This article contains spoilers for Act 1 of Expedition 33
UPDATE: This piece was written just before the end of Act 1. I have now updated the article at the end with a new section discussing the very end of Act 1.
Also, if you would like to read my thoughts on the ending, I wrote about that here.
If you read my post last week, you’ll know that through my first sevenish hours of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, I have been absolutely in love with the game. The combat is phenomenal. The story hooks are excellent ,and the plot is starting to get more interesting. The world is gorgeous, and the music is top tier. But there was one thing that was not quite fully clicking with me, and that was the cast.
It’s not that they were bad, but they were just a bit plain and unremarkable. No one seemed to get all that fired up about anything. They had personalities, but they all seemed pretty understated, especially considering how much each of them had already gone through in a short amount of time.
And the worst of all of them was Gustave, the lead character of Expedition 33. Through my first 8-9 hours, I didn’t hate Gustave, but I found him to be quite bland. I thought voice actor Charlie Cox was also not doing him any favors with a somewhat sleepy performance. Expedition 33 is the first game from Sandfall Interactive, and this was Charlie Cox’s first ever video game voice acting performance. Sandfall has proven to be exceptionally talented in multiple ways, but I wondered if character work was a weakness that they might need to address for whatever their next game ends up being.
It turns out that I was wrong. The more I play Expedition 33, the more I grow to appreciate Gustave and Charlie Cox’s performance. Gustave is not a big personality like your average “JRPG” main character. He isn’t overpowering. He’s quiet. He’s gentle. He’s not your stereotypical leader, and he has times where he needs to be picked up like anyone else. But he has a superpower, and that superpower is empathy.
This Guy Is Not Exactly The Best At Parties
My inclination that Gustave was a bit off hit me from very early on in the game. You start off Expedition 33 a bit before the yearly “Gommage.” This is when all of the people of a certain age will die all at once by slowly disappearing. Gustave is at this Gommage to be there for his ex-girlfriend Sophie. Despite the fact that they aren’t together, they are friendly. You can sense a bit of regret in this moment from them that they didn’t stay together.
And then, it happens. “The Paintress” activates the Gommage, and Sophie slowly fades away. It’s a haunting scene. And yet, Gustave barely seems affected. He doesn’t react how you’d expect anyone to in that situation. Honestly, almost no one does, but Gustave is highlighted in this moment, and it seems off.
Things didn’t get any better for me after the crew made their foray onto the continent to go and confront the paintress. Early on, an old man appears and starts slaughtering the expedition. Gustave freezes, and it costs one of his friends his life. Gustave somehow survives. But he sees the carnage, feels the guilt, and looks set to commit suicide. Then, another companion, Lune, shows up and stops him. I couldn’t believe that after working his whole life to do this expedition that he was going to quit the second he got there. Especially since he hadn’t confirmed that everyone else had died yet. The writing was a part of it, but Charlie Cox’s quiet presence through incredible trauma wasn’t working for me, and it just isn’t how most main characters act.
I wasn’t sure what drove Gustave at this point. The fact that he was going on this expedition and risking dying over enjoying the last year of his life showed an empathy for people around him that I hadn’t seen otherwise. The ability to believe you are the one that can stop the Gommage when no one has for 60+ years shows a fire and conviction that wasn’t on display from either Charlie Cox’s performance, or the way he was written. I just didn’t get it.
Things shifted for me soon after the party gains their fourth member, Sciel. Sciel is the first character in the game who seemed to have a bit of a spark. She brought some much needed energy to the crew. Soon after she joins, Gustave’s personality seems to perk up a bit more. He starts making a few more jokes. He makes inside references to past events with a glint in his eye.
I especially felt like I started his seeing his personality when the crew had to get by a creature blocking their way a little later on. After obtaining a password from the nearby Gestrel village, they are told that they must yell “get out of my way” at the top of their lungs in order to pass. As the crew reaches the area, you can see Gustave slowly trying to mask his presence. He obviously does not be the one to say the password. Sciel catches him and mischievously tells him that he needs to be the one to yell the password because he is the loudest. After 10 hours with this game and barely hearing Gustave raise his voice, this is absolutely hilarious. It made me realize that Charlie Cox’s performance so far wasn’t some weird quirk. Gustave is supposed to be quiet. He’s not boisterous in any way. After Gustave yells the password, the crew discovers that they were fucked with, and that there wasn’t any password, and it certainly didn’t have to be yelled. The Gestral is a little upset about being yelled at, and Gustave cannot stop apologizing to him. It’s a charming little scene, where I felt like Gustave shows his kindness. He’s terribly embarrassed to have been rude in any way.
