Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 - Final Fantasy/Persona inspired FRPG

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wtfNeedSignUp said:
The mother is peak BPD bitch that made every painted version of her children and husband fucked up. Dad and Clea seems way cooler with Verso so he was probably in the right, the implication was that he is a standard case of a person that was incredibly good in something that his family pushed him into, but personally outgrew it.
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What makes the story interesting is we can have this debate.

How do you square what the grandis are or represent then? Why did older verso have a super affinity to writing to the point it was one of the last things he painted?

I think Aline's thing is that she is not bpd but autistic as fuck. She paints reality. She doesnt paint whimsy or fantasy or a hero to help her out. She paints France and her family and they act and behave like real things would act. Meanwhile the gestrals and Esquie react in imhuman ways. Aline and Clea are the most evil painters because they paint real things with real feelings. Renoir and Versos creations can accept what they are made for much better.
 
I'll entertain the Verso disappeared instead of dying theory.

Some key thoughts:

What is Chroma? We don't know, but we do know it exists in the painter's world, so it's effectively "real." Depending on what Chroma is, it could very well be creating real living beings constrained in a painted prison. Could be condensed souls, godstuff, etc. Do painted beings die and dissolve back into their base element? Does it retain memories?

Are the writers real? Do they exist on the same plane of existence as the painters? Or is there another higher dimension where the writers reside? Are the writers stand-ins for the developers of the game or the player or real characters in a personal conflict with the painters? If the writers are on a higher plane of existence, did they write the painters into existence in the first place? This would definitely complicate the whole question about the painted being real beings. Do the writers use Chroma too? Do they get their own magical element (ink, I'd assume)? If the writers wrote the painters into existence, did the Chroma come from the writers' dimension wholesale or is created too at the layer level with the painters.

Okay, so to tie it together. If painters and painted beings dissolve into Chroma with a flourish of paint, would writers and written beings burn like a paper page? Would that burning be intense enough to harm someone standing near by? Do you have to die to burn or is that the teleportation method back up to the writer dimension?

Ultimately - Did a writer write a painterverse into existence and then go live there, getting part of himself trapped in a painter's painting and the rest ported back up to the writerverse for some reason?

Phew.

Edit: You can make ink out of ashes, btw.
 
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metroid_fetish_ii said:
I'll entertain the Verso disappeared instead of dying theory.

Some key thoughts:

What is Chroma? We don't know, but we do know it exists in the painter's world, so it's effectively "real." Depending on what Chroma is, it could very well be creating real living beings constrained in a painted prison. Could be condensed souls, godstuff, etc. Do painted beings die and dissolve back into their base element? Does it retain memories?

Are the writers real? Do they exist on the same plane of existence as the painters? Or is there another higher dimension where the writers reside? Are the writers stand-ins for the developers of the game or the player or real characters in a personal conflict with the painters? If the writers are on a higher plane of existence, did they write the painters into existence in the first place? This would definitely complicate the whole question about the painted being real beings. Do the writers use Chroma too? Do they get their own magical element (ink, I'd assume)? If the writers wrote the painters into existence, did the Chroma come from the writers' dimension wholesale or is created too at the layer level with the painters.

Okay, so to tie it together. If painters and painted beings dissolve into Chroma with a flourish of paint, would writers and written beings burn like a paper page? Would that burning be intense enough to harm someone standing near by? Do you have to die to burn or is that the teleportation method back up to the writer dimension?

Ultimately - Did a writer write a painterverse into existence and then go live there, getting part of himself trapped in a painter's painting and the rest ported back up to the writerverse for some reason?

Phew.

Edit: You can make ink out of ashes, btw.
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The other sperging here is Renoir said Aline taught him to how to paint and got lost in a canvas same way she was and she pulled him out. Ex crack addict seeing the women who got him clean become a crack addict energy. But it implies he was not a painter before meeting Aline and yet he was able to become part of her world.

Also Alicia always "had her head in a book instead of painting with us" before the incident.

Ive already called Grandis connection to writing.

Smells like the family had a connection to the writers before the incident. Maybe through Renoir which explains why Clea wants Renoir back more than the more powerful Aline.

Also the idea that the family would let things go and be totally cool with Verso doing whatever doesnt map to the behavior of any of the Dessendre characters. Obsessive behavior defines all of them.
 
metroid_fetish_ii said:
I'll entertain the Verso disappeared instead of dying theory.

