An in-depth analysis of Expedition 33's ending and a famous Star Trek dilemma (spoilers/long read)

Felt like this deserved its own thread as I'd like to see other people's takes on this. Bit of a long read, but an upfront thanks to anyone who makes it all the way through.

The Gordian knot: Kobayashi Maru and Expedition 33's endings

The two endings present to us a fallacy and then ask us to make a choice based on that fallacy. You're forced to assume that there are only two possible outcomes, neither of which are ideal, hence the Kobayashi Maru dilemma from Star Trek, or in other words, the Gordian knot. Faced with two difficult decisions, you're forced to pick one and live with the consequences of the other. However, critical, out-of-the-box thinking unlocked a solution to the seemingly impossible problem presented in the Kobayashi Maru scenario.

Similarities, differences, and the unknown

But one of the key differences between these two scenarios, is that once a decision is made in the Kobayashi Maru, there's no going back. Both decisions have final consequences. In Maelle's ending, nothing is final. Both worlds keep spinning, and there exists the potential for the same exact two outcomes, or more, at a later point in time once more information is known.

As of right now though, we don't know the extent of the painters' powers. We don't understand why they die if they stay in the painting too long, or how long they'd have to stay before they'd die. We don't know much about the outside world or how time flows there compared to the painted world, or even how "real" the outside world is. We don't know if chroma in the canvas is encoded with the DNA of the people it came from and if the people who are brought back are the same or just a facsimile.

We're uninformed on a lot of important details that could help inform our decisions better or elicit the potential for a third option, specifically because the game doesn't want us to consider a third option. You could argue the Kobayashi Maru is the same in that regard. There was never supposed to be more options, or a "solution," it was only meant to be a test of character. But there was a solution, and it was to manipulate the parameters of the scenario itself, which brings us to the other key difference.

The equivalent solution here would be to program our own ending, which isn't possible unless we're one of the developers. And as we've established, the developers don't want to give us a third option, or an ideal outcome to the problem they've presented. The scenario itself is just as rigged as the Kobayashi Maru, but without the ability to rig it back in our favor.

Conclusion

So, in the absence of the ability to pick an ending based on a more informed decision, and in the absence of the ability to make our own ending possible, and short of not picking an ending at all, Maelle's ending is the most reasonable choice to make, given that it has no immediate consequences as far as we know. Now this isn't an endorsement for that ending, because I don't endorse either of them. Just like how I wouldn't endorse being a part of the human centipede, but if I had to pick, I'd pick the front.

However, in the absence of any alternative, and given how restricted we are, Maelle's ending is the only one that leaves the path open for something to happen later on where the canvas can exist and the family can grieve, since theoretically, I could say, "Alicia eventually leaves the canvas once everything is stabilized to go grieve with her family, and Renoir stays true to his word and doesn't destroy the canvas," and it could potentially be true.

Lingering points in regards to Maelle's ending

1. Verso's soul would still suffer in Maelle's ending because he always wanted to play the piano, not paint.

Not quite, we're never given a reason to believe that Verso's soul is suffering because he's painting and not playing the piano. In fact, quite the opposite. He loved the world that he painted, with Esquie, Monoco, and the Gestrals, as we know that Verso and the other members of the Dessendre family played in the painting during better days.

Based on dialogue from the faded boy himself, Verso's soul was suffering because of the death and destruction Clea and Renoir were causing to the world he'd created after the fracture. Death, rebirth, death, rebirth. That was the problem. The act of painting itself wasn't the issue, and in Maelle's ending, Clea and Renoir aren't around anymore, so even in Maelle's ending, Verso's soul doesn't have to suffer anymore.

2. The people at the end are only Maelle's playthings, and the world is her sandbox.

Based on context clues shown during Maelle's ending, we're given every reason to believe that this isn't the case:

Context clue #1: Verso asks Sciel during a bonding dialogue if she'd be happy with a Pierre clone. Sciel says before meeting Verso, yes. But after seeing how it torments him, she wouldn't wish that on anyone. Yet at the Opera House, we see her happy with the Pierre that we see.

Could it be that Pierre is a clone and that her views have changed again, and that she'd be okay with subjecting a Pierre clone to existential dread? Maybe, but it's much more likely that he's the real thing.

Context clue #2: At the Opera House, we don't see anyone killed by a Nevron. If Maelle were only creating copies and not bringing back the original people, we'd have likely seen some of the people killed by Nevrons, like Lune's parents, for instance, or the deceased members of Expedition 33. Instead, the only people we do see are those whose Chroma returned to the canvas (Pierre, Sophie, Gustave).

