Would You Find A Reason To Smile? | Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 Analysis (Part IV) - Pixel Project Radio: A Video Game Podcast

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:20):
Welcome back to Pixel Project Radio. This is the finale
of our Clear Obscure Analysis series. It's been great fun
to do this, it's been rewarding. I think the conversations
have been terrific if you think so too. If you've
been enjoying this series, if you've been enjoying the show,
please consider giving us a rating or a review, Please
consider sharing our stuff on social media's like Blue Sky, Instagram, Reddit,

(00:45):
things like that. Best way to grow the show and
it would be much appreciated. I'm joined again by Frak,
who's been with me throughout this series. Thanks again, Frak.
How's it going.

Speaker 2 (00:56):
Oh it's great, buddy, Thank you, thank you for having me.
I'm so to be rounding out this game. It's it's
it's been a long, fruitful talk, but all good talks
must come to an end.

Speaker 1 (01:08):
So it's exciting. It's very true and thematically appropriate too. Yes, yes,
of course. So I know last episode I said there
was a lot to cover, and it turned out to
be a little bit felt a little more slim than usual,
But I think this one is going to have more
breadth to it. So let's jump right back in. We
left off right when Alicia wakes up at what is

(01:29):
labeled the epilogue. So this is a glimpse into the
past of Monolith year forty nine. We're taking control of Alicia. Here.
She wakes up from a nightmare. Her face is totally disfigured.
She can't speak. This is a result of the fire
in the manner. She's called downstairs by a woman, her sister,
named Claya. This is going to begin the epilogue Alicia.

(01:51):
So Claia. Claia is Alicia and Verso's sister. What did
you think of Claya at first?

Speaker 2 (01:55):
Threck You know, it was I think this was the
point in the game where it's where everything kind of
starts to I guess make sense. I guess where they're
trying to be, like, so this is what's like been
really going on. And I was just I was kind
of confused, to be honest, just because I'm like, oh,

(02:17):
I didn't I did not expect the game to be
taking the kind of turn that it actually ends up
taking right here.

Speaker 1 (02:23):
You know, Yeah, that's interesting. A lot of folks said
the same thing. So let's before we get into that, let's, uh,
let's give an overview of the situation we're in the finale.
I think spoilers can be safely set on the table.
Nobody is jumping in here that hasn't listened to the rest.
I don't think at unless that's you, in which case
jump back to the beginning. So here's the situation. The

(02:47):
Dessandras were a family, Aleen and Renoir, the parents, the kids, Verso,
Alicia and Claya. There was a fire in the manner
that is said to have been somehow caused by Alicia
and this faction known as the writers. More on them
in a little bit. It's unclear, it's not clear what

(03:08):
happened here. It's left vague, which a cynical part of
me is saying, like, oh, sequel bait, But the more
realistic part of me is like, you know, I've said
it before, I'll say it again. Fiction doesn't need to
speen food. You have speen food. Spoon feed you, spoonerism
feed you everything. I don't want to be speen fed.
Don't speen food me. It's my least favorite kind of food,

(03:32):
the worst utensil. Yeah yeah, it was quickly discarded. I
don't think it needs to spoon feed you everything Like
mysteries are okay, but there was some kind of faction
known as the Writers, and Alicia got involved with them
somehow started this fire. Verso saved her at the cost
of his life. Verso died. Alicia sustained incredible injuries, face

(03:56):
completely burned, she lost an eye, She can't speak any
more more. What happens is a lean Renoir and Clia,
to varying degrees within their grief, they sort of blame
her in unconsciously or consciously. Clia, for instance, is really
cold and austere and terse here towards Alicia, And I
mean she kind of doesn't hide the fact that she

(04:18):
looks at it as her fault. She says, Verso traded
his life for yours. I both love and hate him
for that. That damn fool not hidden at all.

Speaker 2 (04:28):
No, that is a very like complicated emotion to express,
you know, And I'm sure that's happened many other times,
where it's like, yeah, it's it's great that this one
person ended up surviving, but you know, this person sacrificed
their life for that. Like I've never dealt with that personally,

(04:49):
but I could imagine that is a very complicated feeling
to have, where it's like you're glad this one person
is alive, but maybe you subconsciously resent them because somebody's
life had to be sacrificed for them to live.

Speaker 1 (05:01):
You know. It's a perfectly natural thing to feel, too.
It's one of those things where like you can logically
in your head tell yourself that there's no reason you
should feel this way, that it's a totally natural but
not unproductive, but kind of hostile feeling, but your heart
just doesn't believe it. You know. I'm sure we've all

(05:21):
been there. We have feelings that we have and we
tell ourselves like I shouldn't be feeling this, like this
is totally irrational and yet like comma, and.

Speaker 2 (05:29):
Yet yeah, it almost reminds me a little bit of
like survivor's guilt as.

Speaker 1 (05:32):
Well in a way. Yeah, I was thinking that too, Yeah,
whichah Alicia certainly has right. Oh absolutely, I mean I
would too, especially like if you think about the state
that she's in, you know, like, oh, somebody you know,
like died to save me, and yet I'm like not
the same person as before. Like it's one thing to

(05:53):
have survivor's guilt, where it's like like say, like you
were drowning and somebody you know died to save you
from drowning kind of a thing.

Speaker 2 (06:00):
Like it doesn't disfigure you. You're still normal, at least physically,
I guess, but like to be mentally and physically scarred
from that, Like that's really a lot, you know.

Speaker 3 (06:11):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (06:12):
I wrote this down somewhere later, but this reminds me
of something that the late Francis Davis wrote Terry Gross's
late husband, by the way, who recently passed away. He
used this line and I wrote it somewhere that Alicia
sort of whars the debts of time and grief on
her at all times. Yeah. I couldn't have said that

(06:34):
better me neither. That's that's why I took to Terry
Gross and her husband. Yeah. So back to the Desandras.
After Verso died, they all began grieving in their own ways. Aileen,
the mother, went into Verso's canvas and as the painter's
capital p painters, they have sort of special powers where

(06:57):
they can paint entire worlds within these canvases. And that's
what Lumiere is. Verso's soul. The last remaining piece of
his soul is within the canvas that he painted. Aileen
went into there and painted her family within there as
a way of coping with her grief. Now, she painted
them in different ways. She painted Verso basically picture perfect

(07:21):
as to what he would have been, strong, handsome, voiced
by Ben Starr, what we all wish we were. Naturally.
She painted Renoir the renoir we've been fighting as a
bit unflattering, as Maya will eventually say, he's a bit
broader and meaner than he actually is. We'll see that
in time. Now we never see Cleia's painted form that

(07:44):
Aleen painted. Will get to that later too, But she
painted Alicia with somewhat even more disfigurement than what she
has in real life. It's this sort of tearing between
razils and love that comes with this sort of grief, right.
It's the love is unending, it's unconditional, but at the

(08:08):
same time, the grief is persistent, it cannot be scrubbed away.
So it's a sort of hug of war between those two.
And that's how Alicia was painted. It's why she always
wears the mask, it's why she feels that survivor's guilt NonStop.
And she spent so much time in there, tons of
time time in the canvas passes quicker than in real life,
but it also takes a great toll on the body.

(08:30):
She will die if she stays in there. So Renoir
went in there to try and get her out. Expedition
zero him vers So, and I think Cleia too, or
maybe not Cleia. They went to try and get her
out forcefully. That's what caused the fracture. So Painted Renoir,
this is the important part. Painted Renoir is the one

(08:51):
causing the gomages. He is going through and wiping out
Aleen's creations little by little as they get older her
and as her powers ween, he is able to take
down her creations a little more easily. The reason that
he's not under her control is because he retains memories
of the actual Renoir. He is more unflattering, this is true,
but he you know, he's not entirely her puppet, so

(09:16):
he is stopping expeditioners from getting to her. That's also
because he has become obsessed. He has become obsessed with immortality,
as we've learned from Verso. Yeah, so he's doing that.
The real Aleen and Renoir are sort of fixed statuesque
outside of the canvas. The real Renoir is in here,

(09:36):
and you know, we find this out shortly. He is
the curator, that is the real renoir. The real paintress
is the one that we fought at the very end,
the curator esque looking woman. My read on that, I
don't know if you agree with me, here, Threck. My
read on that is that because time age is quicker
in the canvas, that their painted forms have just begun

(09:57):
to crack and crack and fall away. Like I I
think that's why their faces have sort of those shallow
dips in them. It's like the cracked paint is literally
falling off of the canvas, and you know, as old
paint does, it chips away. I don't know if that's
spot on, but that's how I looked at it.

Speaker 2 (10:15):
I agree with that, actually, and I think it also
kind of fits with how it's like the grief is
like consuming them as well, and it's starting to like
chip away at their physical form because a lot of
this is just like the main crux is just that
they just can't move on from the horrible event that
has happened outside of the painting, and it's like they're

(10:38):
almost retreating within the painting as a way of trying
to get over that grief, but doing it in like
an unhealthy way by like not being able to move
on from versus passing, you know, be like, oh, he's
recreated in the painting. But I think that kind of
swell of emotions is also reflected in the chipping away,

(11:00):
that it's just they're just letting it consume them.

Speaker 1 (11:03):
Yeah, I agree with that. I think that's a good
read of it. So Renoire is in there, he's trying
to get Aleen back. Clia is in there as well.
Clia doesn't necessarily agree with either of them, She sort
of Cleia is frustrated with everybody. She wants them out,
not because of the cycle of grief necessarily. She believes

(11:25):
that the real fight is with the writers. That's what
she wants to deal with. She wants to deal with them.
She needs Aleen to snap out of her grief. She
says as much too. She says when she's talking to
Alicia here, she says, Renoire is wasting his time in
there trying to help someone who doesn't want his help.
We have more urgent matters to attend to. Honestly, if

(11:45):
Alene wants to numb herself in the canvas, then let
her grief is no excuse, and then to Alicia, she says,
lest you forget, the only reason Renoir and Aline are
in the canvas is because your naivety cost Verso his life.
Kind of paints the picture of cleya pretty pretty Yeah.

Speaker 2 (12:03):
Yeah, and it's pretty, and I think it shows why
she's not really a main character in the plot until
like this point in the game.

Speaker 1 (12:12):
She's also painting nevrons, which they're helping take care of
the expeditioners as a way to help pull Aleen out
and possibly run War two. We should say too, if
they're painted versions, or rather, if they get killed in
the canvas, they don't like die in real life like
some bad horror movie. They just or at least I

(12:33):
presume that's the case, they would just come out of
the canvas, and we see that happen a little later. Yeah,
I think so.

Speaker 2 (12:39):
And that's why they're, you know, constantly pushing everybody away,
because they just want to stay within the canvas and
they don't want to, you know, be thrown out of it.
You know, they don't want to deal with those pesky writers.

Speaker 1 (12:52):
Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Speaker 2 (12:54):
I feel like the whole writers versus painters thing, not
to get too deep into that. That could be some
like based on some like real life tension that maybe
the Sandfal devs dealt with, maybe during their time at
like Ubisoft. Or maybe this is just me theorizing that,
like this whole writers versus painters thing could be based
on some real life tension that they've dealt with.

Speaker 1 (13:16):
It's certainly possible. There are a lot of ways you
can interpret this, you know. It could be a Sandfall
thing where the artists wanted to do something the writers
wanted to do something different. It could be like critics
of art writing about art and critiquing what the artists
are doing, kind of fighting that way. It could be
a meta commentary wherein the writers are the devs of
the game writing this situation into existence that is directly

(13:40):
antagonizing the fictional characters. It could be a lot of things.
I'm glad that they left it open ended because it,
you know, allows for this kind of speculation.

Speaker 2 (13:49):
Maybe in some way it's a combination of all of them.

