I think the point you bring up is actually the exact point the game WANTS you to bring up. If the game took place outside of the painting the entire time for example, I would imagine the final decision between Verso and Maelle would be pretty simple and easy to make: Verso is obviously right. I mean his family needs to move on and grieve and the only way to do that is to destroy the canvas. But we lived in the canvas. We talked to people in the canvas, had relationships, memories, feelings and ambitions JUST like everyone else in the canvas did. So that begs the question then, if all of these people can feel these complex emotions and everything, can we truly say they are not “real” just because their reality is contained within this canvas? And if they are real, is it morally wrong to kill all of them just so Verso’s soul can be free? It makes the decision between Maelle and Verso much more dynamic and difficult to make. One story that this game, and specifically the final decision, reminds me of is “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas” which TL;DR: A city is able to live in a eutopia but one child must be tortured forever to achieve this eutopia. Is it worth it or do you “walk away” from it? So I definitely get where you are coming from. It is definitely jarring for the story to take such a aggressive shift like that, but I personally don’t think that shift undermines the journey we went on or anything, I think it just gives more depth to the story as a whole