Is Renoir kinda dumb? (SPOILER WARNING)

[Gronmor]

Again, SPOILER TALK!!! You've been warned!

So, anyway, I'm talking about Painted-Renoir here, not the Real-Life one! So his whole thing is to protect the Paintress because, without her, he and his family dies, right? But here's the thing; without the Paintress, so would everyone else! And he knows that, but the expeditioners don't!

When meeting them at the beach, he could be like "ok, I know you're out there wanting to kill the Paintress because you think she causes the Gommage, but she's not. She's warning people about it, and the true cause of the Gommage is this other dude. Let's all go get him together". The goals of Painted-Renoir and the Expeditioners align, and if they knew about it, they could all work together.

But nope: Instead let's just try and kill everyone with no explanation whatsoever! Not once over the course of the game does he even explain that the Paintress might be the wrong target for the Expeditioner to survive!

Sure, there's no guarantee the Expeditioners would believe him. And in that case, sure, let's go to the offensive. But he doesn't even try is what I'm saying!

I get that, for a storytelling standpoint, you can't spoil the big reveal of your story right at the beginning. All I'm saying is it makes him come off as a little dumb! :p

[Humanoïde]

You could interpret that in multiple ways. One would be that he thought the expeditionners wouldn't believe him if he talked to them. Maybe he tried before and it didn't work. We know that expedition zero betrayed him and Verso because they didn't trust them.

But that's a bit boring of an explanation. My prefered answer is that it is a reflection of how he was created and how Aline perceives the real Renoir. To her, Renoir is a mindless destroyer that erases everything in pursuit of his goals. And as such, that's what painted Renoir ended up becoming. As Maëlle said "She painted an unflatering portrait of Papa."

[Kethanid]

Originally posted by Humanoïde:

You could interpret that in multiple ways. One would be that he thought the expeditionners wouldn't believe him if he talked to them. Maybe he tried before and it didn't work. We know that expedition zero betrayed him and Verso because they didn't trust them.

But that's a bit boring of an explanation. My prefered answer is that it is a reflection of how he was created and how Aline perceives the real Renoir. To her, Renoir is a mindless destroyer that erases everything in pursuit of his goals. And as such, that's what painted Renoir ended up becoming. As Maëlle said "She painted an unflatering portrait of Papa."

I agree with this, Alina makes this version of Renoir out of her perception of him. He's unyielding, is pulling out all the stops, because he believes he's doing it for his family, but it's more selfish than that.

[Veylox]

I've got a better one ; the paintress could paint "bro just kill Renoir" or "not my fault guys" instead of painting a number. The game even goes out of its way to show you it's possible because Maelle in postgame writes a message on the monolith

[Crimsomrider]

His actions are actually explained by listening to Julie - Search And Rescue journal and then Verso's journal.

The reason why Renoir, Verso and Alicia slaughtered Expedition 0 and every expedition since then that questioned their intentions is because after their encounter with Clea (who stopped them at the barrier pretending to be their own Clea), they became paranoid of what she could do and who they could truly trust.

She told them the truth about their existence to make them go away and then tried to erase them on the spot when they sided with Aline against Renoir. So knowing they're up against a vindictive Paintress who already took their actual sister and tried to erase them made them extremely paranoid that Clea could try to expel Aline by creating sleeper-agent expeditioners who would strike against Aline should they ever come close to her.

They returned to camp and then hell broke loose which resulted in Renoir, Verso and Alicia annihilating the rest of Expedition 0 after trying to explain what's going on. Afterwards any expeditioner that started questioning the truth behind the Paintress or the family's true intentions the Painted Family would consider Clea's creation and murder them because if they ever managed to strike against the Paintress their world and everyone in it would end. They could simply not take the risk because their entire world was at stake.

Unfortunately unbeknownst to them Clea is not that talented of a Paintress and their paranoia led to countless deaths, one of which was Julie who just wanted answers after witnessing Verso get split in half and then got massacred for trying to get some answers from Verso. Her death ultimately broke Verso because he truly cared about her and carried the guilt with him ever since because he never got over her death.

This also isn't the last time a Painted Family member got abducted for answers, as Lisette of the 56th Expedition caught Alicia after they started wiping out her expedition one by one and was about to torture her for answers before Renoir and Verso intervened in time.

[DmonHiro]

All Aline had to do was write "I can only save the people under [insert number] years of age." on the monolith.

[Samus]

Painted Renoir is like the real Renoir in that he wants to protect his family. The Paintress is his wife and in the last several years, Expeditioners have come to the continent with the intent of stopping the Paintress. Paintred Renoir won't allow this so he uncompromisingly kills them to protect Aline. The Nevrons are assisting Painted Renoir in his attacks. But what Painted Renoir does not realize is that Clea created the Nevrons to freeze the Chroma they were created with in the Expeditioner's corpses. This prevents it from returning to Aline and weakening her powers.

The only difference between the real Renoir and his painted version is Renoir is fighting against his wife's power and this prevents him from wiping out everyone at once.