Not long after that, I discovered the empathetic side of Gustave that I didn’t feel like I fully saw during his interactions after Sophie’s passing. We get a scene at the campfire where Gustave’s adopted sister, Maelle, suddenly has a weird nightmare vision in black and white. In this nightmare, everyone freezes around her, and she talks to the man who killed most of the expedition at the onset of the journey. The cutscene is crazy and absolute art. Everything from the way the cutscene is shot to it going black and white is eerie and riveting.
After the scene occurs, Maelle is absolutely shaken. She just encountered one of the most terrifying moments of her life. Her voice trembles as she tries to discuss what happened to her, but she can not complete sentences easily. She is clearly having difficulty breathing as well. It’s also important to note that Maelle is 16 and not in her 30s like everyone else here. She is dealing with a lot.
Lune understands that what just happened could be incredibly significant for learning what the hell is going on, which is a complete mystery. Perhaps that information could help them with their mission. Lune is one of the most fierce and dedicated members of the team. Even as Maelle struggles to complete her sentences, Lune tries to calm her down in an effort to extract more information out of her. Sciel gently suggests that perhaps this isn’t the time, but Lune presses on.
As a viewer, I found myself siding with Lune because I’m eager to figure out more about this world. Gustave had already given Lune a bit of a stare at this point, but as she kept pressing on, Gustave firmly but gently told Lune that she could ask Maelle more tomorrow. He then goes on to comfort Maelle. Obviously, Gustave has a special relationship with Maelle, but this scene finally unlocked the rest of who he is for me. Gustave is driven by his empathy. It is what makes him who he is. That empathy is also what brings out his strength and conviction. It is what makes him special. Once I saw that, I began seeing how almost everything Gustave does is with others in mind. This is who he is.
Yet, he is also still human. I would argue that Gustave massively failed his own principles when he nearly ended his own life. Doing that would have benefitted no one and hurt others that he has this empathy for. Lune, Maelle, and now Sciel would all be in much more danger and likely unable to complete their mission if he had done so. However, Lune was there to pick him up when he failed. Later on, when Lune failed at empathy with Maelle, Gustave was there to set her straight.
Gustave is strong. But he can also be weak. He has principles, but he doesn’t always live up to them. He’s not the perfect hero, but no one is. I am slowly connecting more and more with Gustave because he truly feels like a real person. That is a rare feat in almost any media, but especially in big bombastic, epic RPG like this one.
The Party IS The Character
The other thing that makes Gustave special is that he isn’t exclusively “the guy” in this game. He is just one part of a good group of friends. The main character of the game isn’t Gustave. It’s the entire party as a group. My friend Paul from Boss Fights says it is reminiscent of Final Fantasy XV. I actually think it gives off more serious Hi-Fi Rush vibes.
I feel like there’s no better way to truly see who someone is than when they are with their main friend group. Personalities shine. Friends bring things out of us that might not show otherwise. Our friends’ traits can rub off on us in unexpected ways.
After Sciel joins the party, and what appears to be Gustave’s main people are now all united, you see how these people all bring out who Gustave truly is. Lune is the one who brings out a lot of his conviction. She is the most motivated person in the group. She brings out the fire in him and is the one most likely to be able to call him out when he strays (much like Gustave can also do for her). Sciel brings out Gustave’s fun side. She forces him to lighten up in ways he just doesn’t before her arrival. And Maelle brings out the compassion that he has. Gustave is an odd mix of brother and father for her, and she brings out that desire to protect that is within him.
Gustave doesn’t feel quite right throughout many of the early hours of the game because he isn’t actually all there. A big part of him is missing, and that is his friends. In a conversation not long after the incident with Maelle, Gustave talks about how he feels more like himself when the people he cares about are around him.
He does not grieve Sophie in the way I expected in the early going, but he clearly carries that grief with him. Perhaps that is why he faltered in the ultimate way as they reached the continent. Grief can make people do things that they wouldn’t otherwise.
Now that he does have those friends, or at least the few that remain, they thrive as a unit in their interactions, and they also make each other better. While I am a firm believer in good friends being as meaningful as family, in the society of Lumiere, friends essentially have to be family. With Gustave now surrounded by that family, he can be his true self. The understated performance by Charlie Cox was not him being “sleepy,” as I first thought. It was Charlie Cox showcasing the pain that Gustave was going through. Now that some of that pain has healed, I slowly feel more fire and more emotion building within him. Gustave is himself again.
Several of my friends were raving about Gustave almost immediately when Expedition 33 launched last week. I saw their thoughts, but I just didn’t quite understand what they were seeing. My early impressions with him were so different. While the events of the game made me re-evaluate my position, it was my friends’ passion and fire that also inspired me to truly try and give this character and voice actor a chance to win me over.
Perhaps it shouldn’t have taken all that for me to see the light. Expedition 33 is a game with heavy themes of grief. I like to view myself as an empathetic person. Yet, I didn’t have that empathy for what Gustave was going through in those first several hours of the game. I failed, much like Gustave did when he nearly took his own life near the start of the journey. It turns out that much like Gustave, I needed a few friends to show me what I was missing.
