The latest French JRPG paints grief as both a haunting and emotionally complex experience.
Premise
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, initially titled We Lost, was developed by Sandfall Interactive and released in 2025. Conceptualized by a former Ubisoft manager Guillaume Broche as an art form in the La Belle Époque style, it mixes Turn-Based Combat with Quick Time Events.
In a seemingly post-apocalyptic world, the residents of an island city Lumière face a curse that evaporates everyone above certain age into flower petals, the Gommage. Each year, the threshold gets lower, and by the present time there are no people aged above 33. Which, aside of the fear of extinction, is already affecting the city's social dynamics.
Across the sea, a titan woman called the Paintress draws the current number on a giant pillar, and everyone believes her being responsible for everything, if not at least having the answers. Every year, a group of expeditioners are sent on a boat to the Continent, hoping to destroy the curse at the source, only to never be heard from again.
An engineer, a mage, a farmer girl, and a bratty orphan, volunteer to be in the Expedition 33 (52nd to count). And as soon as they set foot on the Continent, they get attacked and are scattered across the magical land.
Across the way, you battle mechanical monsters called Neuvrons and help out troll creatures called Gestrals, with every location being a piece of art that takes advantage of the 3D layout to showcase the flora of the fantasy realm, while slowly providing pieces of the puzzle of how the world came to be.
Grief
The story is quite blunt about being about loss and grief. Annually, everyone in Lumière has to say farewell to their loves ones, who disintegrate right in front of them. As Maelle puts it, there are now only orphans in the city. Nobody knows what happened to the previous expeditions and everyone is on the verge of giving up. If you talk to the townsfolk, they will all have different opinions between coming to terms with it and trying to make the best of their remaining time, and treating the prospect of trying to fix the situation as a joke. They make fairly reasonable points that if your time is running out, you may spend it on something you've always wanted instead of endangering yourself for an impossible goal. But the protagonists have all suffered loss and decide to stop all of this from happening again.
The following contains spoilers.
In a shocking twist, your protagonist Gustave dies at the end of the opening act and is replaced by a new one, causing the entire crew having to think about it the entire time. Right after you get used to Gustave's motivations and how everyone relies on him for different reasons, a mythical Expedition Zero's commander Renoir shoots him (alongside sicking monsters on 11 other nobodies), while his rebellious son Verso decides to help the others. Death can be sudden and unfair, and you just have to deal with it.
Each member of the crew has a lot they don't want to talk about. Gustave was an architect for agriculture projects and an inventor of gadgets, but started to feel that unless they actually prevent death it's all kind of pointless. This is in contrast to his sister Emma who is effectively the mayor and wants to use the most of the time they have. Gustave had an amicable relationship with Sophie, who he broke up with due to her being on Emma's side, but they still remained friends. Until she Gommaged right in his arms. Maelle lost her parents early, resulting in the being passed along as an unwanted baby until Gustave has effectively adopted her. Lune's parents were Expeditioners, so with their failure she spent most of her time researching the records of the Continent to gain anything of use. Sciel's husband accidentally drowned, causing her to try to follow him, which also killed her unborn child, before she got miraculously rescued. Still, she decided to become a teacher at the same school he was at. Monoco, a gestral that joins later, was kicked out of his village for defying the chief, and then Renoir kills his kid after you meet them. Verso, being almost a century old, has seeing the other Expiditioners fall and is afraid of starting more relationships. All the time, it's about remembering own mortality and remembering those who have passed away.
Across the game, you can find diaries of the previous Expeditions, and in a quite nice piece of detail, all shortcuts and collectibles are explained to be made by them, meaning you're continuing the progress of your predecessors. This ties to the Expeditioner's mottos "When one falls, we continue" and "For those who come after".
The real kicker is when you finally defeat Renoir and then the Paintress.
In truth, the Paintress's true identity is Aline Dessendre. The Dessendre is a family living in the real world Paris who have a magical ability to bring paintings to life. After a feud with a family called the Writers, the middle child Verso died in an arson while protecting his sister Alicia. Aline couldn't handle it and decided to live inside Verso's painting to honor his memory, creating the painted clones of the family, and eventually completely losing her mind. The husband, Renoir, believes they should let things go and bury Verso's works, which means destroying the world of Canvas. The elder sister Clea is left as a sole responsible adult and doesn't like it, causing her to more or less side with Renoir to speed things up. Alicia attempts to get Aline out of the painting, only to get absorbed in the process and be reborn as Maelle.
In other words, the entire world has been in effect a virtual reality built by an impressionate boy (some time before turning 26) that has been hijacked by his grieving mother. Despite it not being the intention, you can draw parallels to the stories where someone gets themselves locked in an addiction or a dream to avoid facing the tragedies of the real world, and game questions if you would break the illusion.
