Flying Manor|| ||Goblu||

[exotic ember]

Yeah that’s super valid.

Some games I find myself wanting to replay because I have enough distance in time since I played it that it has faded from memory enough to feel fresh again.

And there are a few that I find myself wanting to replay because they were so tight and the gameplay is just so deeply fun and engaging (Celeste, Doom Eternal, E33).

I don’t know if I’ve actually finished a second playthrough of Doom Eternal ever, but I know I’ve started some over the years. I got to Mars Core on a nightmare run. I want to go back and actually beat a second playthrough. The gameplay loop is just so fun and rewarding. And trying to master it is such a joy

[errant wedge]

I did DOOM Eternal twice, first on Ultra Violent and then on Nightmare.

I went back to Destiny substantially stronger as an FPS player after that.

[exotic ember]

E33 is the weirdest case for me of any game because of the fact that I started it on PC, played through most of act 1, went to my girlfriend’s place and decided to buy it on my PS5 so I could keep playing (requiring me to replay act 1), went on to beat the game on PS5, then continued my PC save, then did the endgame on PC. I’ve never played a game twice in a row like that. Nor have I put 120+ hours into a single player game I think

[exotic ember]

No doubt!

[dawn spindle]

I do replay things that are survival/crafting/automation but I am not sure i cound those as replaying even

[exotic ember]

Nice! I did do the DLCs as well for Eternal and I had downloaded a horde mode mod before there was an official horde mode.

After Silksong I may go back and play Doom Eternal again.

It stands as my second favorite game of all time after E33

[errant wedge]

The first DLC was the hardest content in Eternal IMO. Second one was way easier.

[exotic ember]

Oh yeah I guess over the years I have put a stupid number of hours into different Minecraft worlds both alone and with other people

[exotic ember]

Yeah I think I would agree first DLC was harder for sure. Really good times.

[errant wedge]

Crazy to remember that E33 was like, a dream and a reddit post at the time Eternal came out.

[exotic ember]

I do want to go back and play Doom The Dark Ages again eventually since I know they’ve done a lot to improve the game since launch and to make it more challenging. Planning to keep on waiting though for even more improvements. Will definitely be taking on the DLC when it comes out though probably.

Played TDA on nightmare originally.

[dawn spindle]

Oh! I have replayed some games when DLCs came out! i guess that I have, specially if the DLC is meant to be extra content during the game more than postgame content

[exotic ember]

Makes sense!

I also technically have replayed HK a few times. In the sense that I started the game once, got idk how far, and bounced off. Then I started a second time around 2020 I think, got 20 hours in, and bounced off.

And then a few weeks ago I started once again and I actually beat the game. A few things were vaguely familiar and there were a few things I remembered but given how much time had passed that sense of discovery was still very much there. And there was a ton of content I had never gotten to before

[exotic ember]

It’s wild to me how I was so hyped for TDA, and then I found out about E33 because I was watching Xbox directs for TDA news. First time I saw E33 it really piqued my interest due to the visual presentation. Thought it was the most gorgeous game I’ve ever seen.

Then the second trailer at a later Xbox direct really got me hyped for it. I was pretty much sold on the game, as long as reviews were good.

I was so hyped for TDA because Doom Eternal was at the time my favorite game of all time, so naturally I was excited for the follow-up.

But E33 leading up to launch took over the spot for my most anticipated game of the year, and probably my most anticipated game of all time. My hype for E33 on launch was so astronomically high that there was surely no possible way it could live up to my expectations.

Yet somehow, it exceeded them all

[errant wedge]

Mhmm I love how this game co-launched with a Bethesda thing and obviously that thing stole all the attention for like a week, but then E33's quality showed through.

[exotic ember]

Yeah I remember all the concerns that Oblivion would overshadow E33 and ruin its launch, but then E33 ended up doing absolute numbers.

