Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
The following are copied from a Discord conversation I had regarding E33, specifically my thoughts on the ending. Massive spoiler warning.
the act 2 turnaround really did not work for me. i enjoyed the story and world a lot before then
I didn't like the family reveal and the change of focus to the gods of the world away from the people within it. I ultimately didn't connect with the family of painters much compared to the rest of the Lumiere cast (even ignoring Gustav, I think him dying was a good narrative choice) and I felt like changing the focus from the sort of collective societal struggle to one of personal grief made it too rote for me. I enjoy familial stories in general in my more realistic booky fiction, but I feel like they had something way more interesting before the switch.
I also really did not play any of the side content around Simon and co. I've heard that the side content does a better job fleshing out the outer world in a way that might have made me care about them more, but I'd prefer the game do that in the main story instead of optional content.
this is 100% a me thing rather than the fault of the game, but I'm realizing that out of the main cast I think I clicked with Maelle the least, so it makes sense that I would lose interest when she becomes the main character
The ending choice doesn't really work for me because (to me anyway) it's obvious that siding with Verso is the correct choice; once you're forced to acknowledge that the painted world is a sort of created purgatory that the gods can bend to their will, and that for painted Verso it's basically hell, siding with Alicia doesn't feel like "let's save Lumiere!" anymore. And of course, if you side with Verso, the world goes away. I understand that this is meant to be metacommentary on created worlds within fiction in general: the "world" of the novel or game or movie stops existing once you're done, and trying to stay within it just results in the same stories repeated over and over because fictional worlds are ultimately closed. But like, even if that's locally clever I just don't find it interesting or novel of an idea.