Editor’s Note: This section of the blog was written after the complete end of Act 1. Major spoilers ahead.
Well… wow.
I had a very busy weekend and didn’t play nearly as much Expedition 33 as I had wanted to. If I had played just a few more hours, I would have completed Act 1 before working on this piece, and it might have looked completely different. But I love that I wrote this article on Gustave a mere hour or so before he died in the game. It makes it that much more tragic, and it captures my full thoughts on Gustave outside of his death. I imagine many people reading this said “oh no” to themselves as they finished it.
First off, this is obviously one of the most stunning video game deaths of all time. Gustave was the lead freaking character. I had invested plenty of time and energy into his build, and I thought he was showing excellent character growth throughout the game. That’s just not the kind of character that gets killed off in big party RPGs this early.
I played Final Fantasy 7 well after it launched, and way after spoiling it was a giant message board meme. I’m not sure how people felt when that death happened in FF7, but I feel like I might finally have a rough idea. When Gustave was struck down by Renoir and his lifeless face was shown, I genuinely didn’t believe that he had died. I just didn’t think it was possible. While it’s a dramatic scene, it’s also not quite as melodramatic as the way a lot of other games would probably handle a scene of this magnitude (par for the course for the storytelling in Expedition 33, which is excellent). This gave me even more reason to believe that Gustave would be coming back.
But with each passing minute, it became clearer that Gustave was, in fact, dead. Because of everything I’ve just explained, and the fact that I only just started really liking Gustave a few hours before his death, this all hit for me very differently than a scene like this normally would.
Rather than one big shock, Gustave’s death created more of a slow sinking feeling within me. I slowly started to realize what this meant, not just for the game but for my own personal enjoyment of it.
First off, in my original article, I compared the Expedition 33 crew to Final Fantasy XV or Hi-Fi Rush. In the hours before Gustave’s death, it actually felt like the crew was having a lot of fun. There were a lot of enjoyable dynamics at play. The additions of Esquie and Sciel added comic relief that just kind of brought everything together. I was really excited to see how that dynamic would grow. I was excited to hear more playful inside references and see how these relationships and the group dynamic might deepen even more throughout this journey. Now, that is gone. While the crew still has each other, the dynamic will never be quite the same without Gustave. He leaves a hole in the cast, and in the rest of the party members, that can not be healed.
I was also excited to see how Gustave himself would grow as a character. He had shown his gentle leadership style in moments. I was anticipating a big moment later on where we might see a truly fired up Gustave on another level when it came to defending his friends. Once again, that moment now can not happen. Admittedly, I was also bummed because I loved the build I had for Gustave. I now have to figure out how to actually play the game a bit differently. That may seem minor within the grand scheme of things, but it genuinely stings! When I played the original FF7, I was careful not to grow too attached to a certain character because I knew they wouldn’t be in my party forever. I couldn’t make those kinds of preparations here.
If I loved Gustave from moment one, I feel like this all would have hit differently for me. It would have hurt more, but I also think it might have oddly been easier to move on from it. If Gustave was by far my favorite character, he’d still have that title. In fact, his death may have solidified him even more as a legendary RPG character for me. Instead, because of my own personal journey with Gustave, it hurts in a different way.
Of course, Gustave’s death is tragic in and of itself, but it hurts more because of his potential. I truly saw a path to him becoming an all-time favorite character for me. Now, that is impossible. Sometimes, losing that potential can hurt more than losing something that is already great because your mind allows you to create every best case scenario where all of that potential comes true.
So yeah, it hurts. I had a hard time going to sleep last night because that feeling slowly invaded my thoughts and had my mind racing. I woke up this morning still thinking about it. I should be slowly moving on, but the odd circumstances behind this character make it hard to.
I tried to play the game a little bit afterward, but it wasn’t easy. Gustave is essentially replaced with Verso immediately. Verso seems to have an incredibly cool backstory. He seems like a badass. And he is voiced by my favorite video game voice actor. But even that wasn’t enough. Something just didn’t feel quite right the entire time I explored.
I am mourning Gustave, but more importantly, I am mourning the loss of the group dynamic that I was starting to enjoy greatly.
Time will pass. Mourning will happen. Healing will happen. But things will also never be the same. I wish I saw Gustave and Charlie Cox’s brilliance a little earlier. I wish I had enjoyed that character more while I could. I wish I could have enjoyed the party dynamic more while it was there. Perhaps I should have explored a few more optional areas while I could.
But I didn’t, and here I am. It hurts, but I must press forward, as this game seems like an absolute masterpiece the more I play. It must be finished regardless.
Tomorrow comes.
You can read my review of Expedition 33 here.
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