Context clue #3: Gustave still had a mechanical arm. If we're operating under the assumption that Maelle is creating a utopia with clones, it would make sense for her to have given him his arm back as well.

Of course, this doesn't conclusively prove anything. But it is convincing enough that I'm much more likely to believe they're the originals, and not just clones. But as I mentioned earlier, this is just one of those things that falls into the "unknown" category. An argument could be made either way, since we just don't know.

3. The inhabitants of the canvas aren't real, the Dessendre's are.

Again this falls into that "unknown" category. Are the Dessendre's more real than the painted world and its inhabitants? Or were they too, made by someone else? The writers perhaps? How "real" is the "real" world? We don't know, and so we can't conclusively say that either of them are any more or less real than the other.
 
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It wasn't, and you are incorrect.

They are in a play created by the writers to cover Verso's defection to the Writers guild. He is in love with a writer...the story is the Wizard of Oz & Romeo and Juliet.
 
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It wasn't, and you are incorrect.

They are in a play created by the writers to cover Verso's defection to the Writers guild. He is in love with a writer...the story is the Wizard of Oz & Romeo and Juliet.
Sounds contrived and poorly written, like an item description lore dump in a Miyazaki game.
 
🪞
For such a talented writer I would have assumed a larger vocabular would be available...or at least a grasp of the definition of slave.
A cancelled hellraiser's script outline should stay cancelled. Smash that obelisk with your stick.
 
I think the biggest part of the ending for me, is that the kid version of Verso was suffering, and that Maelle slashed at the kids hand as grown up Verso tried to hold him.

Maelle is young and still quite ignorant, and was driven by a desire to be a person who could speak and be more normal. Verso and Renoir always knew she was just a kid and that she wouldn't understand why things had to end to save the family.

Verso finally understood why Renoir wanted to end things at the end, when he saw 'kid Verso' trapped in a cruel cycle of painting fantasies.
 
Maelle ending is the good ending. Versos ending is genocide. You can say those people arent real so they dont matter i disagree. They are as real as you and me. I mean we cant know that we dont live in some sort of simulation. Let's assume someone comes to earth and say this is a simulation, or even a prophet if you want to go the religious route and says well this isnt the actual reality that matters but just a test, basically what christianity already says. So we're gonna delete all you guys right now for one reason or another, would you be okay with that? Not me. Well in the case of religion if it meant we would go somewhere better than sure, but thats not what happening. They're just being deleted as if they never existed, and in that case hell no i wouldnt want that.
 
1. Verso's soul would still suffer in Maelle's ending because he always wanted to play the piano, not paint.

Except the Verso who was left in the painting to play the piano was the PAINTED Verso, not the soul of Verso. The soul was still being manipulated by Maelle to paint a false version of Verso who was then relegated to playing piano for Maelle and her friends for all time.

3. The inhabitants of the canvas aren't real, the Dessendre's are.

The inhabitants of the painting aren't real. They are creations by Aline/The Paintress. That's why their chroma returns to her at tne end of every gommage, and why Clea created the Nevrons to lock the deceased expeditioners chroma in their bodies. This means all of the inhabitants of Lumiere was created by Aline, not original Verso.

Listen to the dialog between painted Verso, Monoco, and (especially) Esquie. They lament a time when it was literally just Verso, Clea, Monoco, Esquie, Francois, the Gestrals and the Grandis. Obviously the original painting when they were children.

Aline created her immortal versions of her family members and all the people of Lumiere; Renoir created the Axons; Clea created the Nevrons.

2. The people at the end are only Maelle's playthings, and the world is her sandbox.

Because all Maelle can do is control the chroma that was left over after both her father and mother were evicted from the painting, this is 100% accurate. She cannot create (only Aline, Clea, and Renoir could), only manipulate.


Maelle ending is the good ending. Versos ending is genocide.

Those "people" weren't real. They were creations of Aline's. And, even if we put that aside, by the time you have to make your choice between Verso or Maelle, every single person in Lumiere had already been wiped out, except for Sciel and Lune, whose chroma essence Maelle captured before escaping at the start of Act 3.

Maelle isn't preventing a "genocide", she's wresting for control so she can be the puppet master of the chroma.
 
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So, in the absence of the ability to pick an ending based on a more informed decision
You have all the information you need.

