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Sometimes, you gotta do it yourself.
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00:00The relationship with fans and developers of video games is a special one, and sometimes
00:06those fans can have a direct impact on a game's creation. In fact, with all of the following
00:11examples it was the direct involvement of fans that uncovered alternate endings or even
00:16completed endings via mods. That's not to say all of the following games needed saving
00:22in the conventional sense, but it's thanks to fans that we live in a world where the
00:27following endings were preserved in one way or another. I'm Josh from WhatCulture.com
00:32and these are 8 video game endings that were saved by fans.
00:368. Price Dies
00:38Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3
00:412011 Given the immense popularity of the Call of Duty franchise, it's honestly shocking that some
00:46hidden, discarded content would be uncovered well over a decade after a game's release. But that's
00:52what recently happened with 2011's Modern Warfare 3, as modders YoYo One Love and Vlad
00:58Lochtinov posted a cut post-credits scene revealing Captain Price's original intended fate.
01:05The official release ends with Price killing Makarov and then defiantly lighting a cigar,
01:10while watching Makarov's hanging corpse swinging around in the wind. But the post-credits scene
01:15returns to show what happened next. As Price looks at Makarov, a shadowy figure appears in the background,
01:21and surveys the scene for a few moments before walking off. Price then slumps over and the
01:26cigar he's smoking drops to the floor, before we cut to a picture of Price's fallen Operation
01:31Kingfish Squad. While it's not quite definitive, this ending certainly suggests that Price dies,
01:37or is in the very least in extremely grim condition. Yet because it ultimately wasn't an official part
01:43of the game, it's really just an interesting what-if glimpse at Activision's original plans.
01:48All the same, for this ending to be found and preserved so long after the game's release
01:52is hugely surprising. 7. An Actual Ending
01:56Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic 2 The Sith Lords
01:59Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic 2, despite being an excellent game, suffered through a rushed
02:04development, causing the final release to feature a massively streamlined story and abruptly curtailed
02:11ending, much to the disappointment of fans. Shortly after KOTOR 2's release though, the game's
02:16passionate modding community began the Sith Lords restoration project, retrieving as much unused
02:22content hidden in the game code as possible and reinserting it into the game proper. This included a
02:28massively expanded ending, where modders did a frankly miraculous job of reconstituting scenes,
02:34such as the Exiles party members teaming up to battle Darth Traya and being killed. Though still
02:40fundamentally incomplete, it feels so much more fleshed out compared to the almost non-ending
02:45that fans originally got. Between this and the mod's other impressive achievements, such as fixing over
02:50500 bugs, it was eventually acknowledged and basically canonised in 2015 by Aspire Media Inc,
02:57the company in charge of managing the game today.
03:006. Confronting The Prophet of Truth
03:02Halo 2 Halo 2's abrupt cliffhanger ending famously pissed millions of fans off, leaving them to wait for
03:09Halo 3 to see how Master Chief and the Arbiter would take down The Prophet of Truth. This was a
03:15result of the game's rushed development, causing massive amounts of content to be cut from the
03:19final release, including a much longer ending which actually completed Chief and the Arbiter's quest.
03:25This more conclusive ending got far enough for much of the voice dialogue to be recorded and the
03:29entire sequence to be storyboarded. And in 2022, YouTuber C3 Sabertooth ambitiously recreated the 30-minute
03:37ending using all the available materials. Thankfully, this included the original Halo 2 storyboards,
03:43graciously provided by Lee R. Wilson, an artist who worked on the game. Sabertooth tirelessly added
03:49animation, sound effects, music and additional dialogue to the storyboards, in turn giving fans
03:55a shockingly persuasive account of how Halo 2 was originally intended to end.
04:005. The Final Boss
04:03As beloved as It Takes Two is, many players felt that it ended on a bit of a shoulder shrug
04:08gameplay-wise,
04:09as the final sequence doesn't feature a boss battle and the game basically just ends.
04:14But this wasn't always the plan, as a few months after its release, players who gained access to the
04:19debug menu discovered a scrapped alternate ending. This 20-minute sequence differs substantially from the
04:25ending of the game proper, with Dr. Hakem fusing Cody and May into a heart-shaped avatar as players
04:31must collaborate to help their daughter Rose navigate a hellish rendition of their family home.
04:37The level also includes a final boss, a shadowy, colossus-like entity which seems to form from Cody
04:42and May's vitriol, and which must be defeated to save Rose and beat the game. The pair then confront the
04:48doctor and realise that they've been neglecting Rose amid their many arguments, after which the spell is
04:53broken and the rest of the ending plays out as it does in the final game. So for anyone who
04:58felt
04:59that It Takes Two's ending was lacking a little oomph, this boss fight and decidedly darker tone
05:04certainly make it well worth watching, if not playing for yourself.
