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But yeah, as previously stated, Carlo's mind and spirit were transmogrified into Ergo by the Petrification Disease, and those were then later inserted into the heart that powers us, the unnamed Puppet of Geppetto. So, if anything, we ourselves are the closest we can get to playing as Carlo proper.
In any case, we do actually play as Carlo proper in the post-game ending where you hand over your heart to Geppetto. So there's that ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I never had the impression that the nameless puppet is made of Carlo's flesh... Why would it? Also, the achievement for beating it is called "The First Puppet", seemingly implying it's the puppet Gepetto made first and probably just kept improving it over time, serving him as a test-prototype machine... I don't think Gepetto would do that to Carlo's flesh, considering everything else. Also, the build is wrong... if you give up your heart and do the bad ending.. well... it's not the nameless puppet who shows up.
Also, where did you get the information from that it is in fact, the first attempt to revive Carlo and his body? That doesn't really make sense with the nomenclature "The First".
The sand memories you find on the shores of Arche Abbey show he was an incredibly absent and neglectful father in Carlo's life. Do you think the same man who would knowingly allow human ergo-souls to be bent to robotic servitude and also order the mass murder of the entire city via the Puppet Frenzy code would be above trying to resurrect his son as a puppet-corpse?
Granted, he was doing it out of grief for his loss and rage at his own blindness to his neglectful ways, but still... Carlo wasn't much more than window dressing to him before he petrified.
Since the Nameless Puppet is just acting on its own volition when it's going berserk in second phase (it was being directly puppeteered by Geppetto's gloves in phase one), Geppetto of course wouldn't see it as Carlo since he didn't insert the P-Organ into it.
It's not, and even the genius of Geppetto can't magically wish a corpse-puppet back into the human being it was without literal divine intervention. That's why Geppetto's entire plan from the start was to use the divine power of the Arm of God to accomplish that.
However, doing that requires unfathomably massive quantities of ergo to power the Arm of God, which is why his plan involved harvesting the ergo of the entire city — as well as stealing the Arm of God back from Simon Manus once that plot development happened — using his P-Organ puppet as a proxy.
The Nameless Puppet's ergo states that it was a failed attempt by Geppetto to rebuild Carlo: Failed because he attached way too many ergo power core boosters to the P-Organ — likely because he still intended for it to go to town on Krat in order to gather enough ergo to power the Arm of God, and wanted to give the puppet as much of an advantage as he could manage — and caused it to go berserk when it was switched on. Since the Nameless Puppet is the only puppet made by Geppetto in his quest to revive Carlo (aside from us, the nameless protagonist), we can only assume until more lore is revealed by DLC or sequels that Geppetto only ever made two total P-Organ puppets.
Fitting that the final battle is a duel between Carlo's body and soul, don't you think?
Hope this answers all your questions!
I will tell you this, though. One - nothing you have said is evidence of anything related to the topic. You also contradict yourself in at least two places. You can use this exact reasoning as evidence that we are, in fact Carlo's body and flesh.
Two - we don't actually know why Gepetto initiated the frenzy. The game itself gives us several pieces of evidence and each one contradicts another. On one hand we are told that the frenzy is because of us. On the other hand we are told that the puppets are fighting of the alchemists and preventing them from doing what they want. This point is also reinforced by the fact that we had to kill several key puppets (bosses) in order for Simon to start the ergo god thing. This makes no sense if Gepetto was the one behind it and wanted that god thing to exist. I also have a few theories about the puppet frenzy, but none of them fit properly within the game's lore.
And three - we know that the nameless puppet is in fact a full puppet. He has no head, no brain and is fully mechanized, just like other puppets. We know because we sliced off his head and can see inside. His legs are also fully mechanical. We look much more than human and seem to be more "fleshy". If Gepetto's goal is to transform a puppet into a human using god hand, then we might as well be the vessel. There is no need to take out the heart. And again, by the very reasoning you wrote, we are or at least in part have Carlo's flesh.
And finally - nothing you wrote explain why the one-handed us show up at the hotel in the end. What happened to the puppet and his body? It quite literally makes no sense. Likely these are all just plot holes in writing and there are no answers.
This is reason enough for me to assume we were playing as Carlo the entire time.
There's probably some artistic licence given to the idea that the more human we become, making our own decisions, then the more alike or dislike Carlo we become. So even though we are technically him, we don't have to become him in the way Geppetto remembers him.
