Clair Obscur’s Mental Health Masterpiece: Dysfunctional Family Dynamics and Game Review

Clair Obscur’s mental health masterpiece is making gamers cry and is one of the best games ever made, with a central story that portrays some difficult topics with great realism.

I’ve been waiting for Clair Obscur to come out since I first saw its concept. It looked like a Square RPG with some Paper Mario realtime mechanics and an utterly fascinating story concept. Especially after I saw IGN’s preview before the game came out and ran through the story, I knew I would be buying it day one.

Then I saw it was a new studio with several game design veterans and some A-list Hollywood voice acting legends like Andy Serkis (!!!) and Charlie Cox, as well as standout gaming actors in Ben Starr and Jennifer English.

Unfortunately for me, I had revisited my favourite games list in the last few months and finalised what I thought was my Top 24 games. After finishing Clair Obscur and weeping like an infant at the ending, I realised I’m going to have to bump another game out (or make it a top 25).

Make no mistake – this is a masterpiece. Gameplay, world design, music (!!!!!!!!!!!!!), acting, story, you name it. This game nails every single area and could be considered essentially a perfect game, especially as new patches continue to come out smoothing out some of the minor edges.

Also probably just worth calling out that the game has some very violent parts and language, so don’t let your kids anywhere near the story parts. Maybe some of the overworld enemy battles are okay, but always check that content rating, parent friends.

I will do a non-spoiler review for the first part of this, but I absolutely have to talk about spoilers in Clair Obscur’s mental health portrayal and deep dive, which is definitely not clear in the story until much later. So, if you’re interested in those heavier story elements or not bothered about having it spoiled without playing it, that’ll be later. But now, let’s talk about the non-spoilers aspects that make this game utterly breathtaking.

That world

In a sea of RPGs, Clair Obscur’s world design stands out as something genuinely unique. Its renaissance French motive is absolutely everywhere. The building designs are incredible, the creatures and world have never been seen before, and it all looks flawless.

There’s one part towards the start of the game called the Flying Waters where you end up underwater, able to breathe, and looking up at all the sea creatures swimming above you as you run around coral farms mixed with French buildings, sunken ships, and camp sites. Every single main level in this game is like that – memorable and brilliant.

Amazing RPG gameplay

Let’s all get this clear – if you like turn based RPGs, this is probably the best battle system out there. Now unpopular hot take, I actually think the Final Fantasy 13-2 system holds up just a bit better, but this system also stays engaging the whole time. This is thanks to a number of different elemental skills, no load times, stunning enemy designs, and the real star of the show which is the interactive realtime elements that stay constant throughout every battle.

In a similar way to Paper Mario and The Thousand Year Door, you don’t just sit there and do damage, take damage, lather rinse repeat. You interact with the battle the entire time. Your characters can dodge, parry, counterattack, jump, and do special super powered gradient counters for heavier attacks. All the enemies are different and mastering their visual cues feels like you’re playing Elden Ring rather than an RPG.

Only criticism I really have is there’s a superboss that just doesn’t need as much health as he has. He’s meant to be ridiculous but unfortunately it really really is. They’ve nerfed him a bit in the latest patch at the time of writing (1.3) but it’s still ridiculous, and unfortunately he guards a great item and a very very interesting part of the story. Oh, and the enemy called “Clair”. Total troll.

Flawless acting performances

This is Andy Serkis’ best role and performance, in any form, ever. And with his storied career, that’s saying something. Renoir is just so layered and varied and he delivers such necessary gravitas to a multi-faceted and compelling character.

Daredevil’s Charlie Cox is unforgettable as big brother type Gustave. He’s charming, he’s real, he’s layered. I do wish he was in more of the interviews and press for the game as Gustave is fantastic.

Jennifer English as Maelle and Ben Starr as Verso, who are in all the press, are definitely the true stars here. I loved Ben as Clive Rosfield in Final Fantasy 16 and Jennifer English is in a ridiculous amount of games, but for both of them, the performances here are fun, heart stirring, and real.

Every other performer is excellent too. It’s rare for a game to have absolutely no dud lines or voices but that’s genuinely true here.

In the voice actors special feature for the game, the game director doesn’t let Ben Starr say anything about the mysterious Verso, and that’s for a good reason. But just know, you’re going to get a whole lot of Ben. And he’s definitely showing signs of being this current generation’s leading man.

What. A. Soundtrack.

