On the blog, Ron mentioned “hidden endings” that “most players won’t see”. In my mind, those are not things that are really trivial, like letting willie out of prison or not being nice when going back to Ransomes flashback. I’ve spent some time in the last chapter (the deleting) trying to find things to do besides the standard endings, but the game is pretty limited at that point - so I’m thinking maybe its something in the earlier sections? I really feel like the pillow bear should have some use…
One user on the blog mentioned finding the Ransome prototype doll in the factory (I don’t know if he was just messing with us, but it at least sounds possible)
I think to count as hidden, it should be really hidden - the device ends the game - but you didn’t have to solve a puzzle for it -
I was thinking of something like:
if you give a prototype pillow bear of a particular color to the kid in the hotel, in Franklin’s flashback, and if you get the right agent kidnapped in the alley (maybe you can get ransome or delores kidnapped?), you trigger some previously unavailable options during the ending… something like that.
Thanks, now I understand better what kind of endings you are referring to.
I tried to do something with the pillow bear. In Franklin’s flashback I gave to the kid a pillow bear of a specific color to see if Boris’ pillow bear was of the same color. A coincidence would have suggested me that there was a connection between the two toys, but it came out that Boris had a pillow bear of a different color and as a consequence I quit this path of investigation.
Maybe it’s important to point out that Ron said “There are also a few hidden endings most people never see.”, which could suggest that: 1) he used some analytics tools to see how many people discovered a hidden ending and 2) some people did actually discover some of these hidden endings, in which case I would have expected these special endings to be shared on the web by now.
We can’t exclude that Ron was referring just to Ransome’s special ending or to what you can do for Willie. But I would like to invest some more time in the near future to see if I missed something!
you’re right that its possible (even likely) that its not something as mysterious as I imagine. That’s what I tell myself when i think about it too much. Also the assumption that someone would have discovered it and posted online by now is very valid - but still those bears make me think…
I’ve started a new game now, and noticed that Boris has an orange pillow bear when he came to the river - does he always have an orange bear or is it randomized when you start a new game? maybe if in Franklin’s flashback you give the kid the bear that is supposed to be in Boris’s possession, something happens?
I’m not even sure that Boris’s bear came from Franklin - Franklin came to the hotel and was killed, and Boris came to the bridge before or after that? where did he get his bear?
Every time I started a new game, it was always orange.
I tried this and nothing special happened. But I can’t exclude there was something else to do to trigger the opening of a special path.
I didn’t assume that the two bears were the same or even related, but since the story doesn’t tell us from where Boris got his bear, I tried to understand if there was a correlation.
I came to the conclusion that there is no correlation, but I would like to investigate more.
After that, I would say. Boris death happens in the present while Franklin’s flashback was in the past.
I don’t know.
One thing that I noticed is that if you try to give Boris’ bear to Willie, Boris says something along the lines “This is not the person I’m supposed to meet”, implying that Boris could be there to give the bear to the person he was about to meet.
Maybe Franklin sent a bear to Boris before dying and the people that Boris was about to meet were trying to take that prototype back (which is compatible with the fact that Boris’ bear is not found on the body).
I did so to see if the game prevented me from doing it. It didn’t, and I got quite sad I had to load a savegame because I didn’t want the game to end that way.
My Boris had a blue pillowbear in his inventory AND a blue pillowbear on his bed. But I didn’t try to give the blue bear to the kid.
are you 100% sure Boris had a blue pillow bear in his inventory? because I always see an orange bear in the inventory in chapter 1, in all the new games i’ve started (like LowLevel said), and a blue bear on the bed in the hotel. (also in those “how-to” screens you see before a new game starts, which show Boris in his hotel, with the explanation of the interface), there’s a blue bear on the bed.
To me it seems obvious that we have not finished the game when the C64 reboots. Chuck said that they are stuck in an infinite loop and that loop must be terminated. Then he said to Delores that he will go to a deeper layer, and we have not seen him yet after he said that. Since the C64 restarts the game the loop continues and the characters are not “free”.
It seems that something outside the game must be done to stop this loop. Perhaps hacking or modding the actual game code so that the game does not restart anymore. Inside the game there are many hints about programming; and the C64 code shows a list of files that is reloaded. Maybe these are all hints what to do; it should be studied more. Maybe after the loop code there is some other dead code that is never executed and only if the “jump” statement is removed, that code will become reachable and we see something else. Maybe a version of TWP where characters can just wander around without purpose.
I had to load a savegame because I didn’t want the game to end that way.