Was fun to follow all of that

[halcyon elbow]

That it didn't die to the Oblivion Remaster is a bit of a miracle

[exotic ember]

Yeah the word of mouth on E33 was really strong thankfully.

Even today E33 has 11k playing rn compared to Oblivion remasters 2k.

[sullen quartz]

I didn't even hear of E33 until after it released, but I guess I don't follow the news all that much. I just know that it released and was an instant hit, so I was mildly curious about it. Then I heard the song "Lumiére" and I was instantly obsessed with it (I still am). Then I just had to listen to the rest of the music and then of course I had to see the rest of the game.

[pulsar citrus]

I can recommend a streamer's Vods that I liked if you want. You can skip at few places if you find some part long but otherwise they are fun as you can also see the person's reaction as well.

[halcyon elbow]

https://fixvx.com/sandfallgames/status/1963168551092555915

Sandfall Interactive - CO:E33 out now! (@SandfallGames)

↪️ Replying to @SandfallGames

Following the release of "Clair Obscur: Expedition 33" and its original soundtrack, we are incredibly excited to announce a unique co-production for the launch of the official concert series! 🎶

Bringing together:
- Bleu Citron → Independent live entertainment producer
- Sandfall Interactive → Video game studio developer of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
- ⁠Lorien Testard & Alice Duport-Percier → Composers of the OST
-⁠ ⁠Les Soudaines → Artistic production & technical direction company

We are so honoured to be able to bring you our plans for the official regional concerts in France soon, with the potential to explore international dates in 2026!

vxTwitter / fixvx · Sep 3, 2025, 9:13 AM

[fallow geode]

🤔 France is only next door, geographically speaking

[fallow geode]

oh, and here's the image from the parent tweet

[halcyon elbow]

Hopefully the stage quality is higher than the Gamescom performance

Alicia Duport-Percier killed it as always but the guitar's sound was ridiculously patchy

[fallow geode]

this will presumably be an actual concert

[dawn spindle]

Man, 👀

Id not mind going to this

I wonder what the international locations would be, it' be great if they said that earlier, so I know if it's better to go to France or wait

[errant wedge]

[exotic ember]

I hope they expand internationally

I would consider going to France for this though if I landed a new job soon enough

[dawn spindle]

I mean I can do that very cheaply

so my question is, do I have a reason to or not

[exotic ember]

Yeah I’m also curious whether it’ll have a full orchestra or if it’ll just be Lorien and Alice. I would think it’d be a full orchestra?

[halcyon elbow]

I imagine they'll at least have the chamber performers they used for the video recording

[dawn spindle]

I do expect an orchestra for this yes

Idk what size but something

[fallow geode]

Just go twice

[dawn spindle]

Money

[exotic ember]

So real

[dawn spindle]

There's also like which places

There are various places in Europe even if not Spain where I have housing

which is cheaper than France where I don't

[exotic ember]

Yeah, I hope they do a US east coast date

[dawn spindle]

I do for once have it far easier than americans and that's giving me a sort of evil glee (sorry I do hope they do that and you do get to see it!)

[exotic ember]

Totally understand!

[errant wedge]

Speaking of video game concerts the Witcher concert is just over 2 weeks away (for the one I'm going to). 🥳

[exotic ember]

Nice!

I’m seeing Avatar the Last Airbender in concert again in a month myself

[fallow geode]

must be doing well, it's got dates through to October 2026 (which is good for me because I missed this years UK tour)

[exotic ember]

Oh wow, must be! It’s a fantastic experience! Cannot recommend it enough. Went last year and it was the best live music experience of my life hands down

[dawn spindle]

I'm not familiar with it but Witcher does sound cool 👀

[halcyon elbow]

I think you'd like it

[dawn spindle]

Witcher music? I do, Witcher game? I'm 100% sure

I meant not familiar with Avatar

[halcyon elbow]

Ah

[dawn spindle]

i haven't played the witcher but I've no doubt the day I do I will like it

[halcyon elbow]

https://tenor.com/view/doja-cat-star-wars-gif-25078126

[dawn spindle]

After... looks at queue... uh...

yeah in 3 years maybe

I do have... CP77 to play through first and then a couple of other things mandatory but only after I finish E33

and well, Silksong because I'm not gonna wait to finish E33 to play silksong, obviously

[errant wedge]

Have you finished the main story?