The painted Verso knows he's not real. But he also has all of Verso's memories and feelings towards his family. He knows what being in the canvas is doing to them. Aline is unable to deal with her heartbreak, Renoir would have eventually died trying to save her if he was never freed, and Maelle is choosing a fantasy instead of learning to live with her new reality.

And as we've established, the developers don't want to give us a third option, or an ideal outcome to the problem they've presented.

The problem presented:
A grieving family is resorting to self destructive acts instead of learning to deal with their grief.

Your options:
Force this family to move on from their collective delusion that will likely kill at least 2 of them. Force them to face reality and grieve Verso in a healthy way Or
let them to spiral and eventually die in a make believe world.

It's really that simple.

Also, all you people insisting that the painted world and its people are 'real' and should be treated as such are very quick to dismiss painted Verso's pain, even after he very clearly articulated it at the end if you fight as Maelle.
 
Is this a coincidence?

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Verso finally understood why Renoir wanted to end things at the end, when he saw 'kid Verso' trapped in a cruel cycle of painting fantasies.
Kid Verso was stuck painting in a world where Renoir and Clea were killing his creations, and then having to watch them be rebirthed and killed again. Talking to the faded boy makes it clear that this is why he wanted to stop painting. In either ending, Renoir and Clea aren't around anymore, which means that in either ending, Verso's soul stops suffering.

The soul was still being manipulated by Maelle to paint a false version of Verso who was then relegated to playing piano for Maelle and her friends for all time.
This is your interpretation of the ending, and you're welcome to it. But nothing about this is objectively true. I could just as easily say this about Maelle's ending:

Alicia eventually leaves the canvas once everything is stabilized to go grieve with her family, and Renoir stays true to his word and doesn't destroy the canvas
And it would have just as much chance of being true.

The inhabitants of the painting aren't real.
The question isn't, "Are the painted inhabitants real?"

The question is, "What makes the painted inhabitants any more or less real than the Dessendre family?"

And the game does not provide us with enough information to answer that.

They are creations by Aline/The Paintress.
If the Dessendre family were created by a higher power as well, that would mean they are not real either. And part of what we don't know is how "real" the "real world" is.

There are theories that this is all a painting within a painting, or that the reality they live in was created by the writers, in which case, the Dessendre family would be just as "real" as the painted inhabitants.

Again, this is one of the "unknowns" that we can't answer.

Maelle isn't preventing a "genocide", she's wresting for control so she can be the puppet master of the chroma
Again that's just your interpretation. Nothing in the game indicates that this is true.

You have all the information you need.
No we do not.

We are only given enough information to lead us to believe that the binary choice is our only option:

Your options:
Force this family to move on from their collective delusion that will likely kill at least 2 of them. Force them to face reality and grieve Verso in a healthy way Or
let them to spiral and eventually die in a make believe world.

And this is what falling for the trap of the binary choice looks like. Rather than using critical thinking to understand that other alternatives are available, you accept that the scenarios presented to you are the only possible outcomes.

And even if that were the case, I could just as easily say with Maelle's ending: "Alicia left the painting to grieve with her family, the canvas was left to exist, and Verso's soul found peace and happiness again once the fighting was over," and nothing we've seen would contradict that. And that would be the best outcome for everyone, except for one person: Painted Verso.

Also, all you people insisting that the painted world and its people are 'real' and should be treated as such are very quick to dismiss painted Verso's pain, even after he very clearly articulated it at the end if you fight as Maelle.
One: I'm not "insisting" that they're real, I'm saying that with what little information we are given, we can't say if they're any more or less real than the Dessendre family.

Two: Painted Verso manipulated and murdered to get his way. Bad things happen to bad people. Having an existential crisis about who you are and thinking your reasons are justified when committing atrocities, doesn't absolve you of wrongdoings. He gets to keep on living in Maelle's ending, which means he has to keep on suffering, but so what? Real or not, he's the arbiter of his own suffering, and Maelle didn't create him, so she's not obligated to kill him. Just like how Verso wasn't obligated to save Gustave, so he didn't.
 
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This is your interpretation of the ending, and you're welcome to it. But nothing about this is objectively true.

It was made patently clearly that the soul of Verso was how the painting continued to exist. For Maelle to remain in the painting and bring Lumiere back to "life" that would have REQUIRED the soul of Verso to remain trapped and manipulated, exactly the same as what Aline had been doing.

How you cannot comprehend this is beyond me but that is where your entire argument fails. Every other argument you have is based on this flaw.
 
It was made patently clearly that the soul of Verso was how the painting continued to exist. For Maelle to remain in the painting and bring Lumiere back to "life" that would have REQUIRED the soul of Verso to remain trapped and manipulated, exactly the same as what Aline had been doing.

