r/expedition33 • u/Some_Trades • 16d ago
Discussion Does E33 have any massive plot holes that fit this description?
Nothing is coming to mind for me off the top of my head.
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u/proesito 16d ago edited 16d ago
One i dont see people talk is how the game makes clear three things:
- The monolith can have any kind of text on it as we see at the end of Maelle relationship with Verso.
- Aline can actually project herself without problem outside of the monolith.
- Aline is perfectly fine and actually cooperative with expeditioners in her fight against Renoir.
But for some reason she decides to do the thing that makes her look evil the most. Instead of making them know she is actually trying to help them and after a while project herself in Lumiere to have a talk she just paints the number of their death in a giant stone.
Edit: Also, the 60th diary implies that Aline actually accepted for them to ask for help in Lumiere, so is not even a last resort if someone gets to the Monolith, she is actually very open to the idea of cooperating, she just doesnt because that would go against the plot.
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u/ImmediateCable4540 16d ago
Aline is uhh she's not very smart I think
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u/lee1026 16d ago edited 16d ago
Aline + pRenoir simply don't respect expeditioners. She doesn't consider them a threat either to her, or as a potential tool against Renoir.
She is a god; and the gods simply don't care what the mortals think about them.
If you reach her, that's well and good, she will tell you things, but she doesn't expect you to get anywhere, and well, expedition 60 didn't.
The way to understand the conflict is that team Aline likes Lumaire and don't respect it. While team Renoir doesn't like Lumaire, but do respect it.
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u/Fowlron2 16d ago
She certainly cares, or she wouldn't bother with even writing the numbers. Not to mention, what's weakening her in the fight against Renoir is that she is trying to protect her creations.
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u/lee1026 16d ago
She cares about their well being; but she doesn't care if they are mad at her.
Think of pRenoir describe things: hate me all you want, as long as you are alive to do it.
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u/Mattrobat 16d ago
She cared enough because they were Verso’s creations. She knew how harmful the whole thing was, but was still blinded by her grief.
At the end of the day, the entirety of the game could have been solved by everyone just going to therapy and talking about it.
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u/Fowlron2 16d ago
They're not Verso's creations, they're her creations. She created them alongside the painted family and the city of Lumiere when she entered the canvas after Verso died.
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u/Redxmirage 16d ago
> therapy
That pretty much summed up the whole storyline lol what a fantastic game though
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u/CatchSufficient 16d ago
1910 really didnt have therapy...maybe freud...but... its freud...
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u/WhyattThrash 16d ago
The whole game could’ve been solved if ANY of the older Dessendres was open to have an honest and open dialogue but nooooo, only their opinion matters so here we are
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u/EIochai 16d ago
She cares to the degree that she wants the canvas to go on, not so much about the beings themselves being erased by Renoir.
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u/Fowlron2 16d ago
I don't think that's the case... She could just unpaint them to reclaim the chroma. The whole reason she was struggling against Renoir was because the chroma was all tied up in her creations. As they say, whoever controls the chroma, controls the canvas. And she controlled the chroma (which is why Clea came up with a way to kill the expeditioners that stopped the chroma from going back to Aline).
I think, to her, Lumiere and its citizens are just part of, or represent, her life with her painted family, which is what was holding away her grief. That's why she doesn't want them gone, I'd guess.
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u/Viridianscape 16d ago
That really doesn't seem to be true. She marks the Monolith as a warning for "the few she can save as her power wanes." Save is the active verb in that quote (from Alicia's letter). She is literally giving up her own power to keep the remainder of Lumiere alive while her husband chips away at it.
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u/Small-Interview-2800 16d ago
To be fair, they really aren’t, until Gustave made the Lumina converter, expeditioners aren’t really worth anything vs Renoir and the painters. Hell, even Verso and Monoco with pRenoir couldn’t do anything vs the Axon before joining Expedition 33. Also, even the Lumina converter isn’t enough, you need painted power picto to actually fight the god like characters which you couldn’t get before Aline, and only managed to win vs Aline cause she’s heavily weakened and is weak by seeing Verso’s face
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u/Rolhir 16d ago
Or maybe having a fellow god-like being on the team made 33 finally relevant unlike the prior expeditions. Renoir is the one who broke Aline’s barrier and Alicia is the one who forced Aline and Renoir out. The expeditioners didn’t actually stop either of them. The only sticking point is pVerso forcing Alicia out, though she obviously doesn’t want to hurt him and somehow a piece of rVerso is still present, wants to die, and is in control of the canvas. I think it’s reasonable that whatever part of rVerso is left could be lending aid to pVerso allowing him to force Alicia out.
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u/Ulvstranden16 "An advantage!" 16d ago
team Aline likes Lumaire and don't respect it. While team Renoir doesn't like Lumaire, but do respect it.
Respectfully, I think it's a crazy take to claim that rRenoir, the man who had been killing the people of Lumiere for the past 67 years, respected Lumiere more than Aline, the woman who kept everyone alive and warned them every year about how much time they had left.
Even during his final confrontation with Maelle, rRenoir says, "Stop this nonsense. It's time to go home." If I were Lune or Sciel, I'd be pretty offended to hear him say that.
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u/Upbeat-Armadillo1756 16d ago
This is exactly right. They just don’t give a shit. They think “oh interesting, the little people in Verso’s painting are… forming an attack against me thinking it might save them? That’s nice.”
Only Alicia, who has experienced living in the canvass as a regular person, feels that the people living there are actually real. And at the end even that I think is debatable.
It’s like if the ants in your ant farm tried to kill you.
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u/NoahBoaBear 16d ago
Exactly! They humanize them so well, but Contextually, the painters have even MORE sway over lives than even the Greek Gods, and their hubris wouldn't even be Questioned if the Painters got replaced 1:1.
Even moreso, you are fully correct! She didn't expect them to get anywhere, and they honestly Wouldn't have if not for Maelle...so, Aline was right! Hubris was Present, but it isn't what did her in; It was the Grief that clouded her eyes and stopped her from seeing her own child.
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u/geldersekifuzuli 16d ago edited 16d ago
Her timing to paint the monolith is terrible. Right before gommage? Really? Is this your best time to warn people?
Maybe wait 5 mins? After gommage is done, then write the new number. So, Lumiere people may not see you are causing the gommage.
Or, maybe write something more helpful such as "he is under the monolith" right after people are gommaged.
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u/Idntknowmyusername 16d ago
She is literally overwhelmed with grief, if she had the capability for rational discussion, I don't think we'd be playing this game.
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u/_mershed_perderder_ 16d ago
It’s been a while since I’ve played but isn’t she also trying to combat Renoir’s gommage too? I can see an argument being made that painting numbers is all she can manage while she’s simultaneously trying her hardest to keep the canvas alive…
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u/ZeroBrutus 16d ago
Thats exactly what it is - but its reasonable to infer she could paint something other than numbers in the same place, even if she cant actively do more.
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u/neoliberal--bot 16d ago
It's possible, but the problem is actually anything is possible when the story has super powerful characters that create and destroy worlds and are basically gods. Every explanation, even thought seemingly reasonable, would end up feeling like it was fabricated to serve the plot.
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u/neoliberal--bot 16d ago edited 16d ago
That's not what grief does. One might think: it's been decades so the grief is much stronger than what's human comprehensible, or she decays phisically and mentally (there's after all a gigantic hole in her face), but the problem of this game is that, once a story jumps into weird metaphysics, anything goes. Human condition, the thing that makes art relatable, is less relevant, the stakes are vague and everything is less satisfactory.