Some key thoughts:

What is Chroma? We don't know, but we do know it exists in the painter's world, so it's effectively "real." Depending on what Chroma is, it could very well be creating real living beings constrained in a painted prison. Could be condensed souls, godstuff, etc. Do painted beings die and dissolve back into their base element? Does it retain memories?

Are the writers real? Do they exist on the same plane of existence as the painters? Or is there another higher dimension where the writers reside? Are the writers stand-ins for the developers of the game or the player or real characters in a personal conflict with the painters? If the writers are on a higher plane of existence, did they write the painters into existence in the first place? This would definitely complicate the whole question about the painted being real beings. Do the writers use Chroma too? Do they get their own magical element (ink, I'd assume)? If the writers wrote the painters into existence, did the Chroma come from the writers' dimension wholesale or is created too at the layer level with the painters.

Okay, so to tie it together. If painters and painted beings dissolve into Chroma with a flourish of paint, would writers and written beings burn like a paper page? Would that burning be intense enough to harm someone standing near by? Do you have to die to burn or is that the teleportation method back up to the writer dimension?

Ultimately - Did a writer write a painterverse into existence and then go live there, getting part of himself trapped in a painter's painting and the rest ported back up to the writerverse for some reason?

Phew.

Edit: You can make ink out of ashes, btw.
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Chroma appears to be the "paint" of the painting. There's a finite amount in a painting, but it doesn't disappear. The idea seems to be that a painter controls a certain amount of the Chroma of the painting, depending on how many painters are actually present, which then determines the scale of their abilities in that painting (i.e. the amount of paint they have to paint with.)

The characters inside the painting eventually learned how to control comparably small amounts, mostly through using pictos created from Chroma. This is what eventually gave them "magic" abilities.

Anyways, I think there would have been more understanding behind Verso's motivations if they had expanded on the character of the real world Verso. But, as previously mentioned, they might have been purposely vague in order to give them the option to make it so he had faked his death to escape his family. He may not even be aware that Alicia was disfigured in the process.
 
King Of Braves said:
Chroma appears to be the "paint" of the painting. There's a finite amount in a painting, but it doesn't disappear. The idea seems to be that a painter controls a certain amount of the Chroma of the painting, depending on how many painters are actually present, which then determines the scale of their abilities in that painting (i.e. the amount of paint they have to paint with.)
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The one argument I'd make against that is that you need magic to make a magical item in the first place. Magic, whether it's specifically Chroma or not, has to exist in the Painter's version of France. Sure, it might be imbuing a certain amount of ambient magic into the panting at creation, but you gotta have something to kickstart the process.

My headcanon is that there aren't painters or writers with the capital p or w designations, but Creatives. Deciding to harness magical energy into painting makes you a painter, writing makes you a writer, and so on. There could be magical engineers (reflected by the various contraptions in world to harness magic and cross the sea), magical performance artists (the mimes as another reflection), and god knows what other disciplines of magic in their universe. There could be magical musicians that create sound based realities. It really could go on and on with possibilities. The key is that it's all the same magic from the top level looking down. This is why people still show affinity with the other creative arts even if they're designated to belonging in a specific faction's camp.
 
I wanted to see what everyone's initial reactions were and this thread has entirely been discussing the game, praising it, and then the culture war going hyper autismo against games that used to be considered normal.
so it's just par for the course, just with weird sperging because it swept the game awards no one took seriously until now just because of this

what fucking kills me is how much more white lumiere is compared to the actual real life paris
 
God of Nothing said:
what fucking kills me is how much more white lumiere is compared to the actual real life paris
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And the kicker is that no one actually got upset about it. Isn’t it interesting how, if developers just make a game with an actual soul instead of focus-testing board-approved stories, then people will gravitate toward it instead of getting bogged down by culture war garbage? Lefties and rightoids both enjoyed the game and you didn’t have progressives crying about representation or sexism nor did you have any serious conservatives complain about woke.

Edit: btw, I finished the game last night. I’ll post my thoughts later when I have more time.
 
Großmann said:
And the kicker is that no one actually got upset about it. Isn’t it interesting how, if developers just make a game with an actual soul instead of focus-testing board-approved stories, then people will gravitate toward it instead of getting bogged down by culture war garbage? Lefties and rightoids both enjoyed the game and you didn’t have progressives crying about representation or sexism nor did you have any serious conservatives complain about woke.

