I think there are four really major gut-punches in Expedition 33's story. The game's gorgeous visuals and really satisfying gameplay might distract you from how devastatingly emotionally painful the story is. But I remember playing the game the first time, the end of Act Two forced me to set the game down for a bit and just... recover.
I don't think it's a spoiler to say that the game strongly hints that something is up. There are too many lines of dialogue, visual hints, character moments, and questions about the world itself that make you wonder if you're not getting the full story.
That being said, I remember still being woefully unprepared for what was to come in this act break.
To avoid spoiling anyone who hasn't played it yet (it's funny to think the game's still only about a year old) we'll do a spoiler cut.
SPOILERS AHEAD:
Playing through a second time, the hints come into focus. There are, though, still some mysteries, like how exactly Verso interacted with the earlier expeditions. A journal at one point suggests he was romantically involved with a woman named Julia, but then probably killed her during the expedition, back when he was following his father's orders.
Painted Renoir, and "unflattering portrait" of the real man, might just be villainous. He knows a fair amount about the nature of the canvas, enough to argue with the Curator (the real Renoir). But one thing I've never totally understood is why he doesn't just go to Lumiere and tell them "hey, don't attack the Paintress. She's the only one keeping any of you alive." Stopping the Expeditions, yeah, sure, makes sense, but what if, on the beach, rather than lopping off Lucien's head and sicking a bunch of Nevrons on them, he had instead said "hey, guys, let me explain why you really don't actually want to attack the Paintress."
It is, frankly, the biggest plot hole in the game. I had thought maybe that he didn't understand the Paintress' role in the Gommage and thought he was basically sacrificing his fellow Lumierans in order to maintain his family's immortality, but given that he does know who she and the Curator really are, I really don't know why he would just tell people.
I'll give Aline some credit, because she's clearly not in a mentally healthy state, and she clearly thinks that Expedition 33 is some ploy by Renoir to force her out (which, unbeknownst to all of them but Verso, they really are).
Still, it's just so damn tragic for the Lumierans. I suppose if they understood the Curator to be the real threat, they could just attack him. But basically, the Expeditions are fundamentally pointless.
I also think it's a missed opportunity in Act Three that they don't make Maelle the "player character" in camp scenes. I know that there's a mechanical reason in which Verso's developing relationship with each of the other characters relates to their Gradient Attacks, but I also think the plot ought to orient things to make her the main protagonist in the final act.
There's also some weird pacing to the ending - the whole sequence between beating the Paintress, the false Epilogue/flashback to Alicia entering the Canvas, the meeting between Maelle, Verso, and Renoir in the empty Lumiere, and then the camp scene and bringing Sciel and Lune back, and then the montage of conjuring the weird ghost army, makes it feel like we should then immediately head back to Lumiere. And that might even be the correct choice for the difficulty scaling.
But even though I don't want to totally overlevel (which I might already have done simply by being so thorough in Act Two - the Paintress Fight was not much of a challenge) I also feel like it just feels weird to go right to Lumiere, truncating Act Three into basically one big climax immediately after the end of Act Two (imagine if Star Wars had ended with Obi-Wan dying and everyone escaping the Death Star but then immediately flying the Millennium Falcon through the trench on the way out and blowing it up).
Anyway, plot-wise, the letter Alicia sends to Maelle (convenient that they, at least, go by different names) does really lay it out pretty explicitly, and I think we are really left to imagine that Verso is, you know, not a great guy.
It's interesting to me that the only time we see the real Verso, it's in not-yet-Maelle's dream, where he calmly stands in the burning room. But that's a dream, and not necessarily a perfect recreation of her memory. There's no physical barrier other than the fire preventing him from leaving - though given the supernatural nature of the Painters' powers, it stands to reason that the Writers might have penned him in. Likewise, again, it's a dream version of this trauma.
But... what if it's more complex than that? The Verso we actually get to know is basically suicidally depressed. His goal initially is to free his mother from her self-imposed isolation, and maybe there's a selfless goal there to force her to move on in the grieving process, but he's also tired of his immortal life, and he's willing to see his family and the people created to more or less for the benefit of giving his family other people to be around wiped out in the interest of self-destruction.
