One of the strange things about games, as opposed to movies and other storytelling mediums (media?) is the way that sequels can often seriously improve upon their predecessors. The first entry in what would become storied franchises are often kind of strange, proof-of-concept games that become the primordial, primitive blueprint for games that are far more beloved.
The two that immediately spring to mind are Final Fantasy and Assassin's Creed. The original Final Fantasy was a solid effort to bring elements of Dungeons & Dragons into a video game world, but it wouldn't be until the franchise's fourth entry that they truly realized the potential for operatic melodrama that is now such an integral part of the series identity.
Assassin's Creed hit its stride a bit earlier, with the second game introducing an actually likable protagonist, marrying meticulous historical research with its open-world parkour assassination missions.
So many of these games retain similar mechanical ideas that are iterated upon with each entry, and while there are often missteps (consider FFII's leveling system, which is a bit more like Elder Scrolls, which did not work very well in the team-based, turn-based combat system from the first game) usually iteration leads to improvements.
There's a general consensus among film critics that editing is among the foremost aspects of film as an artistic medium that distinguishes it from other forms - while film borrows plenty of artistic disciplines from theater, such as acting, directing, scriptwriting, set and costume design, etc., the ability for the editor to take the footage shot by the cinematographer (a discipline largely inherited from photography, though of course with nuanced distinctions) and create meaning from the juxtaposition of images and effectively "controlling the eye of the audience" within the simulated reality of the film's world is something you can't really do on stage.
As generations that saw video games as toys for children give way to generations that have grown up and continued to play these games into adulthood, the answer to the question of whether they can be art or not is becoming more of a clear consensus: absolutely, yes. I don't think anyone who doesn't just immediately dismiss the idea of games-as-art with prejudice could look at a work like Expedition 33 and conclude it was anything but art (indeed, the sense of melancholy heartbreak I have when thinking about the game's ending, if nothing else, proves that the game was not interested in presenting any facile moral message).
But, if we take as a granted that games can be art (I'm certainly of this camp,) I think a similar argument can be made that "gameplay" is an element of games that is unlike what is found in any other medium. Beautiful music, stunning visuals, excellent writing - all of these are also elements of, actually, filmmaking. It is the manner in which the game challenges us, the manner in which we interact with the game world, the systems that we must come to understand to make it through the story, that are unique to the games.
And it is this, if nothing else, that can also provide the throughline of a series.
As readers of this blog no doubt know, I'm a big fan of the "Souls-likes" games of FromSoftware (and even ventured outside of that studio for the excellent Lies of P - a game that also emotionally punches you in the gut, and probably only is diminished in this regard in my estimation by the fact that I immediately went to play Expedition 33 the very day I beat Lies of P).
Indeed, part of the agony of Expedition 33's conclusion is the invitation to question your very enjoyment of the story.
While my social media feeds are flooded with spoileriffic debates over which of the game's two endings is morally better (the debate itself is worthwhile, but I think misses the point if one believes you can arrive at a definitive answer) I'm going to err on the side of caution, and say that if you haven't yet been spoiled for this game's ending, and wish to remain that way, perhaps return here once you have rolled credits on it.
In other words, Spoilers Ahead!
We get to what seems like it should be the final boss of Expedition 33 at the conclusion of Act Two. The Paintress is defeated, but everything feels a little off as we make our way up her monolith - our first confrontation with her, she refuses to fight back (and also, the one we're fighting isn't strictly her,) and indeed, in the final phase of her true boss fight, she actually spends her turns placing shields upon us - trying her best, with the last of her chroma, to just try to save us from what is to come.
Yes, it's a twist that the Paintress is not the one causing the Gommage, but instead it's the Curator, our supposed ally, and that in defeating her, we've allowed him to realize his goal, erasing all the humans of Lumiere, regardless of age.
But the greater twist is who these people really are, and what this world actually is. Why has the world been filled so much with painting motifs? Well, it's because we're in a magical painting. And that painting exists in the "real" world (or the game's fantastical version of it).