Edit: btw, I finished the game last night. I’ll post my thoughts later when I have more time.
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Maelle's ending is the best one. The gestrals, grandis, and lumierians did nothing wrong. Both Renoirs are right because the rest of their families are fucking things up for everyone.
 
God of Nothing said:
Maelle's ending is the best one. The gestrals, grandis, and lumierians did nothing wrong. Both Renoirs are right because the rest of their families are fucking things up for everyone.
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My thoughts in bullet point:
    • I thought it was interesting how much agency Verso loses starting with Act 3 when we learn that he is a painted version of Verso rather than the real Verso. I found it unsettling and sad to see him refer to real Renoir as Maelle’s father rather than his, or how discounted in general he is by the major players in the story going forward. He only gains some agency back when you as the player take the chance to play as him to win back that lost agency to save his namesake’s family from potential destruction.
    • Maelle is sympathetic in that I understand perfectly where she’s coming from. In the real world, she’s mute, half blind, and disfigured. Verso is dead. Her family is in strife both with each other and with others outside their house. In Verso’s painting however, Verso lives on as a painted replica, her family is tightly knitted despite everything, and, without the meddling of her mom of dad (and potentially without Clea if she was willing), Lumiere and the rest of the painted world would be a nice place to live. Her desire to hang on to that experience makes sense. Even if the world is constructed and contrived, the experience is as real as anything she experienced in the real world. Does it really matter if the world is “fake” or “real” if her feelings are authentic all the same?
    • Renoir’s methods are extremely heavy handed — to the point that he accidentally drives Maelle/Alicia into escapism by presenting himself as an existential threat to Verso’s very soul as represented by his canvas. I think that if he took the tact he adopted at the end much sooner the Maelle wouldn’t feel as if she couldn’t leave the canvas or else Verso’s final testament to his own existence would vanish.
    [*]That said, I went with Verso’s path to the end. It made more sense, especially with the revelation that Maelle was going full send on escapism, to force her out rather than to keep the charade going past its run time. After seeing the family seem to make peace with what happened in the end (Clea’s body language was weird though), I felt I made the right choice.

    I went to Youtube after to see Maelle’s ending and was pretty horrified to see painted Verso pleading for death after losing and ending up being controlled like a puppet in the end by Maelle while the world around her seemed to have a sickly joviality that seemed equally forced — all punctuated by Maelle’s face and eyes becoming obscured by paint. And then you have the implication of her family in the real world remaining fractured because she couldn’t learn to let go and come to terms with her reality.

    If it means erasing Verso’s canvas to help her and the family ultimately come together and move on, then I would chose Verso’s path every time.
 
Sorry for double post but I have to ask: How is it that, on Steam, despite the millions of people that have purchased the game, only 37% of all Steam owners beat the game? It’s weird. Did most fanboys watch a streamer play it?
 
Großmann said:
Sorry for double post but I have to ask: How is it that, on Steam, despite the millions of people that have purchased the game, only 37% of all Steam owners beat the game? It’s weird. Did most fanboys watch a streamer play it?
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Most games aren't actually finished by normies.
I think 37% finished is actually far above the average completion rate
 
Großmann said:
Sorry for double post but I have to ask: How is it that, on Steam, despite the millions of people that have purchased the game, only 37% of all Steam owners beat the game? It’s weird. Did most fanboys watch a streamer play it?
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This is the case for most games. It is pretty surprising just how few of the gaming public will actually complete their games. I think it may be related to no one having attention spans any more.
 
Großmann said:
Sorry for double post but I have to ask: How is it that, on Steam, despite the millions of people that have purchased the game, only 37% of all Steam owners beat the game? It’s weird. Did most fanboys watch a streamer play it?
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my body is a machine that turns steam sale purchases into zero hours played
 
Une vie a t'aimer is such a good song, man
clair-obscur-expedition-33.jpg
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I know it's cheesy as hell to put in lyrics in another language referencing what's actually going on but the context adds so much.
 
4090 Chad said:
This is the case for most games. It is pretty surprising just how few of the gaming public will actually complete their games. I think it may be related to no one having attention spans any more.
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Its also a time thing. I slept on this game for half a year before getting it knowing I wouldn't be able to finish it.

Glad I did. There are some odd plot holes here and there but they really brought it together in the ending. Even making the right choice gave you a feeling of doubt. The only part I felt should of been cut was the war with the writers... It doesn't really add much of anything to it and is used in such a throw away line it would of worked better if she knocked over a candle.
 
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