What if that's a fragment of Verso that was unwittingly carried over into Aline's creation of this double?
See, I think that Renoir's Axon reflecting Verso implies a sadness over a failure for a father to really know his son's heart. Verso kept his emotions buried beneath a veneer of happiness, and Renoir sensed, vaguely, a buried sadness and anger there.
Verso was also pressured into a form of expression - painting - that didn't really match him. He preferred to be a musician, and while we do see that the family does also play music (in the "epilogue" we can find Aline's piano and Clea's harp) they clearly don't value it the way they do painting (presumably their music doesn't, you know, do magic).
It really makes me wonder if the real Verso's death might have been, at least in part, a suicide.
We know so very, very little about the Painter/Writer conflict - only that they're at war, that Aline was the head of the Painters' Council (presumably there are Painters beyond the Dessendre family), and that the Writers tricked Alicia somehow in a way that resulted in a deadly fire at the manor.
It's probably the simplest and most likely interpretation that Verso did just die saving his little sister from the fire. But is it also possible that he had a death wish? Maybe he didn't orchestrate the fire or something, but might he have taken the opportunity to die and escape his depression that way?
It's a cruel revelation for the people of Lumiere, even though most don't get the chance to really comprehend it. Aline did create them, as a people, so knowing the whole story, you learn that your entire civilization was basically an ill-advised reaction to grief. Aline should not have made them, but now that they do exist, what responsibility do the Dessendres have to them? Renoir clearly thinks none, or, arguably, considers erasing them the best of a bunch of bad options. But is that right?
If you value Aline and Alicia more than them, then sure, it's probably more important that they process their grief in the real world. But if humans in the canvas are just as human as those outside the canvas, then Renoir's morally obligated to come up with a different method of getting his wife and daughter out of there.
Again, the writers (the "Writers?") of the game don't want us to feel comfortable with either of the endings. Verso's offers more closure, sure, but that closure comes at the cost of apocalyptic genocide (and embracing the very thing we spent the entire game trying to prevent).
I also think those who suggest destroying the Canvas is the only way to end the cycle might not be entirely right: presumably, Alicia will continue developing as a Painter under her parents' guidance (I do think she's Renoir's favorite, actually) and thus can't we expect her to re-create the family she lost just as her mother did? Only now it'll be Gustave, Lune, Sciel Monoco and Esquie, and even a third version of Verso, possibly? Let's not forget, as well, that in the canvas, she's healthy and whole, without the terrible scars, missing eye, and difficulty breathing. I'll tell you, as someone with asthma, there's something truly hellish, as in the kind of torture you could imagine having in hell, of not being able to get a full breath.
I think there's a potential lens to look at the game, which is that of disability and ablism. Both parents force Alicia to be mutilated and in pain - Aline paints the copied Alicia as scarred and broken, while Renoir tries to force Maelle out into a world where her body is also scarred and broken. While I think Maelle's desire to stay in the canvas is motivated in large part by the desire to be with the people she cares about, I also think a huge part is her desire to be whole.
In the real world, she's blamed by her sister (and clearly also her mother) for Verso's death, and therefore she deserves her scars. Alicia Dessendre is never going to have a normal life, and her family is never going to treat her the way that they should. Truly, the exception could actually be her father, but there's only so much he can actually do.
Oh, I started off by saying there were four gut-punches the game had. There are more, actually (like Noco's death in Old Lumiere, which we know is not permanent but also means that the old Noco isn't really going to be around anymore) but I think the big ones are:
The Gommage at the beginning, just showing us how horrifying it is, getting us to love Sophie in the few minutes we know her before she crumbles away.
Gustave's death - a character who is so profoundly kind and good, and also kind of, you know, expected to survive because he was the main character. Further made more tragic knowing that it was in vain - not only that the Expedition was in vain but also that painted Renoir wouldn't have been able to kill Maelle.
The final Gommage - the total rug-pull of seeing this victory turned to utter calamity, and the disbeliving terror of watching people celebrating their survival all erased.
And finally, of course, the ending choice - a terrible, bad choice where no matter what you do, someone is forced to live a life that they do not want.
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