Speaker 1 (13:53):
It very well could be, and there's nothing wrong with that.
There are no laws against it. Let's jump back into
the game. I've been reading about this stuff all day.
My head's in a bit of a tizzy. If I

(14:14):
need to come back in and edit any clarifications that
don't come in later, I can do so. But my
head's spinning. So let's get back into it. So Claya
asks Alicia to go into the canvas to help get
Renoir out. Get Renoir out, we can get a Lien out,
at least Renoir so he can help with the fight
with the writers, So she and Claa. Alicia and Claya

(14:37):
hide the canvas because they think a Lien will try
to return to it once she's forcibly removed, which is
you know, probable given her situation. Alicia jumps in to
get Renoir and a Lien both out destroy the canvas
for good, but it doesn't go according to plan. What
happens is chroma from a Lien, and Claya explains this

(14:58):
sort of takes hold of Alisa and she can't calm down,
so it kind of shapes her and makes her reborn
as one of Aline's creations as Mael.

Speaker 4 (15:08):
That's Aline's proma.

Speaker 1 (15:12):
Stay came. Don't let it take control of you. Calm
Elisia a little over you. It's just stopped. Well, you're
about to be reborn in this world as one of
Aline's creations.

Speaker 4 (15:29):
Have fun.

Speaker 1 (15:32):
Now, I've heard folks say that Eleen didn't even recognize
Alicia when she jumped into the painting, and that's why
she was reborn. I'm not a hundred percent certain that
I agree with that, but I could see where that
interpretation is coming from. I could.

Speaker 2 (15:50):
But also, like, if you compare Alicia to Myel, they're
not they don't look that different.

Speaker 1 (15:56):
No, they don't look different at all. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (15:59):
So, I mean, it could just be that Eleen is
so far gone that maybe she's having a hard time
recognizing Mael's Alicia, you know, potentially. But also I feel
like you would recognize somebody like that if you saw
him anywhere, right.

Speaker 1 (16:16):
You would think so, Yeah, it could also be that
she sees Alicia, perhaps feels badly about her own painted version,
and then subconsciously creates Miele, who is in all facets
a quote unquote I don't want to say normal, but
I hope that gets off what I'm trying to convey here,
version of maybe idolized, unbroken, untainted, not disfigured as she

(16:39):
was before. Yeah, it could be that, but you know this,
this is the gist of this is, this is what
the canvas and the whole world of Lumiere is. It's
Versuo's canvas. It's paintings to help cope with grief. It's
Verso's soul, the last remaining bit of his soul painting
into eternity, Monoco, the gesturals, they're all versus creations. What

(17:03):
I love about this, especially too, is that it's revealed
later that Ska is like a little plush doll, like
a little dolly. Yeah, yeah, I hope they sell that.
I love that they mentioned that, like Ska is the
most powerful creature in the universe, because like when you've
got a little plush as a kid, a little doll,
like that's your friend. So what he's doing is he
made his little friend the most powerful being in the universe.

(17:24):
And I think that's just so cool. That's exactly what
a kid would do.

Speaker 2 (17:27):
It is very wholesome, very very beautiful and wholesome. But
like when we get to this point where it's like, oh,
it's all like when it does the big reveal of oh,
everything's just like in a painting and it's like separated
from the quote unquote real world, Like did you see
that coming, because I did not at all. No, I

(17:48):
definitely didn't see it coming. But in retrospect, I think
it makes total narrative sense. That's one of the criticisms
of this game. There are two main ones that I
see all the time. One is that it's sort of
takes away the flow of the game, which I think,
you know, that doesn't hold a lot of weight. You know,
I don't think narrative fantasy fiction is beholden to like

(18:09):
super action y adventure kind of deal, you know, the
standard hero's journey kind of thing, don't.

Speaker 1 (18:15):
I don't think that makes sense all the time. I
think this adheres to that quite well. But the other
criticism that I've heard is that it makes the whole
first part of the game irrelevant, which I think is
an interesting criticism because the only way one could assume
this is by tacitly feeling and admitting that the painted

(18:35):
world and the characters are in some way less than conscious.
They aren't real. And this will be a central discussion
point with regard to the ending, and you know, depending
on who you ask, it's not entirely off base. We're
gonna get all into quality and the hard problem of
consciousness and a little saur episode on the Taalos principle.
It's gonna get it's gonna get crazy.

Speaker 2 (18:57):
I'm thinking of why people would think, yeah, the first
act is relevant. Maybe it's just because I don't want
to say the game does like a bait and switch,
but once you get to this point in the game,
it does sort of you think about the first act
differently than when you were playing it and you were
just assuming that this was the world, right, but then
when you learn it's not the world, you know, I

(19:18):
think it's for for some people they would just think, oh, yeah, well,
you know, why would I care about, like, you know,
Gustav or any of these other characters because it didn't matter.
But I think it does matter to the whole. It
kind of fits with the whole arc kind of a thing.
And what I like is when they do the painting stuff,
it doesn't get like super meta, which is something I

(19:40):
was a little bit worried about when that happened. I'm like,
is this going to be like a weird fourth wall
breaking or they're going to try to like say something
weirdly meta or anything, And they really don't, at least
I don't think if they do, they don't do it
in a very explicit way. I don't want to say
it necessarily hurts the flow, but it definitely. It's like

(20:02):
if you're, you know, driving on the highway for a
few hours and it's like a nice, smooth sailing and
then all of a sudden, it's like, oh, we have
to get off an exit, and then we're like at
a dead stop and it's like, oh, we're here now,
you know. Like, I think you feel it because it's
such a drastic change, but I think in context with
everything else, it doesn't hurt it by any means.

Speaker 1 (20:21):
Yeah, I think I get what you're saying. I think
we're saying the same thing. It's narratively justified, and I
think irrelevant. I think I'm mis spoke. I maybe tacked
on is a better way to phrase what, Yeah, thanks
are thinking.

Speaker 2 (20:32):
In some ways, it reminds me a little bit of
I don't know, if you ever watched a Dragon Quest
your story, which is like the weird it was the
weird Netflix adaptation of Dragon Quest five.

Speaker 1 (20:44):
I don't want to get cut out your spoilers on
Metal Gear Solo three in the last episode, so we
might be doing that here. Too.

Speaker 2 (20:50):
I'm not going to go into details because I'll just
get mad, but basically it is an adaptation of Dragon
Quest five, but at the very end it goes and
when it went meta, it absolutely ruined it for me. H,
that's interesting another discussion. I don't want to talk about
it now because I will get mad.

Speaker 1 (21:27):
So epilogue is rained back and we're now into act three.
Act three is titled mile So. Miele is back in Lumiere.
It's dark. We're in the uh sort of the fading,
somber evening of Loumiere. Mile sits down beside Verso. Her
hair is now white white gray, whitish gray. This is
a feature of the painters. As far as I can tell,

(21:50):
Renoir has white gray hair. Verso, it's revealed he does,
but he dies it. I think that's revealed in a
conversation with cel. And now that Myle is remembered who
she is, she's got it. I'm pretty sure that's the case.
But this is so. Yeah, this is where they start
talking because remember this Verso is painted. He's not the
real Verso that died. This is where they start talking

(22:11):
and Verso begins to question his existence. You know, at
the core, it's a facsimile. Memories that aren't his, features
that aren't his, a family that isn't his. And this
is the central question that forms you know, is he
a real person? What is the distinguishing factor that would
separate somebody like Verso real human like feelings thoughts. Let's

(22:33):
even extend this out to real life, like an AI,
like a robot. If something is human looking, human like,
it can feel, it can think, it can speak, why
wouldn't they be considered human or why not? You know,
there are no answers to this in real life. This
is still a debated topic over what's called qualia or
phenomenal consciousness. I'm pretty sure there's no right answer. My

(22:56):
l sides with yes, of course you're a person. You
are you? Verso sort of sides with renoir at this
point in time.

Speaker 2 (23:04):
Yeah, it's funny you bring up the AI thinks. I
saw an article the other day about like AI hallucinations
and where like AI is like starting to become like
you'll have like weird sentient moments almost, and it kind
of fits in with like what Verso is doing. It's
almost like he's becoming sentient and realizing that like he's

(23:25):
technically not a real person. He's just a memory of
another person that was you know, created, And it just
reminded me of that a little bit.

Speaker 1 (23:35):
Now, is this AI? Is this like llm's like chat GPT,
because they'll say stuff like that just because they scrubbed
the Internet and see people talking about it. It probably
could have been that.

Speaker 2 (23:46):
I didn't I don't remember the entire article, but it
was discussing like the whole idea of like AI hallucinations
and like sort of what that could I guess lead
to later.

Speaker 1 (23:56):
Oh, no, we're yeah, we're living in basically, yeah, we're
living in scary times. These two go to meet Renoir,
the real Renoir, and this verse meets him for the
first time. It's the curator. As we said, he sheds
the disguise. It's the real Renoir. He's basically the one
that we know. He's slightly thinner, somewhat softer, but he's Renwarre. Yeah,

(24:17):
he's not a stoic. He's relieved to see myele and
he apologizes to Verso in a very interesting way. He
looks at him and says, some.

Speaker 3 (24:27):
Of Feline's finest work, I regret that it caused you
so much pain. What Elene did was unfair to you.
Most of all, please accept the disorder family's apologies. I
know it seems absurd to offer oblivion his recompense, but

(24:47):
perhaps that's the outcome we both desire.

Speaker 1 (24:51):
It's practically dehumanizing, yeah, that is if you side with
Mile's point of view. It in a way, Yeah, it is. Yeah,
and myle shocked to hear this, you know. His argument,
renoirres is that Eileen won't abandon this canvas. A piece
of Verso's soul is still within it. She will always
find it. She will go to all ends of the
earth to find this to numb her grief. She refuses

(25:15):
to accept her son's death precisely so, and renoirre calls
this out. He says, for the sake of the living,
we must part with the dead. And it's difficult for
me to disagree with this, But it's also difficult for
me not to understand Male's point of view. And that's
the entire point of this whole last chapter. Her point
of view is that you can't destroy the last piece
of Verso. You just can't do it. And besides, this

(25:36):
is now her home. Alicia think about earlier in this
when she first sits down with Verso, she says that
she prefers mile And think about why Alicia is fundamentally
and intensely unhappy with her life outside and why shouldn't
she be. She is a shell of her former self.
And this is where I use that turn of phrase

(25:57):
from Francis Davis. She wears the debts and scars of
the past on her body. She will forever be defined
by that moment, by her family, by her loved ones,
by herself survivor's guilt. Her life cannot ever go back
to how it was, So why wouldn't she want to
live here where she can just exist normally, unexciting, uneventful,

(26:20):
but normal quote unquote normal, which is how you know,
folks that go through these tragedies that define their lives,
that's how they tend to speak about it. Why can't
I go back to the normalcy of what it was before?
I know this feeling all too well?

Speaker 2 (26:36):
Yeah, and you can't blame her for wanting to, yeah,
live in this kind of like ANRNIA type world where, yeah,
she's completely free of the shackles that she had, you know,
that had been given to her in the real world,
you know, right, it's I couldn't imagine.

Speaker 1 (26:53):
Man, it's difficult, you know, And I say, I know
all too well. I obviously I don't have a disability
or anything. I have a couple of scars that are
pretty noticeable, but it's it's nothing life changing like this.
It's more so like I don't want to get into
this on Mike, but like I understand, being wholly unsatisfied

(27:14):
with your life is the thing. I get it. Yeah, No,
I totally get that too.

Speaker 2 (27:18):
And it's it's easy to want that escape, especially when
you feel like in the real world there is no
like way to improve things. When I mean I feel
like there's always a way to improve things. Sure, I
imagine with her situation it's a lot more difficult than
some other people. But you know, you can't you can't

(27:42):
blame somebody for wanting to take the easy route in
this kind of a situation. And in a way, Eleene
is doing the same thing.

Speaker 1 (27:50):
She needs therapy, that's really what she needs do, but
instead but instead she just like, yeah, instead of hiring
a grief counselor they just paint this fantastic world to
just you know, escape in and fight Nevron's in like
the lengths people will go to to avoid therapyment, Well,
we talk about like numbing the pain in real life,

(28:10):
you know, escaping into I don't know, social media, alcohol,
podcasts or something like that. But like now, but like
think about how intense this pain must be. You know,
this is why with the most intense injuries on the planet,
they'll give like not narcotics like opiates, you know, fentanyl's
that comes from a hospital setting because it numbs pain

(28:32):
and sensations. So well, that's psychologically what they're approaching here.
So like, I don't know, just talking to each other
that might not necessarily numb the pain in the way
that they need. Now I'm not saying this is healthy,
but it's understandable. Yeah, Like, well, clearly talking to each
other is not working. Yeah, has it worked so far?

