The real meaning behind Clair Obscure: Expedition 33
@expedition33
No Spoilers for now. You will be warned later.
The game is not about death but instead, mass layoffs and can be extrapolated to any industry, but in the developer’s experience, it translates to the game industry.
The story is about a group of adventurers that tries to free the island of an evil paintress that every year, makes anyone with that age disappear.
Now, let’s translate that: The story is about a group of people that in their last days in the company, tries to stay employed even though they know a mass layoff is coming and that is happening every year.
The expeditions - For those who come after.
The beauty of the game is that those who fade away and became petals and live only in the memory of those who stayed it that it is not talking about the jobs but instead of their knowledge, every time a mass layoff happens, the knowledge of those who left goes with them. The expeditions that came before, leave some knowledge for those who come after them but only at certain point. They leave breadcrumbs so you can think about the past and decide your future.
Lumiére - The dome.
A city full of artists, dreamers, hard workers that keep moving in spite of knowing their time will come, because they need to get to the end of the day otherwise they give up. They need a purpose and they either join the expedition or wait and fade. Inside the industry, we have big corporations with buildings so big that they look like cities and inside them, people full of creativity that are there for the joy of creation or just to make ends meet. Developers that code, designers that think and the evil guys that have the brush and paint the number on the monolith.
34 becomes 33.
At the beginning of the game we see the characters fading. Friends, family, lovers, they all fade away and you stay, hopeless, waiting for your turn. Some, take action and take the boat to the unknown, towards the monolith. Anyone that stayed in a company that saw their friends, family, lovers being fired before them have this dreadful sensation and the remorse, some relief, that it was them and not you. Some take some severance package and jump into the ship of unknown. Some wait until their time come.
SPOILERS FROM HERE ON - DO NOT READ FORWARD - YOU WERE WARNED
SPOILERS BELOW - 34
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SPOILERS BELOW - 33 !
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Dark Shores
Once the expedition reaches the beach they face the cold truth, the world that they don’t know anymore, the insecurity, the hardship and their worst enemy. Some of them survive, but most perish on day 1 outside the dome.
After being fired, everyone start contacting headhunters, looking for jobs by themselves but everyone faces he same reality, the market pick and choose who they want and only a few survive. Those few will have a path even harder now, they need to upgrade their skills, learn new things, work together, explore new possibilities and try to stay alive for 1 year. In reality, you need to get more specialized or take another path, learn new skills or start from scratch in a new industry.
Gestral Village
The survivors, Gustave, Maelle, Lune, Sciel get into the village where they meet people that can help them move forward, can give them upgrades, weapons and, if you want the special thing, you need to fight for it, without knowing what that thing is.
Sometimes, a group of friends get-together and build a company, or they help out each other in some way where they keep in touch sending offers, job posts, anything that can keep them alive. Here the other people represent the instructors, you can have access to information but if you really want the good stuff, you got to fight for it and pay a big price but, in the end, it is an investment of time and money in a weapon that might help you relocate.
Stone Wave Cliffs
End of act 1. Time comes for everyone, but for some, that’s the end of the line. Gustave that represents the most experienced in the group and Maelle, the youngest and a dreamer, face destiny once again and Gustave can’t win. It just begs Maelle to keep moving - For those who come after.
Here we have the most impactful decision of our lives, keep moving and hoping that it will work out or give up and change ourselves? Some people don’t have the luxury to keep going, they need to get a job, no matter where or how, but their war chest is empty. They tried their best. If you are in a startup and the money if fading and if you leave the others can survive for a little bit more, you take the fall because you are the one with more responsibilities outside of the adventure.
Verso
After losing their most experienced partner and mentor, the group face reality of not succeeding. Enters, Verso. Some that appears just after Gustave left and promise to help them out in their journey. He has been in this situation far too long and sees the potential in this group to finally have a breakthrough.
Sometimes, you get an angel investor, a friend that can introduce you to someone, and you have your hope renewed. You move along, never forgetting that you might meet Gustave’s destiny and hope to, at least leave something behind fr those who come after.
Esquié
A creature that takes the character places, help them move across the map and become their sole mean of transportation to unreachable places.
This creature represents the meetups, conferences, talks and everything that gives you access to people that otherwise you would have to take a long time to meet or maybe not even that. This is the networking that we all try to keep up while applying for positions.