And turns out the Gommage isn't the Paintress' doing, but Renoir trying to destroy the painting piece by piece, while ironically the Renoir you've known until now has taken the Paintress's side. And all the Nevrons you've fought are Clea's creations who tried to make the genocide easier.
With Aline kicked out, Renoir completes the mass Gommage and everyone except for Maelle dies. Maelle regains her memories of Alicia Dessendre and brings the party back to life, planning to restore the rest even if she does the same thing as her mother did. There is not correct answer. As a friend of mine put it, "it's very French". After you beat the real Renoir at the heart of the Canvas, Verso jumps in and intends to break it, because Maelle has been pretty open that she misses Gustave more than she misses her real family and is going to become the next Paintress. The ending is given to the player's choice.
- You side with Verso, who believes the world (or specifically he) has seen too much suffering and needs to end, while Maelle should deal with the cycle of trauma in her family in the real world. Maelle is kicked out while the Canvas gets destroyed. The Dessendres reunite and mourn the loss of the real Verso.
- You side with Maelle, who believes that Canvas residents are their own people and her family has no right to decide their fate or use them as shields for their own feelings. She brainwashes Verso into accepting her choice and effectively becomes the new god of the world and revives everyone in Lumière. The Canvas is blocked from the Dessendres, but with it costing Maelle's lifespan and mind it won't last for long.
As the title is a reference to an art technique of objects being framed in shadow, the narrative tries to present both endings as morally neutral. Even both Renoirs aren't really villains, but are trying to get the family back together. The fans will never agree if either ending is light or dark, they are both meant to be depressing, and talking about it is a quick magnet of flame wars.
Here's my honest opinion: with retrospect that Maelle's choice turns out to not be a solution, and with how the game presents processing death, I like Verso's ending more. I like to compare Maelle with an equivalent of parasocial gaming attachment and Aline as a raging alcoholic, they need to sort things out. Death of a sentient civilization is sad, but if mainting it is temporary then what's the meaning? But here's my personal problem with the writing: there was a third option. Maelle and Renoir talked it out and decide the following: Maelle can stay in Canvas for a bit to finish her business, then she goes to the real world and convinces Aline to not enter the Canvas anymore or it'd kill her (or they can just lock her in an asylum), and can go back on an occasion. Nobody dies, everyone are satisfied. It's hard to tell who's to blame since both Verso and Maelle just jump to their extreme decisions and don't talk it out. Though I feel Maelle catches a lot of hypocrisy points. But instead of the two, I will blame the writing. I know they've wanted to make both endings morally gray and unfulfilling, but why even bring up the compromise if both sides turn back on what they've agreed on in the last moment?
"Games Tight"
The gameplay consists of exploring the minimized overworld similar to how it's done in old JRPGs, exploring the dungeons which are labyrinths filled goodies and enemies, and combat. Aside of each character having a physical attack and magic skills, each works somewhat differently. Gustave is your standard swordfighter. Maelle can switch between offensive and defensive modes. Lune collects elemental orbs from enemies and can select from magic spells depending on which combo is collected. Sciel's attacks are based on sun and moon cards and deck management. Verso gets stronger if he can keep up the combos. Monoco learns skills from enemies. When it's the enemy's turn, instead of just shielding, you actually have to dodge attacks in real time, and for bosses it often means that being hit is an instant KO. At the start of your turn you can use a gun for extra damage, if you can aim. If you don't like the challenge, leveling up scales the stats quite decently, so you can take time grinding. As you level up, you gain skill points and there are a lot of skills that outright multiply damage, so you can make up your builds.
All enviroments are breathtaking. Alleys of cherry blossm trees, a giant temple-shaped theatre, a castle with painting frames floating around, a field of swords with a black hole in the background. Sometimes you just want to ignore whatever you're doing and look around. For dungeons, they are also quite big; instead of being segmented into floors, some paths are just lower and higer, requiring you to keep track of where you are in 3D.
Despite the depressive tone, I have to applaud the comedy. Esquie is easily the best character because he's nice to everyone, talks like he smoked ten bottles of weed at once, yet can be profound when needed. Some NPCs that provide optional fights talk like grumping elderly. Maelle tries to prove she's not a kid. Lune can be quite unhinged with scientific curiosity. Monoco and Verso share some brotherly dynamic and bicker with "no, U" level of arguments all the time. Verso is also a hundred-year-old virgin and can't talk to women properly.
Special mention goes to the soundtrack. Lorien Testard, despite never writing videogame music before, insisted that most tracks have vocals, leading to even standard battles themes being a rock opera where the vocalists tell additional story. If you understand French, you'll notice that boss themes are actually banters that tell more about the antagonists' reasoning, which is usually just depressing and spoil some plot twists early.
For an indie project that came out of nowhere, Clair Obscur reaches a new high standard of videogaming and puts AAA studios to shame.
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