A Beautiful Painting with an Empty Frame [Total spoiler]

[LOUTRE SOLIDE]

Huge spoiler alert (again), don’t read the following if you’re not at least in Act 3 or if you haven’t already spoiled the ending.

Hi everyone,

I've been playing the game since roughly the day after its release. I’ll focus solely on the story and how I personally felt about it. I'm currently in Act 3 (just started it), and I went ahead and spoiled myself by watching the endings on YouTube, etc.

Since the end of Act 1, I feel like the game starts to fall apart and lose its direction. In the prologue and Act 1, you’re introduced to the world, its problems, the characters, and their emotions. The prologue ends with a kind of dramatic climax. Then comes Stone Wave Cliffs, and suddenly, with the subtlety of a truck in an opera, enters "mysterious Renoir and his family issues."

From that point on, the story felt artificial and disconnected from everything that came before. We’re given this dark and mysterious character who screams “I have a huge secret” from galaxies away. Poorly executed, boring, and overused, the whole dark character trope is just exhausting. The same goes for everything involving the Dessendre family. You could sum up the whole plot with a few words: unhappy family causes a mess and dooms an entire world. Personally, I didn’t feel a single ounce of care or empathy for any of it.

But there’s more: want to talk about character writing?

You develop Gustave during the prologue and Act 1, then he dies ASAP. Okay, fine, if it’s done well... but it’s not. He’s barely mentioned twice afterward and is immediately replaced by Verso. But fine, let’s check the rest of the characters! Even in Dragon Ball, side characters have more development. Lune, Sciel, Monoco... who? Ah, the random people you can talk to at the campfire... Why even include them if you’re not going to use them? The story remains exactly the same with or without those three (except for Lune, who saves Gustave). You could rewrite the game with just Verso, Maëlle, and Esquie, and absolutely nothing would change. That’s such a shame, because these characters seemed interesting, and even with minimal screen time, you start to get attached! (Special mention to the Axon arc, totally useless, clearly just there to give you the barrier breaker. A shame, because those levels were dope af.)

And last, maybe worst of all, the "it was just a dream" trope. Well, it's not a dream, it's a painting... but you get it. We've known for ages that this trope sucks. When I saw it coming, I thought: "No, please not this. Anything but this." And then it happened... and we're back again to the ridiculous Dessendre family drama. How are we supposed to feel sympathy or empathy for them? Even Verso, by the end you understand him, but... meh. I won’t even talk about the two endings, because they feel like pure black or white with a tiny bit of cream on top.

Overall, the game is good. The OST, the gameplay, the feeling of the journey, it’s all almost perfect. But the writing and story ruin everything, it's like so sad. And btw big thumbs up to the team even the writing one. I dislike the story but you have done a huge work that still deserv to be respected.

[SS]

Look up the term Clair Obscur. It's a tragedy. I think very well done considering how upset people are.

Sometimes in life you fall in love with everything only to have it ripped away little bro.

[Aurumworks]

Gustav had to die to put you in them mood. A bit of grief to make you empathize with what's going on with the characters.

[LOUTRE SOLIDE]

Yeah Gustave death was necessary clearly, it's not the worst revelation that comes. When it came I was mad but after all that was the thing to do. I just don't like the main character bait but I can understand it.

[SHwoKing]

It's so easy to diss anything with this kind of flat arguments. They are flatter than the writing you critisize.

"Oh Lord of the ring has bad writing, it's just about a guy that brings a ring in a volcano, nothing else matter"

"Harry Potter is about a young wizard against the strongest one, Ron and Hermione are just placeholders".

And no this story is different than just "it was just a dream" as some characters are conscious that they are living in a paint. It's more like a movie named Neverending Story but the difference is the audience know from the start that it's a book in this one.

[LOUTRE SOLIDE]

I see what you're saying, but my point isn’t to reduce the plot to a one-liner. It’s about how the story is told, not just what it is. Yes, any story can sound flat when oversimplified, but good writing gives depth to characters and emotional weight to events.

In Clair Obscur, Act 1 does that well. But after that, a lot of characters feel underused or irrelevant, and the plot leans too heavily on tropes without fully earning them. The "painting" twist could work, but here it felt like a narrative shortcut that broke immersion rather than deepening it.

I'm not attacking the story for being ambitious. I just think the execution didn’t live up to its own setup.

[Veylox]

Yeah no, can't take you seriously if you clearly haven't played the game you're complaining about. Gustave is mentioned throughout the entire game, up until the very last frames of it, so maybe don't play it on youtube next time

They have a whole arc about getting over his death and burying him, which never happens in video games. And even after that they're still not over his death, as shown multiple times.