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I recently finished the game Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. If you haven’t played the game and are spoiler averse, maybe you should just skip this one. I’m going to use this game as an example, but it might get a little bit spoilery.

A little while ago I wrote a thing about the concept of stakes in a story, and how a lot of people, including writers, misunderstand what stakes are and their function in effective fiction. My argument there boiled down to stakes being about empathy, not rising danger in the plot. Stakes are about you, as the audience, empathizing with the characters and what they personally have to lose or gain. Not in a material sense, but in an emotional sense. It doesn’t matter if they are a character that was always going to win, like a superhero or James Bond. Stakes are what James Bond has to gain or lose emotionally. Everything external is plot, not stakes. It’s the how, not the why. Stakes are about why.

The main characters of Clair Obscur are not only functionally immortal, they are mostly fictional. And by saying that, I mean that they are, in narrative, not real people. They are fictional constructs created by other characters in the story. Still, I dare someone to play through that game and not feel deeply for those characters. The creators of Clair Obscur understand stakes.

There is a point at the end of the game where one of the characters simply sits and stares at the camera. They convey a cold anger that forces you, as the player, to contend with all of decisions in the fictional world of the game. Have you treated this character well. Just because they aren’t real, does that give you give you the right to be dismissive of them. It is a moment that works on many levels. It works in the fiction of the game, but it is also unnerving to you, the actual person playing a video game. You have to accept the gravity of your choices. You empathize with this character, and you finally understand the stakes. By that point it is too late. The die has been cast.

The game includes plenty of apocalyptic moments, but it also understands that those aren’t stakes. Every characters connections with one another, those are valuable. Those are stakes.

There are so many more moments that I could mention, but I think that I have already been spoilery enough. If you have any intention at all of playing Clair Obscur, you should stop reading now and start working your way through the game. It is a really great game and it deserves your eyeballs.