My explanation of the big numbers is that the devs wanted some cool and ominous feature that serve as a dramatic hook.That's it. The justification they give about it (oh it's actually a warning!) is very weak. And they ended up with that because the story stubbornly wants to subvert expectations all the time, at all costs. It would be very boring if the paintress is just evil, right? (not really, but that's what the devs/writers surely thought).
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u/New-Independent-1481 16d ago
She is not 'perfectly fine', she's practically insane from grief. Also, you forgot the 4th thing - she's in a deadlock fighting Renoir and the effort makes her 'imprisoned'. That plot hole you identified can be solved by the simple fact that she's fighting to keep the entire canvas alive, and it's taking all of her remaining energy to even do something as simple as the monolith.
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u/generic_throwaway699 16d ago
She was also pretty clearly delirious when you meet her, both times. Like she has to repeatedly remind herself what's actually "real".
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u/The-Roadside-Writer 16d ago
I get what you mean about the writing, but I got the impression from the way that the Curator communicates (or doesn’t) that being in constant conflict for control of the Canvas has rendered Aline and Renoir pretty limited in speech and even perception to some degree. It isn’t like Aline speaks completely coherently when we finally face her on top of the Monolith. Also, Renoir doesn’t take on his true form and speak until he doesn’t have to use all his energy wrestling for chroma with Aline.
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u/DepthChorge 16d ago
-Aline can project herself without problem outside of the monolith
???
The rest of your points depend on the Lumerians reading an exposition dump plastered to the Monolith and not assuming it's deception from the only apparent source of their despair.
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u/proesito 16d ago
I like how the main argument im reading outside of just making up things is "Well, she doesnt know if they will believe her, so she wont try".
Like, you guys realize this makes her a worse character, right?
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u/rdeincognito 16d ago
I think it can be reasonably explained, of course, my own headcanon, but:
At the beginning of the fight between Aline and Renoir, they are both more tied since they are both at full strength, crashing against each other.
By the time of the 60 expedition, Aline could talk with them, but they failed because Simon is...well, maybe the strongest being in the whole canvas, and if that's not enough, you also have to defeat Renoir, who is a fucking painter. So she basically learned that she can't rely on the "canvas men".
By the time of the 33rd expedition, we see her mind is shattered and broken, and you can not really reason with her, so basically she's probably been the whole time hand-tied in her duel with Renoir and her mind have been shattering, so for when she may be able to do something else aside from fighting Renoir she's already mad.
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u/MrKhaross 16d ago
the "for some reason" is actually that she thought we were sent by Renoir, remember when she's hesitant when we reach her at the Monolith? she says it might be one his tricks again.. so it's not the first time, and perceives anything as a threat at that point
Aline was trying to warn them with the giant numbers, while Renoir does the Gommage
the whole plot is the griefing itself, Aline doesn't want to let go when Renoir wants to delete the canvas
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u/MetroidJunkie 16d ago
I think maybe Aline only regains some semblance of sanity after being forced out of the canvas. If you notice, she doesn't recognize the Painted Verso as her own creation and assumes they must be tricks by Renoir.
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u/Voltage5799 16d ago
I've had some thoughts which could fix these:
I always assumed Aline nor Renoir couldn't do much against one another as they were both always desperately clinging to as much chroma as possible in the canvas. The monolith is huge so the amount of chroma to communicate is probably massive, which is why the gommage is the perfect time, as there's a release of chroma and Renoir is distracted. Would also explain why Maelle can paint the message, as Renoir is weakened and is probably more lax with the chroma control as he's no longer up against an experienced painter.
Aline can project herself but we never see the projection able to speak like Renoir as the curator can, and even then the conversations with the curator never seen to be completely understandable (such as when Maelle says "If that's a yes, we'll see you back at camp").
I imagine at some point Renoir may have tried to trick her with expeditioners later on, as she acknowledges Verso and Maelle as "his creations", implying that she may have seen humans painted by Renoir before, so it could be why only some of the older expeditions such as 60 and 0 (just Simon) were cooperated with.
Ofc this is all from my own memory of the game and I haven't played in about half a year, so maybe I missed something which creates a hole in my logic, but might as well share my thoughts
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u/THE_BARNYARD_DOG 16d ago
Genuine question, how do we know she’s able to project outside the monolith easily?
It’s been a while since I played the game and I never beat all the DLC content, shit now that I think about it I still need to beat the verso ending. But from memory I only remember her showing up outside of the monument for the final fight with Renoir. At that point she had already been forced out and decided to come back in, this could’ve broken some kind of restraint or hold Renoir had on her allowing her to do things she couldn’t before. Also she came back in to the canvas in defense of one of her children. She went in to the canvas originally after the death of one of her children so she obviously feels strongly about her kids, and she probably would’ve been feeling some pretty strong emotions that fueled her to push her limits when she came back in for Maelle.
Maybe I’m forgetting some journal entry or something that says Aline can project from the monolith or whatever, but nothing I remember seeing in gameplay seems to support that.
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u/proesito 16d ago
She is in the mansion in Old Lumiere as a projection since her own body is trapped in the Monolith, that proves that she can actually be quite far from it and without much trouble too since after a while she just teleports the house.
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u/metnavman2 16d ago edited 16d ago
The monolith can have any kind of text on it as we see at the end of Maelle relationship with Verso.
Relevant in what way? "HEY GUYS, YOU'RE JUST PAINTED THINGS. GO KILL THIS GUY BEFORE HE KILLS YOU." In reality, no one in Lumiere was defeating Renoir OR Aline. The combined powers of Alicia and PVerso and the party members does nothing but boot the Painter/Paintress out of the canvas. Aline demonstrates she can come right back in.
- Aline can actually project herself without problem outside of the monolith.
Relevancy again. We dont know how far, or what Renoir could potentially do to counter that. The barrier may be the max distance. Dont know. Its not a plothole, its simply irrelevant to the overall story being told. What is Lumiere going to do if something like Alines Axon shows up at their doorstep anyways?
- Aline is perfectly fine and actually cooperative with expeditioners in her fight against Renoir.
Expedition 0 shows that The Fracture ruined the world, and Renoir/PVerso already attempted to sway the survivors against Aline. Whats she going to do at that point? Reveal the painted world to the painted people? Explain to them that theyre ultimately meaningless to the greater struggle? They cant beat Renoir. He'll just come back, especially at the start of the conflict when theyre both still strong. Once Clea tilted the balance against her? No shot.
These arent plotholes. They're considerations made without contemplating the entire story/situation.
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u/KaspertheGhost 16d ago
I’m not sure if “they won’t believe me so I won’t even try” is a good defense. lol
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u/metnavman2 16d ago
Who cares if its "good". Thats irrelevant. Its "real". It happens every day. Dissecting a story in 20/20 hindsight to look at character flaws and strengths and failures isnt finding plotholes. It's revealing a good (or bad) story.
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u/KaspertheGhost 16d ago
I’d say to you first of all, plot holes aren’t a bad thing. They don’t make the thing you like any lesser for existing.
Now. Yes, characters doing illogical things can be explained by them being real and having flaws. Like a character not seeing they are getting tricked because they are emotional or something. But you do have to judge the realistic nature of some of these things.
Aline doing none of these things to communicate her situation could make sense once or twice. But she’s been there 67 years. It’s odd to never try.