Speaker 2 (28:52):
Get a professional kids if you can. I know, I
know it's difficult, especially these days, but if you have
the means, please try.

Speaker 1 (29:00):
It's worth it. So Renoir is not having any of
this shit. He slams his cane down. He's prepared to fight,
he summons Nevron's He's ready to go, ses Squire, Thank you, Google,
Skia and Minoco comes down. They come to sweep us
back to camp. This is where Mio rediscovers her paintress powers.
She can control chroma, she can paint reality, although she's

(29:23):
not quite as skilled as Eleen or Clea, but she
does here. She is able to repaint Lune and Coo.
And this is another online talking point. Before you say anything,
the in game justification of this is that one, as
I said, she lacks the power, and two she lacks
the chroma to repaint everybody, hence the lack of Gustav,
or at least that's one reason Gustave is lost. My

(29:45):
interpretation of this, and I think this is the right
one is as right as you can be with interpretations,
which is to say not at all. But if she
were to repaint Gustav, that would take away significant character
development for her on accept loss. Now that will come
into complete dissonance with what we're going to see later.
But that's just the human condition. It's messy, it's thorny.

(30:08):
We can't avoid that. Yeah, I think that's fair.

Speaker 2 (30:11):
Like I didn't even think about her potentially repainting Gustave,
but I think it's smart that she doesn't because I
think if she did, it would have come off a
little too like Fairy Taley everything's okay kind of thing,
which I think would have been kind of bullshit.

Speaker 1 (30:28):
But think about it.

Speaker 2 (30:29):
Yeah, the game is about like these people who are
struggling with grief and to see my l and don't
even necessarily they don't I can't remember if they necessarily
make a point of her not bringing back Gustave. But
yet in a way, her not doing that shows that
she has, you know, been through the grieving process and
that she can move on from that.

Speaker 1 (30:48):
Right.

Speaker 2 (30:49):
But then of course you can make the argument why
she do that with lunin cl butay day whatever, man, Okay,
well they didn't you need you need an RPG.

Speaker 1 (30:59):
Okay, we need fight. They didn't die in universe, so
like they got gomad. That's true. Oh, that's true. That's true.
And you know the stakes that we see later in
the game where her and Verso kind of are at
odds with what they fundamentally believe that is that's around
the idea of loved ones, and that's when that's when
logic and consistency starts to break down with a lot

(31:20):
of people. So that's understandable. Yeah, yeah, Lune here they're
at camp. They're all reminiscing, why is your hair of
that color? And she says, well, it's a long story.
Fade the black, you know, just call me gain it off.
Lune brings up a point. All expeditioners killed by Nevron's
did not have their chroma returned to Aleen. I'm a
little bit confused on this. Like they are gray, which

(31:43):
suggests the color is gone from their body. You know, yeah,
did Claya take it. I'm a little unclear on those. Yeah,
I don't think. I don't think the game makes it
clear either, which again, you know, that's okay, it's not
a huge deal, But it didn't go back to Aleen
is the big thing. So what we gathered all of
the chroma to bring back our following fallen comrades, you know,

(32:04):
and that's what we're gonna do. There's a there's a
little line here I wrote down Verso says Aleen wants
her son back. Renoir wants you in a lean back,
You want Gustav back. The cycle we needed to break
wasn't the gomage. It's your family cycle of grief. I
wish this wasn't here. It's a little heavy handed. I
think they do a perfectly fine job of highlighting that
in the story, but uh, he says it. It's fine.

Speaker 2 (32:27):
It feels like at this point they're like, this is
what the story is about. If you're confused here it is,
which I'm sure there's somebody who appreciated it.

Speaker 1 (32:37):
Sure, yeah, probably, So that's what we do. We're going
around to collect the chroma.

Speaker 5 (32:42):
She is.

Speaker 1 (32:44):
She's creating an army of the undead. She's a fucking
army of dead men. She's pulling a mister Bones from
the hit Sega Saturn game. Mister Bone, It's just an
army of uh corpses. Yeah, that's a great game, it is.

Speaker 2 (32:59):
I made the U the Lord of the Rings reference,
you know, And I think it's Return of the King
when aer Gorna gets the the Army of the Dead
to help him fight on the Plantier Hills.

Speaker 1 (33:11):
Oh yeah, that's a better pool than mister Bones. Eh.
It's about even I'd say, I'd say it's about even.

Speaker 5 (33:17):
So.

Speaker 1 (33:18):
This is the World of Ruin section. If you're a
Final Fantasy six fan, you can head to the Final
Dungeon as soon as you get here. This Act three
can be the shortest in the entire game if you want. Yeah,
that being said, why don't we talk about some of
the relationship quests and the superbosses.

Speaker 2 (33:35):
Sure, I probably didn't dive into them as much as
you did, but I did what I could do the
ones that were like not heavy on, like the questing,
you know, because there were some or just like, oh,
just talk to him a bunch of times and you're good.
But there were I think there was one where I
did the quest and it was super easy. But yeah,
we can get there.

Speaker 1 (33:56):
As we go. Yeah, no problem, let's talk about them here.
You mentioned one one one of them does have no
quest attached to it, and that's Cel's. I'm kind of
perplexed as to why, because, like compared to Lunez especially,
it's much more intense and fits with the thesis of
the game much better. You talk with cl and you
learn why she's afraid of water. It's because she tried

(34:19):
to kill herself. Losing her husband Pierre was so painful
that she tried to kill herself, and when she was revived,
the doctors told her that one she was pregnant and
to the attempt killed the baby too. So her big
thing now is like Mayo can bring these people back.
How is she going to tell Pierre that she lost

(34:39):
the baby? Yeah?

Speaker 2 (34:40):
It very very very heavy handed, because when you're not
heavy or yeah, not heavy handed, just heavy but no, no,
yeah heavy, that's what I meant. And yet it's all
like incredibly sad, and it's her going through the grief
and talking to Verso about it, and you learn all
about this like dark side of her which you didn't

(35:01):
really know existed beforehand. But then it like culminates in
like you two consummating, I think, yeah, yeah, you.

Speaker 1 (35:11):
Can hook up with her. That was kind of weird
to me, like like, okay, is this pity sex?

Speaker 5 (35:18):
Well?

Speaker 1 (35:19):
Well, I mean, I mean we see that a lot
in real life, to that thorniness, like just because somebody's
lost a partner, they can have that grief and seek
out relationships. You know, no, for sure, for sure, I'm
not denying that.

Speaker 2 (35:31):
It's just it just feels like it's a weird kind
of shift, kind of like the one you know, you
know what I mean.

Speaker 1 (35:39):
It's just it's not bad.

Speaker 2 (35:40):
It's just like, oh, okay, like you intentionally wrote it
this way interesting and if you hook up with her,
you cannot hook up with Lunae, which you can also do.

Speaker 1 (35:50):
Yeah, I prefer cl anyway. Yeah, I'm I don't know,
I'm not sure who I prefer. Ska. But with speaking
of Luna's I actually like Luna's quest the least. I
don't mean to be reductive about it, but it kind
of boils down to the stereotype of strict Asian parents,
you know, which might resonate with some people, but I

(36:12):
don't know, it feels very overdone in cliche.

Speaker 2 (36:15):
Yeah, it's a little stereotyped, and they just it feels
like they never really bothered to give her like an
actual decent like backstory or like a little twit, Like
I think she could have had a little bit of
a twist to her story, you know, but she really doesn't.
And it just kind of amounts to like what you expect,

(36:37):
which isn't always a bad thing.

Speaker 1 (36:39):
Sure, but I don't know. I just I was hoping
they do a little bit more with her. Yeah. Yeah,
it's a stereotype, it's wrote, it's trite, whatever you want
to say. She like in it accounts for her austere
and logic nature, you know. She says that her parents
saw her as a research assistant. That's why they had
her when she That's why they had her. You go
and fight this SPOS near Currend's dungeon. You receive the

(37:02):
journal forty six, which was written by Luna's mom's comrade.
Luna's mom, Bridget, died protecting them from Nevron's and her
last words were those of gratification that Lunae would pick
up the research after their deaths. Yeah, you know, it's
it's just very predictable.

Speaker 2 (37:22):
I feel like they could have I don't know why.
I just thought this, like they could have went like
almost like a Spock vibe with her backstory, you know
where it's like say like wonderful, are you.

Speaker 1 (37:31):
Gonna spoil Star Trek for me now? Too? Is nothing
sacred to you?

Speaker 2 (37:35):
I mean giving you slight details on Spock's backstories, but well, basically,
like for those who don't know, Spock is half Vulcan
the other half is human. He has a Vulcan father
and a human mother, and Vulcans are known for being rational,
logical creatures. They have no emotions, right, but with Spock

(37:56):
being a half race, a by racial angel if you will,
he kind of struggles with those type of like human
emotions and like just wants to be like a pure
logical vulcan and that's always and that's a conflict with
him through like a lot of the original series and
mainly in A Star Trek the Motion Picture. His arc

(38:20):
in that movie is really good about him going through
that whole process. And I feel like with Lune they
could have done something like that where maybe one of
her parents was really strict and the other one was
like more care free, and they both maybe were trying
to like give her different directions to go in life,
and she's like.

Speaker 1 (38:37):
Not sure which one to go down.

Speaker 2 (38:38):
So it's like she's like, I feel like I should
be strict because I feels like that's the logical thing
to do. But you know, there's this like other voice
in her head saying that she doesn't have to be
so strict, and maybe like that conflict in her could
have been more of the story, you know.

Speaker 1 (38:54):
Yeah, yeah, I think that's a good way of looking
at it.

Speaker 2 (38:57):
Just just an idea. You know, go watch some Star
Trek's great.

Speaker 1 (39:00):
She takes up songwriting afterwards. Her parents never liked it,
of course, so you know she's moving on. Ska's is
pretty sweet. You try to cheer Francois up. He Francois
has your rock gui, which gives you the diving power,
so you're gonna trade rocks with him. Get you make
this little rock figurine that looks like him with a
grumpy little face and a doll version of Claya on top,

(39:25):
which makes me think, like, did Clia have a pet
turtle or a pet rock? And was she born in
the eighties? I think pet rock was a seventies thing?
Oh was it? I think? Okay?

Speaker 2 (39:37):
I used to watch a lot of when VH one
had those like I love the seventies, I love the eighties.
Oh sure, and one of the I Love the seventies
they did a whole section on the pet rock I was.

Speaker 1 (39:47):
I never had a pet rock. They were even you
still saw them now and then in the nineties too.
I never had that.

Speaker 2 (39:53):
I had the sea monkeys for a little bit. Oh really,
those little thing. Yeah that was very weird.

Speaker 1 (39:58):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (39:58):
My grandparents were like, kids are into these, right, and
I'm like, I guess.

Speaker 1 (40:02):
Now those freaked me out. I get that they're a
little weird. It's really sweet. You have to fight Francois,
of course, but give him the rock. He's very grumpy.
He's like, take your rock, and then he's like, yeah,
but you can leave that one. And it's really sweet.
As you're leaving, you hear him crying. So Ska was
right the whole time. You know, he he's been desperately

(40:25):
missing Clea. It's really sweet.

Speaker 5 (40:28):
Wow.

Speaker 1 (40:30):
Hey there, folks, mild Persona four spoilers are coming up.
If you want to miss those, skip to forty three minutes.
I'll give you a second just in case you can't
get to the phone. Maybe you're driving, maybe you're doing dishes,
got sudsy hands, driving to the bakery, maybe coffee, post office?
All right, you got your phone? All right? Skip to
forty three minutes or so to skip the spoilers. Thanks.

