This text comprises potential spoilers for Clair Obscur: Expedition 33.
We will’t disguise from dying despite the fact that our tradition can typically be accused of making an attempt to take action. Our goals of trans-humanism, systematic acceptance of nursing properties, and transition to “celebrations of life” quite than funerals do supply some validity to that declare. Nonetheless, we are able to overestimate the impact that any of those developments and tendencies have on obscuring our view of the Reaper and his trusty scythe.
For the easy and apparent truth is that we people simply can’t sweep dying below the rug. There isn’t any operating from it ultimately—and neither can we disguise ourselves from it whereas we dwell. Naturally then, artworks will deal instantly with this truth, regardless of how death-shy our tradition could seem.
Within the spring of 2025, a small French online game firm named Sandfall Interactive launched their first sport. With its unbelievable forged of characters, beautiful design and art work, fascinating story, and masterful soundtrack, it made fairly a splash within the gaming world. It not solely received “Sport of the 12 months” on the 2025 Sport Awards, but additionally set a report for many awards received. However maybe nowhere did it stand out greater than in its prolonged reflection on dying and grief, and its willingness to go away gamers deeply moved and uncomfortable ultimately.
Loss of life is at all times brutal. Loss of life is at all times violent. There isn’t any glossing over this actuality.
The sport’s title, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, factors to the duality of its themes. Just like the Italian time period chiaroscuro, the French time period clair obscur—which accurately interprets to “mild darkish”—refers to artworks that make the most of a powerful distinction and interaction between mild and darkness, creating an emotionally wealthy and dynamic visible. The sunshine and darkness not solely distinction one another, but additionally complement each other. The sunshine shines brighter and the darkish weighs heavier due exactly to the presence of their reverse extremes.
One of many sport’s major themes is grief. Every character of the principle protagonist household portrays a special expression of dealing with loss. Few of their expressions (if any) are wholesome, however they’re all reasonable. Halfway by way of the story, one of many protagonists, Maelle, suffers an immense loss and turns into overwhelmed by the dying that surrounds her group wherever they go. In a dialog with an immortal character named Verso, she laments dying’s omnipresence:
Verso: “Hey, you holding up? We’re nearly there.”
Maelle: “Holding up? In all places we go, simply dying, dying, and extra dying. In all places we go, simply dying. I simply—I don’t wish to see that anymore.”
Verso: “Look Maelle, it—”
Maelle: “I believed you’d perceive. You stated you spent your immortality burying the folks round you. Doesn’t any of this hassle you?”
Maelle knew she can be going through dying. Although younger, she was something however naïve. She set out on Expedition 33 to combat lethal enemies (often called nevrons) in an effort to cease a cycle of dying known as the Gommage, which kills the world’s oldest residents annually. With each passing 12 months, the age restrict has decreased by one, and now sits at 33.
Annually, the Gommage erases the oldest residents, who gently dissolve right into a wisp of flowers. It’s even celebrated with a competition and flowers, eerily echoing our celebrations of life. Maelle has witnessed this annual killing 16 instances (assuming she was an observant toddler). In a single sense, she is used to dying. However now, she is confronted with a actuality verify.
Is she used to it? Can she, or anybody, ever be used to it? Having left the final consolation and security of her metropolis of Lumière, she is confronted with these robust questions. Positive, the impact of dying hasn’t modified, however the look of dying has. As if all this time, the Reaper was sporting a colourful outfit and a pleasant masks, solely to now reveal himself as he actually is: Loss of life unmasked. Maelle talk about this variation along with her adoptive guardian Gustave:
Maelle: “Loss of life out right here’s not like dying in Lumière, is it? I—uh, I believed I used to be used to dropping folks…However not—not like that—on the seashore…that man…”
Gustave: “Yeah…yeah, I do know…Nevrons, we have been ready for, however not…And now we lastly discovered different survivors and it’s…You understand that’s…that’s the insidious factor in regards to the Gommage. It’s… predictable. Virtually mild. It makes Lumière complacent and accepting however…The Gommage is equally violent and dying…Loss of life is simply as remaining.”
As soon as extra, the Gommage echoes our tradition’s try and pacify our hearts to the concept of dying. However this can be a failed expedition, if there ever was one. Loss of life is at all times brutal. Loss of life is at all times violent. There isn’t any glossing over this actuality.
Carl Jung, the founding father of analytical psychology, put it like this:
Loss of life is certainly a fearful piece of brutality: there is no such thing as a sense pretending in any other case. It’s brutal not solely as a bodily occasion, however way more so psychically: a human being is torn away from us, and what stays is the icy stillness of dying. There now not exists any hope of the connection, for all of the bridges have been smashed at one blow. 1
If the character of dying is such, it’s only pure that grief could be simply as brutal. And that is what the tip of Clair Obscur makes gamers confront. Gamers are confronted with a pointy dichotomy of two merciless decisions. The hope for escaping such a tragic finish is past their management. Maelle resides in two worlds, the “actual” world and a “fantasy” painted canvas world that’s solely maintained by a fraction of her late brother’s enslaved soul.
