From its establishing shot of the Eiffel Tower bent in on itself, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 wants you to know it is very French, if a little twisted. The turn-based RPG revels in the aesthetic of developer Sandfall Interactive’s home country, which often helps to distinguish the game from its many high-profile influences. As a tale of death and grief it’s hard not to make comparisons to genre titans such as Final Fantasy X and Lost Odyssey. And sure, the themes are similar, but did Tidus ever wear a beret? I don’t think so.
Much of the overt French aesthetic of Clair Obscur can seem like a surface level coat of paint. Yet there is much more to Sandfall Interactive’s adoption of the Belle Époque style in this dark fantasy facsimile of France. With just a little understanding of French history, it becomes clear that this isn’t a case of style over substance — the style is the substance.
This article contains spoilers for Clair Obscur: Expedition 33.
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33’s prologue does a lot of narrative heavy lifting. In less than an hour we are introduced to our main cast and the stakes of the world. Every year the citizens of Lumiére suffer the Gommage, an event triggered by a godlike being called the Paintress who appears once a year to paint a descending number in the sky, sentencing anyone older than that number to die immediately. To stop the endless death, an expedition of volunteers is sent out annually to take down the Paintress. That’s us.
While emotionally loaded, the prologue also establishes the central aesthetic of the game. Lumiére, with iconic landmarks such as the Eiffel Tower and Arc de Triomphe, is a slightly different version of real-world Paris. The biggest difference is the specific Paris Clair Obscur seeks to emulate. City streets lined with buildings melding Art Nouveau and Neoclassical architecture point to a Paris of the Belle Époque.
Literally meaning “the beautiful age,” the Belle Époque is a period of French history that spans from 1871 to 1914 (the beginning is more debated, but the ending is not). A more specific date for Clair Obscur’s pseudo-Paris can be estimated by the inclusion of the Eiffel Tower (completed in 1889) and costuming defined by narrow suiting for men and shirtwaist and skirt ensembles for women. Taken together, Lumiére is roughly Paris right before the turn of the 20th century.
But what does that all mean for the world of Clair Obscur? At first, not much. Once the titular expedition leaves the safety of Lumiére and enters the monster infested continent, that iconic Belle Époque style is almost missing from the world. The most we get for hours on end are scattered buildings in ruin that once connected to Lumiére. Our cast is let loose in a run of the mill apocalyptic fantasy environment.
The loss of that Belle Époque set dressing, however, might just be the point. The reason the era looms so large in the cultural consciousness — especially of France — is because it was a period of peace, progress, and hope. All these characteristics seem almost antithetical to the world of Clair Obscur, a world defined by stagnation and never-ending loss, yet they go hand in hand.
Juxtaposing the Belle Époque aesthetic of our world with the harsh reality of Clair Obscur’s highlights exactly what the expedition is fighting for. Gustave, Maelle, and the other members might not enjoy the same peace and prosperity as their “real” counterpart, but it is a blueprint for what they are fighting for. As the expedition gets further from home, they lose tangible reminders of why they each chose to go on this mission. All they have is the dream and their hope. Through this, Clair Obscur reinforces its belief in the need for optimism, even when it seems foolish.
Yet, much like the narrative of Clair Obscur, the Belle Époque aesthetic is hardly as simple as it seems. Even as a period defined by optimism and peace, it is hiding something much darker that more intricately ties it to the grim world of the game. The Belle Époque as a turn of phrase, and signifier of a certain period, was not contemporary to the era itself.
“The term … was adopted by public opinion after the First World War,” writes historian Dominique Kalifa, “This transfer and the birth of the myth can be easily explained as the phenomenon of a generation that had known terrible suffering, lost the best of itself, along with its illusions, and tried to forget the blood and mood from 1914-1918 by exalting the long period of peace and stability that had preceded it.”
The Belle Époque is a fiction fueled by nostalgia for a time before suffering, a time that must have been better than what existed post war, at least in the minds of those who coined the term. A late twist in Clair Obscur reveals that the world of the game is itself nothing but a fiction within a canvas, maintained by a grieving mother (the painter) as some semblance of comfort following the death of her son, Verso. With this knowledge, it becomes clear that the Belle Époque aesthetic is not deployed by Sandfall to evoke the myth of the era, but the tragedies that necessitated its creation.
Essential in this understanding of Clair Obscur’s use of the Belle Époque is the idea of myth making or creating a false memory of the past. Even the title of “beautiful age” is something carefully chosen to embrace only the best parts of the Belle Époque, ignoring its grittier realities. While the Belle Époque is considered a period of optimism, progress, and prosperity, it was something crafted by a wealthy class looking to “retreat into a frivolous, fairy tale kind of existence,” writes professor Ninón Rodríguez, and always came at the cost of those without wealth. This desire to live inside a fantasy, even at the expense of others, is the same behavior of the Paintress herself, as well as the entire ethos behind coining the Belle Époque in the first place. It is a swirling whirlpool of nostalgia and attempts to hide away from suffering.
This nostalgic fantasy has been transformed into a living hell for the citizens of Lumiére due to the Paintress’ inability to let go of her son, who exists in facsimile with the canvas. Despite being influenced by the Belle Époque, Clair Obscur’s world past the prologue often feels more in line with the horrific suffering of World War 1. The very first scene you witness when landing on the continent is a violent slaughter of the expedition. All these people filled with hope are unsparingly cut down in a matter of seconds in a messy blur of grey punctuated by technicolor red — blood.
It’s an image that evokes the immense casualties seen in trench charges, which saw soldiers rush out into no man’s land towards enemy territory. Further into the continent, though not that much further, the expedition encounters constant mass graves and corpses of expeditions past. It’s a reminder of the never-ending onslaught of meaningless death brought on by the Paintress in her grief.
Clair Obscur and the Belle Époque are both coins with hope and grief on either side. Hope is a necessity, especially for those dealing with grief. An individual, a family, a country all need hope to move past the suffering of the past. Clair Obscur’s warning is to not fall into the trap of looking back on a false memory of bygone times for the risk of losing yourself completely. Sandfall Interactive layers on these realities — Lumiére, the world outside the canvas, and our own reality — to constantly poke holes in the myths we create. This is all tied together, by the constant of the Belle Époque aesthetic. The final message of Clair Obscur is to us, in this reality, to move on from that fiction as well, but with hope for those who come after.
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