No, the twisted Eiffel Tower in Lumiere isn't the real one, warped by some magical calamity, but is instead an echo of it, created by a talented, magical boy named Verso, who wanted only to have a playground for himself, his sister Clea, and his dog Monoco, to go on adventures with Monoco and Esquie, to play with the Gestrals and the Grandis.
And that boy, so imaginative, so blessed with talent and creativity, is dead, dying in a fire accidentally triggered by his younger sister Alicia, who now lives within the painting in a false life as Maelle.
The beauty of Expedition 33's world is tinged with grief. The very beauty of it is an enduring reminder to a family grieving their eldest son. Grief can tear a family apart. Alicia, only a teenager, bears the blame, fairly or not, for Verso's death, even while the fire has ruined her face, robbing her of both an eye and her voice. Her physical injuries already make life unendurable, but simultaneously, her mother has abandoned her, unable to give love to her daughters because of the pain of losing her son. Clea, closer in age to Verso and thus closer to him, is explicit in blaming Alicia for Verso's death. Of their family, only Renoir, her father, seems to have lost none of his affection for her, but Renoir is unable to be there for her, because he is trying to draw her mother Aline out of the painting.
It is a game in which there are no true villains - even Clea is merely trying to aid Renoir in his mission to snap her mother back to reality, and perhaps working out her aggression by sending her Nevrons to strike against the world. If there are bad guys, it's the "Writers," the opposing faction to the Dessendre family's faction of "Painters," but the Writers are so obscure and never seen that we can't even be sure if they don't have their own sympathetic motivations (that said, somehow tricking Alicia into conjuring a fire within their home makes them seem... not great).
The game, released by a new studio at a lower price point than most games these days (indeed, the decades-old 60-dollar price point is finally giving way to 70 bucks, but this game sold for 50,) does have some notable voice talent in it, but I doubt that Sandfall expected it to be as massive a hit as it was.
And with success comes the pressure to iterate.
Even the title of the game, I think, seems to imply some sense of continuity: we have Clair Obscur, more of a thematic element (though we do fight Nevrons called Clairs, and some Obscurs, and at one point, a Clair Obscur, which combines attacks from the previous two) and then the very specific story element of Expedition 33.
Normally, I consider it a faux pas to have a colon in the title of the first entry in a series - it reeks of hubris, like the movie Ballistic: Ecks versus Sever, a movie that seemed to believe there would be future "Ballistic" sequels and had the gall to subtitle its first and only entry.
That being said, the French have different naming conventions - among them being a tolerance for much longer titles. When I was a Junior in high school, I went on a two-week foreign exchange trip to France, and when they asked if Americans ever watched French movies, I said "oh yes, of course, I loved Amélie," which garnered nothing but confused looks. I then discovered that the movie released under that quick title was actually called "Le Fabuleux Destin d'Amélie Poulain" (meaning "The Fabulous Destiny of Amélie Poulain").
Still, I'm inclined to forgive Sandfall for this "Ballistic"-like move given that this game was so good, and has sat with me long after I felt satisfied with my completion of it, and because I really want them to make more.
The thing is, that very notion - that they should make more - is itself one of the thematic questions posed by the game. While the game's party ultimately seeks out to confront and defeat the Curator, aka the real Renoir (rather than the painted surrogate we face earlier in the game,) seemingly rebuking Renoir's insistence that the painting must be destroyed so that Aline will not continue returning to it and living amongst the daydreams of their dead son, the very same philosophical conflict is just transferred to the next generation: Verso, himself only a painted facsimile of the boy who created this world (his existence the primary project of Aline's time within the Canvas), is not interested in staying alive merely to satisfy a mother who isn't technically his that her son isn't fully lost, and upon seeing the tired, fleeting fragment of the true Verso's soul within the painting, wishes to free him by erasing it. Maelle, now understanding that she is actually Alicia, has found a world where she is physically whole again, where she is surrounded by people who love her rather than resenting her for the tragic misstep she took that led to her older brother's death - and those loving people, artificial or not, state very explicitly that they don't want to be erased, that they want to live on in their world, and not be doomed simply because the imperfect gods that created them cannot manage their grief without destroying a child's wondrous creation.
