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I can't imagine that this is what the devs wanted.
I am eagerly awaiting either DLC or story/ending changes before even attempting another playthrough.
In Maelle's case, she never leaves the Canvas preferring to avoid her pain in the real world. She doesn't want to live a scarred, silent life where her brother is dead and her family blames her for that death. It's easier to remain in the canvas where she has everything she wants and is happy. Ironically, the rest of her family is okay with Alicia staying within the canvas as they one, don't want her to be involved in the coming confrontation with the Writers, and two, they all just want Alicia to be happy. Even Clea tells her sister this. The problem with staying in the canvas is two fold; first, Alicia has already stayed in the canvas too long and is beginning to experience the same effects of Chroma disease that her mother Aline did. Alicia's face is falling away and it won't be long before her mind goes as well. Second, she is forcing Verso to live a life in the canvas that he does not want. Verso wants to rest knowing that he is dead in the real world. Although Verso finds it difficult to continue, he reluctantly does so for his sister's happiness. On her own, Alicia will never leave the canvas and it will kill her.
For Verso, he wants to save his family and to finally let the fragment of his soul stop painting and rest. Yes, it does mean that destroying the canvas will obliterate the world, and characters, he created as a child. But like he told his sister, "We are all hypocrites" by putting their own wants and needs first before everything else. It might have been better if Aline had not created the people of Lumiere for this particular outcome. If she hadn't, Lune and Schiel would have not to be erased. But while Schiel was understanding of this, Lune was incensed because it was the second time that Verso had lied to her about his intentions. But in the end, she let Verso go existing right up until the very end (Schiel gommaged. Lune did not.)
Verso knew that Alicia had lied to her father that she would leave the canvas. That's why Verso forced her out. Alicia would die within the canvas and Verso had already saved her life once. He wasn't going to let her kill herself and not face reality. In essence, Verso saved Alicia's life again. "It will get better in time," said Renoir. Finally, as Verso told Alicia, she was a powerful Painter and Verso knew that she would create new worlds to live in and that Maelle would live on within her. Does it seem cruel to condemn Alicia to a reality where she is everything she doesn't want? It could be interpreted that way. But refusing to face reality is not healthy. Eventually, Alicia will be better even if she is not perfectly okay with her situation. But that is life. You must take the good with the bad. With the entire family out of the canvas, they have no choice but deal with Verso's death and finally grief his loss. It's not going to be easy. But they will get through it.
The point is not to have a happy ending, the description you made is the basic description of endings, which continues to present all the problems I said.
Rereading them once again, both endings look like villain endings, not just negative ones. At this point a third ending should have been the entire Dessendre family elimination, and that would have been the good ending if that's the case.
Maelle's ending continues to be intentionally negative in disagreement with all the elements of character growth and sacrifices made throughout the game. The ending of Verso continues to be a continuous denial of the principle of human responsibility towards other beings, human or not, but perfectly sentient like us. The ending I said is obviously worthless and is hyper simplistic and banal but I wrote it to make it clear that there are a series of very important elements (responsibility towards others, growth in difficulties, etc.) that are not taken into account.
Even the ending of Maelle, how does it justify her madness as a god come down to earth, after an entire adventure and dozens of dialogues of the highest human depth? On what basis does she completely lose control of herself and the world of the painting? Throughout the game they made us understand that the canvas lives a life of its own and even the child Verso didn't rule it over but just accompany it as an engine that gives life (Dante's idea of God), and now Maelle completely loses her mind like this? Suddenly, senselessly, after a damn epic journey of intense work to save it all, she is the one banalizing and destroying everything from the inside? What was the point of all this journey, turning her into a sick sadist?
The ending of Verso, I continue to say yes, yes it resolves partially the grief that keeps the Dessendre family going, but what was the point of all the journey and knowing the life and depth of the world and the characters, if in complete human de-responsibilization we annihilate an entire sentient world? What was the point of suffering and growing and dying alongside them? Do we really want to reduce all of this to a psychological journey in which the protagonist conquers his fears and moves on with his life? While millions die to allow this? Not only is it awful, it is also ethically wrong from every point of view and there is nothing to laugh about in the ending, the antagonist here is us, and we should be put to rest forever (ergo, our entire journey has made us more infamous and worse beings than when we started).