How you cannot comprehend this is beyond me but that is where your entire argument fails. Every other argument you have is based on this flaw.
And it was made abundantly clear in every bit of dialogue with the faded boy that the sole reason why the soul of Verso was suffering was because of the death and destruction happening in the canvas.

The soul of Verso isn't any more "trapped" with Maelle in the painting than he would be if the real Verso had never died and the painting sat in storage for the rest of eternity in the Dessendre mansion. Did you not see all of the other canvases in the storage rooms?

You have your own interpretation, which is fine, but nothing in the game definitively states that your interpretation is true.
 
Oh, so we're getting into "Squall died at the end of disc 1" levels of fan theorizing.

This is my stop. Enjoy!
 
Did you read more than one sentence of my post?
Yeah, I did, and you went off on a ridiculous tangent about religion and other nonsense that had no bearing on it.

Those "people" weren't real. They were figments of an imagination and they had all been blipped out of existence before you had to make your choice.

Your asking me if I read more than one line of your post tells me you didn't read more than one line of mine. Because I explained everything. Not my fault you don't listen to exposition in the game. 🤷
 
Yes, I think verso's ending is genocide but also hear me out on why that's not considered important by the painters

It's absolutely genocide but clearly something a lot of people do in that world. I'm sure they have painted many other worlds and destroyed them without a second thought of the sentient creatures in them.

Just, we give importance to sentience because we ourselves are one. It's inherent to being empathetic.

But do we think about the billions of animals that we slaughter each year? Do you care about the billions of bugs that die every day probably? You can use the 'they're not sentient' argument all you want, they're clearly all living creatures with the ability to feel some form of pain (Even Bacteria feels something similar to pain). What I'm saying is that Life is inherently meaningless and we give it importance by being empathetic creatures.

Over the years, I have accepted the idea that we likely do have a creator (not counting our existing religions obviously which are basically superstitious books that the Middle east wrote, used as 'comfort drug' by humans). But for that creator, the idea of helping the good people, the weak is ridiculous as it not only goes against the rule of evolution 'survival of the fittest' but also likely that we are nothing more than bugs in the grand scheme of things and our lives are equally as important.

Imagine a bug praying to a human to save it (a 'superior' living creature, not neccessarily the creator). How ridiculous is that? Now imagine a being painted our world for some reason unknown to us. Why in the world would he care what happens to it? Maybe he doesn't want to destroy his art which would result in a genocide of all humans but obviously, he would care more about the former than the latter which may not even be a passing thought.
 
Felt like this deserved its own thread as I'd like to see other people's takes on this. Bit of a long read, but an upfront thanks to anyone who makes it all the way through.

The Gordian knot: Kobayashi Maru and Expedition 33's endings

The two endings present to us a fallacy and then ask us to make a choice based on that fallacy. You're forced to assume that there are only two possible outcomes, neither of which are ideal, hence the Kobayashi Maru dilemma from Star Trek, or in other words, the Gordian knot. Faced with two difficult decisions, you're forced to pick one and live with the consequences of the other. However, critical, out-of-the-box thinking unlocked a solution to the seemingly impossible problem presented in the Kobayashi Maru scenario.
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the middle point option never existed and that's the entire point of the final sequence.
Verso wanted to believe a third, compromising solution was possible, reality smacked him in the face TWICE in rapid succession, showing him he was a fool and forcing his hand.
Similarities, differences, and the unknown

But one of the key differences between these two scenarios, is that once a decision is made in the Kobayashi Maru, there's no going back. Both decisions have final consequences. In Maelle's ending, nothing is final.
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Wrong. Aline going right back to the canvas and maelle lying to her father and knowing so make pretty much the canvas existing and those two getting over theur grief an impossibility.
you cannot trust an addict, Renoir says that and he is proven right....EVERY.SINGLE.TIME.
Both worlds keep spinning, and there exists the potential for the same exact two outcomes, or more, at a later point in time once more information is known.