Speaker 2 (40:53):
He reminds me a teeny bit of a Kangi social
link in Persona four, where it's like it's mostly like
he's mostly played as like a like a comedic kind
of a character, but the closer you get to him,
you realize more of the kind of emotion in his situation,
you know, And I think they try to do something
similar with Skia, but you know, not as like questioning

(41:15):
other things about his character.

Speaker 1 (41:17):
But wanted to talk about that. One. I need to
replay that. Two. I don't think it needs a remake,
but you know I'll play that two. Three. Nothing drives
play the remake. That's the replay, will be the remake.
Nothing drives me crazier than when people talk about Kanji
and best girl Nalto. Is it Nuto? Uh?

Speaker 2 (41:39):
If you think Nwato's best girl, I was asking for
her name. I think it's an Alato. Yeah, I don't
think she's best girl.

Speaker 1 (41:48):
Nothing drives me crazier than like when they're like, you know,
Kanji's gay, like that's his arc, or like NATO's trans
It's like if if that's the narrow brush part in
the pun that you want wide rush, excuse me that
you want to paint with and you want to miss
all the nuance with it, be my guest, But that
is such a reductive take of those two characters. Persona's

(42:08):
got enough reductive writing as it is. You got to
give them the credit where it's due.

Speaker 2 (42:12):
Well, I do think Naoto and Kanji like questioning their
sexuality is part of their characters. Well, yes, it's much
deeper than it's just Kanji's in the closet or Naoto
you know, is like transgender. Like it's if that's all
somebody is saying about them, it's like, well, they didn't
really play the game, because there's clearly more there with

(42:36):
those characters. I mean, it could be an element of it, absolutely,
I mean. And what I like is Kanji is left
kind of vague because I think even he doesn't know
what he is, you know, and he's only a teenager.

Speaker 1 (42:49):
He'll figure it out. It deals with societal expectations, It
deals with conformity, how one views oneself. There's so much
more than just you know, Kanji is gay, I don't know.
But that's why Kanji's my favorite character in the game.
Monoko Monoko. His relationship quest is focused on bringing Noko back.
Here's something that I admittedly did not realize until very late.

(43:12):
The Gesturles are all paint brush looking things, right, That's
what they are representive of.

Speaker 2 (43:17):
Explains their heads. They reincarnate, that's set up earlier. That's
kind of like washing off the paint brush in the water,
like cleaning it off. And you know, they mentioned that
when they're reincarnated, When Noko's reincarnated, he'll never be he'll
not be the same Noco. He will be a different
Noko than we knew, but he will look the same.
And that's you know, that's kind of what washing a

(43:39):
paint brush off is. You know, it's never going to
be the exact same thing. You think about it that way?

Speaker 1 (43:44):
Pretty cool. Well, and when you dip it in, when
when you.

Speaker 2 (43:47):
Dip it in paintbrush to give it a different color,
you know, each color represents something completely different, you know,
like red has its own meaning and blue has its
own meaning that you know, or like kind of employ
said biases or you know what society is, Like red
means this, you know that kind of a thing. And
I think that's also reflective of it of like a

(44:07):
different color could bring about a different personality.

Speaker 1 (44:10):
Yeah, sure, I could see that. You head to the
Sacred River, which is a really beautiful location. Ah, oh
my god. Yes, it's like really dark and shimmering. There
are like colorful uh statuettes and rocks everywhere. It's really nice.
I mean you've got to fight golgra because, like you
could see all around there are like statue petrified past

(44:34):
gesturals that are waiting to be reincarnated. There's a queue
there's a line and Monoco is jumping it. So Gogra's like,
all right, well you gotta you gotta fight me. And
this fight is bitchen. It is hard, man, it's difficult.
I didn't beat it. I tried like three times and
I couldn't do it. Halfway through she goes super Saiyan
and she just cranks up the heat.

Speaker 3 (44:55):
Man.

Speaker 1 (44:55):
I barely scraped through this one. But man, this I
love this fight.

Speaker 2 (44:59):
It's so I was always able to get when she
went super Saiyan, but then I just I just couldn't
hang after that.

Speaker 3 (45:05):
You know.

Speaker 1 (45:05):
I was probably just too under leveled and I didn't
want to spend however long it would have taken to grind.
So oh well, when you beat her, you do you
do revive Noko? He is he does not remember anything.
And this deeply, deeply saddens Monoco because like Noko raised
Munoco Ya and some folks have tied this back to

(45:26):
the Dessander's family's dogs, possibly because Monoko was their dog,
and it could have been that, you know, you dog dies,
you get a new dog. Cat diyes you a new cat,
that kind of thing.

Speaker 2 (45:36):
That's a good way of thinking of it. Yeah, yeah,
it's neat. It's it's a neat interpretation. But Noko raised Munoco,
and Monoco said like, this should have been my turn.
But you know, Eskia or not esk Versa and Golger
are like, dude, we're going to kill God. Noko is
better suited reacquainting with.

Speaker 1 (45:53):
The world in the village. Yeah, yeah, and I don't
think he has the ability to kill God. We talked
about cl Mile. This is my favorite one. I mean,
not surprisingly Myle's my favorite character, but we are. This
is a confrontation of painted Alicia. You go up into
this tower called the Reacher. This is actually the third

(46:15):
axon the Reacher and this I couldn't wrap my mind
around this at first. This tower is like quasi living,
you know, it can move around. This is a representation
of male of Alicia. The other two are representative of
Cleo and Verso. This one of Alicia. It's the most
abstract one. She who reaches for the skies. I think

(46:36):
it's it's hopeful, right, she's the youngest, she's the most
impacted other than you know Verso, because you know he's sad,
so there's an inherent hope. It's made of flammable materials,
which is a little grim sardonic, but you know, you
get to the top of it and Painted Alicia is there.
She's painting. Verso tries to give her the letter, but

(46:58):
she is so upset with him because Verso killed her parents.
You know, we've already killed the painted versions of them.
She drops the letter. She agrees to talk with Mael.
They have a friendly little duel. This is one of
my favorite fights in the game. It's a really good fight. Yeah,
it's so good. It's so cool seeing her with like

(47:20):
she's got Mile's move set, but she's got variations on
it where they just hit harder, they move faster, there's
more moves on it. Oh man, it is so cool.
She also has a touching line Mile does. She says
she blames us, doesn't she And then she turns to
Painted Alicia and she says, you didn't deserve that. You
know she Miyle knows too well what losing family is.

(47:42):
She's lost many, but you beat her. It's a really
sweet moment. It's a love of fencing between the two.
You know. Miele offers her a new life. She says,
we both deserve to fly. Let me give you a
new beginning. But painted Alicia doesn't want this. Her voice
is strained. She says, send me to my family, and
Mael obliges. She mimages her and Verso cannot stand this.

(48:04):
He freaks out, but he can't get there quick enough.
He never got the chance to say goodbye. This is interesting,
you know, This is what I was saying before. Verso
will eventually come around to like what Mayo was thinking here.
But his sister was the last of his family that
he had. He never got to say goodbye. She took
him away too quickly. She took the renoirre route of

(48:30):
like trying to advance this along quicker. He says, You painters,
you just do what you want. You don't care how
it affects the rest of us. It's a nice little
wrinkle in their philosophies of this. I think, Yeah, I agree.
Did you do this one? No? I did not. Oh man,
it's good, it's good. You should. You should check it out,

(48:52):
you know what, I just might just might do that.
Did you check out the Superbosses? Oh no, I didn't
even know they were a thing. Oh yeah, so one
of them is Clea. This isn't so like you find her,
and she is like super gray with very beady eyes.
They look so evil and intimidating. Mile says that she
painted over Eleen's version of her. I guess she didn't

(49:14):
like it, so she painted over this one to be
like super strong, because she's a really talented painter. And
this boss is wicked man. She like attacks with Nevron.
She can summon them and they'll all have adjectives like powerful, agile, strange.
So you have to learn their attack patterns because if
you miss a Perry, or if you dodge, or if
you get hit Clay, I will hear herself from like

(49:36):
one point five to two million HP. Oh great, I
mean this fight demands perfection. Luckily, it's not like there
aren't a crazy amount of them, and you can you
can learn their attack patterns pretty fairly simply, but it
does it takes a while. Yeah, yeah, And knowing how

(49:57):
much I struggled with the combat at time, I feel
like I wouldn't have made much progress in this one.
So Simon is even worse now. Like you're going down
there and everybody's like, I've got a really bad feeling
about this, and you get down there. This is the
most metal looking scene in the game. There's this dude
sitting there, one armed, huge sword with his hair like

(50:20):
long hair sticking up like super sayan three goku and
those you remember those like molten swords we saw in
Old Lumiere. Yeah, yeah, those were all his. Like, there
are just loads of them down here sticking up. It
looks like a metal album cover. It's sick.

Speaker 5 (50:36):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (50:36):
Look looking at his character model, he's like a weird
mixture of like cloud, a little bit of suffer Off
and maybe a little bit of Orin as well.

Speaker 1 (50:45):
Yeah. Yeah, like very very final fantasy. He was in
Expedition zero with Verso he's Versa's old friend. He's Cleya's lover.
That's revealed in his journal. His fight. It's just infamously brutal.
I built a bit old with solo male that could
take one shot his Phase one. But here's the problem. One,

(51:05):
I mean one, his attacks are crazy. Two. If any
of your characters die and you don't revive them quickly,
he just erases them from the canvas. He just takes
them away. Phase two. After you deplete his after you
debuff his health to zero, Phase two gets the health
bar up again. His sword gets even bigger. His attacks
now have shadows, so like they're they're the same attacks mostly,

(51:28):
but now you have to hit Harry twice because he's
got like a shadow sword. It's weird. And once you
get him down to like a third or a fourth
of his health, he automatically wipes whoever is on the
on the battlefield away. He just removes them, and then
your backups have to come in, so like, you can't
even get away with just three good characters. Everybody has
to be up to snuff. Fuck that, Yeah, dude, it's

(51:52):
it's crazy. Yeah, no, thank you, Yeah, agreed. Why don't

(52:17):
we beat the game now? Huh? Good idea. I feel
like I talked like mostly throughout a lot of that.
I apologize. I hope that's cool. Oh you are good man.
So we're beating the game. Now. We go back into Lumiere.
It's draped in this sort of constant pallid darkness. Void
type Nevron's are introduced here. That one that looks like

(52:38):
a horse with like a void sphere on its back.
Yeah yeah, that thing is sick. That's the most thing
is I can get that as an attack, and it's
easily one of his most powerful. Oh that sounds great.
We get down there. It gets a little bit to
avengers for me, you know, we get down there. Mile
points her sword and says it gets a close up

(52:59):
and she's like, tomorrow comes.

Speaker 2 (53:01):
It's yeah, yeah, that's really where it felt like they
were getting to the end and they're like, okay, we
got to wrap it up, throw some cliches in there,
just to get get it going.

Speaker 1 (53:10):
I didn't even think they were trying to wrap it
up so much as like, I don't know, they were like,
you know, what's epic marvels Like, no, no, I mean
it's epic to somebody. I guess, yeah, I guess. I'm
not trying to yuck anyone's yum. It's just, uh, I
don't know. It made me kind of grown.

Speaker 5 (53:29):
No.

Speaker 2 (53:29):
I think I think that's fair because the game has
had a very mature kind of writing that to do
something like that that feels more like a a weird
tonal shift than the whole like revealing the paint paint,
the revealing the canvas thing.

Speaker 1 (53:45):
You know. You know, it's funny you said this game's
got mature writing, and immediately my voice went back to
Ska throwing up mid sentence. I'm sorry, Hey, Hey, it happens, man,
it's just part of life. You've never thrown up mid sentence.
It happens to the best who hasn't drank an entire
bottle of it at the cac to see who gets

(54:07):
the last pie. Not specifically that type, but yeah, sure,
those nevrons are everywhere, but we've got our mister Bones
army or I guess if you're thrack the air Gorn army.
I like, mister Bones, that's fine. You run forward and
like they're jumping out to get the nevrons. It's pretty sweet,
Like it's pretty cool. Love it, absolutely love it. The

(54:30):
scale here is insane, Like you're running towards that distortion
of the Eiffel Tower. It is so big. I love
how this game plays with scale. I really do.