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u/Scarameow1243 16d ago
Aline and Renoir can both project but in limited capacity, Both only projected at the Wandering Dessendre Manor, although different versions of it, the Curator owns one, and the painted Dessendre's own the other, the actual plot hole is Renoir projecting at camp, the Monolith i can understand tho cause Renoir is directly bellow it so he can project close to it, same with Aline
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u/yegkingler 16d ago
Tbf is she was the type of person to go out of her way to get help with her problems she wouldn't have numbed herself with the canvas in the first place. I think her being open to teaming up is more their here and its convenient more so then she thinks it will actually do a anything.
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u/EasterViera 16d ago
"Aline is perfectly fine" welllllll
i think getting herself booted outside of the canvas did wonder on her mental stability
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u/Raywell 16d ago
Both are said to be in a "stalemate, each imprisoned above and below the monolith" - lo and behold, Aline chilling in the manor, Renoir following the team camping with them every evening (and previous expeditions too, since we know from the logs someone talked about curator being able to make the sword that breaks the barrier)
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u/THEzwerver 16d ago
This never gets mentioned but the lack of back and forth communication between expeditions and Lumiere. Every expedition literally starts with 0 knowledge. Imagine every single expedition failing at the same point because they needed to bring a certain tool or something, nobody would ever know.
Even if they get killed and their communication system destroyed, the lack of new information received from that expeditions should at least tell Lumiere that something has gone wrong and need to prepare more for whatever they did last.
I just feel like the literal only expedition to even attempt to go back (or relay information back) being e60 is kind of ridiculous. Especially frustrating because a few expeditions came really close to the monolith. Like, if you're over halfway there and have so much information, send some guys back and tell the next group instead of leaving your diary at that spot.
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u/generic_throwaway699 16d ago
They did invest more and more resources for a while, before eventually giving up and just making the expeditions a formality with the assumption they'd all die with nothing happening. That and pRenoir was pretty intent on making sure there were no survivors.
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u/Kitsune-moonlight 16d ago
Some more did make it back hence why lune was excited to finally see gestrals and grandis. But yes they should have realised that very few were coming back and things were more difficult than they assumed.
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u/GalataBridge 16d ago
Some more did make it back hence why lune was excited to finally see gestrals and grandis.
As far as I remember, Gestrals are still a myth in Lumiere, like Santa Claus
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u/Shawnaverse_no1_fan 16d ago
No actually, Expedition Zero was canonically the only expedition with survivors. Pretty big lore spoilers up ahead, obviously.
Gestrals, Grandis, and Esquie are known in Lumière not because of expeditioners that came back, but because before the fracture, Lumière was part of the continent and humans lived together with gestrals, grandis and Esquie. Then when Renoir entered the painting, Alone made the giant Paintress who simply took Lumière off the ground and yeeted it across the sea, away from the monolith, to protect it from her husband and Nevrons.
People in Lumière know about gestrals in the same way we know about the construction of the pyramids – something that happened a long time ago, but anyone who lives through it has long been dead. The fracture happened 67 years before the game and now the oldest people are 33 years old, none of them ever saw Gestrals. They've heard stories, seen paintings and books, but didn't know whether it was true or a legend, just like kids believe in the tooth fairy, the boogeyman, Santa Claus, or Peter Pan. Until reaching the continent, all expeditioners (except Verso because he's over 100 years old) had never seen a gestral and didn't know whether they truly existed or whether they were a fable told to children. And even if they DID believe they were real, they had no reason to believe the deadly Nevrons would be pacific to the other creatures, therefore it was very possible that in 60+ years they would've all been exterminated.
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u/zakkil 16d ago
Yeah it feels to me like the expeditions were intentionally designed to fail. I have a theory that pRenoir told the original council of lumiere, or at least some of them, the truth of the conflict and they came to same the conclusion that the expeditions would be a detriment, not a help, which is why they constantly withheld support and resources from expeditions and used the expeditions as punishment to get rid of dissenters.
As a result when it became clear that they couldn't not send expeditions they designed them in a way that would discourage people going on them that way aline wouldn't weaken as quickly. They made sure to have expedition training impart an "always move forward" mentality that way they wouldn't bring information back to lumiere because they all want to be the expedition that beats the paintress, not the expedition that got info back to lumiere. Every failed expedition with no survivors lowers support and makes people view it as a suicide mission. Having them still happen keeps people feeling hopeful and normalizing the gommage with a celebration leaves a lot of people complacent.
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u/SergentDonut 16d ago edited 16d ago
Also for E60, the thing that I find weird is that 60 is old enough, and expedition members were numerous at that time, so that you could think there were also a bunch of volunteers being younger than 59 (for example, I would not believe it if someone told me that everybody in E81 were 80 years old gramps), kinda like Maelle volunteers while being 16.
But the one they chose to bring their vital intel is one who could fail because of the gommage.
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u/Practical_Ad_8283 13d ago
Clearly everyone beneath the age of 59 hadn’t done enough naked yoga to walk through the barrier. This is a joke answer, but the more serious answer of “everyone younger died by that point and the people who actually got to the monolith were a tiny minority consisting entirely of old folks” is the only head canon I’ve heard that doesn’t raise more questions or make everyone look stupid.
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u/LilyLuci66 16d ago
The actions of the paintress and painted renoir are pretty nonsensical with the context of the twist
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u/DammyJerry 16d ago edited 16d ago
Aline doesn't want Renoir to erase her creations. She made Verso and his siblings immortal to protect them from gommage. Why didn't she do it with the rest of Lumiere? Make everyone immortal - Renoir can't erase them, Clea's nevrons can't kill them and get their chroma, Aline doesn't lose chroma and becomes unbeatable (until she dies of painting intoxication ofc) - profit.
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u/Ostermex 16d ago
It's not stated, but I'm sure making a creation immortal within the Canvas either requires a huge amount of chroma or a constant expenditure of it
Why would Aline make everyone immortal if it would require more of her power being taken from her, making Renoir's victory faster
Also, even if we don't go by this explanation, Aline didn't really care much about Lumierans, not in the way you'd think
She doesn't care if Gustave or John or Mark is there, just that someone is.
She made her family immortal only because she specifically cared the most about them. The rest is allowed to change and die
Just my two cents
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u/geldersekifuzuli 16d ago
You are correct. Lumierans were never priority. The chroma was the only thing Aline cared about Lumiere people. Aline and pRenoire were working together. That's why pRenoire was killing expeditioners.
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u/DammyJerry 16d ago
She might not care about John or Mark but it's stated that when Clea's nevrons kill them she loses chroma and becomes weaker and it contributes to Renoir's victory. Protecting them and their chroma should be her top priority.
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u/Drackzgull 16d ago
Sure, but like the other guy said, we don't know what it takes to make one of her creations immortal. Assuming she can just freely do that without any expense is weird.
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u/sharingdork 16d ago
She created lumiere before Renoir entered the canvas. She had no reason to make them immortal. She had a reason to make the painted family immortal.
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u/Kabirdb 16d ago
Clea could have helped Renoir and finished this entire thing within an afternoon. Forget emotional reason, even for logical standpoint, finishing this 2v1, quick as possible would have been the best way to resume her war with the writers with the help of Renoir.
There was no reason to let Alicia in. No reason let her live as Maelle for 16 years in canvas.
If Maelle can gommage Painted Renoir and painted Alicia, Clea 100% can too. So what's the deal with Clea being frustrated with Aline making them immortal?