Just go listen to it. Chrono Cross level brilliance (I love Chrono Cross). Lost Voices is a standout in a soundtrack that already stands out

Even the high level story is captivating (revealed in trailers)

Now if the gameplay wasn’t already going to get you in, the high level story premise is immediately gripping.

The French city of Lumiere exists in the ocean, ripped away from the main continent, due to an event known as The Fracture. Every year, a tall, monochrome figure known as The Paintress rises from her slump and paints a number on the Monolith, and one year later, everyone who is that age dies. The game begins with the number 33 being painted, and everyone who is 34 dying. Every year, a large group of people that age launch an Expedition to go to try to find out who she is, and to stop her. This has been happening for 67 years so far so most parents are long gone, meaning there is a communal society raising children with figures more akin to parental figures and adopted older siblings.

Gustave, Sciel, Lune, and their 16 year old friend and adopted little sister Maelle reach the Continent only to have their entire squad murdered by a bunch of monsters and a mysterious old man in an Expedition uniform. With the Lumina Converter and the work of all those who came before, they hope this time Expedition 33 is the one who will stand a chance.

And that’s all you should know if you want to have the best experience playing it for yourself.

Every act of the game is capstoned by an utterly breathtaking twist, very much akin to “Magus isn’t the final boss of Chrono Trigger and you’re nowhere near finished the game” level twists. And they are absolutely constant. This world is worth exploring over and over, and even every side mission lends something major to the main story. Every small thing is all about the main story.

And here come the spoilers, which I really want to get into, because this is a work of art and an extremely powerful story.

—Spoilers start here

What the story is really about – mental health

Alright, if you’re reading here, it’s because you’ve already played the game, or don’t want to play but are just interested in this amazing story that had me absolutely sobbing so loud at the ending I almost woke the kids up from their sleep. It resonated and resonated heavy.

It’s not just me though – if you go through YouTube or Tiktok or Facebook you can search for Clair Obscur ending reactions and see your favourite gaming streamers tearing up, or getting mad, or both. It’s because the game has amazingly represented so many different combinations of people that it’s hard to imagine an individual who doesn’t resonate with at least one of these characters.

The first hint you get about this story being more complicated than you think is that as soon as you get a little bit closer to The Paintress, you realise she’s actually huddled over, hands on her arms, crying for years and years in between her small step getting up to paint the next number. She’s not intimidating – she’s tragic.

I kept wondering why Charlie Cox who plays Gustave who seems to be the main character in all the trailers and the start of the game wasn’t in any of the press.

And then the end of Act 1 happens, and he is killed off by Renoir, leaving Maelle heartbroken that her adopted older brother and father figure has been cut from her life. It’s this game’s Aerith in a definite nod to its Final Fantasy inspirations, amongst many others (eg. FF8’s ending and the Curator’s face).

But the game isn’t about just losing Gustave, although that is a motif for Maelle in losing a brother figure in her life – it’s about grief, it’s about mental health, it’s about addiction, and it’s rooted in some very real psychology regarding dysfunctional family dynamics.

We learn as we progress that this world isn’t real. It’s a painted Canvas, owned by the late Verso, a 26 year old son of the Dessendre family who dies in a fire. He dies trying to save his sister Alicia, who herself is severely injured and disabled in the fire, leading her mother Aline to blame her for what happened. Renoir is actually Aline’s husband and the father of both Alicia and Verso, and they both have a sister named Clea who just can’t handle the way the family handles its problems.

The Dessendre family are Painters, having the housefire started by an unknown group called the Writers. They are able to paint in living paint called chroma, and also able to enter their paintings as people within the world. Everyone you meet, every monster you fight, every creature you encounter – none of them are real, they have been painted by a member of the Dessendre family in order to be able to cope. A wonderful world and some amazing individuals within for sure, but they don’t truly exist.

Like in Inception, the family members keep losing themselves here refuse to hear that “this world isn’t real”.

Having lost her son in the fire, Aline continues to return to the Canvas in order to be with the last remnants of the soul of her lost son. Renoir is desperate to have her come back as her addiction grows worse and worse and threatens her life, as well as the health of their family.

Clea, having two parents constantly fighting and trapped in false realities, continues on with her life in the real world, although we do see a number of times where she steps into the Canvas to help her father, remember her brother, or help Alicia’s manifestation in the painting, which we learn to be Maelle as her mother blocks her fully entering the painting properly when she tries. Alicia then lives 16 years in Canvas time as someone else’s daughter, surrounded by love she doesn’t really get any more at home, free of disability or impediment from her injuries.