Speaker 2 (54:39):
Yeah, And when you see that crazy Eiffel Tower, I
was like, man, I hope we actually get close to it.
Like we don't actually ever do anything.

Speaker 1 (54:48):
Inside that Eiffel Tower, but it was nice to get
like closer to it, especially for it to be the
backdrop for some of like the last fights. Yeah. Absolutely,
you eventually encounter run here. It's the final stand. This
is going to decide the fate of Lumiere and all
its inhabitants, Verso and the canvas. Miele is pleading, but

(55:08):
Renoirre is steadfast. Some of this I'm going to just
read because the audio the voices get a little tough
to hear. Renoire says, I know how powerful and intoxicating
it is, how deeply attached we can become to the
worlds we pour our hearts and souls into. I was
enthralled and it nearly killed me. Child. Do you think
I want to erase versus Canvas? Do you really think

(55:32):
I want to destroy the last piece of his soul?
There's no right answer here. I mean, That's what I
love so much about this last act is this is
less of a trying to find out who's right and
more of an unraveling and exploration of how these emotions

(55:52):
can manifest and what the thought processes behind them are.

Speaker 2 (55:56):
Yeah and yeah, with the emotions manifesting kind of explains
how it feels like everything is just starting to fall
apart around you, you know, like just all this pent
up emotion that's been happening, it's just it's.

Speaker 1 (56:11):
The dam is starting to burst. I guess and it's
too much to deal with. It weighs on the mind
like a vice. It squeezes it until the I mean
the air is sucked out of it. It's like it's
like when you get hit so hard in the chest
you can't breathe, like you want to, but you just cannot.
It's it's like that, like really, for some people, it
gets physically like that, like you just you can't do

(56:33):
anything exactly, and it does stuff to you. It changes
how you think and feel. It's our brains are insane things.
Indeed they are. They named themselves. Oh my god. Yeah,
oh geez, I'm having like a timan Eric mind blow
a moment. I haven't mean to do that too. Oh man,
I gotta take a shower. That's a shower thought if

(56:56):
I've ever heard one, that is. I think I saw
that in our slash Shower. Mayo pleads some more. Renoir
will not hear it, and his patience is wearing thin.
He I love this line, he says. He says, I
treat you as if the shadows from the worst day
of our lives is going to suffocate you and take
you from us too. So powerful, very powerful. That's what

(57:20):
it is. For him, seeing them in some way reminds him.
It's a constant reminder of the worst day of his life,
of losing his son.

Speaker 2 (57:29):
Yeah, Like, I feel like he's the one who wants
to properly grieve and move on from this, but everyone
around him just doesn't want to do it, and because
of that, he's getting sucked into this and being treated
as the bad guy when in right, if you really
think about it, he's probably the most sensible one here.

Speaker 1 (57:49):
Well, And that's one argument that I've heard too, and
I can understand Mael has this viewpoint of wanting to
prolong the comfortable experience Renoirre is older and grison. He's
been through this before. He knows that this is no
way to deal with grief. You know. The way to
deal with grief is to accept that those that are

(58:11):
gone will not come back. That's the cycle of life. Now.
Admittedly he is trying to push others through their own
cycles into that, which can become thorny. But you know,
that's one argument. He's been through this. He's been through
this before, he's walked this road. He knows how it goes.

Speaker 2 (58:28):
It probably comes from a place of frustration, you know,
like he wants to be. And also think about it, he's,
you know, the father, he's supposed to be like the
leader of the family right in terms, and he's trying
to like guide everybody to like, hey, I know how
to like deal with this, or like I've been through it.
Here's what we do. And to see basically his whole

(58:50):
family unit breaking down in front of him over this,
and he's losing control of it, right, you know. And
I think the end of this is kind of like
templary of that. It's just him like he's just lost
control of the whole thing, and kind of at the
end he just goes, fuck it.

Speaker 1 (59:07):
I guess he's like, I'll take it by force. I'll
do it myself. Yeah, yeah, fuck it, I'll do it.
He's been here before. He doesn't want what happened, what
presumably may have happened to him, happened to my own.
And I want to point out too, it's not just
the sight of Mael that reminds him of that day.
He's thinking about that. Seeing Verso two Verso is an

(59:28):
unholy reminder in his eyes of what transpired that day.
He should not be and yet here he is the thing.
This should not be. This leads into a battle. Nobody
can take it anymore. The dope music begins again, Renoir
morphs into the Curator terrific A really good fight too.
I you know, I feel like he summons the axons

(59:49):
throughout this fight, which is really cool. I don't know,
I feel like I'm just changed as a person from
fighting Simon.

Speaker 2 (59:59):
Yeah, because I I could imagine this fight isn't nearly
as hard as that one is something that I've seen
folks online say so like when you do New Game Plus,
everything just gets harder, more difficult, And I think Simon
and Claya do too, like big time.

Speaker 1 (01:00:15):
But I've now I dude, you gotta fight them. You'll
you'll understand it's it's something else.

Speaker 2 (01:00:23):
Maybe I'll find them just just try it once just
to see how bad it is and go, okay.

Speaker 1 (01:00:29):
It's it's weird.

Speaker 2 (01:00:30):
I mean like like this is a weird thing. But
like like when your friends are like, come on, do
this like dumb thing, You're like, I'll just do it
once just to make you happy, and then you never
do it again.

Speaker 1 (01:00:39):
The big thing in my middle school that's like that
where everyone's like, come on, man, just try it once.
Was the dairy challenge, where you drink a gallon of
milk and under an hour and try not to protect
how vomit everywhere? Oh no, we never did that, thankfully.
Yeah I never did it, but uh, it was big
amongst my friends. I'll say we were into the cinema

(01:01:00):
and challenge that was Oh that too. Yeah, that one
can kill you. It didn't kill me. Yeah, it didn't
stop us. We've got iron twenty bucks that day. Yeah,
we've got the good genes. I'm not wearing geens. I
have heard that if you do do the Superbosses that
the end of this game becomes like crazy easy, you know,

(01:01:20):
something to keep in mind.

Speaker 2 (01:01:21):
I could imagine, because, yeah, because this final battle is challenging,
but I didn't think it was like ridiculously tough.

Speaker 1 (01:01:29):
Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, it's family drama time. Remember at
the beginning when Claya and Alicia hid the canvas, Yes,
well Eleen found it, damn it. Renoire was right, she
found it. She returns to the canvas. She brings the
painted version of herself, the or not the painted version,
the representation of like her grief. That creation the goldlame

(01:01:49):
esque paintress in the background it's fighting against Sarn super sick.
Oh yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:01:56):
I love when you see like big fights happening behind
you when you're doing the small little fight you know.

Speaker 1 (01:02:01):
Oh yeah, yeah, the fight gets harder with Renoir. Here,
the frenetic attack got me pretty decently.

Speaker 2 (01:02:08):
Oh yeah, yeah, I'm I was surprised I beat him.
It was the second try.

Speaker 1 (01:02:13):
Yeah, first try, I got real close and then I
kind of messed up a little bit and died. But
when I did it the second time, I was able
to clear it, which was I was honestly kind of
surprised by that. But it wasn't until much later in
the game where I got the one chromo where you
can exceed the ninety nine like damage. Yeah, you get

(01:02:34):
that at the start of act three.

Speaker 2 (01:02:36):
Yeah, and once I figured out how that works and
I was able to pass it to everybody, Yeah, that
definitely made a lot of these fights much easier. And
especially like may L, who was like my big, you know, hitter,
I could get her to do like crazy amounts to
damage on him.

Speaker 1 (01:02:52):
Oh yeah, yeah, that it becomes essential at a certain point. Yeah.
I just wish I had learned that earlier in the game.

Speaker 3 (01:03:00):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:03:01):
I probably discussed it in part one. So go listen.
You know, if you beat Claia get you get an
absolute banger of a pictose where and this came in
clutch for me for Simon where if if you don't
take damage on the turn previous, you automatically regain one
hundred percent health. Oh that sounds amazing. Yeah, it's crazy

(01:03:23):
because I mean that's what she does the entire fight
to you, you know, yeah, yeah, here's my power. So
Renoird knows that he's been beaten. He's not entirely upset, though.
He says that it was a lean who first saved
him when he was in the canvas. He doesn't want
this to be like a hymn versus them, but he
still will not back down. He thinks he sees nothing

(01:03:44):
but that day, every day, NonStop, and how his family crumbled.
Do you know why? Do you know why I cannot
leave her.

Speaker 3 (01:03:56):
Or you behind?

Speaker 1 (01:04:11):
This?

Speaker 3 (01:04:13):
This is what I see every.

Speaker 1 (01:04:18):
Day.

Speaker 3 (01:04:23):
I cannot spend another day with living corpses.

Speaker 5 (01:04:30):
Since the fire, our family has crumbled and leaned in
the canvas, Claire fighting her solitary war, you living ghost.

(01:04:52):
Verso's death broke.

Speaker 1 (01:04:54):
Us wanted to be fixed. I needed to be fixed.

Speaker 5 (01:04:58):
I get.

Speaker 1 (01:05:01):
I cannot lose you too. It's I mean, it's it's
the kind of feelings that makes your hair stand on end. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:05:10):
Yeah, he's tired of reliving this grief over and over again.
He just wants it done.

Speaker 1 (01:05:15):
But the thing is is, Mile says, that's exactly how
she feels about all the friends that she's made along
the way. You know, that's maybe the expeditioners were the
friends we made along the way. Yeah. The music here
is like really still a lot of non vibrating strings.
It's nice, She convinces him honestly, She lies to him,
and he believes her. She says like, look, I'll I'll

(01:05:38):
come back. I'll come out of the canvas, like I
won't stay here forever, and he believes her. He well,
he doesn't gomage himself. He leaves the canvas willingly. He says,
I'll keep the light on for you. I hope you
find peace.

Speaker 5 (01:05:52):
Hm.

Speaker 1 (01:05:52):
But we know she's lying, she's gonna stay here. Do
you think that he chose to believe her because he's
just tired, or do you think he truly believed what
she was saying in that moment.

Speaker 2 (01:06:04):
I think he was so broken that he was willing
to accept whatever, you know, because by the end of
the fight, you can tell he is just a completely
broken down man and is just willing to accept whatever
is told to him, you know, even if he knows
it's not true. And I think he does know that,

(01:06:24):
but at this point there's nothing he can do about it.

Speaker 1 (01:06:27):
I think we've all been there, like when we're in
a particularly grueling back and forth with somebody we love,
or when we're just that depressed talking with somebody who's
trying to cheer us up, Like at some point you
just shut down. You're like, all right, Like I trust you,
like in some base level, I don't believe you, but
I just do not have the energy or the heart to,

(01:06:48):
you know, convince you. Otherwise I'm just going to go
along with you. Or maybe maybe even he's just you know,
placating her. Maybe he's like, I just I don't agree
with you. I want you to be happy. That has
become over these last few hours the most important thing
to me. I just hope you find your piece. Maybe
it's that I think it is too. I think in

(01:07:10):
some ways he's letting go as well. Maybe so I
don't know. Because that would mean that he's accepting the
loss of his daughter. I'm not. I you would have
to convince me that's fair, that's fair. Can you do it? No?
I just threw it out there as an idea. Man

(01:07:31):
not on Mike, only behind closed doors. Oh yes, yes. Now.
One thing to note is that at a certain point,
like when he talks about seeing that day over and
over again, I just see living corpses. He opens this
like pair within the painting, within the canvas that shows
you know, that day, and it also shows the young
boy painting that remember the like ghostly young boy. You

(01:07:56):
know that. At this point it's kind of clear it's Verso,
you know, yep, Verso, hour verso, the painted Verso all
throughout renoir and male's verbal sparring all throughout there. It
shows him he's looking at the ground, he's lost in thought,
he's pensive. He you can see a war raging on

(01:08:16):
inside of him. So he jumps inside of this rift
and he walks over to the young boy and he says,
it's time to stop painting. You're tired of painting, aren't you,
And he nods, I'm tired too. Mile does not like
this one bit. No, she follows him in. She doesn't
want this oblivion, this recompense that Renoir suggested. This is

(01:08:38):
not what she wants. She says, like, you know, if
I leave, Papa will erase the canvas. Immediately I leave,
papago erase this canvas. This is not worth your life, life,
my life of loveliness in a shell of a body
with no voice and no few you will in that way.