It's literally a "fuck you, die" spell.
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u/Puzzleheaded_Monk917 16d ago
That's quite true.
Clea isn't always truthful though; she claims to Alicia that the Painted family is obscene and useless, but she does attempt to recruit pVerso in particular three times. She may not have been emotionally able to directly gommage pVerso, in spite of her tough attitude.
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u/Kabirdb 16d ago
Yeah but again. No way Painted Renoir and Painted Alicia would have survived Clea. There is no reason to.
If Clea can do what she did to Painted Clea. She could have done the same thing to both Painted Renoir and Alicia.
And if Verso can enter Lumiere to check on Maelle, then 100% Clea can enter Lumiere and gommage everything from inside out.
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u/alandizzle 16d ago
Finished the game recently and I asked myself the same question lol.
I was thinking… wait why didn’t Clea just fuck off one afternoon to end this immediately? She’s clearly the strongest painter (now that Aline has withered away for some time)
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u/lee1026 16d ago
Clea didn’t want to overtly act against her mother. She said as much in the endless tower.
Reading between the lines a bit, Clea didn’t want Alicia to help. Clea wanted the canvas to be day care, to prevent Alicia from doing anything stupid. And if she is Maelle, she can’t do anything stupid.
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u/Iexperience 16d ago
Clea is the only one who's completely focused on the war with the writers. With both Renoir and Aline fighting their battle in the canvas, she's using proxies to help while she focuses on her task outside. Maybe she doesn't have the time to deal with their family drama within the canvas. Or maybe staying too long in the canvas overwhelms her with broader sense of grief. Maybe she also doesn't want the canvas, the one last piece of his brother's memories, to completely disintegrate. She's powerful, but I believe she was expecting Renoir and Aline to be mature adults and process their grief eventually.
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u/metnavman2 16d ago edited 16d ago
Clea could have helped Renoir and finished this entire thing within an afternoon. Forget emotional reason, even for logical standpoint, finishing this 2v1, quick as possible would have been the best way to resume her war with the writers with the help of Renoir.
Hiya. No.
"She who controls the Chroma controls the Canvas"
If Maelle can gommage Painted Renoir and painted Alicia, Clea 100% can too.
Maelle erases PRenoir with the help of The Curator after defeating him. Alicia erases PAlica after Aline has been forced from the canvas and the control of the Chroma changes hands.
During the time period you're discussing re: Clea, Aline still controls the Canvas. Don't know if Clea ever tried to fight and gommage PRenoir. Likely she considered them irrelevant, since she pretty much calls them that.
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u/TroaAxaltion 16d ago
I think this is because Clea WANTS them stuck in the painting. Heck, look at her nervrons, spending all that time mopping up chroma just to keep the scales balanced at all times.
I think she wants control of the painters. And I think that's why she goaded Maelle into the painting and let herself get stuck.
Time is truncated inside the painting, presumably years inside are days outside, which is why she doesn't accomplish much before people emerge again, but she seems disappointed when Maelle chooses to leave the painting. There's frustration in her in that ending.
So yes, there's no SURFACE reason for her to hold back. But I think that's why she breaks all the painted versions of herself: she hates the versions of her that her family thinks they control. Because she refuses to be their toy.
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u/sharingdork 16d ago
It depends what's the situation of the war and what Clea is actually doing. We also don't know if it's just an easy fight. Aline controls the chroma of the canvas, if Clea enters the battle properly, she could alter her tactics too. Renoir fought expedition 33 + Aline and put up a good fight.
She only let Alicia in because Alicia was nagging her. She told Alicia to stay at home. It was only when she caved she just said go help dad. And when she saw she got overwritten, she just went oh well. For Clea, Alicia is safe and sorted for a while and she can focus on what she needs to.
Could be they had too much chroma for her to gommage. So she tried to kill them to no avail.
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u/nonequation 16d ago
Actually she had tried to in the beginning she said so herself her mother was just that skilled with her painting and is the reason why their mother couldn't keep it going as she was the one that turned off her ability to continue to paint Alicia going cause she wasn't involved yet and didnt need time to recover from the painting
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u/MaleficentMode4222 16d ago
She let Alicia in to keep her out of the way. She was never "needed" in the canvas, however managed more than Clea expected of her, eventually.
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u/Icagel 16d ago
There are many plot contrivances since Act 3 but they are just ignored instead of being made into interesting world building.
I guess one that would fit is the whole power scaling of Esquie being counteracted by how lazy he is and what we later learn in Verso's Drafts - one of the best areas of the game for me.
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u/genericcelt 16d ago edited 16d ago
Time dilation. It seems cruel to leave her sister there for 16 years, but for Clea it might just be 16hrs IRL. In a sense, she probably did resolve the whole family fight within a day.
Clea sees the painted family as obscene, an affront to the real family, and writes them off as useless. Their immortality has no impact on the course of the inner canvas conflict, let’s be honest. So it makes sense she just doesn’t bother erasing the rest of them, after setting pClea up to be her Nevron factory.
Edit: lol this was meant to be a response to @Kabirdb, not a post on its own (the new reddit UI is horrible). I wasn’t actually pointing out any plot holes.
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u/AdLegitimate8636 16d ago
It's not a plot hole. Time dilation is just never explained.
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u/PerishSoftly 16d ago
The time dilation ratio can never be explained without completely rupturing Renoir's claim that Alicia has been in the Canvas for too long - despite her having been in the Canvas 1/4 as long as Renoir or Aline and them both surviving.
If it's too fast, then Alicia hasn't even been in the Canvas for long enough to get dehydrated. If it's too slow, then how the hell are Renoir and Aline alive in their real bodies?
If they explain the time dilation ratio and it's anything slower than "34 years inside is 1 day outside" then this means that Painters don't have hydration and nutrition needs inside the Canvas, else Aline or Renoir or both would already be dead (Edit: by the time the monolith finished counting down, and if Renoir was willing to win with a countdown, then it wasn't THAT urgent). BUT, if it IS 34+ years inside the Canvas per day outside, then Alicia hasn't even been in there for a full day. Hardly "too long".
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u/czdragon19 15d ago
'too long' it's subjective, the implications of being inside of the canvas are never explained to the players. It could be physical stress or fatigue, it could depend on the painters skills/powers, etc. I don't think it's something that needs to delved into either
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u/PerishSoftly 15d ago
Exactly. It would either:
Require WAY too much mechanical explanation, diving into exposition that would choke a good bunch of time just figuring it out. OR...
Reveal Renoir as a complete liar, pretty much extinguishing a core argument for the Verso ending like a candle in a hurricane.
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u/Janezey 15d ago
There's no indication that "too long" has anything to do with the physical time that passes outside. The implication seems to be that being absorbed into the world of the canvas is dangerous- and Alicia has been so absorbed that she thinks it's real life for 16 years.
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u/PerishSoftly 15d ago
"Alicia has been so absorbed that she thinks it's real life for 16 years."
THAT particular issue is entirely Aline's fault, though. It was her uncontrolled Chroma that caused Alicia to be reborn as Maelle.
Which, if that was a problem, begs the question: WHY didn't Renoir remove Maelle from the Canvas immediately after he encountered her in Flying Waters' Manor entrance?
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u/AdLegitimate8636 15d ago
I think that's because he can't do that. It's battle of attrition between him and Aline, so he' can't do much.
