>>718479740
>>718479740
>2/3 of the story means nothing only if you pick the bad ending (Verso).
Even if you ignore the developers' very obvious intention for the Verso ending the be the correct and cannon ending, even if you pretend Maelle's is the only ending that exists. There is still an overwhelming shift in focus for Act III to where Lumiere, The Continent, and their inhabitants become an afterthought. There is hardly a mention made of Gustave or Sophie or anybody else after this point. There are no depictions of the Lumierians living their lives or enacting a resistance against Renoir. The fact that Maelle even has the slightest bit of good will left for her father, who murdered her friends, parents, and everybody else she has ever cared about for 16 years and for another 50 or so years before that, just to get her and her mother to listen to him.
Imagine if Lumiere were a real 3-dimensional place, occupying the same world that the Dessendres inhabit. Imagine then that Maelle is there, with a family and a community, and by some quirk of magic has become separated from her natal family and started her life again from infancy in Lumiere. Then, in a bid to get her back along with her mother who has seen the same fate, murders everybody there slowly and tragically over the course of 66 years before nuking the entire place at the soonest available opportunity. Is there any universe where he is remotely in contention as a good guy? Where Maelle says anything other than "fuck you, you complete and utter psychopathic malevolent cunt"? The fact that the games story plays out so differently from my hypothetical scenario tells you that there is a fundamental difference in personhood between the real people and the painted people, that even if they are objectively real, that they are not even close to equal. This, combined with the dramatic shift in focus to where they essentially become an afterthought by the end of Act II, delivers the message that we ought not care.