[dawn spindle]

I have the end left

so no

[errant wedge]

Do that.

[dawn spindle]

I won't until I finish the clean up

which I've done a bit this week

[errant wedge]

[dawn spindle]

currently working on some islands

[coral trout]

I am reinstalling E33.

[halcyon elbow]

The day before Skong?

[coral trout]

Yeah, I never played Hollow Knight and I finished act 1 already of 33.

[exotic ember]

That’s okay, E33 is superior

[coral trout]

Yall I forgot what buttons that I use to dodge

[halcyon elbow]

https://tenor.com/view/emperor-star-wars-good-goooooood-evil-gif-12447951

Parry only

[coral trout]

I don't know what button that is PANICCC

[coral trout]

Apepi playing rpgs: This way seems to continue.... Maybe I should head back and go the other way because I could miss out on lootz?
Apepi goes the other way half way: Well maybe that first spot was just a dead end loot spot, I should go back...
Rinse and repeat.

[coral trout]

Act 2? ||When one falls....

Maelle then literally falls off of a bridge. ||

||The boss didn't die when I got him to 0%...
He has another sword ||

||A literal cutscene ||

Act 2 ||Can someone recommend me a Verso build? Idk what to do with him. ||

[coral trout]

Act 2 ||I gotta get these girls out of these swimsuits, I can't take any of the scenes seriously ||

[coral trout]

||I decided that Maelle has grown out her hair after her trauma. You know, the whole I am changing my whole life trope except she's growing it out.||

Act 2 ||Which pisses Lune off, but also triggers her insatiable sense of curiosity. ||

Okay I am done for today, tomorrow I continue.

[dawn spindle]

I know we're all in wait for Silksong, but can someone confirm this for me? I did a quick google but I don't wanna do too much into it.
Act 3 ||Monoco skills|| ||Are the 2 I'm missing in Lumiere?||

[dawn spindle]

Act 3 ||flying manor|| ||How many versions of the lampmaster are there? (don't answer) this one's fun though||

[errant wedge]

Yup

[dawn spindle]

okay ||so I can not use this guy ever again til the end, good ||

[halcyon elbow]

Act 3 ||You can get them outside Lumiere||

[errant wedge]

https://fixvx.com/ZEVENTFR/status/1963676938838426089

It'll be interesting to see them play with peeps other than Orchestre Curieux for their planned tour, and (if they get any) performance at TGA.

ZEVENT (@ZEVENTFR)

ZEVENT 2025 - Ochestre Curieux feat. @expedition33
Dim dim dam~~ https://t.co/RX6I2EdsVv

▶ Play video

vxTwitter / fixvx · Sep 4, 2025, 6:54 PM

[halcyon elbow]

This is an improvement over the last live performance for sure but it still needs some workshopping. The strings are still getting lost

[coral trout]

I know that the singer did this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q62CFrDiQ4I&list=RDq62CFrDiQ4I&start_radio=1

[sullen quartz]

Hehe. I'd heard of Grissini Project before but I hadn't made any connection until I saw another video of theirs recently and recognized her. "Whoa, is that Alice Duport-Percier from Expedition 33?" I hadn't know she was a member of Grissini Project because I hadn't followed anything from them in years.

[coral trout]

It was a random youtube recommendation. I decided to watch it. I thought she was familiar but couldn't figure it out. Then I read the comments.

