From where i stand, the vast majority of analysis i see on verso operates on an inaccurate assumption that reframes his character as a whole.
This man did not sacrifice the city of lumiere to achieve his ends.
Verso is so relentlessly determined to pursue what he believes to be the greater good that he’s willing to go through with horrible things to realize it. It’s easy to look at what he’s been capable of doing to the people around him and write him off as someone who would wipe lumiere off the map. I’m not saying he’s a good person. But objectively? The deaths of all those people are not something he could have chosen to prevent at any point in time.
It seems like the prevailing take is that verso made the choice to end every life in lumiere to save his family and grant himself, both original and painted, the release of death. To me, this doesn’t follow the logical progression of the story.
The fate of lumiere was never verso’s to choose.
If you find verso’s journal, he states his dream for lumiere as of expedition 0 so plainly it hurts. We deserve to live. All of us. We deserve to exist. His plan was to free the paintress. Send his mother home, and keep lumiere alive. And we know that’s his truth, we know that journal represents as genuine a window into his mind as we ever get and the most sincerity the man can physically manage, because of how fucked he’d be if anyone but himself ever laid eyes on it.
And i doubt he just had some change of heart, decided all that wasn’t worth the effort. I don’t think he caved to a selfish desire to die either. Everything about this man, from his prior self’s sacrifice to his willingness to suffer for others to his gameplay mechanics (i’m looking at you, burden), scream to the player that he isn’t motivated by that kind of self interest. No. I think he just realized it was impossible.
He wanted to save lumiere, up until the last moment. Pleaded with aline to accept verso’s death and go home. But realistically, he’d already given up. He probably knew in his heart for decades that it was never going to work.
So that left him with two options, right?
Kill the paintress, save aline and let lumiere die…or forfeit and watch both die slowly. Because lumiere is still, fundamentally, a city caught between two mourning gods. And the only alternative to ending it in one stroke was letting the gommage continue to its ultimate conclusion.
It’s easy to say verso’s choice was cruel, but i genuinely feel the alternative is worse. Because what would monolith year 18 look like? Year 13? Year 9? I spent all of act one and two thinking about that, and i think the death that they had was kinder.
Verso was never even in a position to sacrifice the lives of an entire city to save his mother. No. From where he stood, there was no outcome where lumiere would survive. Renoir condemned the city to death. His mother was the only person he could save.
“But what about the letter?” Finding the courage to pursue a different path might have seemed like an option, for someone with the capacity to hope. But that’s not verso. Verso’s behavior paints a picture of a person who will commit unimaginable acts, do things that tear his own body and psyche to pieces and mar his own soul beyond recognition if it means controlling the odds of everything falling apart. He has no faith in anyone or anything, least of all the possibility of luck treating him kindly. The guy operates on a perfection meter because he’s convinced anything failing that means it’s over. See: how he reacted mid-act 2 when axons became the expedition’s only shot at success. He’s a creature of pure pessimism and despair. Letting himself trust in the possibility of a more ambitious outcome where more people survive isn’t something he’s capable of.
And it makes sense that he would feel that way. To verso, trust would seem like a cardinal sin. You can’t trust your family to make anything but horrific choices, you can’t trust your companions with knowing you or you’ll pay in blood. Trust is something that gets you burned to death in a house fire.
So between the two choices verso realistically could have seen, only one lets him save anyone at all. Everyone dies, slowly and horrifically, or everyone still dies with the exception of aline.
And the choice verso makes at the end of it all? Declining to participate in a second act of playing a god in denial, refusing to resurrect lumiere, is not the same as killing it. He knows how wretched it is to be the plaything of the dessendre family, why would he want to re-inflict that upon people who are no longer alive to suffer?
So. Those are my thoughts on that.
Edit: this is fully a case of closing the stable door after the horse has already bolted but. This was a scream into the void type post where i yell at a flaw i saw in the logic of a lot of video essays and broad consensus on reddit. I took the expectation of thoroughness and analysis i would give to a public-facing video with thousands of views and blanket applied that to anyone who happens to read this. I thought that would top out at maybe 20 people so didnt put much thought into it. I aimed this take at an opinion and forgot to consider the individual reader.
The frustration i felt absolutely reads like condescension. This wasn’t me looking the reader in the eyes and asking how the player could miss something simple (because it isn’t simple!), it was more wondering if i’m actually losing it or if almost every analysis i was seeing of a story i care a lot about was presented on a partially inaccurate premise. Less “how did you miss this,” more “how did EVERYONE miss this.” But these two things read the same way. So now that the post has already escaped containment (💀) i decided to go back and soften the tone of the entire thing. There are probably gonna be multiple versions of this floating around now, but better late than never.
Also. This take focuses exclusively on lumiere. I didnt forget about the gestrals, grandis and nevrons at all. I do have lots of feelings about them. But this was intended as a fact check on a specific concept, not an endorsement of either ending
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