Verso is best boy
I just finished first play though including all side content and all y’all saying Verso is a villain are NUTS.
His decision is inevitable anyway. If Maelle stays in the canvas, she will die, the canvas will be erased regardless. It’s made very clear the painters can’t stay inside the canvas without eventually dying and Renoir would absolutely erase that canvas if Maelle died in it.
‘But he is a sneaky little liar!’
And what? Verso is forced to be immortal, watched his sister be mind controlled (and aware of it herself) and kill herself, watched another sister ask to be killed in front of him while he’s not allowed to die. All while knowing the ‘gods’ fighting over ‘him’ are dying because of it. This poor man is forced to be alive, psychologically (and physically, thanks Julie) tortured, unable to be his own person, knowing the entire world will end anyway and that none of it is real.
It’s also made clear that PVerso is not even similar to real Verso. If they didn’t have the same appearance nobody would even conflate the two, but he can’t even be who he wants to be because of the painters forcing that face on him.
The Painted Boy aka Verso’s soul fragment is clear about how he’s tired of what’s being asked of it, too.
“I wish she would understand…just what it means for me to paint…” and very clear of a child being coaxed into doing something they don’t want to but have been told is for their good “Maybe I should never stop…maybe i should continue forever…Unless, no…maybe I should never stop”
There’s also zero joy in his choice. He is very clearly not happy about it at the end. He just knows it is what had to be done.
Painters are 100% villains to me because if they got a grip then the world wouldn’t need to be erased. Aline’s destructive grief is ruining the world, Clea treats the inhabitants as puppets, Renoir wants to massacre everyone, and Alicia eventually forces Verso to be a living puppet like Painted Clea. Their grief becomes an entire civilisations problem. I would end the world, too.
Tl;dr: The world will die with or without PVerso ripping the bandaid off and he deserves to not be forced into literal enslavement to placate emotionally immature gods.