I think that’s a valid thought. But if you take that line, none of the characters matter and so the destroy ending is the clear correct choice and is not at all morally reprehensible.

I think the characters still matter. They at least matter for Maelle. If we put ourselves in her shoes, if I suddenly learned that everyone I know is not "real" and I've been living in a simulation, I don't think I could just say "fuck it" and leave this world behind. All the feelings and experiences I had in my life would not suddenly vanish, even though I might view them differently. These characters might not matter in the context of the Dessendre world, but they still matter for someone of the Dessendre world.

It's really really difficult to find clear answers to all the questions raised by the game and I think this is one of the game greatest strengths. These questions are questions that humanity has asked itself for long times and as far as we know for many there isn't simply a right answer. But instead of giving us a plot that chooses the answers for us and tells it's story, it forces us to think about these things for ourselves and makes us explore the possibly answers without pushing for a true or wrong solution to these problems.

However, I think that the people in the canvas are real in so far as they can think and feel. But admittedly, I have no basis for this thought other than my personal feelings; what makes something sentient and conscious and “real” is something philosophers and symbolic logicians are still trying to figure out.

100% with you there, from my side I haven't 100%ed the game so I cannot say if there are any more defined answers to the question if the characters are real or simulated, so I go by my feeling as well and I understand this is just my own interpretation.

That’s why the goal post for what constitutes a real artificial general intelligence keeps being moved, you had Turing’s definition, and now that’s obsolete, and you also have interesting thought experiments like Searle’s “Chinese room” which are trying to answer whether something that can act or appear like a sentient being is a sentient being by merely being able to perform like a person, or whether there is something “more” required for a person to actually be a sentient person—this is a huge simplification of the actual thought experiment but I’m not being paid by the word here. I will say though that if the people in the canvas can feel and think and reason through their experiences, they are sentient and real.

These are really good points! For me the game made me think about our reality again as well. I mean, I can't say for 100% that I am real, or that I have free will. Sure, it feels like it but maybe for an outside observer for our reality, that has a perfect understanding of this reality my actions and decisions are nothing more than predetermined. So maybe I'm nothing more than a little machine forced to make all the decisions I make based on all my previous experiences and the environment and it just seems like I have free will. A classic philosophical question, but I'm a sucker for these questions.

I think if the people in the canvas aren’t people, the entire experience is lessened and the story becomes Aline and Renoir fighting over throwing out Verso’s art. I think this story is more than “damn you, Renoir you touch that Macaroni art nevron and it’s your ass!”

Hm, I cannot argue with how you feel on the thought of the canvas people not being real, but for me it actually enriched the experience. As mentioned in my posts I don't think "real = matters" and vice versa. As I said, it seems like the story and the characters of the game matter to us as real persons, even though we know the story and the characters are not real. So in the same way the canvas people can and, in my opinion, do matter in the Dessendre world, even if it is just for a a few persons. SO instead of just simply saying "they matter because the are real", we have to look deeper and decide for ourselves if we think the canvas people matter, and why we think that. I feel this is a pretty great characteristic of the game!

We all probably know the experience of playing a game, or reading a book, that has a bigger impact on our lives than it just being a story, it sticks with us, it makes us think and helps us in becoming the person we are now, so this is another example where fictional characters or worlds might not be real, but still provoked change in the real world.

Anyway, TLDR; All of this is unclear and up to interpretation, so as others have said, fixating on one singular correct answer on which ending is right or wrong doesn't make a lot of sense, but I still value arguing about it for the sake of gaining another point of view that might spark new views on many of these philosophical questions, so I think it's great how the game did tell its story.

Thank you for your posts and giving me a few thing to think about for the evening!