(01:09:02):
You don't need this covers Everything you want is here.

Speaker 5 (01:09:07):
Here.

Speaker 1 (01:09:07):
I have a chance to live, So.

Speaker 5 (01:09:09):
To live.

Speaker 4 (01:09:12):
Exists.

Speaker 1 (01:09:14):
Life keeps forcing cruel choices. He says that, and she's like,
don't quote Papa at me. Kind of funn oh dare
you you know? And this is the climax, Like Verso
extends a hand to the young boy, Miele swipes the sword.
You know, cruel choices. Indeed, it's you know. And these
are okay, let's talk endings. These are the end. These

(01:09:38):
are divisive. Again. I want to totally make this point clear.
Neither one is correct. I personally think one is much
more interesting. But neither are quote unquote correct. Everybody is
right and wrong simultaneously. Here right Mayel will never ever

(01:09:59):
lead a life that is not fraught with the debts
of that day, the shadow of Verso's death, the quote
naivety of her as Claya said that that caused the
death of her brother. Her disfiguring and a disability constant
remind her a reminder, and she will be defined by that.
Verso has been cursed with ceaseless immortality. He's tired. He's

(01:10:22):
a facsimile of somebody else, Like he's not even him technically.
He's been seeking an end for years. He is so tired,
and everybody he loves has gone away. You know, I
can see both points. You know, I don't think either
is wrong. I think I don't know, I understand both

(01:10:44):
of these.

Speaker 2 (01:10:44):
It's a case of like the way the story was
leading up, there was this way the story was building up.
There was no way for there to be like a
happy ending. There wasn't And I think the developers intentionally
made it that way, because, Uh, it's gonna come down
to your interpretation, like, which ending do you think is

(01:11:05):
the better ending?

Speaker 1 (01:11:06):
Right?

Speaker 2 (01:11:08):
It was interesting where like the ending I chose seem
to be the one most people didn't choose, which I
found interesting.

Speaker 1 (01:11:17):
Yeah, you know, there aren't as many of these takes anymore,
because you know, now everybody can just make a video
essay for better or for worse, and you know, people
watch them and then make their own Reddit posts about it.
It's a whole carousel.

Speaker 2 (01:11:33):
But people don't sharing cycle of content regurgitation.

Speaker 1 (01:11:38):
Yeah, basically, yeah, we say on a podcast, basically it
is what it is. But I don't see this take anymore.
But a lot of folks said, like, yeah, there it
is black and white. One of these is clearly the
right one that that the devs are steering you towards,
and quite honestly, the one that they're citing, the one
that we're going to talk about right now, versos ending
is not the one that I think the devs were

(01:11:59):
steering you towards at all. No, I don't. In a way.
I do think they are, like, in a way trying
to point you to a specific ending. I do.

Speaker 2 (01:12:10):
I Yeah, I don't think it's the VERSA ending either.
I think it's the other one, which I think is
interesting because in my opinion, I think the Verso ending
is the more it's the more solid ending. For my sake,
Oh really, yes, do you.

Speaker 1 (01:12:28):
Want to talk about it and then say why you
think that is well, I would say, let's just discuss
the versa ending real quick. Okay, So if you choose versa,
you fight as versa against my own. She begins to gomage,
and you know, he's just forcing her out of the canvas.
She's not being murdered here. And this is like a

(01:12:48):
sort of what I wrote here as an araboris of death.
He is losing her within the canvas. She is losing
him once more, because once she's gone, he's going to
end at all. Right, so she is once again losing
a new found family member. Right, this is part of
the tragedy of her side of things. Verso then embraces

(01:13:11):
Minoco and Skia. They all hug before those two gamage
as well. Then cl then Lune will not meet him.
She is kind of pissed. She just sits down, and
then he walks up to the young boy. He says,
it's okay, it's over. Verso then you know he presumably
destroys the canvas. Well, no, because once the young boy,

(01:13:34):
once real, Verso's soul stops painting, this whole thing ceases
to be. So that's done. Versu's soul is gone. That
means his creation, his world is over in the real world,
notably with a not distorted Eiffel Tower. The Desandras hold
a small funeral for verso you know, everybody seems content,

(01:13:56):
mostly even Clea, although she is the first one to
walk away. Surprisingly, Alicia seems content too. It is kind
of the happy ending and that's it. Then it goes
to credits.

Speaker 2 (01:14:10):
It's kind of the happy ending, but also it does
kind of bring that sort of reality crushing moment to
it as well, because I think, in my opinion, I
think knowing what they knew after everything had happened, I
feel like if they tried to just keep the canvas going,

(01:14:31):
I feel like they wouldn't have gotten that sort of
like kind of calming or relief that I think they
would have felt, because it's one of those like it's
hard to put the toothpaste back in the tube, and
it's like when you already know, like, oh, this thing
that I'm in, this positive sort of almost fantasyland that

(01:14:53):
I live in, is not real and it only exists
to relieve the grief of somebody else else in a
very unhealthy manner. Personally, I don't think I would be
able to live with that, Like I think that would
weigh heavier on me, like not facing reality but escaping

(01:15:14):
into like a fantasy. And that's why I think the
verso ending for me, I think works better because it
allows you to sort of realize that, hey, no matter
what kind of way you try to escape the negative feelings,
the only way you really can escape those is to

(01:15:34):
confront them head on and take them on. And it
feels like that's what they're doing and realizing that, you know,
no matter how many different canvases you try to paint,
it's not going to take the pain away, and the
only way to take the pain away is to confront
that pain. And I think that's what they're trying to
say with that ending, which to me, I think fits

(01:15:57):
better with the whole theme of Green. So it sounds
like you're aligning yourself with Renoir's pithy saying we must
accept things how they are, not how we want them
to be. In a way, yes, because you can't have
in my opinion, you can't have control over everything in
your life.

Speaker 1 (01:16:17):
You just can't.

Speaker 2 (01:16:19):
And learning to accept that I think can make your
life better, Like control the things you can control, but
learn to accept that there are things beyond your control.
And I think like having the painterests and doing all
this stuff is them trying to assert control in a

(01:16:40):
situation they don't have control of at all, and and
doing that, I feel like it only makes you weaker.
It only makes you feel weaker and feel like you
can't do anything, which may equate to the way they,
you know, start to break down and chip away. You
know that they're just desperately trying to hang on to

(01:17:01):
something that is just it's already gone, They've already lost
the fight and they're just still trying to hold on
to it. And I think that just makes you a
I feel like that just makes you worse as opposed
to just you know, accepting certain things. I'm probably not
worrying it correctly, but.

Speaker 1 (01:17:20):
No, no, I think you are. I can I float
something by you please?

Speaker 4 (01:17:24):
Now?

Speaker 1 (01:17:25):
So if you can picture like a three pronged scale
instead of like the traditional two pronged one, you know,
something in the in the realm of a super scale,
how would you balance the following three things of the
life of Verso, the life of Mael, because again, if
she stays in the canvas, she will die, and the

(01:17:48):
lives of all of painted Lumiere, and I guess a
follow up question or alternative question would be what do
you think of the lives of those painted and Lumiere like,
how do we weigh these sacrifices against each other when
some of them are going to be cast away? How
do we reconcile that to make a decision?

Speaker 2 (01:18:10):
I think how I reconcile that stuff is like I'm
the guy in the movie where they shout like, but
it's not real. You know, I'm that guy because in
a way they're not. They kind of like represent that
they're like, they're not. They're just this world that has

(01:18:30):
been created by this person to deal.

Speaker 1 (01:18:34):
With their grief.

Speaker 2 (01:18:35):
And no matter how real they may feel to you,
at the end of the day, in my perspective is
that they're not real. They're just figments of your imagination.
And when you get lost in that too much and
then you can't see what's right in front of you,
that just makes things harder, you know what I mean?
Does that make myel and Gustav's relationship less real? Not

(01:18:59):
in the moment, And I don't think it detracts from
the impact that it may have on people. You know,
and it was a you know it. It was nice
to see that, but just for me, it's like, but
was it even real to begin with? And if it wasn't,
you know? So do you see that Mayel and Gustav

(01:19:20):
as a sort of self numbing then, like in the
face of grief, like some sort of medicating pacifying in
some ways, yes, because I think that's something we all
try to do when we deal with grief, is try
to try to numb that pain because we don't want
to feel that those are bad feelings. We don't like
to feel bad feelings.

Speaker 1 (01:19:41):
That's so interesting. So like, at what point then, I mean,
the question that follows is at what point would they
become human or would something like this become human? There's
no mean real answer to that, but like.

Speaker 2 (01:19:53):
No, it's down to perception, it is, and my perception
is probably going to be different from other people's perceptions,
and that's fine. I'm willing to, Like, I accept that,
that's okay if we have disagreements on it, but you know,
and it can feel real to somebody else, and I
understand that, you know, But at the end of the day,
in my opinion, I'm like, I it probably wasn't. It

(01:20:15):
was just a coping mechanism, and it feels like the
whole canvas, paintress, the entire thing to me boiled down
to being like an elaborate coping mechanism, which is probably
something that a lot of artists do when they're feeling
those negative emotions, they express it in their art and

(01:20:36):
then it creates the whole art imitating life, life imitating
art type of thing.

Speaker 1 (01:20:42):
You know.

Speaker 2 (01:20:42):
Being in the music world, I'm sure you understand where
I'm coming from from that, where like, even if it
is art and it's not real, it can feel real
to the person that's making it, And that's very much true.
But maybe it's because I'm not the one who made
the art, so viewing it from an outsider's perspective is

(01:21:03):
probably different than, say, if I were the one doing
this to get over the grief.

Speaker 1 (01:21:08):
Hmmm, So so you side?

Speaker 3 (01:21:12):
Uh?

Speaker 1 (01:21:12):
Do you largely side with Renoir for wanting to rush
them through this? Not rush them through it? No, I don't.

Speaker 2 (01:21:20):
I don't like his method of just trying to hurry
it along. Like grieving is a unique process for everybody,
and everybody handles it differently. Like not to get too
deep into my own real life, but when my grandfather
on my on my mom's side the family passed away
quite a few years ago, seeing like he was kind

(01:21:43):
of the centerpiece of the family in a lot of ways,
and so seeing how his death affected not just like
my mother, but like her siblings and then those siblings families,
and then you know, my own siblings and everybody around it,
Like seeing everybody dealing with the grief in their own way.

(01:22:07):
And in some ways I sympathize with Renoir because some
of those family members I think went about their grieving
process in I don't want to say the wrong way,
but like in a way that wasn't good for them,
unhealthy ways. Yes, stuff that we're kind of still dealing with, honestly,

(01:22:29):
And in some ways I can feel Renoir's frustration and
seeing certain people do the things that they do. But
also like at the end when he just kind of
accepts whatever he's told, like I kind of feel that
as well. Yeah, So maybe that's maybe that's why I
lean towards him, is just from like my own personal

(01:22:52):
vantage point, sure.

Speaker 1 (01:22:53):
And that's that's an important thing to keep in mind too,
is that I am paraphrasing Jizak And I'm sure a
million other people that have had the same thought. But
we constantly we cannot really have an objective view of
the world. We're always viewing it through some lens of ideology.
Whether that's male American, somebody who's lost a family member,

(01:23:15):
somebody dealing with alcoholism, any number of things. We're always
viewing through some lens. So on your side, given your background,
it makes sense why you would view grief this way.
It makes sense for a lot of people to view
grief this way. I think, Well, I think the important
thing is, though, is that you can agree with Renoir largely.

