Lumiere etc

Louis Vuitton yada whatever

 

This entry gets edited so much that you have to read it in parts, like I do.
I really like the sad song "Alicia" from the game, so I looked it up.
The youtube video is still there right this second, but they have a habit of blocking stuff;
So enjoy it while it is there.

Dad vs "Curator" (Dad vs Dad?)

https://expedition33.wiki.fextralife.com/Skills You can learn up the butt but when it counts, only the wimpiest moves are available, the rest are too expensive to use.
I'm doing my homework now (this game has to last until next month)

-----

Gee, *thanks*, google 

"High Contrast" is so low class, so great-unwashed, so crude
FURIO

Some evil huntress lurks.
Will I need "WeMod"?

https://www.reddit.com/r/expedition33/comments/1kcsr5x/i_believe_in_esquie_supremacy/
No one name-dropped Kafka yet.
But they're name-bombing another game I need to google, "FFX"

Yeah, OK.

Anyway I'm stuck totally in a giant aquarium filled with nightmarish boogeymen.
If they respawn that would totally suck.
They've taken away my compass and I'm slowly going in circles.
The game takes its cues from those endless-walk games in which you get lost a lot.
Then you google it. (Ble?)
But I suck at puzzles....
Counting sand looks more promising.
A map, *something* 

They dole out knowledge like typical elitists: Eventually and occasionally you'll get a map, and the map says (mostly) go north, which is impossible without a compass. Didn't the french invent Mazes for rich people to have fun?

The guy with no face, yeah.
But you (the game) never mentions that, I'm supposed to just soak it in (I guess)
We're at camp, no way to upgrade weapons (yet,) now I know why.
Thanks,, google (grrrrrrrrr) 

The money-grubbing fools in walkthroughs have you travelling zig-zag fashion to obtain useless crap instead of plotting a route (mostly, north and east.)
When that doesn't work, you find the rock to go under or whatever.
Ahhh!!!

Anyway in typical game-style there are two biggie bosses to kill and some cryptic lore to follow.

"I am your Father!"
"Noooooo!!"

etc.

Pâtisserie, boulangerie, and viennoiserie
(we're supposed to know what a viennoiserie is...)
I looked it up and I still don't know.
"Between French pastry and french bread"
Bullshit, I wanna say. They could have translated it (croissant) and stuck a "w" in the croissant, but no.
Fine! (deaux nutte does not exist but should)"boutique de beignets" ( bo-teek duh ben-yay)

Krispy Kremes aren't doughnuts, they're candy-coated tooth killers (just saying)
REAL doughnuts have disappeared through a black hole, IDK.
Someone make ben yays, please.
Putain. See, they all talk perfect English but switch to french at pretentious moments.

No one goes on about petites fromages (yet.)

Creamerie Restaurant Fromagerie
(if the picture is too dark to see)

https://www.reddit.com/r/expedition33/comments/1kcjcni/december_33/ (wut?)(*ahem*) "quoi ?"

I want to edit in (a week later) that Critics must be falling over themselves praising this game, with its black-and-white and french phrases. "Astounding, Incredible" Holocaust-level depression, it'll be the game of the year somewhere.
"La vie est nulle !" Merveilleux !" (pardon my French)

(link)

I don't read "Kafka" or ever utter his name, but I know the reputation he has.
So I googled his name and "Expedition 33" and sure enough.

There are games, movies and philosophers I'll never read or experience, but when you-all name-drop them, I look them up.
(e.g., "Inception" which sounds a LOT like "Dreamscape")
No one waxes bombastic on the mimes yet....

https://www.ign.com/wikis/clair-obscur-expedition-33/Sirene

I don't know how to get to the goal of this chapter and the link is very unhelpful.

A large woman dances in the bottom-middle, and her minions

but I'm totally lost.
 I'm stuck on one of the upper levels, or paragraph-1000 of the walkthrough.

OK, after we escaped her lair, I don't know how, 
We meet the paintress' sign eventually.
We shoot the sign (Hologram, whatever) and nothing happens (duh)
I haven't loaded up on skills throughout the game, I just shoot the target with my really big gun.
O well. Morituri Salutamus te. Bonum est hodie mori.

Fromage!

Odd choice. 
The "Main" Character dies and for what? 
Dramatic effect?
But the question is important, assuming you've been careful to build up little defensive points and abilities.
It won't matter, everyone is doomed. His *sister* is the protagonist you've been ignoring for most of the story, so bulk her up.

