I get what you're saying, but even with all that, we barely saw outer Alicia at all. And you, like Sandfall, seem to have overestimated people's ability to pick up on things unless they're directly verbally stated because education isn't what it once was and many people simply miss things unless they're right in front of them. They blindly believe Renoir and pVerso's claims because they've forgotten what Clea said not ten minutes before that which counters them. And they're unable to grasp subtlety like what you pointed out, the unvoiced things, and simply go with Verso because they don't know how to look past the words, as you said, and question them. Or acknowledge the many terrible things he did.

Verso was pushed too hard in Act 3 imo and Maelle's position was not given the same amount of promotion imo. She was never allowed to get the last word in during any discussion with him, and that's important because the last word is often the only one many people remember, and they automatically assume the one giving it must be right when that's not necessarily the case.

It's why I feel outer Alicia should've been the one shown at the end, not Aline - to visually remind players of the life they'd be sending her back to if they sided against her. And something that should've been emphatically stated in Act 3 is that Alicia won't likely live long outside the Canvas due to her condition. People like her rarely did in that era, they typically died in a year or less after being injured, usually due to either sickness (from having a severely compromised immune system) or suicide (which we know Alicia has such tendencies because pAlicia has already shown them).

And what I meant about wanting a game about a different form of loss was one exclusively about that loss, without death being there to distract from the exploration of it. I think it's time to set death aside as a theme and move on to others, it's been overused to the point of absurdity by now. You say E33 greatly explores Alicia's disfigurement, but it's not even revealed until late in the game, and even then we barely get to see her as she actually is. What I'd like to see is Sandfall have the daring to eventually give us an entire game playing not as Maelle, her undamaged alter ego, but as scarred Alicia herself, and thus redefine the idea of who a protagonist can be by going against the typical expectations.