The whole story plays out with startling realism, largely because it is a game version of the well known and tested models of dysfunctional family dynamics in psychology. Clair Obscur’s mental health spin is a perfect representation of what happens in families where one or multiple people have an alcohol or substance addiction or severe untreated mental health issue, usually triggered or driven by grief or loss, and all the other family members adopt different roles in order to survive or cope.

This is a nice succinct summary of the people around “The Addict” or the central dysfunctional person in a family and more of a description from FHE Health, although multiple psychological bodies have great resources available on these dynamics, as well as counsellors and professionals to help you deal with these if you find yourself in this boat with your family, or even your friends or other social circles. I was introduced to this model through the Australian Institute for Family Counselling (AIFC) but have been unable to find their model on this online, although it’s all the same and startlingly common.

At any rate, this story can be so brutal because it touches on so many people’s real world experiences, and they have a character representing or struggling with each or a number of these roles. Let’s go through the family members and see what’s happening here in this co-dependent nightmare of a situation.

I think Clea is the easiest to start with. The middle daughter of the family. Her brother dies, her sister becomes disabled and unable to speak properly, her mother runs off into a fictional world constantly and is otherwise severely disabled in her own way by her grief and depression, and her father spends all his time trying to win mum back, leaving her all alone, the Hero, trying to help the family in its real world practical way. She goes to stop the Writers by herself, because no one in the family will leave their grief long enough to help her.

We learn her mother Aline even paints an Axon (a giant monster) who is cursed to carry a huge city on her back, a portrayal of the Hero that Clea utterly despises, so she enlists the help of a painted human called Simon to destroy it, then goes and paints her own version of herself into the Canvas. We also learn that she drastically helps her father Renoir to destroy the Canvas in the hopes of bringing her grief-stricken mother back out of her fantasy world.

Because she’s the most stable (or seems to be the most anyway), it seems that she takes on large aspects of raising her sister Alicia while her parents go off elsewhere. Holding such disdain for her parents for their choices and inability or unwillingness to move forward, she refers to them by their first names rather than any affectionate titles.

I guess another example of this type is Luisa from the movie Encanto. The strong one.

Aline would be next. Aline, who is actually The Paintress, who wasn’t trying to destroy the world but to warn everyone that Renoir was killing off every older creation of hers in the painting one year at a time as he was able to, is the true individual keeping the Canvas and the entire world alive.

Like in the state of the Painted World, she is also the one the Dessendre family now completely revolves around. As can happen in real life, all the family members have taken up orbit in the gravitational pull of her despair.

She is absolutely destroyed by the death of her son and is so unable to face the grief or process her issues that she has become addicted to living in a fantasy world, a world that isn’t real, all the while neglecting her real family and real life outside. Haven’t we all seen someone like this in our own lives – whether an alcoholic, a drug addict, a sex addict, a severely depressed individual, or possibly all of them at once. Aline really needs counselling and professional help, or at the very least, to process things properly with her family members, but instead she hides away for years and decades at a time in these fictional worlds.

She also blames Alicia for the death of Verso and the cause of her despair. This is represented in multiple ways which we’ll look at more when we get to Alicia. A mother who just holds utter contempt for her daughter for things that weren’t even her fault. Misappropriated blame. Little does she know by doing so, she’s creating another woman who will perpetuate the same cycle again with the same coping mechanisms if a significant change does not occur.

The game makes a real measured jab actually in this regard at its own players, that perhaps you are playing this game and all your other games or books or screen time or sports or whatever you do to hide from your real world problems, to stay escaped from your husband or wife or children or issues, to fill your time with activity so that you don’t have to actually stop and feel the hit and the pain and the necessary processing that’s required to work through your grief, your shame, your loss. There is absolutely nothing wrong about getting help, and I actually love that this game is so brave to also call out and demonstrate the consequences to yourself and everyone around you if you don’t get the help you need.

The addict, the avoider, the one with unresolved mental health issues, the one who constantly views themselves as the victim, the one who absolutely refuses to change, will continue to also destroy and pass on the cycle that they themselves suffer so greatly from.

Come back to the real world. Face your grief. The trauma is real, the pain is real, the grief is justified. But you need help. Stop running and hiding, Aline.