As of right now though, we don't know the extent of the painters' powers. We don't understand why they die if they stay in the painting too long, or how long they'd have to stay before they'd die. We don't know much about the outside world or how time flows there compared to the painted world, or even how "real" the outside world is. We don't know if chroma in the canvas is encoded with the DNA of the people it came from and if the people who are brought back are the same or just a facsimile.
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we do know those things. Painter die from exhaustion, because using their powers need stamina and withers them, especially if they stay continuously in them.
The only vague point against it is that , according to Clea "Aline has been more time in other canvases"..but we can clearly see she is withering, so my guess is not only the time spent, but also the amount of "life" created while you are there..although you would imagine Clea also knowing this, so is she being callus because her mother abandoned them?
as per the chroma, yes, the resurrection is kept vague and it's probably one of the holes in the story, everything in the procesd seems to point out to resurrected people being just clones with implanted memories, but we are never given a behavior from sciel or lune that might confirm that (until the ending)
We're uninformed on a lot of important details that could help inform our decisions better or elicit the potential for a third option, specifically because the game doesn't want us to consider a third option. You could argue the Kobayashi Maru is the same in that regard. There was never supposed to be more options, or a "solution," it was only meant to be a test of character. But there was a solution, and it was to manipulate the parameters of the scenario itself, which brings us to the other key difference.
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untrue, the entire third act is about trying to get to the third solution and realizing is not there.
The equivalent solution here would be to program our own ending, which isn't possible unless we're one of the developers. And as we've established, the developers don't want to give us a third option, or an ideal outcome to the problem they've presented. The scenario itself is just as rigged as the Kobayashi Maru, but without the ability to rig it back in our favor.

Conclusion

So, in the absence of the ability to pick an ending based on a more informed decision, and in the absence of the ability to make our own ending possible, and short of not picking an ending at all, Maelle's ending is the most reasonable choice to make, given that it has no immediate consequences as far as we know. Now this isn't an endorsement for that ending, because I don't endorse either of them. Just like how I wouldn't endorse being a part of the human centipede, but if I had to pick, I'd pick the front.However, in the absence of any alternative, and given how restricted we are, Maelle's ending is the only one that leaves the path open for something to happen later on where the canvas can exist and the family can grieve, since theoretically, I could say, "Alicia eventually leaves the canvas once everything is stabilized to go grieve with her family, and Renoir stays true to his word and doesn't destroy the canvas," and it could potentially be true.
everything is final in maelle's ending...she is never going back from that canvas...she knows it, her father knows it, the player knows it if it followed the facts. She can't even manage to deny it when Verso calls her out on it.
Lingering points in regards to Maelle's ending

1. Verso's soul would still suffer in Maelle's ending because he always wanted to play the piano, not paint.

Not quite, we're never given a reason to believe that Verso's soul is suffering because he's painting and not playing the piano. In fact, quite the opposite. He loved the world that he painted, with Esquie, Monoco, and the Gestrals, as we know that Verso and the other members of the Dessendre family played in the painting during better days.

Based on dialogue from the faded boy himself, Verso's soul was suffering because of the death and destruction Clea and Renoir were causing to the world he'd created after the fracture. Death, rebirth, death, rebirth. That was the problem. The act of painting itself wasn't the issue, and in Maelle's ending, Clea and Renoir aren't around anymore, so even in Maelle's ending, Verso's soul doesn't have to suffer anymore.
wrong again. we know that he is tired of painting, we do know he never loved painting since there is only one canvas of his. Him loving his creatures and him finding an eternity of painting torture are not mutually exclusive.Think of a mother that does 2 terrible jobs to support her children...she does it out of love, she loves her children...does that make the shitty jobs less shitty?
2. The people at the end are only Maelle's playthings, and the world is her sandbox.

Based on context clues shown during Maelle's ending, we're given every reason to believe that this isn't the case:

Context clue #1: Verso asks Sciel during a bonding dialogue if she'd be happy with a Pierre clone. Sciel says before meeting Verso, yes. But after seeing how it torments him, she wouldn't wish that on anyone. Yet at the Opera House, we see her happy with the Pierre that we see.