Summarizing, because of all the dialogues and development of the game I don't see Maelle's fall into madness as justified enough, they should have given more valid reasons. She ends the game without having overcome her brother's death and without having any respect for the entire world of the painting, like a narcissistic child. What was the point of living 16 years twice and in two completely different environments, receiving love in two completely different ways from two families? What was the point of Gustave's sacrifice? Just to make her understand to move on with her life? Meh.
For the Verso ending, a depressed individual decides to save another one at the cost of destroying an entire planet (Lune's look is there exactly to account you for what you've done).
Proof of this to be terrifying at the same point as the other ending is the fact that everyone who accepts this ending (at all costs!) believes that inside the painting are just npcs without free will (trying with all they have to don't think about all the dialogues we had in contrary of this).
The catharsis in all of this is zero. No emotional release, no relief, no purging of emotions, no moral and psychological development for the player who chooses between two horrible destructions where in both the sentient beings of Lumiere become puppets or directly erased. All the emotions you have experienced are betrayed instead of purged, there is no overcoming of fear and pain for the player, they leave you stuck in the cycle and this prevents you from growing exactly like Maelle.
Elden Ring spoiler:
You all know an ending of a game which has all I said? The Ranni's ending in Elden Ring. There you see catharsis, there you see an epic journey that ends trying to give a new chance to the world in a way never tried before (the hidden and far God concept, Deus absconditus in latin, dunno how it's called in english), there you're leaved with hope at least and you can purge all your emotions, grow and go on even if leaving all the world behind and partially sacrificing yourself.
The Ranni's ending is not a good ending but it is the middle way between complete annihilation (Verso's ending and May Chaos take the world ending of ER) and taking control of a hopeless world where we will repeat the cycle of pain and suffering endlessly just for our own pleasure (Maelle's ending and every other golden order et similar ending in ER). That is a deep, profound and interesting ending, not the two we have in this game. I'm sorry because I loved the journey but the endings are not on point.
Addition:
At this point I was thinking that the game should have simply ended at act 2. Verso achieved the destruction of the canvas, Alicia and her mother were pushed out by force (as happens anyway in the next act). Fin. At least we didn't have to see the banalization of resurrecting people like Sciel and Lune (clearly for gameplay reasons and in opposition to narrative and lore) and this trails of weird things.
The Maelle's ending gives nothing of interesting if not a picture of how deep can grief take you (but we already had her mother for this).
The Verso's ending already happened in act 2 and it's just a reiteration after they made you believe there was a some sort of solution while only procrastinating the inevitable.
From the very moment Maelle resurrects Lune and Sciel everything goes down a cliff of banalization, approximation and divergence from the original story, without giving any interesting deepness to what you're living (due to the endings).
Much more interesting if the impossibility of resurrecting people had been maintained (or at least the drama of Theseus' ship that we see instead perfectly applied to the story of Noco, another sign of the fact that the writers themselves messed up things about how much sentient/real are things inside the canvas).
I understand people who can calmly accept Verso's ending due to this. But before that resurrection that made us think that the world inside is just fake, as I said in my other post, the narrative was completely different about the beings in the canvas. The entire white Nevrons story, the faceless child words, the journey itself and the fact that even the main characters had to be born, rise, feel and become a singular individual different from the real self (Maelle) or the imagine they were made from (Verso), was telling a completely different story from "they're all fake, let them die".
Edit: formatting the text
the canvas is basically sucked into drama because the best the painters can do is breaking it. In the verso ending, it ends wholesomely because they talked it through. Not just because the canvas is gone. The canvas didnt need to be gone. If it was gone and they still didnt talk it through, the mom might just make a new canvas and start a new fake family and be distant, then this whole thing would cycle. Grief is the problem, not the canvas.
I agree with the whole reasoning.
As I continue to think about it I'm starting to consider that the only true teaching of this game is that limited beings should never have the power to give birth to other limited beings like themselves (or even a little less, but still with consciousness like the white nevrons). The other things like "we should learn how to surpass grief" are too basic and simple, and resolved from people with too easy reasoning, to have a meaning in such a complex and deep world the authors made in this game.
In top of that I'd add that Verso's ending contradicts one of the most important quotes from Tolkien: "'Deserves it! I daresay he does. Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement. For even the very wise cannot see all ends."
Well, we are made to give death to all of them without problem, with the ridiculous lightening of the heart given by the Lune/Sciel resurrection scene + Maelle's ending, all put there to tell us "don't worry they aren't real, they're puppets" even if we have played 60 hours with the game saying the contrary every ♥♥♥♥*** minute.
