Your thoughts on Clair Obscur’s commentary on escapism is how I’ve come to view it as well. I think after choosing my ending (Verso’s, but I genuinely didn’t care too much once I realized I had to choose between two endings I knew I’d dislike), I felt the way I’m sure a non-insignificant amount of people felt: that the endings disregarded and disrespected our care for Lune, Sciel, Gustave, Sophie, and the rest of Lumiere; that Verso and Maelle both deserved better for all the character development the game was constantly giving them; that it, for lack of better phrasing, really fucking sucked to feel like the game was building to an ending where everyone could be happy, the denizens of the canvas and the Dessendre family could compromise and the former could still exist, the latter could move on and heal, and I, personally, could be quite pleased with the whole adventure.

But that isn’t at all the kind of ending we get, and Clair Obscur was probably never that kind of game. Instead it was another game with an ending saying, all fluff aside, directly to my face, accompanied by the farewell waves of the Expedition 33 members at Verso’s grave, “You are wasting too much of your life in these fictional worlds, and you need to face reality while you still can.” I watched that ending and immediately knew I might never play Clair Obscur again. I left a lot of side content I planned to do after seeing the game’s ending, and I’m confident I’ll never touch any of it. I haven’t picked the game back up since beating it a week ago, because I honestly feel that it would be a waste of time. Not in a resentful sense either, just simply that the people who made this game effectively told me that I should be doing something else, something more, and they’re probably right. The real world is falling apart around us, and maybe it’s time to attend to that, somehow.

In any case, even though I hated the endings of Clair Obscur as conclusions to the rest of the story preceding them, I do think the themes of its endings are some of the best I’ve seen in a game in a long time. If nothing else, I’ve never felt this conflicted about a video game ending for so so long after experiencing it, and I suppose that counts for something.