[errant wedge]

https://youtu.be/ajJanul_K4k?si=HxcfDqwHvI2a7j_2

Damn, she can also German.

https://tenor.com/view/angelthump-angel-thump-gif-24913730

[sullen quartz]

And Japanese! As you'll see from what I posted in #1378391089366696046

[halcyon elbow]

I imagine Italian as well given her opera background

[coral trout]

Act 2 ||The version of Lumire in the Maelle and Gustave scene was a vibe.||

It took me a while to figure out, but the post processing looks so bad. I ended up just turning it to low.

[coral trout]

Act 2 ||I taught a guy how to play his instrument. ||

[halcyon elbow]

https://tenor.com/view/skeleton-trumpet-funny-silly-doot-gif-16260031

[coral trout]

Act 2 ||I beat Frost Eveque.

Also I thought a statue was a boss. ||

[coral trout]

I really didn't do that much today. I spent most of the night rebuilding/restating characters.

[pulsar citrus]

The what scene?

[coral trout]

Act 2 ||The one after the funeral that happens after you rest.||

[pulsar citrus]

I have no memory of it

[coral trout]

Hold up the ost to 33 is 8 hours long?

[halcyon elbow]

The first OST

There's a second OST that's another one and a half hours

Testard says they cut about half the music he wrote, too

[coral trout]

Act 2 ||Hold up I just thought of something... When a character is inverted, they look like the white mask girl.||

[nova temple]

||I think that's just coincidental, because their color palette gets flipped||

[coral trout]

||You had no idea how long it took me to figure out that the inverted debuff made them change colors. I thought Maelle was bugged until I faced the boss that made everyone like that. ||

[nova temple]

Oh, took me well into my post-act 2 exploration to figure that out

[coral trout]

||https://youtu.be/cOLQ09ckZl8

This was the version I believe.||

[sullen quartz]

I listened to the soundtrack without context and loved a lot of the music I heard. Then after watching the playthrough, I listened to it again and found myself adding more songs that I either realized I liked even more on a second listen, but more importantly songs that were more meaningful to me because I understood their context. Lumière à l'Aube is one such example.

On its own, I thought it sounded nice, but then after hearing it in-game, the association made it all the more beautiful to me.

[coral trout]

I was bored watching football with the family and decided to listen to the music. 😂

[errant wedge]

Heh, he's Lorieniso now.

[coral trout]

Act 2 ||I walked into this one and this music is such a vibe.
https://youtu.be/8zXe7w5OckE ||

[coral trout]

Act 2 ||The trains always ran late? Deutsche Bahn confirmed!||

Act 2 ||Jaz music? ||

Act 2 ||Momo is a wild shape druid ||

Act 2 ||My other characters are twice the level Momo is. 💀 ||

[coral trout]

Act 2 ||I BEAT THE DANSESE TEACHER! I WAS ABOUT TO GIVE UP BUT I LOCKED IN! ||

[errant wedge]

@ Europe peeps: https://fixvx.com/expedition33/status/1965008117248450927

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 (@expedition33)

We are so excited to announce the first official French concert tour! 🥖
"Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 - A Painted Symphony"

📍LYON - Oct 25
📍PARIS - Oct 28 & 29
📍MONTPELLIER - Oct 31

Ticket sales open: Sept 9th, 10am CEST
http://expedition33.francebillet.com

More regions to come in 2026! https://t.co/H04q3wAZvW

vxTwitter / fixvx · Sep 8, 2025, 11:03 AM

[coral trout]

More Expeditioning today.
Act 2 ||Oh no, another beach. O.o||

[dawn spindle]

I think imma wait for 2026

Though I'm seriously considering it

[coral trout]

||Another platforming ||

[dawn spindle]

Yeah I've a big big test on Oct 31

[dawn spindle]

That solved any consideration I had

[errant wedge]

Jaunty music, threatening aura.