As I agree that the the canvas didn't need to be gone and the family need to talk it though, and understand that someone don't like both endings too extreme case, I do feel like the game does not need a "happy" ending.
Maelle is 16. I recall when I was at similar age and had a argue to the parents, how many times did I think in their position and talked it though? And how many times did I think "the parent just want to against me, maybe they don't love me, blah blah blah"?
The will of fighting against parent is too strong for teenagers that makes the family could not talk it through.
It is all based on my experience - the game's choice is more realistic, and the "if they can be reasonable" is more like dream talk.
---
For me, the true ending would be destroy the canvas.
Think of the oath of the expedition, "For those who come after".
And what Lune said (cannot remember the exact phrase) "We move one when we fall. Not IF. When"
The spirit of this is never make the characters can live themselves, is to create hopes and chance for other peoples to live in the future. This is the same meaning to Gustave's death. What makes all these sacrifices become worthless is when Maelle choose to live in her eternal illusion and refuse to move on.
We grieve the loss. And move on.
That's what the game want to tell us.
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Sorry for my bad English.
And it is totally fine if you don't agree with me, we all have our own believes.
1) I totally agree that a happy ending wasn't needed, I'm sorry I made the ending example in my first post, it was only to express the core of my ideas, I know very well that it'd be a horrible ending the one I expressed.
2) I want to integrate and express myself better, which I esitated to do because I had to do a little spoiler at least on the feeling of other games endings, so I'll hide it with brackets: an ending like Ranni's ending in ER, Death Stranding ending or even Persona 3's, would have been better and more mature. All three of these games have one thing in common: hope, despite everything. In Clair Obscur we only have a crippled hope in Verso's ending.
Well, I gave you an award that I meant to give to Jarlath because I'm old and apparently my coffee hasn't kicked in yet. Oh well, I have plenty of points to spare.
Again, I disagree. We don't necessarily want happy endings. We want endings that make sense with the rest of the dialogue in the entire game.
The devs seem so preoccupied with the "no happy endings" trope that they flushed the rest of the game down the toilet.
Exactly. I'll express a very difficult thought not in my native language, I'll try.
As I mentioned in other posts, the purpose of Greek tragedy was not a dark and tragic ending, even though it is called tragedy. The purpose was the catharsis of the spectators. By representing actions that arouse pity and terror, it had to lead to a purification of these same emotions in the spectator. It was not a matter of scaring and saddening the audience for its own sake, but of freeing them from these passions through a sort of "emotional release" controlled and mediated by art.
In fact, we have several tragedies that have endings that are, if not positive, at least of reconciliation.
As far as I'm concerned, I didn't feel any of this, only suspension, incompleteness and a block in moving forward. Funny since the game is based on this but fails to make me do it (while Elden Ring, Death Stranding and Persona 3* succeeded immediately, and they don't seem like happy endings to me).
From my point of view everything that was talked about in act 1 and 2, even in act 3 until you enter the picture where the little Verse is, is betrayed, trivialized and made incomplete.
Despite all this I really like the game, I repeat, and it is on the podium of the best three jrpgs I have ever played. I will simply pretend that the story ends after the boss fight with Renoir, and Alicia earns his trust, lol.
*Also Cyberpunk 2077 achieved this result on me.
The ending of Act 2 didn't leave me in a great spot for progressing the rest of the game or my view of that world due to it simply prolonging what they made clearly inevitable. That moment in Lumiere could of been the "who do you fight as" moment.
I guess I am contrarian in that when a story gives only a happy ending or retcons tragedy to give you a happy ending I strongly dislike it. So I appreciate that this game gives two endings that can be morally placed how the individual viewing wants but walk the "good/bad" line all the way through.
I lost my parents fifteen and nine years ago, and I lost my dear aunt and uncle both in the past eight months. I know a bit about grief.
And my town is full of homeless addicts. They wreak havoc on people just trying to live their lives.
I play games to escape this crap. I don't want a fantasy game lecturing me. We've had enough of that nonsense, and it's intellectually insulting.
I think it's less trying to be a lesson than just an exploration, if that framing helps you at all. It doesn't really reach a definitive moral or conclusion (and even kinda lets you pick both your own ending and what that ending really means).
Doesn't, of course, make it any sunnier or more escapist, but it might make it feel a little less insulting?