Could it be that Pierre is a clone and that her views have changed again, and that she'd be okay with subjecting a Pierre clone to existential dread? Maybe, but it's much more likely that he's the real thing.
ehm..this seems like a clue that they ARE maelle's playthings.
1) Maelle did not know Pierre, and you are supposed to repaint people by remembering them and get their essence
2) Sciel knows that the new Pierre might be as Tormented as Verso was, yet she does not seem to care, almost like she is being controlled
Context clue #2: At the Opera House, we don't see anyone killed by a Nevron. If Maelle were only creating copies and not bringing back the original people, we'd have likely seen some of the people killed by Nevrons, like Lune's parents, for instance, or the deceased members of Expedition 33. Instead, the only people we do see are those whose Chroma returned to the canvas (Pierre, Sophie, Gustave).
that's the thing, we don't see anyone identifiable except from the main cast.
the city of lumiere is full of vibrant and different individuals and they are featured prominently in the game intro and other scenes in lumiere...yet everyone in the crowd is a copycat of the same guy and gal...even the very female cast ALL WEAR THE SAME OUTFIT AS MAELLE except for Sophie.
Context clue #3: Gustave still had a mechanical arm. If we're operating under the assumption that Maelle is creating a utopia with clones, it would make sense for her to have given him his arm back as well.
clones are based on memory, and she probably always knew him without his arm.
Of course, this doesn't conclusively prove anything. But it is convincing enough that I'm much more likely to believe they're the originals, and not just clones. But as I mentioned earlier, this is just one of those things that falls into the "unknown" category. An argument could be made either way, since we just don't know.
It's funny how, even admitting a lot is open to interpretation in that ending, we come up with the complete opposite idea from the same scene.
Also, last thing that really started my whole doubting the ending in the first place, is when the camera lingers one last time on Sciel and Lune, which don't seem to react AT ALL at verso stuck on the stage...no puzzled face wondering what was going on, or worrying that something is wrong...just a plain stare like everything is according to plan.
And the thing is, there's no reason to cut to their expression if it's not indicative that something is wrong...if you cut to a reaction and thee is no reaction, that's entirely the point.
3. The inhabitants of the canvas aren't real, the Dessendre's are.

Again this falls into that "unknown" category. Are the Dessendre's more real than the painted world and its inhabitants? Or were they too, made by someone else? The writers perhaps? How "real" is the "real" world? We don't know, and so we can't conclusively say that either of them are any more or less real than the other.
the inhabitants for the sake of the story are as real as the dessandres, everyone in the story treats them as such and we saw their tribulations for survival..arguing their existence is a moot point.
the thing is, no matter how the dessandres recognize their reality, their priorities is on their family and their reality, much like Sciel told to Verso's face that he would sacrifice him in an instant if it brought back Pierre.

like Verso said: We are all hypocrites, doing the same thing to each other
 
Yeah, I did, and you went off on a ridiculous tangent about religion and other nonsense that had no bearing on it.

Those "people" weren't real. They were figments of an imagination and they had all been blipped out of existence before you had to make your choice.

Your asking me if I read more than one line of your post tells me you didn't read more than one line of mine. Because I explained everything. Not my fault you don't listen to exposition in the game. 🤷
I disagree with them not being real. Lune is as real to her as we are to us. We have no evidence of being any more real. It's not something we can prove. Maybe we arent real, and that doesnt mean i would not care about my life anymore.

And to me this isnt about siding with maelle, or verso for that matter. Maelee is not even part of the equation to me. To me it's siding with everyone else. With the majority to whom their lives and emotions are very real and i think they matter.
 
Maelle ending is the good ending. Versos ending is genocide. You can say those people arent real so they dont matter i disagree. They are as real as you and me. I mean we cant know that we dont live in some sort of simulation. Let's assume someone comes to earth and say this is a simulation, or even a prophet if you want to go the religious route and says well this isnt the actual reality that matters but just a test, basically what christianity already says. So we're gonna delete all you guys right now for one reason or another, would you be okay with that? Not me. Well in the case of religion if it meant we would go somewhere better than sure, but thats not what happening. They're just being deleted as if they never existed, and in that case hell no i wouldnt want that.


Maelle says exactly this to painted Verso. "you are you". Therefore, a living person.

Any living creature that has feelings and self-awareness is alive, regardless of in what "reality". Nobody has the right to claim otherwise.
 
The point of the test in Star Trek is to find out if a potential leader can keep on effectively making decisions in a seemingly hopeless one off situation. It is a similar thing in that both Kobayashi Maru and the game present one off "wicked problem" type scenarios where there is a unique one off decision to make where much of everything about the problem is obscure or unpredictable, including what the problem is or if it can even be solved. In Star Trek, Kirk's solution is facetious and most likely a character flaw as it trivializes the seriousness of real problems even though it is presented as a "heroic" thing and a sign that the Federation expects people to "do the impossible". It is also not taking the idea of these problems seriously to boil them down to binary questions of picking this side or that side and getting one of two outcomes but that is game development for you.

But we can have ethical problems like, if the inhabitants of a simulation think they are real, and do everything "as if" they were real including thinking and being conscious, then isn't is as bad to do bad things in a simulation as to do the exact same bad thing in "reality" itself. I would lean towards yes. If that is the case then would you think it is ethical to allow someone to use people as playthings or experiments for their own gratification?
 
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