⚠️ Spoiler Alert: This reflection contains major story spoilers for Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. If you plan to play the game and want to experience the narrative twists firsthand, you may want to pause here and come back after finishing it.
Before watching my husband play Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, I hadn’t given much thought to what it really meant for God to be the ultimate creator. I believed, of course, that he made me (along with the whole universe), but I never paused to reflect on how much love and goodness must be behind that truth.
I took his creatorship for granted.
But this video game made me consider, for the first time, what life might be like without a good creator.
I never expected that something my husband played for fun would leave me overwhelmed with gratitude because we have a God who is so good. To understand what struck me so deeply, you’ll need to know a bit about the game’s premise.
Imagine if a video game creator could step into the world they designed and live among the characters. They could walk through the towns they built, speak to the people they coded, and even make them appear and disappear as they wished.
This is what “painters” can do in Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, one of the most talked-about video game releases of 2025. It sold 3.3 million copies in just 33 days — and for good reason. Visually, it’s breathtaking. Mechanically, it’s innovative. But what struck me most was its story.
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The character Aline is one of these god-like painters. After losing her son in a house fire, she literally enters one of his childhood paintings to cope with her grief. Inside it, she creates a living city called Lumière, a place that resembles early 20th-century Paris. The people she paints laugh, fall in love, go to school, and build families. But their entire existence depends on her brush.
Each year, Lumière faces a terrifying ritual called the gommage. A giant monolith stands on the horizon, and Aline, now known as the Paintress, writes a number on it. Anyone whose age matches or exceeds that number is erased, wiped from existence.
The first time I saw this play out, I was sitting next to my husband, Zach, as he played. That year’s number was 33 — and there was Sophie, a beloved character in the city, who had just turned 33.
When the number appeared, we watched in silence as she, and countless others, simply ceased to exist. Children were left without parents. Lovers were torn apart. It felt senseless and cruel.
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But later the truth unfolds. The gommage is not Aline’s cruelty, but the work of her husband Renoir. He too is a painter. He watched as his wife spent years isolating herself inside the painting, her body wasting away from the strain of sustaining her creations.
So he stepped inside the painting, determined to destroy it. But he could only erase her oldest creations one year at a time, because she was the more powerful painter. Meanwhile, she tried to warn the people of Lumière of their impending doom by painting the number on the monolith.
And so the lives of the inhabitants of Lumière hang in the balance as their creators wage a quiet, devastating civil war.
As I watched this all play out, I couldn’t stop thinking: What if my life depended on the mood swings of flawed, grieving creators? What if they loved me today, forgot me tomorrow, and erased me the next? And then, if they wished, brought me back?
I found myself whispering, thank God Jesus is our Lord.
Unlike Aline or Renoir, God is eternal. His goodness and love never change. As Jesus says in Matthew 24:35: “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.”
And unlike the fictional painters, God didn’t create us to fill a void or resolve a conflict. In fact, those fictional painters aren’t all that different from the gods and goddesses found in ancient creation myths. I can’t help but think of stories where human beings were formed out of chaos or born from violent wars between deities.
These gods had no selfless love for their creation — only vengeance and manipulation. There was power, yes. But no righteous justice. No mercy.
But when I think of our God — who went to such great lengths to reveal the truth of our creation to His chosen people, and who even came down to become one of us just to save us from our sins and show us the magnitude of His love — the contrast leaves me speechless with awe and gratitude.
The “Catechism of the Catholic Church” teaches us that God created us out of sheer goodness and love. He wanted to share his own blessed life with us — just because he delights in us.
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During the Last Supper, before Jesus gave his life so we could have eternal life, he told his apostles:
“So you also are now in anguish. But I will see you again, and your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take your joy away from you” (John 16:22).
Experiencing Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 reminded me of how fragile and unfair life would be if our Creator were anything less than good. Thankfully, we don’t live in a world made by flawed artists. We live in a world made by a loving Father.
And unlike the canvas of Lumière, the life he’s painting for us is eternal.
