The ending and final act of Expedition 33 make no sense and partially ruin the game. I will say I absolutely love the game up until this point, I'm replaying now in NG+, I even love the story of the ending. I do not expect every game to have a happy ending and I'm fine with both endings being somewhat melancholy. I just wish they had written the characters to be consistent and not in a way that shits all over the first two acts.

Why does Maelle have any good will left for Renoir? So what he's her father, parents do evil things and their children hate them for it. He caused half a century of misery for an entire community. He genocided a continent. He killed many of her close friends, including her best friend and adoptive brother/father Gustave. Why does the Verso ending also involve going back to have a relationship with this family? When Gustave died, she had pain, revenge, and murder in her eyes. She ought to be saying "no I don't want a relationship with you dad, you fucking malevolent genocidal psychopath. I'm leaving the painting but the first thing I'm doing outside is stabbing you with a kitchen knife" The only way this ending remotely makes sense is if you accept the painting as not real, or at least of significantly lesser importance than the real world, and Gustave as not a legitimate person in his own right but just an automaton analogous to Verso and Renoir to help Alicia come to terms with her grief.

I do like the ending in its own right. The family, the grief, the way it has effected each of them differently. But it unavoidably shits over the first two acts and renders them meaningless. For Maelle to have any feelings left for Renoir, for anybody in the group to have any feelings for Verso, for there to be any real dilemma in the ending choice, you are forced to admit that none of the world or characters you have come to love over the course of the game have any of their own importance and only matter to the extent that they influence Maelle.

>>715958405 (OP)
gameplay loops was pure trash though.

>>715958405 (OP)
Third act Maelle is a different character.

>>715959110
cute male!

>>715958475
>gameplay loop
this term didn't exist on /v/ until the 2020s, you need to go back to whatever troon shithole you came from

>>715958405 (OP)
Somone fucked up this graphic? They're all named Clair Obscur?

>>715958405 (OP)
Get some fucking taste. This game was dogshit.

>>715958405 (OP)
>small indie team with no budget
>multiple big name celebrities
How?

>>715963464
first VA budget is not related to dev budget but is only handled by the publisher
VA is not that expensive, even with TV celeibrities.
Charlie Cox who voiced Gustave only worked for 8 hours
Also the game had a budget because it's AA, most likely around 10M.

>He genocided a continent. He killed many of her close friends, including her best friend and adoptive brother/father Gustave.

That was not Renoir. That was Aline's painted version of Renoir. The real Renoir is the Curator. Everything that happened shouldn't affect Maelle's feeling for her father in any way.
I also don't understand why you claim anybody in the group should not have good feelings for Verso. They were comrades, why would they not like him, after all they've been through?

>>715964321
>That was not Renoir. That was Aline's painted version of Renoir.
False. The real Renoir is the one causing the fracture, the yearly gommage and the reason for the expeditions in the first place. He's the one who gommages the entire of Lumiere after the Paintress is removed. OK fair enough it's painted Renoir who physically killed Gustave. He's only doing it to prevent the entire universe from extinction at the hands of real Renoir which is what happens when the Paintress is defeated.

>>715964321
>They were comrades, why would they not like him, after all they've been through?
Because they are not comrades. He manipulated and tricked them into helping him destroy their entire world and murder all of Lumiere because he doesn't like being fake Verso. He knew that's exactly what would happen when they defeated the Paintress and that's the only reason he was helping them.

>>715958405 (OP)
I would have liked it better without that painting nonsense. Could have just been its own world and you could still keep the twist of Paintress isn't the one doing it but Curator.

>>715965920
On top of this, there is a piece of optional relationship dialogue where Verso admits he let Gustave die on purpose and could have stepped in sooner. He admits he did this because he knew Gustave dying would help him get Maelle on his side and give her the conviction he needed her to have. And her reaction to this revalation is basically "oh, well thanks for being honest, I guess we're closer friends now".

>>715966212
I don't even mind all the painting stuff, the fake world, the Dessendre family and all of their drama. I just wish it was handled in a better way than the narrative just completely shifting to where none of it really matters anymore and the story is now about Maelle and only Maelle. Regardless of which choice you make, the fact that the game even wants you to weigh up the entire game world and the lives of everyone in it, against the life of one French girl and her family, comes across as a big middle finger.

>>715965776
He literally chose to trust Maelle and gave up in the end. The one who destroyed it all was Verso.
It doesn't matter if it was what Renoir wanted, he ended up not doing it.

>>715966707
Did you play the game while scrolling Tiktok or something? Renoir is the one fracturing the continent and gommaging the oldest people in Lumiere every year, in a bid to destroy the entire thing, prevented only by Aline. He is the one who finally succeeds in gommaging the whole of Lumiere at the end of Act II once the Paintress is finally out of his way.

>>715967120
And he opened the possibility for Maelle to bring everyone back lol Just like she did in her ending
Maybe you were the one not paying attention.
It literally DOES NOT matter what Renoir did before Maelle even got there and HE DID NOT destroy the canvas.

>>715958405 (OP)
>Sciel ugliest girl in the game
>hottest VA
How did that happen

>>715958405 (OP)
>>715966212
The game is a metaphor. People IRL get sucked into their work/hobbies/passions/etc to escape reality and all this is is a literal interpretation of it. I think the point of the game is that YOU the player are not just a bystander but have becomest a victim of the same escapism. You pick Maelle's ending if you genuinely feel bad for ending the painted world that doesn't exist and you pick Verso's ending when you know sacrifices are needed to be made to move on in life.

>>715967426
>And he opened the possibility for Maelle to bring everyone back
Are you saying he deliberately let their chroma intact when he killed them so that Maelle could restore them later? What about the 50 years of gommage before Alicia even entered the painting, did he do the same with them too?

>>715967867
I think it goes deeper than that too, Aline probably didn't mean to desecrate her son's canvas and wanted to make a nice resting place for him but doing shit like painting an entire city probably compels her to stay (See what Renoir says about Aline warning him about the price of staying in a painting). From a metaphorical point of view, this also means that kicking Aline out led to her coming back to her senses and so she didn't need Lumiere any more.

>>715961025
Not only do jeets not play games, they now openly seethe at people who use phrases commonly used to describe games like "gameplay loop"
>>715967867
Yes, but the metaphor falls apart when the people in the painting are shown to be more or less real. Sacrifices do have to be made to grow irl, but not literal human sacrifices. The story is fun, but it's another example of "good for a game" writing.