[coral trout]

Act 2 ||Le Goeland? Seagulls?||

Act 2
||Apepi: I've gone pretty far up, I must be close to the top...
Apepi: Looks up....||

||I fell but I didn't fall far 😅 ||

||Oh no I am falling now it's gone bad.
I fell 6 times now.||

[halcyon elbow]

Pro tip: holding the sprint button while at a standstill will mean that when you do start moving, you'll go straight to full speed

[coral trout]

The devs 100% were playing Only Up while making this game.

||I am up to 22 falls. ||

[dawn spindle]

I dare you to make it to 30

[coral trout]

Uh...

[errant wedge]

Not sure if you just beat it or if you would like a tip.

Some tips:
||Toggle sprint does the same thing Kon mentioned. You can always toggle it off for precision if you need to.||

||For a lot of the little objects that are right next to you, you can just press the jump button while looking at them to climb on, no actual jump needed.||

||If you fall but know there is an object below you, you can cancel the stupid roll animation your character does by hitting the attack button right after you land, which will stop you from moving just slightly forward of your landing location.||

[coral trout]

https://tenor.com/view/wolf-of-wall-street-jordan-belfort-leonardo-di-caprio-one-of-us-jonah-hill-gif-5441859

Act 2 ||I did it! 42 falls. I was so close many times.||

[coral trout]

Act 2 ||Finally to continue the plot, old Lumire... ||

Act 2 ||Why did Momo turn into Regice and use Explode? ||

||Oh no Lune is stuck with the two characters that I never play. ||

[coral trout]

Act 2
||Luna and Sciel talk about Verso and trusting him.
Momo: ||

||WHAT DID THE LOG REPORT SAY TELL ME NOT MAELLE ||

Act 2 ||Verso?||

https://tenor.com/view/discord-who-asked-me-looking-for-who-asked-travolta-meme-travolta-confused-gif-27133622

||I am sure I should be worrying rn but I am way too over leveled to have to even try. ||

Act 2 ||I am just waiting for the WoW sword to show up.||

Act 2 ||The old guy is Verso's father? ||

||You know when a cut scene is coming when your character starts aura farming slow walking. 😂

New music unlock? I get to kill an old guy? Let's go!||

||No paintbrush guy ||

||Did he just call Maelle Alicia? ||

[halcyon elbow]

Huh toggle sprint is new

[coral trout]

Act 2 ||Did you listen to what I just said? ||

Act 2 ||I wonder if any other game has tried to replace the main character with another one like in 33.

Though arguably Maelle could be seen as the main character I guess?||

Act 2 theorizing ||The mansion used to be the painters.

Maybe she is the one who originally discovered Luminas or something? And was like a master inventor then she went crazo and messed up and fractured the world?

Alicia was Verso's gf or sister? Sister seems to make more sense if she is with oldy.||

||Dark and personal ||

Act 2 ||Esquie wants an armband too ||

https://tenor.com/view/naruto-gif-18258632

Living in cajun land did not prepare me for half of these French words.

Act 2 ||Is it just me or is Sciel incredibly flirty? ||

Act 2 ||Hold up, Esquie can fly? ||

Act 2 ||What determines if you can increase relationships?||

[coral trout]

Act 2 Question ||Esquie can now travel to expedition flags? Huh? What does that mean?||

[coral trout]

||Here me out, what if the painter is Verso's mom? That would tie everything in a Lil nice bow.||

[coral trout]

Act 2 ||Okay I am infront of the Axon start areas, tomorrow I start that. I did all the other content. I went back and got all the painted spikes, that was a lot of work.

How far % of the game am I right now?||

[nova temple]

You have like 4-5 big quest areas left for the main story. 4-5 quests ago you were... At the start of Act 2? So I'd say you are like 70% done, not counting optional content. Maybe 50% if we count optional content that's really recommended to do

[errant wedge]

The French concert is now sold out.

It seems their ticketing system had no anti-scalper mechanisms so they just got bought out instantly by bots. 😬

Hopefully if they come to the US they'll partner with peeps more competent than Bleu Citron.

