[SPOIL INSIDE] Why erasing only once a year ?

[Eeko_San]

Hello everyone,

First of all, i'm a french native speaker so, forgive me for my english and grammar.

I just finished the game wich is, to me, a masterpiece but i still have some question and especially these one :

Why do the erasing take place only once a year ?

I understood that Renoir and Aline fight each other and Renoir use the erasing in order to push his wife out of the painting. And, the sory tell us that Aline is loosing har strengh every year so "people" die sooner and sooner.

But, does the game explain why the event take place like this and not continuously ? I mean, Aline is lossing her strenght every day not just once a year.

I tell myself that is some sort of anniversary aspect with the erasing happening at the date of the death of verso in the "real world".

Like a specia horrible tough day in the life oh the couple where Renoir become more angry and his wife feel more despair. A day where the gap between the parent become more wide year after year....

But i didn't got a clear answer, if there is one

[tenchu400]

It is explained in the story or at least how I understood it. That people are killed every year in exchange of killing everyone. It was like a compromise of sorts between the two. This is why everyone gets killed after you kill the paintress, Renoir is trying to remove the paintress from the painting. She uses her power to prevent everyone from dying and instead only allows a smaller number of people to die.

Edit: Also a subtle context clue. When you are in the final stage of the paintess she heals and buffs you. Showing you that she didn't want to harm anyone.

[Helldivers™ 2]

Because people dying one a year was a cool dark concept that looks good in review articles and the store and gets people hooked.

and then they had to explain it somehow when they decided to do a bait and switch and say nothing is real, and this is what they came up with to link it.

[Revan]

I think it's just an age-thing. Renoir is old, as was stated at the beginning of Expedition 33. When you are old, one Gommage each year is probably all the body can do.

Just kidding. The whole world is a painting, so have you ever thought about the possibility that the gommage does not happen once a year, but that they started counting years by gommages?

You can not apply too much logic to the world of this painting. Don't forget, one expedition used a giant wheel to travel to the continent. This worlds logic is based on child Versos imagination, that's why there are so many oddities in this world.

Maybe the original world did not even have a real contept of time and it was just a world full of funny creatures and some nice people in Lumiere. Then Renoir happened and a world, created by a little child, was thrown into a nightmare scenario and the people living in it adjusted to this new world. However, they still applied the logic from a childs imagination to fight deal with the nighmare.

I hope you understand what I'm trying to say here :) I really believe that we can't view this world through the same lense we would with the real world. This painting was created by a child, and it's a childrens logic that applies there. Esquie is a prime example for this. At first I wondered why there is such a weird and odd creature. But once you learned what this world truely was Esquie made absolute sense. He is a childs, fictional, "best friend" that looks like an odd, giant, toy.

[Shin Happens]

It's never truly explained, as far as I remember things. I would assume it's only once a year because of the immense power struggle between Renoir and Aline. Clea's Nevrons rob Aline of more and more chroma, so Aline gets gradually weaker, to the point Renoir can gommage the oldest part of the population.

Now what that is always once a year and not every other week? Because the story says so, if it happened more often there would be no Lumière left in no time.

[Rexbert]

Originally posted by Helldivers™ 2:

Because people dying one a year was a cool dark concept that looks good in review articles and the store and gets people hooked.

and then they had to explain it somehow when they decided to do a bait and switch and say nothing is real, and this is what they came up with to link it.

This is the real reason. Amazing game, with great music and gameplay and all the rest, but oh my god the story is such a letdown. They had tons of compelling ideas and characters and then fumbled everything and you can tell it began the moment they had to come up with the answer to why the cool premise they'd come up with was actually happening. The writers clearly didn't know either, and decided on meta-narrative family melodrama.

[vitalemangiatordi]

It is explained in the story that the number on the monolith is actually a warning from the Painter that means "with the power I have left I can only save those younger than this age from Renoir's attempt to erase you all instantly." Why Renoir is able to erase Aline's older creations more effectively is not specifically stated, but it may be that a painted person has a less strong and resistant chroma the older they are.