2. This is an entirely fair point that I concede to you. The game does explicitly tell us that Grand Covenant's 1st Law is "all puppets must obey the Creator," and Rule 0 is "the Creator is Giueppe Geppetto," but it's our own judgment that makes the leap to "Geppetto must've instigated the frenzy" when we tell Venigni what we heard. Interesting basis for speculation, but not really conclusive evidence as you've pointed out.
2a. I should point out that, while Geppetto's own goal did revolve around using the Arm of God, but his conflict with Simon Manus was that his own goals for what to use the Arm of God for conflicted with Simon's: Geppetto wanted to use it to revive Carlo, but Simon wanted to use it to remake the world in his own image.
3. You are right that the Nameless Puppet has had pretty much all of its insides — organs, bones, and all — scooped out and replaced with mechanical bits. However, I personally believe it's more likely that Nameless is the true remains of Carlo (rather than you) because of how, well, emaciated, bloodied, and corpse-like its fleshy bits look.
3a. However, even though I think that the Nameless Puppet is made from Carlo's corpse, I know for sure that it isn't Carlo anymore because everything that made Carlo who he was — his memories, personality, and soul — are stored in the P-Organ that we currently carry. Building on that, we (the current incumbent) are also probably like 95% mechanical bits on the inside too, since otherwise there'd be nothing for the P-Organ to actually interface with.
3b. Also, another important point I completely forgot about: When he's rising the Nameless Puppet out of the case, Geppetto says "my son" to it while he's looking it directly in the sewn-shut eyes. I'm not personally sure if he's referring to it or to the P-Organ with that line, but the scene does heavily imply the former.
I should also mention that I was wrong about Geppetto seeing you as his son before — when you say no to him and refuse to hand Carlo's heart over, he stops referring to you as "my son" and more as "the puppet that holds Carlo's memories." Was that a genuine turn of heart or merely him dropping the ruse? I'm not sure. There's not enough to definitively tell either way.
4. The cutscene for the Real Boy ending shows Geppetto inserting the P-Organ by hand into something mechanical inside the case after yoinking it out of you, with the last thing you see being a healthy, pink-skin right hand lifting out of the case — almost certainly the real Carlo since you're currently dying on the floor. This, combined with Nameless Puppet being the only contents of the case we get to see in the other endings, leads me to believe that the Carlo we play as post-game is indeed the Nameless Puppet, brought back to life as a living, breathing human with the powered-up Arm of God.
Some other physical differences between pre- and post-game Carlo I should note:
* Carlo has brown eyes; we have blue eyes
* We have freckles; Carlo doesn't (his face is stained with dried blood)
* Carlo has brown hair; we have black hair
As for why post-game Carlo still has the Legion Arm? Most likely for gameplay reasons, but aside from that I can only really speculate why with how little information we've got about Carlo's mental state. Maybe he liked the feel of it from his time spent as us? Maybe Geppetto gave it to him so he could "clean up" the survivors in Hotel Krat? Both or neither of those? Who knows. Not me, that's for sure.
I will agree that the hand climbing out of a suitcase is convincing, but there are still several issues with it. One - how did the puppet without a face and with that skin suddenly became like a proper human? We are not shown that Gepetto did anything at all, just put in the heart somewhere. It's also not like we actually received the ergo god in the p-organ. Why the immediate effect?
Also, like I said before - how did fully mechanized puppet suddenly became "human"? Why not just use us if that's the case? I checked and it's true that Carlo in the ending doesn't have freckles and has different color of the eyes. The hair color I don't see any difference, though. But all of this can also be explained by ergo. Since you are willing to go as to transform a monstrosity into a human, it's that outrageous to say the eye color just changed because of the same process.
And I really cannot get passed the fact that it's us with the legion arms show up in the end... Why would they (devs) do it this way? If a normal two-armed Carlo showed up, I would say - sure, the theory has very strong possibility even regardless of everything else. But given that NG+ doesn't really have any real continuity other that for players benefit, I don't see who gameplay reason would be why Carlo with legion arm shows up...
As for the suitcase. Yes, we don't really see what's inside. However it seems to be a magical suitcase since a giant puppet can be stuffed inside... There is distinct possibility there are other stuff in there, maybe another puppet similar to us. I will say that it's a plot whole and that the writers messed up and we won't know for certain unless given more information.
Playing as the NP could be fun, but in a different storyline. Gepetto would have to be the one playing as the NP is technically a shell. Why he starts fighting on his own in the second phase is not explored, except for him going into some kind of frenzy, and because he is the endboss. He needs some more context than that to be the player character.