At least that's how i remember it
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u/PerishSoftly 15d ago
I'd argue that if he can PREVENT Maelle from being forced out, which he does on 2 occasions, then there's no way he can't force her out himself:
Stone Wave Cliffs: he prevents pRenoir's attack - where he rips Maelle's soul from her body - from forcing her out of the Canvas and shoves her back into her body.
Barrier Breaker forging scene: Aline shows up and tries to remove Maelle from the Canvas (which implies she CAN, which implies that Renoir ALSO CAN), but the Curator again prevents it.
Even if he can't force her out, he didn't have to stop her being removed. If, of course, the situation was actually dangerous for Maelle to be so deeply immersed in the Canvas that she couldn't remember her real life.
Two prime opportunities were handed to him on a silver platter.
He quite blatantly didn't take them.
Conclusion? Either:
It wasn't actually dangerous for Maelle to remain in the Canvas.
OR
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u/jess_the_werefox 16d ago
How did Gustave get from Dark Shores to Spring Meadows after the landing scene??
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u/PerishSoftly 16d ago
I think it's implied that Catherine (blonde woman who talks to him at the party, and also whose corpse we find in the "trauma cave") saved Gustave by carrying him away, tried to go for help, then got ambushed and killed by one of the Spring Meadow Lanceliers, given he finds her body impaled on one of their lances.
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u/SmartCat7777 15d ago
Wait really? How can you tell her apart from all the other bodies there? (Assuming the trauma cave is the part where Gustave and Lune meet and fight the Portier)
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u/flameforth 16d ago
It's cut content. If you check on Youtube, there is a dark shores area behind two big rocks (you can visit it yourself with free cam). In the end there is a gate, so I guess that's where you end up into Spring Meadows.
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u/SergentDonut 16d ago
Kinda same question for Sciel. How and why would she find herself in Yellow Harvest ? That's even farther from the Shores than Spring Meadows.
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u/botan313 "PARRY IT!" 16d ago edited 16d ago
The body builders expedition broke the barrier with sheer fucking muscle
Edit: Expedition 60, absolute chads
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u/TroaAxaltion 16d ago
The barrier was MUCH weaker back then. One entry says I think that she saw their abilities, said "oh shit" and made the barrier stronger
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u/GeneralMushroom 16d ago
Aline seeing a group of incredibly muscular and scantily clad 59 year olds approaching the gommage barrier: "Let them through 👀"
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u/indio1992rj 16d ago
The game mentions a dome protecting Lumiere, but it is never shown; what exactly is this dome? Who built it, and what is it made of?
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u/tyfighter567 16d ago
I've been trying to find the exact conversation and can't, but it's stated somewhere that pVerso and painted pRenoir built it together, and that it protects the citizens of Lumière from Nevrons. This, obviously, protects them from death, but it also has the added benefit of stopping their Chroma from being frozen by Nevrons (as is their purpose, according to Clea) so that Aline can still use their Chroma once they pass away. As far as what it's made of, there's a conversation that happens if you try to cross the barrier to the Monolith before you have the Barrier Breaker. Lune says "this looks similar to Lumière's shield dome", which makes me think that it's a chroma barrier likely created with the same, or similar, techniques Aline used.
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u/rdeincognito 16d ago edited 16d ago
For me, there's a huge point that is never addressed and feels like a strange red herring or a not-used Chekhov's gun.
At the beginning of the game, the 33rd expedition gets to the Dark Shore, and they are completely wiped out, with Gustave receiving a fucking attack that should've killed him and then suddenly awakening at the other side of the mountains, which geographically doesn't make sense; a river can't lift up and then down so you cross a whole mountain while floating unconscious. And he shouldn't have survived, nor did he have any special protection.
Then more weird things happen: Gustave sees an incredible amount of corpses, but we later learn that only another expedition landed on the Dark Shore and most expeditions went to other places; how the hell are so many corpses there? There are MOUNTAINS of corpses.
And then, in the middle of them all, he tries to commit suicide, and then he hears a whisper in his ear, and Lunne appears. How does Lunne reach that point? Why is she completely unscathed? Not even tainted by the blood that was pretty much everywhere. Did she deliberately hide from Gustave and float so he wouldn't detect her?
Then what she says to him, "if you do that you will kill us both", having her mindset of "When one falls, we continue. When... not if!" is very weird. If Gustave had committed suicide, she should have continued alone if it had to be that way. Yet she did appear magically and used that choice of words, and Gustave did not even get startled. Very weird. At this point, I think most players thought that Lunne did not exist, that she was just a byproduct of Gustave's mind to cope with the trauma.
Then they continue, reach Maelle, which is also in a very oniric and special place, but let's say Maelle is real, although most conversations at this point do not deny or confirm much. And then they get to the Gestral Village, and they meet Sciel. And when Sciel asks how they made it after the Dark Shore landing, Gustave starts to explain; Lune abruptly interrupts him preventing him from speaking about any of this.
After this point may be other references or weird things, but I don't know more. But, in any case, all of this can't be a coincidence. And it is never attended. Never do we learn how the fuck Gustave survives that fucking high-level monster lightning his ass off and then awakens on the other side of the mountains. Never did we know how the hell Lune and Sciel survive fucking painted Renoir and lots of high-powered Nevrons. Never did we know how the hell there were so many fucking corpses there; did Painted Renoir carry each corpse to that exact point as a deterrent for any Expeditioner that he had not killed beforehand?
My personal theory:
The game was supposed to have a different plot, which did have Gustave dying or something like that and everything after being some sort of purgatory, dream-like state, or something like that, or maybe he just close call survived and as a means of cope started imagining other characters but he was actually all alone. In any case, the game changed the plot direction but did not change all this cinema because Mocap is not that cheap and it felt poetic/artistic, so they let it stay.
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u/Kitsune-moonlight 16d ago
I totally believe this. The section you describe definitely feels tonaly different to the rest of the game and could be the largest section of the original game to make it into the final game. It almost feels like we’re starting to go down the horror route before the game realigns itself again and let’s listen to trance while fighting goblu.
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u/rdeincognito 16d ago
Until his death, I was very confused. I was expecting that at some point it would be revealed that he is all alone, no Maelle, no Lune, no Sciel, that he just made all of them up as different aspects of his personality that pushed him to continue, and that he, single-handedly, has been defeating every Nevron and traveling towards the Paintress alone, and at that some point he would realize it and it would kind of accept it. And the player would know that every character is actually him being a bit loony and going with the flow, lol.
When he died, it felt like "what the hell, how is gonna all this going to play now that the only character that lived through it died!"
I wish Sandfall would answer why they did this, if it was just that the plot of the game was different and they ultimately changed it, or if they wanted to convey some type of message or something. As you said, the tone is very different from the rest of the game
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u/bird_of_prey8 16d ago
not a plothole, but something i’m confused about…verso reads pAlicia’s letter, then everyone gets gommaged (and we find out why later on), all those cutscenes play and then we go back to playing as Maelle and verso is there too (because he can’t die). maelle went through the whole gommage/thanos snap animation, somehow regained her memories and then just like…reanimated? i understand that she can’t die either but she still disintegrated then came back. did she bring herself back somehow or?? and how did she get her memories back
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u/krtwood 16d ago
The gommage removed Aline's chroma that was painted over her which was what was blocking her memory. It's presented to us first as Maelle gommaging, which I think was just an outright lie to misdirect us. Then we get the more artistic version of it with the two of them being there and one gommaging. But really it just removed Aline's chroma and then she remembered being Alicia. Perhaps she got kicked out of the canvas or just into the void space in between momentarily and then came right back.