[exotic ember]

Oof

[coral trout]

Thanks.

[coral trout]

Sacre Bleu.

[coral trout]

HOLD UP
Shadowheart and Maelle have the same VA?

[errant wedge]

Yup

[coral trout]

She knows how to pick the good roles.

[fallow geode]

only 8 roles to her name too

BG3 was her breakout I think

[halcyon elbow]

If E33 gets GotY, it'll be her third

She's also in Elden Ring

[coral trout]

Time to Expedition today.

My play time is just about...43 hours now.

[halcyon elbow]

Ye continue

[coral trout]

Act 2 ||💃 ||

Act 2 ||New music unlock ||

[halcyon elbow]

There's never not new music unlock

[errant wedge]

Never a bad time to vibe to some jazz. 🎷 🎹 😎
https://youtu.be/bZqyX8QSY3U

[halcyon elbow]

Testard says the thing he was most intent on avoiding was that thing that happens where you get really sick of a decent to good piece of music because it is in like 10hr of a 50hr game

So he went hard in the paint on quantity and stylistic variety

He also was not paid by the minute of music (industry standard) so Sandfall was not incentivized to cut "unnecessary" music to save money

[errant wedge]

Hell he even put his own poetry in the game.

[halcyon elbow]

Mhmm

I mean of course he did, he had lyrics to write, but also straight up poetry

(To be fair, that so much of the music has lyrics is moderately unusual by video game standards)

[errant wedge]

Normal games: 1-2 hour OST

Lorien Testard: is 8 hours enough?

Normal games: it's just a midgame boss, not even the end of the act, doesn't need to go too hard

Lorien Testard: 11 minute long epic rock anthem???

[halcyon elbow]

Whole ass concept album with the entire Un Vie A trilogy

The 33 total minutes really is good branding

[coral trout]

Act 2 ||Yall my Lune is now a monster. She has 100% crit rate now. I just need to trick then Genesis and it is gg. She can solo things.||

[halcyon elbow]

https://tenor.com/view/palpatine-good-gewd-star-wars-episode-3-gif-15386400457909814305

[coral trout]

Act 2 ||Here me out... Lune is the Avatar.||

Act 2 ||oh no I accidentally fell off the ribbons. ||

||Wait falling ended up being a shortcut. I am so good. 😎 ||

Act 2 ||This 100% is one of the dev's dogs I bet.||

Act 2 ||Small thing you might not have noticed. Walking up to the piano in the mansion pauses the music. Not pressing the piano keys.||

||The mansion has photos, one is of the 33 painting... Was this destined?||

[halcyon elbow]

That's the office dog. His name is Monoco

[halcyon elbow]

||Each character plays their own theme, depending on who you're controlling when you interact with the piano||

[errant wedge]

||They also apparently play with varying levels of competence, with Verso being the best at it, and Monoco the worst.||

[coral trout]

Act 2 ||Also one of the painting was ripped out.... Perhaps a family portrait?||

[coral trout]

Act 2 ||Oh I really liked how they changed aspect ratios in that one screen, I forgot to mention it.

Also dancer lady showed dead people? I need to re-watch that scene.

Time to kill her!||

||Ez 😎 ||

||Wait she has Lune ||

||Lune took her out! ||

Act 2 Theorizing ||People dying to the gommage are reincarnating into... Gestrals? Which is why some of the characters are noticing things about Gestrals feeling familiar. Gestrals already have a whole reincarnation thing going on anyways.||

Act 2 ||Maelle has main characteritis.||

Act 2 ||Sciel wants me to bed her. ||

||I didn't even think this game had romance in it... Ahhhhhhh what do I do ||

||No I must be STRONG and save myself for Lune!😭 ||

[halcyon elbow]

[silver pawn]

^||nooo!! Give in to Sciel!! Haha ||

[coral trout]

Act 2 ||Confirmed Alicia is Verso's sister? Though arguably he could have a sister and a gf, you never know!