My regret, if I want to get immersive, 
is that all those little prizes you get after battles, clothes and colored things, lay useless in my inventory.
I have no idea what they are for.
The really bad guy is dead, and now we are to meet the crazy lady who lost her family in some accident.
They dole out details like elitists, and I don't know what the accident was or who died and why people keep coming back from the dead.
My guess,
It's all a dream, a twisted fantasy, And "we" don't exist.
I'm writing this knowing I'll keep playing and replaying like a rat memorizing a maze to get the fromage.
(How depressing)

OMG, it's not done??!!!

Quelle Bombastique

My wake-up dream today: I'm an actor in a sitcom wondering what I'm doing there (playing the part of an underling in a school) alongside the main actors Gerald McRaney and Delta Burke.
Some of the characters in the game serve no purpose at all, except to add a more realistic effect.

Is there a theme? I mean, with all the corpses and broken buildings?

Life is pointless, we're all pawns in someone else's play, and try as we might, we'll die.
Or maybe, don't get too attached.

Uplifting, this isn't.

They explain the plot at the very-very end, sort of, but it's dragged out and I start thinking of food or whatever.
I shall seek a plot summary to explain the "Epilogue"

https://www.ign.com/wikis/clair-obscur-expedition-33/All_Endings_and_How_to_Get_Them

And this entry, compact and succinct, almost tempts me to play until the conclusion,
But it's hard developing an imaginary relationship with these characters.
Who do we root for?
Who is the bad guy?
No, I'll restart.
The real villains are only referred to. "The writers." 
And the major catalyst, a horrific fatal fire, is almost never spoken of (until the epilogue? IDK)

---

The story of the game changes a lot.
Somewhere towards the end, Alicia tells her dad that she's hidden the canvas, where her Mom will never find it.
Oh, you mean that 6-foot wide, twelve foot tall canvas that

your mother's hypnotized body is sitting in front of?

But let's ignore that, obviously there IS a hidden canvas somewhere.
Mom finds it pretty damn quick when Dad needs her help.

A male child  is seen painting the canvas. 
Verso pleads with him to stop painting.
Alicia-Maelle realizes who the painter is but stops short of saying his name.

There are no author's cliff notes, only wrong-headed reddit posts and the blog entry I just found.
https://www.thegamer.com/clair-obcsur-expedition-33-plot-holes-make-no-sense/
In other words, until the commercial ridden TV show comes out or rich people can watch it on Netflix, some stuff will remain a mystery.

I only know a couple obvious inconsistencies.
Who are the mimes and why does the game author hate them?
The "Monsters" (Nevrons?) sit around like security guards waiting to kill someone.

Some are fired-up, gung-ho, and some go through the motions like they don't get paid enough or they're getting too old for this shit.

"Gustav" should not have died, and in the end, he is resurrected. Both him and his girlfriend.
Now that you already know they're copies of the fake-originals, it all seems so pointless.
In fact, you could argue that the plot gets a lot weaker after Gustav gets sliced up.

We discover (too late) that "Maelle" is really "Alicia" but with amnesia.

The whole journal-writing-thing makes the story meaningful and then meaningless (The brat with the big head drops it on the ground)

I just read a professional page that says that writing in the journal means something, because you get a skill later on (that is prolly too expensive to use, so nevermind)
Also the semi-ghosts scattered throughout the game, utter a few pithy phrases, mostly of memories or of regret, and these too are useless.
They're vague and eventually, after three or so phrases, become silent.
Don't waste time talking to anyone.
Don't help anyone (It's pointless, and I'm thinking of You, white blob with a torch)
Don't misinterpret this blog entry to turn into a republican, I'm only parroting the f'ng game, you gossipers.

Uh, (Ooh, that got my heart going) yeah, waste of time talking to anyone to try to be immersive,
Unless you like little points and gold stars.

Without the amnesia Maelle wouldn't have cared as much.

A reddit post wrongly states (inmho) that Dad (Renoir) shows a picture of a woman on the floor coughing and gasping for air, as the mother.
I just assumed it was the for-real Alicia, not her mom with COPD, but you'd have to read the very long reddit post.

Bloggy stuff I usually add for my imaginary two-or-three readers gets erased a lot, and lately it's too terrible to enter into my journal.
Does my life really have to go down the tubes every few years?
Shouldn't I crawl away into fantasies of my own and forget about the real world?
In the game, the fantasy is godawful, and the player has to decide whether reality or fantasy is worse.