(01:23:39):
But I think and I don't mean to speak for you,
but I think it's understandable. I think you could understand
what makes all of this appealing and maybe in some
ways necessary for Mayel and Aleen. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:23:50):
Yeah, Like again, I think his like real kind of
aggressive approach probably is like the incorrect approach. But they
probably framed him that way so he could come off
more as a quote unquote villainous type character.

Speaker 1 (01:24:04):
Well, and let me let me steal man your argument
a little bit. Sure, it's I said, rush them through.
You could argue that that's not correct. Whatsoever. Aileen's been
in there for a long time. She's been in there
so long that we're going to talk about the paint effects,
but the paint effects in real life are staining them,
and her in world avatar is so chipped away and

(01:24:28):
broken that it doesn't hard. It barely resembles a human.
So in some ways you can argue that, no, he's
not rushing through that at all. He's seeing his wife
effectively kill herself and he can't bear to lose another
family member.

Speaker 2 (01:24:43):
Yeah, that's probably a good way of thinking about it,
because you don't get the exact like how like the
time difference between the real world and the canvas world.
So we're not one hundred percent sure how long it's been,
but yeah, from the way Renoir deals with it, it's
very much a you know, it's been going on for

(01:25:04):
a long time.

Speaker 1 (01:25:06):
Yeah, somebody in there says like they've been at something
for hundreds of years, and like, yeah, I mean, even
if it's I don't know why I keep thinking it's versa.
But even if it's versa, like that doesn't track from
when he died to now, So like hundreds of n
this is a hyperbolic time chamber.

Speaker 2 (01:25:22):
Situation exactly exactly, and yeah, like seeing her like yet
and viewing this as like her just guy kind of
slowly killing herself with her grief is in some ways
I find that to be accurate.

Speaker 1 (01:25:36):
It reminds me of.

Speaker 2 (01:25:38):
There's a book by well, if you know the band Rush,
the drummer Neil Peart like to he wrote some books
in the two thousands, and he wrote one called Ghostwriter,
which was about his journey of grief from his daughter
dying in a car accident, like right before she was
about to go off to college, and then watch his

(01:26:00):
wife basically slowly killed herself with grief over the next year,
and then him basically, yeah, losing his wife and daughter
and the four plus year journey of him kind of
you know, trying to gain back some sort of normal life,

(01:26:20):
you know, doing like you know, retiring from music completely
and getting on his motorcycle and just driving around the
entire North American continent pretty much just trying to find
some form of like peace and moving on from the stuff.
The book's called Ghostwriter of if y'all are out there,
if you haven't read it, I highly recommend it. It is
a very good read. You learn a lot about him

(01:26:44):
and sort of like like, it's a really good book
about like long term grieving, especially in such a horrific
tragedy that it's crazy to think that he was able
to move on from it and actually live like a
fairly decent life until he passed a couple of years
ago now from a a I think it was a
brain tumor.

Speaker 1 (01:27:03):
Yeah, that's horrible. I had no idea his daughter passed
away like that.

Speaker 2 (01:27:07):
Yeah, yeah, it's it was. Yeah, it's pretty rough. That
was in ninety seven, Yeah, it was late nineties. Oh yeah,
it's a pretty it's a pretty heavy book, but it
does have a fairly i don't want to say, like
fairy tale happy ending, but like to see Neil come
out of that and be able to like you know,

(01:27:30):
kind of start a new life and like find love
again and all, that's just it makes you feel good,
you know, especially because I'm such a big fan of
the band, So it was nice to see that he
was able to you know, move on from that, I guess,
and I'll maybe I'm also viewing this game from that
perspective as well, the perspective of that book.

Speaker 1 (01:27:50):
Do you want to do a little discussion around Miles
ending oh yeah, yeah, I actually haven't seen her ending
in full, like I've read it. Okay, but you know,
go ahead, you know, we'll try to paint a picture.
So this one sort of turns into the classic utilitarian argument,
is the life of one or two worth, the lives
of worth, the lives of a thousand. I see a

(01:28:12):
lot of folks label this one as the selfish ending.
I don't agree with that. It kind of depends on
whether you see these painted lumierez as conscient, conscious agents,
which I submit to you that the game goes at
length to suggest, so your view of the ending may change,
and of course, through the lens of what you know.

(01:28:32):
Your personal life is of course, like we just discussed.
But here's what happens. Verso begs for his life here,
or he begs for the end of it is this
has been star like winning the Oscar. This is phenomenally acted.
He's he's painted, He's over and over again. He's just saying,
I don't want to live this life. I don't want

(01:28:53):
to live this life. Please please please, oh.

Speaker 5 (01:28:59):
You you can do this, you can do this.

Speaker 1 (01:29:02):
Please bade me me.

Speaker 5 (01:29:11):
I don't want this.

Speaker 4 (01:29:12):
Love. Stop saying that I want this life.

Speaker 1 (01:29:19):
I love this I just I just wanted to live
this life tub together, this life down that was stolen
from us.

Speaker 4 (01:29:31):
Please please, I don't love this life.

Speaker 1 (01:29:53):
He's begging to be killed, to be put out of
his misery, and my l sort of standing like like
kneeling beside him as he's going, you know, saying you know,
just no, And as she the screen fades black, and
as it's fading up, she says this quote. Above the darkness,

(01:30:14):
she says.

Speaker 4 (01:30:15):
You could growl.

Speaker 3 (01:30:18):
With you.

Speaker 1 (01:30:21):
Find a reason to smile, which that in and of itself,
I think is a fantastic discussion point. But let's close
out the ending. A crowd in Loumiere lines up for
a piano recital put on by Verso. The whole Lumier
is repainted. Skier and Monoco are ticket takers. The whole

(01:30:42):
crew is in the audience with their previously deceased loved ones.
Pierre is back, Gustave and Sophie are back. Luna's parents
don't seem to be back. I don't know what that's about,
but you know that's fine. They all sit down, The
lights go out, it turns to black and white sounds
versa takes the stage. Everybody applauds. It looks like he's older.

(01:31:05):
It looks like Mayo painted him to be a bit older.
Maybe he's aging. Maybe she gave him mortality in this universe.
Tough to say. He goes to play, he's really nervous,
like he can't bring himself to do it. You know,
given the circumstances, I'm not surprised. But this dissonant piano

(01:31:26):
chord immediately punctuates this jump. Cut to close up of Mayeu,
whose face has the splattered paint over her eyes, and
then as Versa plays the theme the credits role, should
him too. I know we talked about the paint before,

(01:32:02):
but as she's staying in there, Remember it's kind of
a dual idea, right, If you continue to paint over
a canvas, two things happen. One paint splatters kind of
accidentally get onto the canvas. They splatter, They build up,
they cake up, they dry up. That's sort of what
that looks like. Also, recall pentiment Pentimento. When old layer,

(01:32:23):
when new layers excuse me, start to fade and crack
and break off, and the old, faded, dry, cracked layers
underneath begin to shine through. You could say that's what's
happening here too, and it happened to the other Dessanders
as well. You could see that almost like their paintedselves
are cracking and breaking down. But that's the end of
this one. I think narratively this one makes more sense,

(01:32:48):
and I do think it's the more interesting ending. I
think a lot of folks and I'm not saying this
is you thrack like, let me just be clear. I
think a lot of folks online like the other ending
because it's happy because the leading boy, the leading man,
gets to be saved. I think, well saved. You know
he's dead, but you know the family has a happy

(01:33:10):
send off. His soul is freed. Yeah yeah, Shangsung didn't
get him that day. I think your soul is mine.
I think this one is more narratively driven. This game
has gone to great lengths to suggest that the painted
Lumierians are conscious agents. You know they Mayo constantly stands

(01:33:33):
up for them. They're my friends that I made along
the way. And yeah, you could say that that's a
biased view because this is her ending. We can't it's
it becomes a circular definition to cite her. But I
think the game does too. It solely focuses us on them.
It shows their deaths as being meaningful. It shows that

(01:33:53):
they have feelings and relationships and their own thoughts and convictions.
I think this is where where I don't want to
say the game is driving because I don't agree with that.
I don't think either one of these are quote unquote
true or real. But this one, I don't know. This
one just makes all the sense in the world to me. Also,
because you know, I deeply sympathize with Mael. I understand

(01:34:17):
how blind to destruction you could be when you are
that devastated in grief. And let's not even forget that
Mael's you know, complete disfigurement and disabilities will now stay
with her for the rest of her life, and all
of her family kind of looks at her as the
blame for what happened. They look at her as the
incitement for the fire that took their son. Yeah, Cleia

(01:34:41):
Aline Renoir, they all feel that way. How could she
go back to that life? I don't know. I totally
get it.

Speaker 2 (01:34:48):
I understand it too, you know, her wanting to live
in this canvas world where you know she is a
whole person and not like you know, a person, right.

Speaker 1 (01:35:01):
Right, She just again, she just wants the normalcyback. She's
I mean, it's not like she's a superhero in here.
You could make the argument that she's God, but it
doesn't make it doesn't seem like she's wielding that. I mean,
she just wants to live an unexciting totally you know,
the banal of like the every day. She just wants that.

Speaker 2 (01:35:20):
Yeah, and I respect that, but you know, at the
end when it shows that, like the paints blotch and like,
you know, her body showing those signs of decline, like
that almost says that.

Speaker 1 (01:35:31):
That says to.

Speaker 2 (01:35:31):
Me that she's not going to get that normal life
that she wants, even in this fictional world.

Speaker 1 (01:35:37):
It does say that it will eventually claim her. But
it also shows her moral values, her philosophy, her convictions.
She puts all of the painted Lumierans above herself too.
She in this way, she is also saying that she
wants them to live the life that she never had too,

(01:35:59):
that they would now have because they got gamaged at
such a young age. She brought them back at the
expense of herself because she fully believed that they deserve
that and.

Speaker 2 (01:36:09):
It's that her. She's like, you know, sacrificing her real
life to live in this canvas life. And even if
it's a short term situation, it allows these people around her,
who she perceives as being real people, the chance to
actually live out their life, right right.

Speaker 1 (01:36:29):
I mean again, it comes down to whether or not
in this sense, it comes down to whether or not
you view these people as basically automatons like painted just
nothing but paint, you know, or if you think that
they have somehow ascended into phenomenal consciousness, into having whatever

(01:36:50):
that nebulous thing is that makes us human. And there's
no wrong answer. Why I think this is the more
interesting ending, though, is because you have to think about
these things. I think with the vers so ending now,
and I want to be clear, Thrack, I think that
your discussion around that was cogent and really solid and

(01:37:10):
heartfelt too. I don't think that you were choosing that
because it's easier. However, I do think that one is
easier to justify for a lot of people, and I
think this one is not. And I think that's why
it's a little more interesting, because it forces us to
have these conversations. You know, this is a seemingly self
selfish action. Why might she have chosen that? You know?

(01:37:33):
Why are these people people and not just a collection
of paint pigments? You know, these are the hard questions
that we might not be able to answer, but we
have to.

Speaker 2 (01:37:44):
I don't even necessarily think the other ending is like
a bad ending or that, like if it's if somebody
chooses that and prefers it that like you know, that
they're missing the point or something like that. I don't
really necessarily think that. I think the way that is
presented is in some ways, yeah, narratively, it makes sense
that Mayle would do that, you know, even knowing what

(01:38:06):
she knows, now you know what I mean? So in
some ways, yeah, I get that. I I guess it
just comes down to, like, if you do view these
characters as like, you know, deserving of this chance or
not kind of a thing, you know, like, yeah, they
may like they may not be real technically, but do

(01:38:28):
you feel them as real?

Speaker 1 (01:38:30):
I guess, yeah, there's a tipping point where at what
point does reality does VERI similitude sort of tip over
from feelings and perception and memories that mean something to you.
And that's that's hard for us to to to speak
about with conjecture. Without conjecture, excuse me, because like we

(01:38:54):
will never be in this situation. There are no people,
as far as I'm aware, that can paint a fictional
world like this that we can just jump into. That'd
be great.

