One of the most interesting things about playing Clair Obscur, a video game full of very interesting things, is learning some of the wild and wacky ways previous Expeditions tried and failed to bring down the Paintress. Some brought submarines, others cars. Some brought siege engines. One expedition brought naked butts.
For me, though, the doomed idea that sticks in the memory is Expedition 50, who tried to traverse The Continent using...an enormous wheel. It's funny, it's weird, it was clearly never going to work and yet it's so bold, so out there, that you can't help but admire both the Expedition and Clair Obscur’s dedication to the bit. Using a giant wheel as both a base and means of transportation is just the dumbest idea. It doesn't have any balance. It wouldn't be able to make the slightest jump without toppling over, which would then destroy your car and your house. Who even thought of this? There's a reason this doesn't exist in other video games, even make-believe ones, why-
Ah, excuse me, I am now being told that a second 2025 video game features a Big Wheel.
I started playing The Alters this week, and you only have to play for a few minutes before being introduced to your base of operations, the one thing that will keep you alive and move you around on an incredibly hostile alien planet. It's huge, it's fancy, it's supposedly the epitome of modern space exploration technology in a universe with quantum computing and on-demand human cloning.
And it's a Big Wheel.
The same complaints made against Expedition 50 can be made here, whether in terms of in-universe logic or just game writing. It's a dumb idea! It'll topple over, it's not an optimal use of space, it's too tall, I could go on forever.
And yet the same truth also applies here: it's a Big Wheel. I wouldn't have written this many words about a Big Truck, or a Big Van, or even a Big Spaceship, because those are things I would expect here. Big Wheel is not, and it is stuck in my mind, like a rusty nail in my heel. I was not prepared for The Alters to have 2025's second Big Wheel, but now that I've been confronted with it, I can't help but fully embrace the madness.
Everything about The Alters is a bad idea! People's motivations to sign up to the doomed mission are cooked, the ethics of everything you're doing out there are worse, the conditions you're working under are atrocious. Why not send you out there in a Big Wheel? Everything else in the game has an air of 'fuck it, we're doing it', it's only natural that extends to both your home and transportation.
It's wild how my feelings on this can be shifted so effortlessly. One Big Wheel was a freak occurrence, a memory for the ages. Two Big Wheels? Now it's normal, accepted, this is just how video game people get around now. I look forward to Nintendo releasing Mario Big Wheel on the Switch 2 and MachineGames returning to the Wolfenstein series just so they can focus on a Big Wheel.