05:084. The Jacqueline Natla Teaser
05:11Now if Eidos Montreal had had their way, this alternate ending to Shadow of the Tomb Raider would
05:17never have seen the light of day. According to the developers themselves, they accidentally included
05:21the wrong ending cutscene in the launch version of the game and immediately patched it out on release
05:27day. This secret ending came to light on launch week when one enterprising player played through
05:33the game without patching it first and ended up seeing a tweaked ending compared to everyone else.
05:38Like the official ending, it shows Lara Croft planning her next adventure in Croft Manor,
05:43but the key difference is that it lingers for a few moments on a letter from Jacqueline Natla,
05:48who long time Tomb Raider fans will remember as the villain of the very first game in the series.
05:53This obviously indicated that the next game would bring a rebooted version of the villain into the
05:58fold, though for whatever reason Eidos Montreal decided to scrap this tease. And while the omnipresence
06:04of day one patches left the developers thinking that nobody would ever uncover the original ending,
06:09hilariously all it took was someone not patching the game to ensure that it saw the light of day.
06:143. Yennefer's Betrayal – The Witcher 3 Wild Hunt
06:18Despite The Witcher 3 being almost an entire decade old now, modders are still discovering new
06:24things within the game code as recently as this year, and the latest find is a doozy. It all started
06:31when developer CD Projekt Red released Redkit back in May, a set of mod tools allowing players to create
06:37their own weapons, quests and so on for the RPG. By this past June, YouTuber XLitalis and modder
06:44Glassfish had used these tools to uncover an extended, and until now unseen, part of The Witcher 3's ending,
06:50where Yennefer betrays the Lodge of Sorceresses to Emperor Enmere.
06:55The ending of the final retail release doesn't have much to say about the Lodge of Sorceresses, but this
06:59cut content would have added numerous scenes to the climax, culminating in Yennefer turning on the
07:04sorceresses and ensuring their eventual execution in order to keep Ciri safe. Though the sequence is
07:10only partially constructed in the game's files, it was nevertheless fully voice acted, suggesting it
07:16was most likely a late cut in the development process. But thanks to these enterprising modders,
07:21it's no longer a hush hush secret. 2. Batman Doesn't Kill The Joker – Batman The Video Game
07:29Okay, time for a seriously deep cut now with Batman The Video Game, which was released on the NES in
07:341989,
07:35and loosely based on Tim Burton's Batman film that came out the very same year. We say loosely,
07:42because the game's official ending takes a savage deviation from the movie. In the film,
07:47Batman inadvertently kills the Joker by tethering him to a gargoyle which then falls off the cathedral's
07:52roof, eventually dragging the Clown Prince of Crime to his demise. But in the game's original ending,
07:58Batman straight up murders the Joker, angrily throwing him over the side of the cathedral to
08:03his death in revenge for his parents' murder. Yet many years later, a ROM of the prototype version
08:09of the game was dumped online by an unknown source, likely either a collector or someone who worked on
08:15it, revealing that the original ending had Batman more fittingly beat the Joker into submission and
08:20spare his life. Even with Nintendo being famously litigious regarding privacy, it's neat that this alternate
08:27ending was salvaged from the trash heap of history.
08:301. The Avoidable Sacrifice Fallout 3
08:33Okay, time for something a little bit different now. Fallout 3's original ending pissed off a lot of
08:40fans, as it made players pick a character to enter an irradiated control room and activate a water
08:46purification system, effectively laying down their life for the greater good. Short of doing nothing and
08:51just letting the facility explode, you've got two choices at the end. Sacrifice yourself,
08:56or the Brotherhood of Steel's Sarah Lyons. This dramatic choice always felt extremely forced
09:01because your companions all have excuses for not doing this selves, and worst of all is Mutant
09:07Fox, who, despite literally being able to withstand the radiation without harm, claims that he doesn't
09:14want to interfere with your destiny, whatever the hell that means, even though for him it's literally
09:19walking into a room, flicking a button, but for you it's doing the same thing and dying.
09:25Fans loudly called the clumsy lack of logic out immediately following Fallout 3's release,
09:31and kicked up enough of a fuss that Bethesda effectively fixed the ending with the Broken Steel DLC,
09:36released about six months later. This revised ending allowed Fox, or any other radiation immune
09:42companion to enter the control room instead, in turn allowing basic common sense to prevail.
09:48While there's much debate to be had about fans basically negging developers into reshaping their
09:53creative vision post-launch, in the case of Fallout 3 they were probably right to demand an ending
09:57that wasn't howlingly patronising.
10:00a way that you really couldn't win and be involved with that. I'm
10:00very disappointed with you. Not very
10:00say so little bit, but I think I can always say something why maybe
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