This text accommodates potential spoilers for Clair Obscur: Expedition 33.
We are able to’t conceal from demise although our tradition can typically be accused of making an attempt to take action. Our goals of trans-humanism, systematic acceptance of nursing houses, and transition to “celebrations of life” fairly than funerals do supply some validity to that declare. Nonetheless, we will overestimate the impact that any of those tendencies and tendencies have on obscuring our view of the Reaper and his trusty scythe.
For the easy and apparent reality is that we people simply can’t sweep demise below the rug. There is no such thing as a operating from it ultimately—and neither can we conceal ourselves from it whereas we stay. Naturally then, artistic endeavors will deal straight with this reality, regardless of how death-shy our tradition could appear.
Within the spring of 2025, a small French online game firm named Sandfall Interactive launched their first recreation. With its unbelievable solid of characters, gorgeous design and art work, fascinating story, and masterful soundtrack, it made fairly a splash within the gaming world. It not solely gained “Recreation of the 12 months” on the 2025 Recreation Awards, but in addition set a report for many awards gained. However maybe nowhere did it stand out greater than in its prolonged reflection on demise and grief, and its willingness to depart gamers deeply moved and uncomfortable ultimately.
Demise is all the time brutal. Demise is all the time violent. There is no such thing as a glossing over this actuality.
The sport’s title, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, factors to the duality of its themes. Much like the Italian time period chiaroscuro, the French time period clair obscur—which accurately interprets to “gentle darkish”—refers to artistic endeavors that make the most of a robust distinction and interaction between gentle and darkness, creating an emotionally wealthy and dynamic visible. The sunshine and darkness not solely distinction one another, but in addition complement each other. The sunshine shines brighter and the darkish weighs heavier due exactly to the presence of their reverse extremes.
One of many recreation’s major themes is grief. Every character of the primary protagonist household portrays a unique expression of dealing with loss. Few of their expressions (if any) are wholesome, however they’re all reasonable. Halfway by means of the story, one of many protagonists, Maelle, suffers an immense loss and turns into overwhelmed by the demise that surrounds her staff wherever they go. In a dialog with an immortal character named Verso, she laments demise’s omnipresence:
Verso: “Hey, you holding up? We’re virtually there.”
Maelle: “Holding up? All over the place we go, simply demise, demise, and extra demise. All over the place we go, simply demise. I simply—I don’t need to see that anymore.”
Verso: “Look Maelle, it—”
Maelle: “I believed you’d perceive. You mentioned you spent your immortality burying the folks round you. Doesn’t any of this hassle you?”
Maelle knew she can be dealing with demise. Although younger, she was something however naïve. She set out on Expedition 33 to struggle lethal enemies (generally known as nevrons) in an effort to cease a cycle of demise known as the Gommage, which kills the world’s oldest residents every year. With each passing 12 months, the age restrict has decreased by one, and now sits at 33.
Every year, the Gommage erases the oldest residents, who gently dissolve right into a wisp of flowers. It’s even celebrated with a pageant and flowers, eerily echoing our celebrations of life. Maelle has witnessed this annual killing 16 occasions (assuming she was an observant toddler). In a single sense, she is used to demise. However now, she is confronted with a actuality examine.
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. Certain, the impact of demise hasn’t modified, however the look of demise has. As if all this time, the Reaper was carrying a colourful outfit and a pleasant masks, solely to now reveal himself as he actually is: Demise unmasked. Maelle focus on this alteration along with her adoptive guardian Gustave:
Maelle: “Demise out right here’s not like demise 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 had been ready for, however not…And now we lastly discovered different survivors and it’s…You realize that’s…that’s the insidious factor concerning the Gommage. It’s… predictable. Nearly mild. It makes Lumière complacent and accepting however…The Gommage is equally violent and demise…Demise is simply as closing.”
As soon as extra, the Gommage echoes our tradition’s try and pacify our hearts to the concept of demise. However it is a failed expedition, if there ever was one. Demise is all the time brutal. Demise is all the time violent. There is no such thing as a glossing over this actuality.
Carl Jung, the founding father of analytical psychology, put it like this:
Demise is certainly a fearful piece of brutality: there isn’t any sense pretending in any other case. It’s brutal not solely as a bodily occasion, however much more so psychically: a human being is torn away from us, and what stays is the icy stillness of demise. 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 demise is such, it is just pure that grief could be simply as brutal. And that is what the top of Clair Obscur makes gamers confront. Gamers are confronted with a pointy dichotomy of two merciless selections. 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 demise 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 won’t cling to this fantasy life to which she is so understandably drawn.
Regardless of which possibility and ending the participant chooses, there might be grief, ache, loss, and demise. 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 gradual, inescapable fading of the canvas world. Demise merely can’t be defeated in both world.
The grief in each situations 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 search for on the night time sky. Is something extra sure than that in all these huge occasions and areas, if I had been allowed to go looking them, I ought to nowhere discover her face, her voice, her contact? She died. She is useless. Is the phrase so troublesome to study?
Sure Lewis. Sure, it’s. The sheer unnaturalness of human demise astounds us. The visceral ache and shock and grief that we expertise is acceptable. The anger, the refusal to simply accept, and the insatiable need to carry on are a pure response. As Tim Keller noticed:
To say, “Oh, demise 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’re not like bushes. We aren’t like grass. We had been created to final. We don’t need to be ephemeral, to be inconsequential. We don’t need to simply be a wave upon the sand. The deepest wishes of our hearts are for love that lasts. 2
This need ought to not be ignored. Actually, it should be woke up. Clair Obscur helps us do exactly that. For all inside the recreation will not be obscur. It’s not all darkness. The gameplay, the gorgeous art work, the captivatingly inventive sub-creation and world-building, the award-winning classical soundtrack, the deeply relatable characters, the excessive virtues displayed and inspired—these are all completely lovely. This can be 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? Regardless of how a lot ache, grief, unhappiness, failure, or loss we expertise, there’s, 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 demise, and its horror. The sunshine of human life solely heightens the darkness of demise.
In a method, that’s precisely the place Clair Obscur leaves us. Finally, even when “escape” is chosen, it’s expensive 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 greatest, is an phantasm. It merely will not be highly effective sufficient to ever defeat the nice enemy of demise. Therefore, the story is a tragedy. And tragedies have a method 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 cherished 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 means of with illumination highly effective sufficient to overwhelm even the deep darkness of demise itself. The defeat of demise by Jesus Christ is a victory of such splendor and grandeur and glory that we merely can not 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 concerning the saying that’s written, “Demise is swallowed up in victory. O demise, the place is your victory? O demise, the place is your sting?” The sting of demise is sin, and the ability of sin is the legislation; however thanks be to God, who offers us the victory by means of our Lord Jesus Christ. (I Corinthians 15:55-57, NASB 1995)
We are able to grieve. Actually, we must always. There may be certainly an imperishable to return, however for now, we’re certain inside the perishable. Thus, grief is a correct response to demise and loss. However, there’s a cycle of demise 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.
Subsequently, for many who consider in Christ, there’s the chance 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 artistic endeavors like Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 are signposts pointing us in 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 Demise, (New York, NY: Penguin Books, 2020), 42 ↩︎
- Timothy Keller, Making Sense of God: An Invitation to the Skeptical, (New York, NY: Viking, 2016), 139 ↩︎
