(End Spoilers)Why Didn't Renoir End it Himself?

[Ratsplat]

If Renoir, or any painter for that matter, can just summon up a portal at will, why didn't he just go in and pay a visit to Verso's soul? And yet, a non painter is somehow strong enough to end a painting.

[Aradner]

because, sadly, the ending had a very forced ending vibe in mind, disguised as choice, and they bent the plot backwards to achieve it. Truly a shame.....

[WZ]

No clue, I was wondering the same at the time, seemed like a little plot hole. Why personally / manually erase the canvas if all you had to do was talk to your boy? Why would Aline paint a copy instead of just talking with the existing one? Especially when that little boy is clearly bored / tired & missing his family... A lot of the writing is top tier quality - but some details like this don't really jive / detract from the story if we overthink them. I suspect it's just "not that deep" & a story we're supposed to roll with rather than nitpick at - or it starts to seriously unravel.

[Ratsplat]

Originally posted by WZ:

No clue, I was wondering the same at the time, seemed like a little plot hole. Why personally / manually erase the canvas if all you had to do was talk to your boy? Why would Aline paint a copy of him boy instead of just talking with the existing one? Especially when that little boy is clearly bored / tired & missing his family... A lot of the writing is top tier quality - but some details like this don't really jive / detract from the story if we overthink them.

There's also the strange fact of... why was it even a portal to begin with? All Renoir had to do was pull up a 'video' (was it even a real scene or did he exaggerate her condition?) to show everyone Aline. But instead, it was an entire portal! Seemed very very convenient for Verso's sake.

[Talbot]

Originally posted by Ratsplat:

If Renoir, or any painter for that matter, can just summon up a portal at will, why didn't he just go in and pay a visit to Verso's soul? And yet, a non painter is somehow strong enough to end a painting.

Might have to do with Maelle still being in the painting. What happens to her if she's still there when the painting "ends?"

Verso beats her into leaving before he ends it in his ending, so we don't get any answers there, but it's maybe the "simplest" explanation.

[Ratsplat]

Originally posted by Talbot:

Might have to do with Maelle still being in the painting. What happens to her if she's still there when the painting "ends?"

Verso beats her into leaving before he ends it in his ending, so we don't get any answers there, but it's maybe the "simplest" explanation.

I was thinking the same thing, though I get the sense that Verso was headed towards getting the soul to stop before attempting to remove Maelle. He only vacated her after she fought back.

[WZ]

Aye that's how I lived it : a rather too convenient plot contrivance to try and pull a Life is Strange type, artificially binary moral dilemma ending ( and failing even worse than LiS did, because it all boils down to whether you consider the canvas real - whichever way you lean, there will be no moral dilemma, one ending will be the obvious choice ). Verso's dead, the entire plot revolves around that. Pulling a last minute "actually there's a little piece of him still kicking" detracts from everything that went before. I know they talked about there being "a piece of his soul" left before, but I always perceived that to be the canvas as a whole - not a literal piece / copy of him. It really makes no sense for Aline & Renoir to not immediately connect with that boy. Is ok 99.9999999% of the game was stellar, still GOAT tier experience overall, just a little fumble at the end.

[DmonHiro]

Because if Alicia or Aline are still in the painting when it gets destroyed they probably die as well. As for why Aline created a copy instead of interacting with the boy? That's simple: the boy is a small part of a soul. It's not exactly sentient. It's barely coherent.

[Talbot]

I think Aline also probably wanted to interact with the Verso she lost, i.e., the adult version, who didn't get to have the "life" she thought he deserved. The Soul Verso is a version of him that's at an age she already had that time with and didn't lose, so she isn't grieving for that iteration of him in the same way as the adult who was killed.

[Apocalypse]

Originally posted by Ratsplat:

If Renoir, or any painter for that matter, can just summon up a portal at will, why didn't he just go in and pay a visit to Verso's soul? And yet, a non painter is somehow strong enough to end a painting.

There is zero reason for him to use the portal at all when he most likely could just destroyed the physical object in the real world. But the issue for him was that family members were still in the Canvas.