April 23, 2018

Sexy Brutale, The (PC): I had it open for a couple of hours... as I wrote out an alternate ending for it!  I'll just post the entire post below.

Minor Entries: Black Desert Online (PC), Blade and Soul (PC), Sword of Chaos (iOS)

My The Sexy Brutale Alternate Ending
As good as the ending was, I know a lot of people felt the game shifted gears from "solving murders in Clue meets Groundhog Day" to a giant metaphor.  While there are hints at the metaphor early on, at the same time, the game did position itself in a way where it everything could be wrapped up in a more literal sense.

Going with the relatively-straightforward approach of the initial 90% of the game, I decided to try to my hand at creating an ending that presumes the events are real and actually occuring.
(As a side note, I hope the developers aren't offended!  I wouldn't have spent three hours after work writing this up if I didn't enjoy the game immensely and feel a strong emotional attachment to it!)


The Setup:

This assumes a few things: first, nearly everything that happens up to meeting the Gold Skull and finding the Red King is the same as it is in game, with all revelations afterward discarded.  Second, Lafcadio Boone is the real Lafcadio, and an invited guest to the party like all of the rest.  Third, the magic is real.  Willow can see the dead, there's a giant spider and an evil fishand the masks both influence the wearer and siphon some of their ability.


How it Plays Out:

Lafcadio leaves the fresh-water spout turned off to the side in the Secret Chamber, leaving Grinmaw to go belly-up.  Beyond that, the game plays out like normal, up to finding the Red King and meeting the Gold Skull.

The Gold Skull is surprised to learn Lafcadio is still alive, but expresses his gratitude for bringing Eleanor directly to him in the room of the King of Red.  Rather than leave it to his staff, the Gold Skull had planned to kill Eleanor himself, as she would be the most likely beneficiary of Lucas's insurance fortune.  He asks if Lafcadio likes his new, secret addition to the mansion: the preserved body of a power and ancient magician, derisively calling him "the Red King" after witnessing him cry upon seeing his power used to kill innocents.

The Gold Skull explains that the Red King is his power source for the masks, the magic, and the creation of his staff.  He surmises that Eleanor's ability to teleport seems to be an unfortunate side effect of the Red King's blood magic, also giving her the appearance marking her as "The Bloody Girl", then mocks it as Red King's feeble attempt to stop his plan.
Unbeknownst to the Gold Skull, however, the Red King's guilt at his part in the deaths is creating unexpected consequences: the time loop, a phenomenon the Gold Skull is not aware of due to be stuck within it like the rest of the guests.

With them cornered, the Gold Skull then attempts to kill Lafcadio and Eleanor, but the enraged Red King lets out a  mournful cry that stuns the Gold Skull, allowing Lafcadio to escape and reset the day.

Before waking up, Lafcadio experiences images of the mansion on fire--foreshadowing Lucas's botched attempt at blowing it up--and then meets the Bloody Girl yet again, and this time she asks him to check on Lucas.  Lafcadio heads to the upper floors to find Lucas, and Lucas now becomes the final victim that needs to be saved.  Lafcadio watches as Lucas prepares the bomb, only to find it goes off too early--as per the Gold Skull's intent.  Lucas perishs in the fire, and Lafcadio resets the day.

This time, Lafcadio locates the bomb, only to find the Gold Skull rigging it to go off early.  The second the Gold Skull flees, Lafcadio disarms the bomb.  Lucas finds the disarmed bomb and is stunned when he realizes he had almost killed his friends and his wife, seeing it was set to go off early and assuming it was his mistake.  Lafcadio then warns him of the Gold Skull's own plans, and how the staff has been attempting to kill the guests already.

Lucas is shocked, stating that he had no hand in hiring the additional staff and it was his chief of staff who brought them on.  With the finances of the Sexy Brutale increasingly poor, he had kept only a single servant.  When Lucas told his chief of staff about wanting to bring on a larger staff temporarily for the party, the chief of staff insisted he would handle it.

Lucas hands his mask to Lafcadio, who then takes it as his own.

Gameplay-wise, this is the easiest victim to save, but now Lafcadio has his work cut out for him: he must manage to save every guest in a single day.  But Lucas's mask affords him the ability to move at high speeds, the speed a physical manisfestation of the way Lucas lived most of his life: hurrying with reckless abandon from impulse to impulse.

Utilizing both Lucas's mask and the teleportation mirrors, Lafcadio manages to save each of the guests, ending with Lucas.  Eleanor, Lucas, and Lafcadio then head to the basement to confront the Gold Skull.  The Gold Skull arrives, but Lucas quickly engages him.  The Gold Skull's mask falls off, revealing Lucas's chief of staff.  Lafcadio rushes to the controls to shut down the Red King's prison pod.  The Gold Skull throws Lucas off and shoves Lafcadio away from the controls, but he's too late.