Within the painted world, she and her mom search refuge and escape from the grief of her brother’s dying by clinging to a “painted” however still-living model of him. However that model of her brother longs to guard his sister by destroying the canvas world in order that Maelle is not going to cling to this fantasy life to which she is so understandably drawn.
Irrespective of which choice and ending the participant chooses, there shall be grief, ache, loss, and dying. Even the ending that permits a resurrection of some beloved characters comes on the expense of Maelle’s life in the actual world, the lack of her brother’s freedom, and the sluggish, inescapable fading of the canvas world. Loss of life merely can’t be defeated in both world.
The grief in each eventualities is sort of unimaginable to bear. And in that grief, we style the lament that C.S. Lewis expressed in A Grief of Noticed:
I lookup on the night time sky. Is something extra sure than that in all these huge instances and areas, if I have been allowed to look them, I ought to nowhere discover her face, her voice, her contact? She died. She is useless. Is the phrase so troublesome to be taught?
Sure Lewis. Sure, it’s. The sheer unnaturalness of human dying astounds us. The visceral ache and shock and grief that we expertise is acceptable. The anger, the refusal to just accept, and the insatiable want to carry on are a pure response. As Tim Keller noticed:
To say, “Oh, dying is simply pure,” is to harden and maybe kill part of your coronary heart’s hope that makes you human. We all know deep down that we aren’t like timber. We’re not like grass. We have been created to final. We don’t wish to be ephemeral, to be inconsequential. We don’t wish to simply be a wave upon the sand. The deepest needs of our hearts are for love that lasts. 2
This want ought to not be ignored. In actual fact, it must be woke up. Clair Obscur helps us do exactly that. For all inside the sport is just not obscur. It’s not all darkness. The gameplay, the beautiful art work, the captivatingly artistic sub-creation and world-building, the award-winning classical soundtrack, the deeply relatable characters, the excessive virtues displayed and inspired—these are all totally stunning. It is a playable murals, philosophy, and storytelling. Literary gaming, if you’ll. Not all video video games are created equal.
The ending’s tragedy is heightened by the story’s magnificence and goodness, and is that not a mirrored image of each human life? Irrespective of how a lot ache, grief, unhappiness, failure, or loss we expertise, there may be, by the character of what we’re, as Keller put it, “an irreducible glory and significance about each single human being.” 3 That is the tragedy of dying, and its horror. The sunshine of human life solely heightens the darkness of dying.
In a means, that’s precisely the place Clair Obscur leaves us. In the end, even when “escape” is chosen, it’s pricey and fleeting. The sunshine of Clair Obscur’s two worlds is discovered within the goodness and fantastic thing about their characters, however not in hope. Hope, at finest, is an phantasm. It merely is just not highly effective sufficient to ever defeat the good enemy of dying. Therefore, the story is a tragedy. And tragedies have a means of lingering with us as few different tales can. As soon as extra, this stems partly from an “ought-not-ness.” The story shouldn’t have ended like this. We merely can’t escape that feeling, even when we liked the ending from a literary perspective, as a result of deep down, we all know that our tales shouldn’t finish like that.
However that’s the place the sunshine of Christ shines by way of with illumination highly effective sufficient to overwhelm even the deep darkness of dying itself. The defeat of dying by Jesus Christ is a victory of such splendor and grandeur and glory that we merely can’t overstate it. The depth of the grief present in loss is conquered solely by the hope discovered within the victory on the Cross.
Thus, Paul writes:
However when this perishable may have placed on the imperishable, and this mortal may have placed on immortality, then will come in regards to the saying that’s written, “Loss of life is swallowed up in victory. O dying, the place is your victory? O dying, the place is your sting?” The sting of dying is sin, and the ability of sin is the regulation; however thanks be to God, who offers us the victory by way of our Lord Jesus Christ. (I Corinthians 15:55-57, NASB 1995)
We will grieve. In actual fact, we should always. There may be certainly an imperishable to come back, however for now, we’re certain inside the perishable. Thus, grief is a correct response to dying and loss. Nonetheless, there’s a cycle of dying that has been damaged. There’s a nice enemy who has been defeated. There’s a tomb that is empty and a resurrection that will final.
Due to this fact, for individuals who imagine in Christ, there may be the likelihood to not solely grieve, however to grieve with hope (I Thessalonians 4:13). For tomorrow will come. The solar will rise once more. This world could also be fading, however even now, a brand new creation is being made. That’s the story of Christianity, and artworks like Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 are signposts pointing us in the direction of that nice actuality.
- C.G. Jung, Reminiscences, Goals, and Reflections (New York: Classic, 1965), 314; Quoted in: Timothy Keller, Making Sense of God: An Invitation to the Skeptical, (New York, NY: Viking, 2016), 163 ↩︎
- Timothy Keller, On Loss of life, (New York, NY: Penguin Books, 2020), 42 ↩︎
- Timothy Keller, Making Sense of God: An Invitation to the Skeptical, (New York, NY: Viking, 2016), 139 ↩︎