Monoco
This is the guy who joins the team because Verso knows him and he can and wants to be around even though he has some issues with Verso. He can bring value to the team with its experience and by getting parts to use them but usually hangs around, cracking bad jokes of telling the team the cold truth.
Here we have our life friends and family, those who are outside of our bubble and can give us incentives or dissuade us from the path either because they don’t believe we can or they can see something we are blind to see. We usually ignore them because we know more and have a goal, but sometimes they show us something important.
Renoir
The main villain. He is there to stop the expedition.Nothing much more to tell here besides the fact that he represents the one obstacle you can’t go through unless you are powerful enough.
In real life, he represents Time and Money. Your journey depends on those two factors. If you don’t have enough money, you are out, if you have time and no money, you can’t get in, you will need to change time for money in order to persist in the path or give up the path and fade away.
The Paintress
The one who created this world and everything around. The one who is changing the numbers. The one to be beaten. If you see, I didn’t say she is the main villain, because without here there’s no world.
She is The Corporation. Here we are talking about any corporation. For the developers, Ubisoft, for me, my previous employer, but for you, it is your own employer. There is no way around it, she decides our fate, she can paint our number and we are gone. Unless..
Last Act
Here is where this game makes it, this is why I wrote all of this. The metaphor is incredible and I started this at 3:29am on a Sunday.
In the game, Maelle discovers she is Verso’s sister, Renoir is her father and the paintress is he mother and all of this is happening inside a canvas. The family is trying to cope with the death of Verso and this is the only place he exists. Irony of this, Verso died on a Fire by saving Maelle. Now, Maelle doesn’t want to leave the paint and face reality while Verso is tired of this and wants to stop and the paintress is the one that makes him stay there. Maelle doesn’t want to let him go, she can’t stand his death and wants to keep painting even after they destroy the paintress.
If I was able to translate it enough, you will be able to understand that the developers (expedition) here were fired and had to build their own game to stay in the industry. If the game was a success, they would keep their jobs by working on their own company and creating more games and making more money, in an endless cycle (Maelle’s idea). Meanwhile, even though some of them got to the end of the game creation and ripe the benefits, they saw the reality, that this endless cycle would make them slaves again and would die inside the dome made now by themselves (Verso’s idea).
This translates to ourselves, are we willing keep working for companies that might fire us and we die by fire, do we build our own company and work for ourselves endlessly until we die or, ripe the benefits of our “early retirement” and live outside the bubble until no one remembers us and we are just a number in the statistics?
I don’t know about you, but I didn’t finish my game yet, I’m at the Dark Shore right now, I didn’t find my expedition mates and I see Renoir approaching. If I face him alone, I know what is going to happen. Better run, it is 5:12am on a Sunday.
@0xReflection More of the same...
Just like $TSLA, it will be very speculative.
Traders are panicking. They want in, and sell ASAP.
Holders will be buying and holding for 10y. No offers.
I believe every small investor that already holds $tsla will buy and hold $spcx for ever.
@SpookedE86704@Figure_robot The real question is: can you?
Because it is not about a symphony or a beautiful painting, it is about the individual human ability vs the collective robotic ability.
Once one robot knows, all of them know.
Mozart knew, 99.99999999999999% of humans don't. Knowledge lost.
@jimstewartson He is not stupid or arrogant, it is just business.
If he says what he thinks, the stock will tank.
He knows very well the issue, but he can't do better now.
It is all marketing. He just tells everyone to build more energy and keep buying his stuff. 1% efficiency gain = +1% value
@Lockyjoon Doing anything different than that would be betraying your family.
You understand and can see the light.
Hold strong. Hold long.
This is your retirement, his startup.
I'm with you.
The vision is clear. Let's keep moving.
@rushicrypto The difference is scalability.
If these traders could perform 1000 tasks in 1h, how much would they be worth?
The electrician charged me $600 to install a new washer outlet in the garage. Took him 1h.
If he could do 1000 at same time: $600k/h
@MichaelAArouet It is hard for the young to buy the same as their grandparents at their age.
The left just says that it is wrong and they should take it and divide it equally: 50% for the government, 50% for them, before taxes...
Suddenly they have something and the gov, everything.
@elonmusk is @robotaxi owners have the ability to geofence their own vehicles?
I would like to restrict where the car can go. L
@SawyerMerritt do you know anything about this?