Then we have Renoir, the father and husband. As the dysfunctional model shows, every addict must have an enabler in order to actually perpetuate their broken behaviour, and with her real husband unwilling to go along with the fictional games any more and neither of her daughters willing to play along, one of whom she hates and blames for the death of her son, she paints her own enabler. A fictional version of her husband, the Renoir who keeps protecting the Paintress because “he loves the family”, and that’s what Aline believes her husband’s actual behaviour should be. She views her real husband’s attempts to handle the true reality as unloving and uncaring, as many people do when someone tells the truth around a system of dysfunction.

The painted Renoir is the in-world embodiment of the well meaning spouse or child or friend who keeps everything status quo, who buys the alcohol for the husband or wife, who stops the kids or the friends or anyone else saying anything critical or different, who retargets the problem at others in order to keep the boat afloat, even if everyone is actually drowning because of it. Like many of us, if we don’t have anyone who can enable our bad behaviour around us, we’ll go looking for one – Timon and Pumbaa friends who’ll hang out with us but will never remind us of how much more we can be.

But the real Renoir has had enough of being surrounded by “living corpses”, tired of having a wife who doesn’t care for him or anyone else any more, who refuses to grieve together but decides to run and hide and stay hidden. He is the Curator, set free by his daughter Clea after Aline trapped him under the Monolith and out of her way, and once the Paintress Aline is expelled from the Canvas, he is free to destroy everything. In the shock Act 2 ending, he erases everyone except for Verso and Alicia from the canvas, leading to a final boss confrontation as Alicia tries to get him out before he completely destroys the Canvas in an attempt to set his family free from their denial and addiction.

“I don’t exist to her. None of us do. She’s left us all behind to drown by ourselves, so that she can drown alone…”

If the painted Renoir is The Enabler, then the real Renoir is perhaps The Scapegoat, or the Truth Teller. He’s done with the way things are, he hates that no one is moving forward in a healthy way, he’s not going to let his daughter Alicia develop the same addiction as his wife. Aline is furious with him and literally goes to war with him for even trying to suggest that they should get rid of the Canvas and actually grieve and move forward properly. This schism causes The Fracture which ripped Lumiere out of the continent and threw it into the sea.

The incorrect perception that the player, Aline and Alicia carry is that it isn’t Aline that has the addiction problem, it’s that Renoir and Clea keep trying to ruin her happiness and Alicia’s opportunity to still be with her brother. Which perception of the Dessendre family you choose to believe is in your hands in the ending with the two choices to either preserve the world that you’ve spent hours and hours in and full of characters you love, or to set everyone free.

As in the real world, the Truth Teller usually gets blamed by the family or the social group as an externalised problem that they can occupy themselves with. All the while, the real dysfunction, the true darkness in the family, remains unaddressed. And like in the real world, the conflict that emerges when an addict or someone with severe and untreated issues is confronted has an enormous blast radius that leaves cities and people never the same. That’s probably why the Enabler will never do it – they don’t want to lose some of the benefits of the status quo should the challenge explode.

Like the spouse who refuses to buy the drinks any longer, or hides the credit card so dad can’t go load up or blow the family’s money, Renoir cops the blame from the player, Verso, Alicia, and Aline for trying to make things different and pointing out how bad things really are.

But if you let him, he may just convince you there is a future where we aren’t all revolving around this problem, and able to go outside and live a healthy life together once more.

Alright then: Alicia. We learn that Alicia has never been happier in her life than by being Maelle, growing up surrounded by love and support, having no disability or injury, free to be the version of herself she believed she could be if she hadn’t been hurt in the fire or pigeon holed and the focus of all the anger of her mother. When she discovers as Maelle that she is the real Alicia, and in her ending, she chooses in her heart to be her fictional self, because she has completely given up on her real self.

There is a painted version of her – monochrome, wearing a mask, unable to speak, scarred and ostracised. It was her mother’s version of her, and tells you all you need to know about how Aline sees her own daughter. The Lost Child. She contributed to the problem, so better for her to be out of sight. She is so desperate for approval, we learn she spends all her time at the top of a tower with a version of her mother that Renoir painted, a happy smiling face that actually feels like she approves of her. This is how desperate the painted version of Alicia is, but as the game goes on, we learn the real Alicia does indeed carry the same desire and insecurity.

The real Alicia, even through her disabilities, is a great painter, and sees the world in beauty. Her brother believes in her so much, that even the painted version of her brother that meets the portion of the real Verso’s soul wants to see her back in the real world, shining and living out her best life. I lost it when I chose Verso’s ending and saw him telling her sister how much she should still believe in herself and how much more she still had ahead of her in her real life, no matter how much she despises and belittles herself. Alicia begs and pleads with her brother to let her stay in her fairytale, make believe life, and in Alicia’s ending, we see her develop the same addiction as Aline, addicted to having everyone playing their part like a puppet in her show, preserving her own addiction and repeating the cycle her mother set before her.

