Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 Was Dropping Spoilers From The Start, But Nobody Noticed
James Lucas is an Executive Editor from Newcastle, England. They have written for sites like IGN, NME, GaymingMag, and VG247, with a special focus on FPS games, Soulslikes, and survival horror.
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 caps off every act with a huge twist, and don’t worry, I won’t lather the intro to this article about spoilers in spoilers. But, as it turns out, the music already gave the game away.
Granted, the lyrics are very, very cryptic, and odds are you won’t grasp exactly what you’re hearing until a second playthrough. Still, some were able to suss out the meaning behind the words and piece together the story as early as the prologue. Take u/AverageHalfLifeFan, who, from the very first song, worked out that Alicia and Maelle must somehow be related. In fairness, they look so similar that I’m sure many of us jumped to that conclusion anyway, but it only goes to show how integral the lyrics are to the wider narrative.
More blatant is the music played before the Dualliste fight later in the game. During the Forgotten Battlefield segment, the lyrics explicitly spell out the ending: “In this world, we both reside. One wants to fade, the other stays beside. On this canvas, though it may not be real. We’re battling for the fate we feel.”
It’s obscured by dialogue and plays faintly in the background, but even if you did make out the words, it’d be nigh impossible to understand what they mean. It vaguely nods to Maelle (or Alicia) and Verso, but you could read that as any two characters, perhaps The Paintress and Renoir; still, going back, it’s fascinating to hear the ending laid bare so clearly.
Even If You Speak French, You Probably Didn t Understand What You Were Hearing
The ‘French’ lyrics are much harder to decipher, and there’s debate over whether the words are mixed in with Latin, gibberish, or a regional dialect, like Occitan, so even if you spoke the dev team’s native language, odds are you’d be lost. However, a few phrases stood out, and some players noted that they heard tidbits in the overworld like “Renoir will always lose his son” and other references to the ending.
In fact, one player went to read up on the lyrics before playing the game, but was warned away by a “pure soul” who told them they’d be met with a wall of spoilers.
So, while we were exploring the Canvas, even with Gustave, we were privy to some of the game’s biggest reveals: the entire world being a painting, Maelle and Alicia’s connection, the prophecised duel against Verso, straddling the line between spoilers and foreshadowing. But as u/AverageHalfLifeFan put it, none of these lyrics ruined the experience. Instead, they “enhanced it” – and only give us more of an excuse to go back and replay Clair Obscur and pay even more attention to its award-worthy score.
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