There's a reason it's called Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, and whether you like that reason will depend on your patience for absurd RPG premises.
Until the other day, what I knew about Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 was that:
- It’s a French RPG with some Persona-inspired flair
- It’s got turn-based combat with real-time mechanics
- It’s coming out in April
Based on the screenshots of forlorn young adults, I also expected a melodramatic story about a quest to save the world, but I realized recently that I’d never actually read the game’s premise.
It’s more bonkers than I expected. Here’s what the Steam page says about Expedition 33’s story:
“Once a year, the Paintress wakes and paints upon her monolith. Paints her cursed number. And everyone of that age turns to smoke and fades away. Year by year, that number ticks down and more of us are erased. Tomorrow she’ll wake and paint ’33.’ And tomorrow we depart on our final mission—Destroy the Paintress, so she can never paint death again.”
Even when the RPG’s wordy title became the subject of some good-natured internet heckling recently, it hadn’t occurred to me that “Expedition 33” might refer to something specific. Now I know: There’s an immortal painter who only paints numbers that make everyone that age die.
It’s not the most absurd premise in the history of absurd RPG premises—plenty of fantasy worlds have irrational cosmic entities——but I’ve become fixated on the timing of this expedition: “Tomorrow she’ll wake and paint ’33.’ And tomorrow we depart on our final mission.”
Our brave adventurers waited for the very day The Paintress is going to kill every 33-year-old to embark on this quest to stop her? I know not everyone is a two-hours-early-to-the-airport person, but the stakes are pretty high here. Couldn’t have left a day early?
That S-tier procrastination can perhaps be explained if the crew dispatched to save the 33-year-olds failed, and nobody knew until the age group was vaporized. The official description does imply that this is an expedition of 32-year-olds:
“With only one year left to live, join Gustave, Maelle, and their fellow Expeditioners as they embark upon a desperate quest to break the Paintress’ cycle of death,” it reads, emphasis mine. “Follow the trail of previous expeditions and discover their fate.”
The exception is Maelle, voiced by Jennifer English of Shadowheart fame, who is 16.
In her reveal trailer, it’s mentioned that Maelle has nine years to live, which means that this death magic doesn’t just kill people of a certain age the moment it’s painted, but works continuously throughout the year. (In eight years, Maelle will be 24 and the Paintress will paint 25, but that miss apparently doesn’t grant her immunity and she’ll die when she turns 25.)
So, it seems we probably do have an expedition of people in their early 30s who are either going to die when they turn 33, or next year when the Paintress counts down again. Or if they’re killed in the course of their quest, in which case I guess it’ll be Expedition 32’s turn.
I still wonder why such an apparently small group has been sent to deal with this species-ending threat. In Fraser’s recent hands-on preview (he didn’t like the combat, but said that the game has potential), he noted that much of Expedition 33 is killed at the start, which helps explain why we’re so few. But “expedition” still implies a modest detachment to me, and this seems like the sort of concern you might muster an army to do something about.
Did they try that earlier, when the world’s 90-year-olds were being wiped out, and fail? Or did this world’s leaders brush off the culling of the elderly and let their hearts grow cold? Is the whole thing a parable about collective action in the face of a pandemic? A metaphor for the unwillingness or inability of humanity and its richest nations to curb climate change through cooperation and sacrifice? Just RPG nonsense?
Time will tell! Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is out April 24 on PC and consoles, which also happens to be my birthday. I might take that as a concerning omen, but the truth is that I would’ve been vaporized years ago in Clair Obscur’s world.
Oh, and “clair obscur” is the French term for the Italian “chiaroscuro,” which refers to the modeling of three-dimensional forms seen in Renaissance paintings, as well as the high-contrast style of artists like Rembrandt and Caravaggio. What that means in the context of an artsier Thanos, I can’t say.
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