And... Verso can bamf out a piano just anywhere?||

Act 2 ||Expedition 69 flag ||

[halcyon elbow]

nice

[coral trout]

Act 2 ||a head ate me and transported me somewhere else, someone has played too much fromsoft games.||

||He who guards truth with lies... Kelsier I didn't know you were in the game buddy!||

[halcyon elbow]

The game director has old speedruns of Sekiro on Youtube, so, yeah

[coral trout]

Act 2 ||New 🥖 unlock!||

Act 2 ||69: Each Expedition carries the next one forward. ||

||The mouths have eye balls ||

[coral trout]

Act 2 ||Wait... One of these paintings is 100% Lune.||

||I like these mansion unlocks and log reports than unlocking something cool gameplay wise. ||

[coral trout]

Act 2 ||So Verso created the mask guy and his sister the dancer axon?

Why... Did Verso talk to himself in third person? He's a cognitive shadow maybe?||

||I can now face the painter at the monolith ||

||Am I still in Act 2?||

||The new Maelle weapon looks so SICK||

[coral trout]

Act 2 ||Esquie was holding his wine? This game is so unhinged.||

||In the shadow of the monolith.||

||A lifetime spent dreaming.

We now going with the matrix with this plot? Huh.||

Tomorrow I continue.

[exotic ember]

|| Long ago, the four nations lived together in harmony… ||

[sullen quartz]

I've decided Lumière is going to be one the songs I do for my vocal performance class this semester.

My voice coach wanted me to think of a song that I really resonate with, one that I love and just gets me in the zone. And it occurred to me during that conversation that Lumière fit the bill perfectly. I hadn't considered adding it to my singing list until that moment, and now I'm wondering what took me so long.

Time to start learning some French! 🇫🇷

[halcyon elbow]

https://tenor.com/view/gustave-coe33-expedition-33-clair-obscur-baguette-gif-13519385428911712143

Gotta do it properly attired

Baguette and all

[sullen quartz]

Oui oui 🥖

Would be pretty cool to have an Expeditioner uniform cosplay, come to think of it 😁

[errant wedge]

https://i.redd.it/1x15dudk77jf1.gif

[coral trout]

Carbot

[coral trout]

Act 2 ||So I go now to kill the Painter... But if I go to kill the Painter now.... Who's the final boss? Is God next? ||

Act 2 ||The Expedition flags are 00...so they got here?.... ||

||It feels very intentional that there is nothing here except the boss.||

Act 2 ||The boss is nullifying all my attacks. 😱 ||

||🔥 ||

[coral trout]

Act 2 ||Aline? Did someone die? Did... Verso die or something?||

[coral trout]

Act 2 ||I can go on a train ride?
This game has everything! ||

[coral trout]

Act 2 ||wait this looks like the Lumire we are from... ||

Act 2 ||WAIT! THE MONSTERS ARE NAMED CLAIR OBSCURE ||

Act 2 || ||

Okay everything is working again.

[coral trout]

Act 2 ||I was right.

New music, this one is voiced, by a guy.

This song is somehow giving me a heavy metal and classical vibe at the same time. ||

||He just went tiger mode ||

Act 2 ||Old guy is deadage.

So...is the broken shadow people the real original ones and the other ones are copies?||

Act 2 ||Could.... Maelle be a copy of Alicia? Hmmm.||

[errant wedge]

also

🍿

[coral trout]

Act 3??? ||It is so French of them to kill everyone at the end.||

||And there was FIVE PEOPLE IN THE POTRAIT? ||

Act 3 ||epilogue? ||

||I don't have any gear no I worked so hard for that ||

||Small thing people might not know. Here in the game there is a type writer named Overwood.

Now that company doesn't actually exist, what does is Underwood. So what game companies do is call it Overwood instead.

