Alternative Ending(spoilers)

[Deadz0rs]

I have an idea for an alternative ending but would wanna keep it simple by editing some mission out of the game, mostly. In order to trigger this alternative ending, you would need to skip 2 early missions and if you didn't, the game would play out normally. The 2 missions you skip would be 1.) rescue Micah from Strawberry and 2.) Collect debt from Downes.

 

You can imagine the outcome, Micah never persuades Dutch and Arthur never get's sick. I think most of the story could still pan out the same up until the end of Act 4. Act 5 could be the new ending where you and the gang live out the rest of your days in Tahiti(just a renamed Garma with no missions, same terrain/map for simplification) Act 6 and the epilogue would not exist in this alternative ending of course.

 

So the basic idea here is to change as little as possible in the game outside of just not making certain mission available if you skip the 2 missions above. Some obvious skips would include Arthur waking up at the Doctor's office and other mission that have Micah in them. Perhaps some missions with Micah could be included but instead replace his character model with another, if it can make sense to do so of course.

 

I would love to work on this mod myself if I could find the tools to do so. With the way Rockstar games tend to work, there are mission triggers that make certain missions available after completing certain other missions. The main focus of this mod would be to change/alter some of those mission flags for making such a mod work.

 

And although I haven't fully fleshed out the concept(which missions to include/exclude and any other flags manipulations required to keep the story moving forward), I wanna start getting some feedback from others on what they think. Please point out any issues/mission that may not makes sense if the 2 missions are skipped and/or couldn't just simply be skipped themselves. Do you think such a mod could be created that can mostly execute this alternative ending idea by simply skipping missions and changing some mission flag settings to open up other missions without previous mission completion requirements?

[Alraune]

I think the biggest hurdle here would be the creation of the new ending itself, and changing old missions/adding new ones so that leading up to the new ending actually makes sense. Even without voice acting, someone would have to animate all of that. Making entire new cutscenes, essentially, is as of yet unprecedented for this game.

 

It's a very ambitious idea, but I don't think it's one that would happen for a long time.

[Deadz0rs]

My whole approach here is to keep it simple and not require the creating of a new ending or adding new missions. The only altercation might be the changing of character models within an existing mission. Basically the ending is the start of act 5 but with no missions available, roll credits. There wouldn't be anything to do other than wander around Tahiti(Garma) endlessly with no escape.

 

So imagine a more scuffed alternative ending with the main focus of my idea just being able to remove and/or re-order missions to create a slightly different story. The actual ending would be something as simple as this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZaactcRhV8o where you can board the boat then skip the footage from the 2 minute mark to the 7:30 mark, aka a scuffed ending where you make it to Tahiti(Garma). So let's not worry about the actual alternative ending and see if there is a way to get there via mission manipulation(skipping/reordering) while working with what resources we actually do have, something I figure would be relatively easy to mod.

 

The main guiding factors are that we skip the Micah rescue and Downes Debt missions, then see if we can at least get to the boat scene while still making sense(mostly). Some of it's easy because all of act 5 & 6 are out, but there are still a lot of missions to review, some of which may need to be skipped(missions with Micah for instance). So the question is, can we even piece together a coherent enough story via mission selection alone to reach this point. We can worry about cutscene manipulations and character model replacements(if needed) later, if at all.

[Alraune]

So much interesting character development happens for Arthur explicitly because he's dying, though. You'd have to change a lot of dialogue or omit some scenes altogether if the goal is to skip the moment he contracts TB from Downes. It might be possible, but I think it'd be a significantly lesser product without something added to make up for what had to be thrown out. This seems more like an experiment or a proof of concept kind of thing than an actual alternative ending. Or, at best, the groundwork for what could someday be a true alternate story once our understanding of the game and modding tools has advanced enough.

[Deadz0rs]

This seems more like an experiment or a proof of concept kind of thing than an actual alternative ending. Or, at best, the groundwork for what could someday be a true alternate story once our understanding of the game and modding tools has advanced enough.

 

This is very much what I'm going for at the moment, I'm trying to make a mod, not rewrite the story. And since a lot of the Arthur sickness shows up much later(in chapter 6), the easily solution is not taking the story that far. And of course it would be totally scuffed compare to the actual story but again, that's not that the point either.

 

First thing I need to figure out is how to have control over the mission sequences and being able reorder/omit mission via modding. But I haven't seen any mods/trainers with that feature yet and I don't know how feasible creating such a mod might by.