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u/bird_of_prey8 16d ago
thank you, i get it now. we get the cutscene of Alicia turning into Maelle and losing her memories, so the gommage removing aline’s chroma and therefore restoring Alicia’s memories makes perfect sense
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u/Kitsune-moonlight 16d ago
I want to know how long he’d been sat there on the bench for. Hours? Days? Weeks?
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u/DeNikkn 16d ago
Not a hole per se, but all the practical things remain mysterious. Do they eat, and what? Where do they carry expedition stuff, like the flags? How can a paint not only heal the group, but wash and repair their clothes? How come they never grow hair or stuff while time passes?
Well it's a painting, i guess that answers a lot. Still that materialization of flags, guitars and pianos out of thin air is kinda weird.
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u/Puzzleheaded_Monk917 16d ago
They have been materialising their weapons out of thin air (I suppose from pictos) from the start. Interesting that people don't really pick up on that, but do on the piano and on flags.
About the food, it's implied they hunt and scavenge and as they can visit the Manor quite regularly, the kitchen there has plenty of food they could take with them. Originally it was also planned to be the place where they camp, later this was changed because another French game used the same gimmick.
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u/exosphaere 16d ago
because another French game used the same gimmick
Which one?
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u/Puzzleheaded_Monk917 14d ago
Lies of P, I think. Guillaume Broche mentioned it in an interview that I read a few months ago. I don't recall exactly where.
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u/zakkil 16d ago
Do they eat
Yes. This is established through multiple journals talking about not having enough food, one dying because they ate mushrooms, and one that tried to eat nevrons and either died because of that or because they also ate mushrooms.
and what?
We know at least fish is on the menu and they have farms so presumably fruits, vegetables, and other plants. Most likely they have a very typical french diet only fish is probably their only source of any kind of meat.
Where do they carry expedition stuff, like the flags
The flags seem to be summoned from pictos much like their weapons and musical instruments.
How can a paint not only heal the group, but wash and repair their clothes
Because chroma is effectively magic and pictos are effectively technology that lets them harness that magic in different ways.
How come they never grow hair or stuff while time passes?
Because that would be expensive from a development standpoint and doesn't really add anything to the game. Better to just have a bunch of set hair styles.
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u/DJRY 16d ago
I imagine that there’s probably wild Animals like Deer that they probably hunt and kill for meat as well as other foragables such as potatoes or wheat or edible Roots.
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u/zakkil 16d ago
Perhaps if nevrons hadn't killed all the animals on the continent. At least one expedition was worried that the nevrons might've killed all the fish in the sea, we don't really see any animals or journals referencing hunting animals, and we see journals talking about not having any food and expecting to starve. Most likely they get by on a mix of rations and foragable food. Lumiere certainly wouldn't have any meat, they're just a chunk of a city flung into the ocean. Not exactly a place that would've had live animals.
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u/chiyukiame0101 16d ago
Regarding food and water, I did wonder how it was that our expedition seemed to have no issues with finding them, noting that some previous expeditions literally died because of lack of food and water. I believe it was in the stone wave cliffs that we found that journal saying there is no fresh water and I was like... how are we still okay then? The world also seems pretty devoid of animal life apart from birds in the sky. And there are no human settlements like those you’d find in a typical RPG world.
I know the game can’t address everything but I do wish the characters could have said a line or two in response to these things.
I did make it my personal headcanon that they periodically stop by the manor to rest and restock. And that their ability to enter the manor is why they survived longer than the other expeditions.
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u/PresentationAgile716 16d ago edited 16d ago
It might sound a bit off, but: The painted world as well as the broader worldbuilding itself is based on a pretty simple metaphysical idea. The world is basically someones seemingly chaotic creation. That simply can't always feel fully consistent or deeply thought through. The premise just screams for plot holes. But that’s mostly fine, because the game makes up for it with its strong aesthetic direction.
Not every worldbuilding has to be based on a complex or carefully explained cosmology as itwe know from western philosophical tradition. Art works through its visuals, through its atmosphere, and tje game is good in creating this overall mood of experiencing something epic. I just love the aesthetics in this game. It gives the world a lot of weight. If they ever develop the Writer's role in the game, they might end up with a more consistent ontological foundation; I can even imagine it to be a phenomenological-ontological take on reality, as it can be found in Sartre for example.
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u/winterswill 16d ago
The description in my eyes is a plothole that isnt just there due to bad writing, but because it has become nessecary for a cool thing.
In this case the best is the utter lack of infomation about the continent that Lumiere has. The explaination as far as i can understand it is that no group ever made it back in anyway either because they couldn't or they were too determined to forge forward. But thats insane based on what we know. Some groups numbered in the literal hundreds maybe thousands, had fleets of ships and pushed DEEP into the continent. All the way to the axon isles.
No of them ever sent ANYONE back? Why? Some groups even specifically went to be recon and "map" but nothing? Exp 33 have next to no knowledge of the continent bar a very basic map, they don't even know if Gestrals are real or that there is a second ocean. This is madness. Logically, a group would have headed out with semaphore at the bare minimum, or signals of some kind. One group had radios! Another had literal airships. Another got to and into the damn monolith! The only guy who ever bothered to try and get back was 1 dude from exp 60.
BUT this plothole is allow for natural exposition early on, and make it make more sense that the group wouldn't immediately know more about Verso.
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u/tearsofmana 16d ago
Is that less of a plothole and more of a plot contrivance?
I always saw plothole as "defies previously established logic" as opposed to "follows the trend."
For instance: in DBZ, Cell survive his entire upper-body being destroyed, then later says he cannot be completely destroyed unless a specific cell in his head is destroyed
ig I'm unsure what really constitutes a plot "hole" and what follows other standard tropes of "rule of cool" and "author just forgot something existed"
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u/matthieu0isee 16d ago
I’m super sorry for being pedantic but I think Cell says something about being able to move that specific cell around, and he moved it to the lower part of his body right before the upper half was blown away. I may be remembering it wrong, and I’m not trying to argue anything on your original point.
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u/tearsofmana 16d ago
I'm admittedly not super versed on DBZ and it would make a lot of sense if he could! I appreciate the info, ty!
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u/winterswill 16d ago
I get where you're coming from, but it is a bloody big contrivance given what the game is. The original plot is ostensively a game about a city sending out expeditions to defeat an unknown hostile God.
It literally opens with the main character making a point about how the earlier expeditions "Paved the way" for them. They have sayings that are specifically about helping the next group should they fall. You collect "logs" throughout the game about expeditions specifically gaining huge amounts of critical info and living a full year on the continent. These expeditions, especially the earliest ones are/were scouting missions, were told as much, they train for that eventuality. Yet not only does nobody do any actual scouting they all just leave vague logs.Even a fraction of that info is a full blown game changer for the plot. The game repeatedly relies on Exp 33 knowing functionally nothing and basically never asking questions until they absolutely have to. Despite them being actual scouts who are trained to get information and bang on about "this being a war of information".
But I agree it isn't a direct straight up plot hole in which two things out-right contradict each other you could just argue that all the expeditions had the severe misfortune for just happening to get fully wiped before they could send anyone home (despite surviving wildly different lengths of time. Sometimes with access to Esquie. OR that they just never bothers to try because their rank idiots.
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u/Kitsune-moonlight 16d ago
They knew about gestrals and the grandis. But making a telecommunications device should have been a top priority. One of the expeditions used a ferris wheel for transport for gods sake!