With a cry, the Red King smashes open the tank, grabbing the Gold Skull.  Fading away and taking the Gold Skull with him, the Red King is finally released from his unwanted, torturous immortality.  All around the mansion, the staff is shown fading away as the Red King's power leaves this world.  Eleanor's appearance reverts to normal, revealing for the first time a pretty woman with child.

Lucas begs their forgiveness, promising to sell the mansion and find another way to live a simple life with Eleanor.  Lafcadio offers him the kind of forgiveness only a priest can give, and Eleanor is more than happy at the idea of a simple life.  Humbled by the words of the two most important people in his life, Lucas promises to live a better life for Eleanor, and for their child.
Finally revealing himself to his guests, Lucas appears at the ball that is to cap off the night.

Although some of them are a little shaken by their experiences, the guests had already concluded the day's events were a result of the Lucas's own eccentricities coming to fruition: in this case, the rumoured idea of  "immersive theatre" that he had been working on for years.
Reginald quietly tells Lucas of his concerns related to his mysterious project, but Lucas tells him that he has done away with the bomb entirely and has no further interest in continuing.  Reginald is relieved, his concerns about Lucas's aims dispelled.

Lucas explains that he let the staff go because an entire day of "acting" had tired them out, and the guests instead staff the ball themselves, taking up what instruments they can.  Shortly before midnight, Lucas explains this will be the final party held at the Sexy Brutale, as he will be selling the mansion to refocus his life on his wife and child.  The guest are disappointed, but admit that day was the most exciting day they've ever had at the Sexy Brutale, and promise to keep the party going throughout the night, quickly loosening up.

Only Lafcadio and Eleanor are tentative as they watch the clock closely, exchanging glances and breathing sighs of relief as it crosses midnight.


Further Elaboration:

Although some of my storyline and rationale is made up, I tried to make sure it jived with what we already know.  If the Gold Skull isn't Lucas, it would have to be someone close to him who would know the inner workings of the mansion more than anybody, including its affairs as well as the layout.  Who better than the head servant?

As a loyal and trusted servant, The Gold Skull would likely be in line to receive a payoff if Lucas is killed, perhaps even having written it himself into the will.  Convenietly for the Gold Skull, all of Lucas's good friends who are all at the mansion, which was supposed to make for a convenient alibi for Lucas, but also places all the heirs in a single location (and the Gold Skull's home turf), making them easy targets.

Yet while the mansion blowing up early *should* kill off everyone, Lucas's friends are intelligent and inquisitive.  The Gold Skull can't risk them figuring out the plot ahead of time, and he can't risk them escaping the fire.  He needs to be sure the others are out of the equation so he's in line to receive the money himself.

The Gold Skull needs help, and that's where using the Red King's magic to create the staff gives him the help he needs.  Their masks place them under his control, although, like with the guests, hints of their own personalities show through.  For example, some of the staff takes morbid delight in killing the guests, like guy's murder; another is filled with jealously (and possibly misogynist) as he tosses Tequila into the trash; another is actually struggling with guilt as he learns that Aurum is, in his own words, "a good man".  Regardless, all are more than willing to go along with murder.

Even with that help, the Gold Skull is facing formidable opponents in his guests, and so he devises the masks.  The masks exert control over the users by taking on their owner's personalities and skills and amplifying them, for example, by playing on Greyson's natural tendency for thievery and treasure hunting and encouraging him to become near-obsessed with the Moloch Egg to the point of terrible decision making and making it easier to cloud their judgment and lure them to their deaths.

In turn, the masks become infused with that amplified aspect of their personality.  Aided by Eleanor's magic, these masks allow another wearer to utilize a portion of that obtained knowledge and skill: in this case, Lafcadio.

Like the rest of the guests, Lafcadio is initially killed by the Gold Skull's men, dying in the chapel with Reginald (as the game hints at if taken literally).  Eleanor, however, realizes that Lafcadio is an intelligent man and a jack-of-all-trades, and therefore the best choice to stop the Gold Skull and save the guests.

In terms of the genuine peril some of the guests ended up in, the game repeatedly refers to Lucas's interest in "immersive theater", and his own eccentricities abound in both his manner, his past, and the design of the mansion.  I figured it would not be a hard sell for his closest friends to appreciate Lucas in action.

And Grinmaw's death is merely to tie up that loose end. Alternatively, if we want to end on a creepier note, Grinmaw could be left alive. There could be an after-credits scene where a new family buys the house, and starts hearing dark murmurs at night...


So, whatcha think?  Would you make any alterations?  Do you have your own headcanon endings?

Thanks to anyone who made it through my wall of text!