Speaker 2 (01:39:03):
Yeah, if you can, don't let the government find out.
I mean, if I if I could blue Skidoo in
doing another uh uh world, that'd be kind of dope.
Oh my god, yep, blue Skidoo.

Speaker 1 (01:39:17):
We can't. You know, he's he's taken a kind of
turn to like speak to like his adult viewers now,
like the ones that watched him as a kid. I
wonder what he would have to say about all this.

Speaker 2 (01:39:25):
Yeah, he's been doing that for a while now, and
it was weird when people were giving him crap for it.
I think he started in like COVID.

Speaker 1 (01:39:32):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:39:33):
I have a lot of respect for for Steve, Steve Burns,
I believe it's his name. Oh yeah, just see, he
just seems like a genuinely nice guy who kind of
stumbled into like being what he became and you know,
kind of learning to It's kind of the issue. I
think a lot of people who are in like children's

(01:39:55):
like you know, media and all that kind of deal
with the whole in like later in life, learning to
kind of accept that, Yeah, because I think we kind
of view children's media as less than for a lot
of reasons, and so like and like being involved in it,
you know, like it's hard to put that on your
resume if you're trying to be quote unquote legit.

Speaker 1 (01:40:16):
I guess sure.

Speaker 2 (01:40:18):
And he and he's talked about that before as well,
Like it's a really funny YouTube video about him going
on a date.

Speaker 1 (01:40:26):
You can look it up. It was, It's really funny.

Speaker 2 (01:40:28):
So but seeing him kind of embrace that, I think
because he recognizes that some people kind of need that
or it makes them feel better, is a good thing.

Speaker 1 (01:40:37):
You know. Yeah, I agree. Just a couple of thoughts
to close this out. I do think like I've made
a kerfuffle about the lumiarians. The way that I envision
this is like this has always been at the core
about how she feels about that day, right about Verso.
I view this as like a box wherein Verso is

(01:40:59):
the biggest marble, but all of these people that she's
met in the canvas are tiny marbles that are just
getting put in one at a time, and Verso's marble
will always be the biggest, there's no changing that. But
eventually there's less and less room in the box because
more of these marbles come in, more of these important people.
They might not mean what Verso meant, but there's so

(01:41:20):
many that it becomes a new family, right, the family
that she lost functionally right, like literally lost Verso figuratively
lost Cleia, Renoir and Eleen in various ways and degrees.
I mean, you heard the stuff that Claya said downright cruel, horrible, Yes,
horrible thing to say, and like, don't get me wrong,
I understand it. Grief does crazy things to people. I

(01:41:43):
get it, and I get it with my l too,
Like how do I want to phrase this. I've known
people that you know, grieving in one way or another,
maybe because of their lot in life, maybe because of
their choices, who have done some serious self destructive acts
and grieving whether it was like overspending or serious alcohol abuse.
And it's like it's one of those things where in

(01:42:03):
the moment they maybe don't see it, maybe they do
see it and they just don't care, Like they emotionally
physically cannot bring themselves to care. They need, play, cater
they need they can't survive without that numbing I get it.
That's a tough tunnel to be within, especially if you
can never see the end. It's constricting. I totally get it.

(01:42:26):
I think that's part of it. I do think that
the lunar lumiarians play a big role, though, Like I
really do think that putting them above herself is not
an insignificant thing. I mean, is it the most important thing?
I don't know, but I think that's critical in this
and I think on some level it's admirable. Does it

(01:42:46):
outweigh condemning Verso to his life? That's not for me
to say, you know, is one life greater than the
life of hundreds? I don't know. I'm not getting into
the trolley problem here.

Speaker 2 (01:43:00):
Feels like, you know how I mentioned the sort of
like lack of control that people feel. It almost is
like Mael feels like she has some control in the situation,
or she's like realizing that she may have some and
wants to use it to help as many people as possible.

Speaker 1 (01:43:18):
I think that's a good point. Yeah, it's it's her
trying to make up for that day that she feels
like she had no control over it. Now she can
control this new world, giving people a new life. I
that's a good point. I think that's a good read
on it.

Speaker 2 (01:43:34):
And I think most people, if we're going to do
the trolley problem, would rather save more people.

Speaker 1 (01:43:40):
At the end of the day. I think so too.

Speaker 2 (01:43:44):
Yes, I know, I know, I know. Context is key,
you know, and they always try to throw in the
context to kind of try to trip you up.

Speaker 1 (01:43:52):
But well, it's funny. It's funny you say that there
was a I forget if it was a philosopher, scientist
or what that's you know, because when you choose the
hundreds you are they phrase it in different ways, like
you know, you're just watching the train and it's going
to hit the one person. What do you do? Then
you're doing the lever. You know, you're using the lever.
Then it's somebody positive that Like let's say you're on

(01:44:14):
on an overpass and there is an extremely overweight man
standing there and you can push him onto one of
the tracks to save you know, for him to get killed,
to save everybody, or like you know, him and the
one hundred or him and the one other person. Would
you push you know, because if you pushed him, the
fat man would die. If you don't push him, either

(01:44:36):
the one on the track or the hundreds on the
track will die. And then it gets thorny, right, because
now you're actively causing the death of somebody if you
didn't think you were before. It's very thorny. It's a
very tricky issue. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:44:48):
Yeah, But also that just a lot of those like
with philosophers are like, well, what about this or what
about that? You know, it's maybe it's because I've been
watching The Good Place and like seeing the guy who's
supposed to be the philosopher just be this indecisive guy
who can't make a proper decision.

Speaker 1 (01:45:06):
You know, it makes me think about those things a
little differently. Is he the one that can't make up
his mind between like dry erase and pen and paper
and he just goes on and on and never chooses anything. Yes,
And those kind of people drive me up the fucking wall.
That's so funny. That's so funny. That's what armchair philosophers
like me end up doing. Like I'm a nobody and
I'll just talk in circles and not get anything done.

Speaker 2 (01:45:27):
I mean, and I think philosophy is great because it
shows that we're willing to like think about things and
sort of view our existence kind of beyond ourselves. I
think it's a good thing. But yeah, like it's so
easy to get kind of caught into a corner, you know,
and just like overthink everything to where it's like, you know, just.

Speaker 1 (01:45:47):
Just you know.

Speaker 2 (01:45:49):
That's why sometimes it's better to just give people two options,
you know, Like they say that when you're like, you know,
raising kids, it's like, hey, don't give them limitless options
because they'll never make a choice. Like tell them it's
like it's either this or that, you know, that's all
you get, and then making them pick.

Speaker 1 (01:46:06):
We see that all the time in life, you know.
The audience's gamers, Like, you know, did you feel like
you had do you feel like you're paralyzed by choice
now that you have unlimited you know, Steam games, or
you know, did you feel differently when you were a
kid and you only had like five games?

Speaker 2 (01:46:21):
Like the thing is my feeling, if we're going to
get into that, my feeling about games hasn't changed when
it comes to like they're like I always think about
the things I'm not playing rather than the things I'm playing,
like even as a kid, but like I didn't have
the resources, so it's like, well, I guess I got
to you know, dive into this game and deal with it.
But also we didn't have the Internet to constantly remind

(01:46:43):
ourselves about all the millions of games that are out there, so.

Speaker 1 (01:46:46):
Right, exactly like back then, the choosing was easier though,
Like you've got five You've got Teken, Zeno Saga and
Need for Speed and Midnight Club. You know, that's four
games you could just choose one, whereas now it's like
I've got three hundred games in the Steam library, I
don't know what to play.

Speaker 2 (01:47:03):
Choice paralysis, yeah, I mean, And there are ways of
getting around that.

Speaker 1 (01:47:09):
I think we all do.

Speaker 2 (01:47:09):
Like I try to organize my games into like these
are the ones I haven't played and these are the
ones I have played, so I can kind of have
that separation there, which I think helps.

Speaker 1 (01:47:19):
But that's just messing. So that's the end of Claire Obscure.
As you can see, there's no right or wrong way

(01:47:42):
to think about this. The important thing is the conversations
that spin out of it. That's the sign of any
good art. It's that it continues to exist outside of itself,
and I think Claire obscure fully fully conforms to that idea.
I think this series has been really, really invigorating. I

(01:48:03):
think it's been very thoughtful. I think it's been very exciting.
I'm very proud of it. I don't know how many
people will listen. I don't know if any new folks
will find us because of it. I hope so reality
is you know, I don't know if reality will play
out that way, but I'm proud of the work we've
done here. And I got to thank you again, Thrak.

(01:48:25):
I appreciate you being here.

Speaker 2 (01:48:27):
Well, thank you for having me. It's been It's been
quite the journey and a if you ask me, doesn't
matter how many people listen to this. What's important is
that you and me got together and had a conversation
about a great video game. And I think that's more important.

Speaker 1 (01:48:44):
Yeah. Absolutely, And I got to thank the listeners too
for joining us on this conversation and hopefully taking this
and you know, having conversations with themselves or their friends too,
or with us in the discord server. That's what the
point of this is.

Speaker 5 (01:48:59):
This.

Speaker 1 (01:48:59):
I've said this all the time, this podcast isn't an
exclamation point or a period at most, it's a semi
colon or an m dash. You know, I want the
conversation to continue.

Speaker 2 (01:49:09):
So that's what a semi colon does. Yes, it joins
two complete clauses together. Okay, too independent. If I man,
if I had known that, I would have looked so
much murder writ in my papers.

Speaker 1 (01:49:25):
So thank you, thak, Thank you listeners. Thrac If you
want to tell folks about frack ops or through Yeah,
what's new over there? Yeah? Yeah? What? What? What better
deviation this is?

Speaker 2 (01:49:37):
It's a shooty bang bang So uh, I have a
little solo show called Call of Duty thrack Ops where
self explanatory. I have been working my way through the
Call of Duty franchise doing a solo podcast type thing,
a little bit influenced by Rick and his editing skills
about the sort of yeah, breaking down the campaigns of

(01:49:59):
Call of Duty throughout the years, getting into the history
of the development cycles and everything. And as I get
further in discussing certain facets of these games as far
as they relate to like modern political climates, it's not
gonna get that deep, but there are certain elements in
certain games that are definitely worth talking about in that vein.

(01:50:22):
At the time of recording this episode, I'm up to
episode four. In Episode five should be out relatively soon
after this, and then I'm gonna take a little break
because I'm gonna be out of state for a while,
so that'll be fun. But it'll come back probably within
a month of the last episode and just kind of

(01:50:43):
keep rolling through into the next year. So there's a
lot of cod content to come. And so yeah, there's that,
and then also my main show is The three Dyo Experience,
where me and Bill try to compile a weird history
of the Panasonic three Dyo, the failed nineties video game.
It's a lot of fun, it's very loose. We also

(01:51:03):
talk about, you know, gaming news and things like that.
I Rick's beIN on there, so go listen to that
episode pick project listeners, and we've had other guests as well.
We're all this is all part of the Superpod Network,
So go to superpodnetwork dot com and you'll see a
great list of podcasts across the spectrum that I've been
a part of and haven't been a part of, but

(01:51:25):
I have. I put the stamp of approval onto all
of them very nice. You can find links to all
of those in the description, to all of Thrax stuff,
et cetera. You can also find links to our stuff too,
to the discord server, which again is free to the Patreon.
If you want to support the show and enable this
stuff to keep, going to our socials would mean a

(01:51:46):
lot if you shared our stuff, liked our stuff, share
it with friends, Blue Sky, Instagram, Reddit, things like that.
Ratings and reviews, of course are always welcome, even if
they are middling or somewhat negative. If you feel that way,
honest reviews are appreciated. You can find all of that.
You can find thrack ops. You can find the three
do experience and the links to the supplemental materials that

(01:52:07):
have been in each one, all in the description. So
with that, once again, Thrack thank you, once again listeners,
thank you for closing the door on the Clear Obscure
Analysis series. Hope you love the show.

Speaker 1 (01:52:19):
Today, I'm Rick, I'm signing off for now. Take care
of everyone.

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Would You Find A Reason To Smile? | Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 Analysis (Part IV)

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Would You Find A Reason To Smile? | Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 Analysis (Part IV)