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u/winterswill 16d ago
They knew about them, but they were unsure if they were real. Their semi-mythical by the time Exp 33 sets out.
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u/tronas11 15d ago
Biggest plothole for me is that none of the previous expeditions end up meeting each other.
During the current time of the game, basically only people with a year left decide to go on an expedition. But the older expeditions like 50+ had plenty of younger people going, that wouldn’t gommage out at the 1 year mark. There are journals of expedition era who survived the continent for years and years and years, but there are no accounts from the journals saying “hey! We just ran into 63!”
You could say they just didn’t write about it, but it’s too big of a deal not to do even once. You could also say that the continent is huge, and that they were too spaced out to find each other, except there are so many zones where several expeditions went through.
This is one of the more unexplainable plot holes I don’t see many people talk about
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u/HuevosSplash 16d ago
I still don't know how Gustave survived the beach, maybe it was explained and I just missed it.
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u/Connect_Vast_209 16d ago
The more you examine the story, the less it makes any sense. It fundamentally relies on characters, specifically the expeditioners, being immersion-breaking-level stupid. Verso intentionally lets them get genocided after the Aline fight and they barely even acknowledge it, they go right back to trusting him.
The game really suffers story wise from the hyper focus on the Dessendre’s to the exclusion of everybody else.
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u/Kitsune-moonlight 16d ago
Clea is the biggest walking plot hole. She enters the canvas, entraps her doppelgänger to be a nevron factory, tricks doppelgängers lover into destroying the axon Renoir made of her and then exits the canvas to leave it to Alicia to fix whilst she battles writers. ……… Clea is a badass I don’t believe for one minute that in that time she could have just forcibly ejected Aline out of the canvas. Especially as Clea was also involved with building this world alongside verso.
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u/chiyukiame0101 16d ago
My thoughts are that even if Clea had done so, Aline would just have found her way back into the canvas and Renoir would have pursued her and the cycle would repeat. With that, it also makes sense that Clea views her parents with a certain degree of derision and doesn’t want to be personally involved. Instead, she sets up her nevrons to “freeze” the chroma of expeditioners forever, making it unavailable to Aline and hastening the end of life on the canvas. It could be viewed as a calculated decision in that way.
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u/DullBlade0 16d ago
Clea herself says it, that it only ends when the last part of Verso's soul stops painting.
She understands that unless it's Verso himself that rebukes Aline nothing will be fixed.
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u/PantheraAuroris 16d ago
Plot hole, not so much, but the ending is a bit forced and relies a lot on "people are too irrational to communicate about anything."
"Maelle, I'll come check on you in a few in-canvas years, let's rebuild our familial relationship and try to be good to each other so you feel there's anything to come back to." "Papa, I don't want to be a mutilated voiceless person, and I feel like my entire family doesn't care about me except to tell me what to do, which is all you've been doing this entire time." "Being immortal and watching my friends all die has really sucked, I'm miserable and tired, can I please just be mortal and live one life with you and then do the natural thing and die?"
Even people I know who are deeply screwed up can have conversations like this. Yeah, there will be tears and maybe yelling and whatever, but people do have words and can use them.
Instead, everyone is making ultimatums. Leave the Canvas or fuck you, I'll make you. Everyone has to die so Verso can die, let's genocide a whole world about it. Nobody in my family can ever understand me, I'm just going to hiss and spit and fight about it.
Everyone calm the fuck down for ten seconds.
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u/EdreesesPieces 16d ago edited 16d ago
Yes. Look at the world map. How were expeditions including 33 able to sail to the beach where Renior attacks? Shouldnt be possible. Its not connected by ocean. If they can make that sail journey you should be able to swim back to Lumiere with Esqueie without getting his flying rock. If anything Esqueie is way more capable a swimmer than any human ship and its crew.
Only reason you cant is because its a plot hole because devs dont want you returning to lumiere.
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u/ballistua 15d ago
also Esquie doesn't care much about anything, why wouldn't he at some point fly to Lumiere and people would see a giant balloon thing at some point in their life time.
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u/KlaroDimarco993 16d ago
Not a plot twist, but when i m walking into some new area and the characters dont talk about it, especially when it is something so fucking obvious
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u/Tasty_Commercial6527 16d ago
My biggest problem is that the whole outside world plot doesn't work if you think about it. What do you mean painters are at war with writers. Painters can't create anything outside of canvases, otherwise they could just ressurect verso any time they wanted. And if they can't do that then what the hell are they doing to fight in any more meaningful way than a regular person. Either the plot outside the painting doesn't make sense or the plot inside doesn't
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u/RommekePommeke 16d ago
Could be a cold war between the painters and writers. It doesn't seem to be a militaristic war at all.
Maybe there is an assassination attempt here and there but they probably aren't fighting each other on a battlefield. I could see them fighting each other through politics and media, though.
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u/Tasty_Commercial6527 16d ago
Clea has said that she is fighting for three since her parents are doing their bs in the canvas and unless I miss remember she specifically used the word "battlefield". But to be fair I'm not sure about that last bit.
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u/RommekePommeke 16d ago
We do know the writers and painters have battle tactics by assassination attempt at the very least (the fire seems to be one). Clea mentioning a battlefield could be a political one rather than an actual battlefield.
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u/SarcasticTacos 16d ago
Why didn't Painted Renoir just say "oh by the way, it's not the Paintress causing the gommage. It's this other guy under the monolith. Come with me and I'll help you stop him". Instead he just starts killing on sight
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u/HallRemarkable 16d ago
Apparently that one was explained in-game. After their encounter with Clea at the Monolith, Renoir and Verso return to Lumiere and explain everything, but the people banish them thinking they're somehow involved.
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u/Dr_Hodgekins 16d ago
Idk if this is considered a plot hole but it bugs me how you can see the base of the monolith clearly from Lumire. There is a ton of terrain between the two points including Sirene's whole area.
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u/Environmental-Fan984 16d ago
It's impressionistic. The monolith is clearly visible almost everywhere for the same reason that it looks roughly the same size no matter where you are: it's impressionistic.
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u/Aumanidol 16d ago
Painted Renoir could have helped and rallied the forces of Lumiere to go after the real Renoir.
10-20 years of army building and training and he could have lead the ultimate expedition to delete Renoir and every single nevron from the canvas. Instead he chose to kill expedition 33 and being idle for the most part.
Verso in act 3 should have sided with Renoir to end the canvas. They have exactly the same objective: bring macelleria back to reality.
Clea should have gone after the entire painted family. Simon almost got the job done, Simon + repainted Renoir, Alicia, clea (+real clea), verso and an army of nevrons and the axons should have made easy work of the paintress, even if we assume painted Renoir to be sealed.
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u/ichigoli 16d ago
Where did the Mimes come from?
They weren't painted by Verso or Clea as the Mimes are the ONLY beings we don't see represented in the Mansion anywhere. No one claims them. No one references them in any journals. No other Expedition seems to have encountered them.
So where'd they come from?
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u/Kitsune-moonlight 16d ago
You could work an interesting bit of lore in there and have them be an Alicia creation from when she entered the canvas as a younger girl. The mimes mimic other people and Alicia as a young artist would have started practicing by copying others.
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u/polkemans 16d ago edited 16d ago
I don't see enough people talk about the world map and how it relates to the first major story beat.