The debate amongst the game's audience has been raging, and in typical social media fashion, there's a sense that the position one supports is the only logical, reasonable position to take, and that the other is naive or even stupid to take. This saddens me, because the game's clearly meant to leave us not with the sense that the choice we make is clear-cut and "good." We're meant to be haunted, to doubt ourselves.
But, especially if we see the merit in Verso's ending, it makes it feel almost problematic to stick around in the game's world and keep playing. In fact, because the game continues to be playable past the roll of the credits - if you save the final boss for last, you'll find the challenge to be profoundly underwhelming) it almost seems as if the assumed ending is Maelle's. Unwilling to allow the Canvas to be destroyed, Maelle now presides over this world of adventure, and we keep playing within it. (How fitting that her character is the one that can be built to perform feats of massive overkill, like what I used to one-shot the game's ultimate mega-boss, Simon, when I became too frustrated trying to beat him the conventional way.)
This is a lot of words I've written, and I haven't really gotten to the actual meat of what I meant to write:
Should this game have a sequel?
On gameplay alone, I'd say 100% absolutely. While I've heard that the game's mechanics actually iterate on existing games like the Persona series (which I've never played,) there's a unity of gameplay mechanics, visual direction, music, and utterly unapologetic Frenchness that I think would be the solid backbone of a long-lasting game series.
But on story?
Creating a sequel to a game with multiple endings is tough, especially when those endings can seriously change the nature of the world they're set in. The Dark Souls series managed this through obscurity, though even there, I think Dark Souls III must assume you Linked the Fire in DS1. The Mass Effect series carried over a lot of player choices through the initial trilogy, but the poorly-received fourth game intentionally took the action to another galaxy, bypassing the need to account for what galaxy-shaking choices you might have made in the ending of the third game.
To me, thus, the obvious choice would be that "Expedition 33" is the story of the Dessendre family and the poor painted people who got caught in their grief, and a future Clair Obscur game would give us a new setting, a new cast of characters, and tie itself to the original through gameplay elements, themes, and motifs but nothing so explicit.
There's a fine model here: the Final Fantasy games, for example, have all taken place within their own continuities - the only crossovers being the tongue-in-cheek exceptions (like the blowhard sword-collecting antivillain, Gilgamesh), figures who share names but not identities, like the various Cids, or Biggses and Wedges, or occasionally never-confirmed fan-theories. This commitment to non-continuity has resulted in some funny game titles - like Final Fantasy X-2, which is fully distinct from Final Fantasy XII - when they do actually decide to continue a game's story into direct sequels (I'm given to understand that some people like it, but watching my roommate play through the first fifteen minutes of X-2 made it look like an utterly manic travesty compared to its predecessor. Maybe it just has a rough opening?)
Anyway, I could easily imagine Clair Obscure becoming a famed series of RPGs, iterating upon the turn-based-with-Souls-like-dodging-and-parrying gameplay of this first game.
I could even imagine some story continuity - not by revisiting the Dessendre family, but perhaps retaining the Writers/Painters conflict within the "real" world as an inciting element (given my love of Alan Wake, and the fact that his story is also a cautionary tale about artists having the power to shape reality, I would find it hilarious if they got Ilkka Villi to play one of the Writers, even if I think it'd probably be best if we never got a very clear answer of who the Writers were).
Alternatively (and maybe additionally, though this could cause some lore snarls,) I could imagine the Gestrals becoming recurring elements - like Moogles in Final Fantasy, just an original fantastical creature that shows up in almost every entry. The Gestrals are perhaps the most charming element in Expedition 33, and even if it stretches things a little (they were clearly Verso's creation - with their silly, fight-everything ethos, they're exactly what a little boy would come up with to populate his fantasy world) I'd love them to be the series mascots.
I really suppose it depends on what Sandfall wants to do - do they want to be the studio behind one particular series of games, or do they want to branch out into other genres of both game and story?
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