A few have done this I think.||

Act 3 ||So this is why we find Maelle in that room.... ||

||In Paris? There was the Eifell tower but I thought that was just the French Frenching. ||

Act 3 ||WAIT! Maelle..... When she played the Piano.... It was Alicia's theme.... Sandfall isn't beating the allegations.

How didn't I see this before.... ||

||Also Monoco was a dog?||

||I am just looking at all the art ||

Act 3 ||So let me get this start, in real world, people can create paintings and then go into it, kind of like in Inkheart. And mom is grieving because dead son, and father went it to stop it and delete her creations but they are at a stalemate.... ||

||The writers? O.o||

||So the writers tricked Alicia, Verso went and saved her but died instead... ||

Act 3 ||Her name will be Maelle. So she went into the painting and got redrawn into Maelle
Btw, Alicia means noble/kind.||

https://tenor.com/view/absolute-cinema-raccoon-absolute-cinema-gif-17862327649353748812

[coral trout]

Act 3 ||Deal more than 9999 damage

I'll come clean..... I knew the 9999 thing was coming, it was spoiled to me.||

||And I cooked with the inverted Maelle looked like Alicia.||

||Real Maelle outfit.||

||Also I was right, long hair was the canonically official haircut for her. ||

I think this is a good place to end it for tonight. Tomorrow I continue.

[halcyon elbow]

I love that when the reveals come they put pieces of the puzzle you absolutely had together, very little of it comes out of nowhere (except, perhaps, some amount of perspective)

[coral trout]

Or a small thing you notice way before even the other pieces come together and people try to get you to ignore them...

Now that I mention that...

[coral trout]

Act 3 ||Gaslighting Argent

Too many people on this server try to gaslight me when I guess something correctly way ahead of time. I am looking at you #993647773482225734 ||

[nova temple]

I mean, I stand by what I said 😛

[halcyon elbow]

https://tenor.com/view/correct-futurama-the-best-kind-of-correct-yes-yep-gif-5787390

[coral trout]

Act three ||So if there are Writers and Painters and Verso's parents didn't like that he was a musician... Are musicians a thing in this world?||

[halcyon elbow]

Act 3 ||There does seem to have been some significant deception involved there, so I tend to think the answer is yes. Both Renoir's interpretation of Verso (the Axon Visages) and Aline's interpretation of Verso (Verso as we know him) revolve significantly around the fact that they never truly knew what he was thinking behind his facade, and Aline sort of characterizes him outright as a liar. Don't think she ever entirely forgave him||

[nova temple]

Act 3 ||It often come back to a pretty throwaway line about the connection between pictos and music...||

[coral trout]

Act 3 ||I headcanon that Verso made all the music in the game.||

Act 33 ||I am not sure how to work out that all the paintings(sans like one...) were all about a boys painting and not other ones though... ||

[coral trout]

Act 3 ||Still thinking where I ended last time.

Technically the epilogue... Wasn't an epilogue. It was a... Prelude?

So let's think about timelines.

Alicia gets tricked
Fire happens in the house, real Verso dies, Alicia injured.
Mom goes into his painting in grief, recreating the family. (though... Clean seems to be missing? Something might be going on here...and curious she still painted Alicia injured)
Dad goes in after tries to pull her out, trying to kill the world.
They keep fighting, nothing happening.
Clea wake Alicia, tells her to stop them from fighting because of Writers.
Alicia goes in but gets painted over by.... Mom, turns into Maelle.(though I semi have a Lil doubt on this one)
Game happens
After everyone is snapped, Maelle realizes she is Alicia and wakes up or something...
Thats where I finished last night. ||

[halcyon elbow]

Act 3 ||I think she made Painted Alicia injured for the same reason she gave Painted Renoir the pain of having lost the real Verso (despite Painted Verso being right there anyway), as a twisted sort of punishment for perceived failings leading to Verso's death||

[coral trout]

Act 3 ||Also didn't we kick out mom? Why is act 3 happening.... 🤔 ||