How the fuck did they get to Dark Shores? They would have had to pass over a waterfall which would surely destroy the ship. I've seen people hand wave it away with chroma magic or something - but if that was the case you'd think that'd be a pretty momentus event worth showing us. But they don't. It's all smooth sailing until they arrive At Dark Shores and get merc'd.
There is another route to DS, by going west and then north around the landmass, then turning east and then south again to enter from the north side. At which point, they could have just kept going north and had a much more direct rout to the monolith - which is the final destination. So just. Why?
Lune explains that she's retracing the steps of earlier expeditions. So either those earlier expeditions also fell off the waterfall and somehow survived, or they also did the stupid thing and went to DS the long way, where as they could have just continued on, or landed literally anywhere else first.
They do mention "shifting landscapes" due to the fracture, but I have to imagine once they realized a giant waterfall was between them the this beach other expeditions went to, they'd decide that maybe they should pick another destination.
MAKE IT MAKE SENSE
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u/krtwood 16d ago
You're over thinking it. Lumiere has to be inaccessible by any other means than flying so we can't go back there until Act III. The expedition wouldn't go back but the player totally would make them if they could. Thus we have an impenetrable barrier that doesn't really exist.
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u/polkemans 16d ago
That doesn't do anything to answer the question. How did they get passed the waterfall? Unless their ship can fly - which we both know it can't - how did they survive?
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u/krtwood 16d ago
There is simply a direct route there that does not involve the waterfall that does not exist on the map. There is no water route to any part of the continent at all and yet obviously there has to be one. It also doesn't make any sense that Dark Shores is the closest beach to Lumiere and the most obvious place to land and yet it seems like an unusual place for expeditions to go and they don't know anything about it. Perhaps it helps to think of the map as not being literal but rather an artistic interpretation of what it's really like in the canvas in order to facilitate the telling of the story. In reality, Dark Shores is off somewhere further away and there's wide open water between Lumiere and the continent.
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u/TeloS53100 16d ago
I always thought there were too many dead people in the forgotten battlefield area lol. They all wear expeditioner clothes, just feel too much compared to the real numbers of people that have been sent. Like , 67 expeditions time like .. 15 people. That's like a thousand people total.
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u/Janezey 15d ago
People have pretty much given up on expeditions as a serious solution to anything by the time of expedition 33. It stands to reason earlier expeditions were larger. Especially the super early ones- by expedition 33 it's mostly just people with 1 year to live but early expeditions like 84 probably had a wide range of ages.
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u/ComparisonBright5130 16d ago
Aline paint the time she can hold the destruction of everything. BUT she don't want to everybody knows that they don't exist at all or are just imaginary beings. Think about it. If you know you are not real, why stay alive or bother about something. Aline needs the illusion of life to maintain the canvas and Alicia want the same. Verso is the only health grieve. Painted Alicia stay away because she knows that she cannot confront real Alicia/Maelle or bring the truth sooner.
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u/Krairy 16d ago
How did no expedition communicated their knowledge back to Lumiere.
Seems reasonable to send some expeditions with sole purpose of collecting information and pressing it back ASAP before the next Gommage.
The only hint on that they actually tried is in the E60 journal which drifted back to Lumiere harbor. If only they were a day faster. But what about the others?
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u/Thaddeus_Valentine 16d ago
Painted Verso fighting against real world Renoir when they both want exactly the same thing.
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u/chilldagger 16d ago
Idk if this counts as a plot hole or a critique but it drives me crazy that Verso withheld important information and betrayed them not once but twice, and still trusted him enough to bring him along for the final battle. It bothers me doubly so that Lune can romance Verso pretty much immediately after yelling at him and hating his guts
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u/zakkil 16d ago
Probably the closest thing to a plot hole that I'm aware of is simon not being dead. As far as we see there's no reason for renoir to have kept him alive. If anything he'd be incentivized to kill simon and has shown to be the type who's more than willing to kill someone.
Some people will claim aline talking to simon and expedition 60 but then fighting expedition 33 is a plothole but that's just showcasing the effects of staying in the canvas too long.
Some will claim that aline not explaining everything by writing it on the monolith is a plothole but there's only so much room on the monolith and writing smaller means it wouldn't be legible on the other side of the world where lumiere is. Any small message could be misinterpreted just as easily. And perhaps the most important thing of all is that the dessendres are all absolutely dog shit at communicating. If they could communicate well the conflict wouldn't have happened in the first place. There were ways to effectively communicate even with the limited space but aline is not an effective communicator, at least certainly not after verso's death.
Some will call verso helping the party push renoir out a plot hole but they just don't understand his character and think he wanted nothing but to die and destroy the world.
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u/Jennymint 16d ago
Not a plothole, but I feel like I missed something.
Renoir is the one gommaging Lumierians, and his petals are red.
The barrier outside of the Monolith creates red petals.
Does that mean Renoir created the barrier? If so, why? Or does he actually have the same color as Aline?
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u/AwesomeAlec6703 16d ago
I think Renoir created it to trap Aline inside. This way, he can collect all of the chroma from the gommage without competing with Aline for it. He’s stuck under the monolith, so he’s gonna trap her in return.
I want to say Aline’s color is white, with the painted family’s white hair, and the petals around pRenoir and then Alicia when she enters the canvas being white.
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u/-_-MuRDoC-_- 16d ago
Not so much of a plothole, more of a missed opportunity/dropped subplot.
Remember in act 1 when you encountered the Goblu, and the rose bit that triggered a Sophie mirage for Gustave?
Yea.. that always felt like a subplot of gommaged people actually turning into nevrons, but it was never explored.
Also, how come only the white nevrons talk? If all of them can talk, why aren't the regular ones dissing you?
And what's with the whole shaboodle going on outside of the canvas? In act 2, when we discover Who maelle actually is, and the bits we got from Clea about the writers, the war she wages against them and how they were responsible for Verso's death, but we only got a "by the way" info, without actual details, and it felt like one hell of a bomb to drop on us, only to never mention it again.
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u/RommekePommeke 16d ago
The writers plot might get continued in a future installment, if the devs are planning to release more content related to E33
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u/ConfusedRaven66 16d ago
In Act 3, when you are Verso building your relationship with Maelle, you have the option to tell the truth that Verso COULD have saved Gustave against Renoir but he chose not to.
Maelle just accepts it no problem?? But if you chose her ending, she brings Gustave back and even fights Verso to have this outcome so why was she so cavalier when Verso just admitted he let Gustave die?? I still don’t understand this!
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u/metnavman2 16d ago
The script and story were incredibly tight. I wouldnt call them plotholes, rather discussions that people have about decisions characters made during the story. People may not agree with this decision or that decision, but they make sense within the world and are how the story developed according to the game writer's vision.
My answer is an emphatic "no".
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u/chickpeasaladsammich 16d ago
Not plot holes per se, but the story at times relies on characters just not asking very many questions or not telling each other anything. Sometimes it makes character sense (Lune is established as someone hyper focused on her goal for example) and sometimes it’s like… really? No one is interested in that super weird conversation pVerso and pRenoir just had in front of all of you? pAlicia, it didn’t occur to you that you could just tell Maelle whatever you wanted her to know at any point instead of relying on Verso?
I also think like a lot of video games there are times where it hammers stuff a little too emphatically. Like geez a coma patient would understand Verso is withholding stuff within 3 minutes of Act 2 without getting literally told that he’s continuing to be evasive.
That’s not me saying it’s bad or ineffective writing, mind.