She had given up on herself. And her mother had given up on her too.

And yet she is so much more wonderful than she thinks she is. Even after the tragedy and her severe disfigurement, she still has so much ahead of her and so much to contribute.

Verso also sees in The Reacher section that Renoir believes in Alicia as well – “he just wants to see you fly”.

And she can. And she will.

Which leads us to Verso. The real Verso was lost in the fire saving her sister, and so we only get to know the painted Verso, who encapsulates the memories of the real version, and is the Verso who got to actually live his life if he hadn’t tragically had it cut short. This manifestation is nowhere more powerful than when Verso finds the part of his soul that is still in the painting – a little boy you’ve seen all throughout the game, trapped continuing to keep the painting alive to try to allow his family to continue coping.

He was lost so young. He never got to live his full life. You feel the full weight of the tragedy, and you cry even more. Or at least I did.

But he doesn’t want to paint any more. He doesn’t want to keep leaving a false life that isn’t real. He doesn’t want his family to continue hiding in his Canvas. He wants them to be free. He is tormented by memories of a life he’ll never have and can’t keep living for decades and decades on end knowing he has actually been lost.

He wants his father Renoir to be able to have his family back. He sees his real mother Aline hunched over, delirious and crying the entire time at the painting, unable to breathe, gripped by grief and using his art as a coping mechanism. He sees his sister Clea going off and trying to keep the real family going.

And he sees his sister Alicia, so angry at herself, so doubting of her capabilities because of what happened to her, and helps set her heart free by telling her who she really is and how much she truly is still capable of doing.

Oh that we wouldn’t all have a Verso in our lives who tells us how much more capable we are when we sell ourselves short, and that we would also be that Verso in the lives of others.

Fortunately, the family has a happy but a difficult ending, if you choose Verso’s ending, which you should, in that with the Canvas removed, they are able to move on with their real lives, get the help they need, have the love between husband and wife and mother and father and son and daughter restored, and move forward unimpeded by unprocessed grief and depression. They’re Painters with a great future and their lives remain ahead of them, not behind them, all the while continuing to celebrate the memory and the legacy of someone who meant so much to them.

And we all need to do that. No matter what role you may have filled in your own interactions with dysfunction (and we all are dysfunctional to a degree), we need to find help, find freedom, to stop escaping and staying escaped, to come back to the real world, to grieve together, but not to stay in grief forever – to move forward into our brighter future.

That, my friends, is Clair Obscur’s mental health masterpiece. Find the freedom from the role you’ve had to play, and live your life.

—End Spoilers

I do just want to note that the topics in the game and maybe the analysis above can be pretty brutal for a lot of people. I just want to let you know that I too went through seasons of deep depression and anxiety and panic attacks, and had to get a lot of help to return back to health, and have had to go back to counselling again about a year or so ago when I felt a life event cause me to take another dip which really helped. So there is no judgment here on any of this, and you can read more about my journey through it at 6 Things That Helped Me Get Through Depression And Anxiety

If you’re in that boat, I’d implore you to urgently seek professional help, no matter which character you find yourself resonating with, or even if you have mental health issues beyond those the game explores. Let the characters of Clair Obscur serve as a powerful reminder of what happens when you leave things unaddressed, and please find an appropriate counselling service in your area. Even AI can be a helpful starting point if you need someone to talk to and you don’t feel like you have anyone – Gemini, ChatGPT, whichever service you’re across. A lot of these have generalised psychology summarised and also have all the relevant mental health services in your area available.

But hopefully you’ll see that you do have people all around you, and that you are more capable and beautiful than you think. You matter, you were made for a reason, and you’re going to see it through.

In summary, Clair Obscur is a masterpiece. Truly. And I don’t think the complex dynamics of addiction and grief and depression have ever been so poignantly and directly explored and represented in any form of media, ever. And even better, it’s a 10 out of 10 gameplay, story, music and sound, presentation, all of it, at the same time.

Buy it, buy any DLC, throw money at Sandfall, vote with your wallet to tell Sandfall and the rest of the industry we want more of this please.

If you’re not a gamer but have heard enough to be interested, find someone doing a playthrough on YouTube or Twitch.

Or if you need a more kid friendly exploration of the topics involved, stick with Disney’s Encanto.

Now I just need to somehow rework my favourite games list once again…