Getting through an average day in 2026 requires resilience – the basic ability to weather mundane-but-constant highs, like a good news text from a friend, and lows, like realizing you need to head to the store (again) to pick up an item you forgot (again). Achieving that ability to manage everything going on at once is hard. It’s tempting to allow yourself to ricochet from high to low in rollercoaster fashion – but we need to give our brains a break. We must…achieve…balance.
Easier said than done, of course. So let’s work to avoid burnout, take a deep breath in and out, and remember the immortal words of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33’s Esquie: “I too am ‘Whooo.’ But I’m also ‘Wheee!’ So the ‘Wheee’ balances the ‘Whooo.’”
Esquie’s mantra, here, comes from one of the many camp conversations you can enjoy during downtime in an otherwise tumultuous game about grief. In this quiet aside, Esquie (an enormous, floating, and endearingly oblivious companion who’s arguably the emotional center of the whole game) is speaking to his dear friend Verso, one of the game’s traumatized playable leads. They are discussing their mutual friend François, who has gone quiet since losing his own closest friend. Verso mentions that François used to be all ‘wheee,’ but these days he’s a bit more ‘whooo.’ These are Esquie’s shorthand terms, we learn, for happy and sad. Already, this shows-not-tells us exactly how close these two are (we’ve all got baffling inside jokes turned vocab with our nearest and dearest) and allows us to feel immediately what it’s like inside their relationship. This is one of the realest-feeling moments in the game for me, despite everything going on in Expedition 33.
But Verso’s not done talking. He asks Esquie which of the two – ‘wheee’ or ‘whooo’ – is more Esquie’s vibe these days. Esquie does not pick. He’s whooo, sure, I mean, look at the world these characters are living through. But he is also wheee; he gets to tackle existential problems by spending time with his best friend, which is a lovely win. And this feels very realistic. Even when things are darkest, there’s usually something happening that we can hold onto, a little light to keep us feeling human and remind us that we’ll be okay.
It’s not surprising that such a simple yet resonant line came from a real-life emotionally nuanced moment. The game’s lead writer, Jennifer Svedberg-Yen, told Polygon back in May 2025 that this particular scene came together in the middle of the night, when she was too tired to do anything other than articulate the way the moment should sound. We’ve all been there, right? Life happens, and words fail us. We just sit back in our chairs and sigh. And communicate those feelings as best we can. And it feels so relieving, bonding, and right when the people around us just get what we’re trying to say, even when words fail.
So! Whatever the universe has in store for you today, remember you are both ‘whooo’ and ‘wheee.’ Perhaps you’re bracing for bad news that hasn’t landed yet, and you are ‘whooo;’ perhaps your pet will curl close to you on the couch later, and you shall be ‘wheee.’ Breathe deep through whichever happens first, allow yourself Esquie’s gift of perspective, and remember – You and me and Esquie: We’ve got this.
