| “ | Yeah, I figured that was coming. I suppose you've earned a pardon.
|
„ |
| ― General Hubert Galeforce |
Pardoned Pals is one of the sixteen endings in Completing the Mission.
In this ending, Henry Stickmin and Ellie Rose attempt to join the Toppat Clan, but ultimately join forces with the Government and stop the launch of the rocket into orbit by destroying the rocket along with the entire Toppat Clan. At the end, Henry and Ellie are officially pardoned by Galeforce.
Its auxiliary ending is "Toppat Recruits," as they share one single pathway up until the final choice scenario. This pathway is available by choosing "Pure Blooded Thief" and "Convict Allies" in the Endings Hub.
Plot
Intro: Arrival
After having escaped The Wall, Henry and Ellie are on the run from Dmitri Johannes Petrov and Grigori Olyat. They make their way to the Dogobogo Jungle and the Toppat Launch Site, where Ellie hopes she and Henry can join the Toppat Clan.
However, when they are about to arrive, Matteo Gurtchev sees them as they drive by and informs Dmitri, who orders the Wall squad looking for Henry and Ellie to move in towards the Launch Site. Worse, General Hubert Galeforce chooses this exact moment to launch an attack against the Toppats to stop them from launching their Orbital station, starting The Toppat Raid. Henry and Ellie crash their motorcycle into a car. With the two being surrounded by the Wall squad, and the Government, who mistakes the Wall for Toppat reinforcements, they are given the following choices:
- Rope + RPG (fail): The duo try to launch the RPG but when they throw it up in the air, it points at them, and when Henry pulls on the RPG, it pulls the trigger, blowing up him and Ellie. Fail message: What... was the plan there exactly?
- Controller + RPG (fail): Wiring the controller to the RPG, Henry and Ellie attempt to guide the rocket to the Wall soldiers. Tthe projectile is too slow in its approach, however, and Henry and Ellie end up blasted from a Wall tank. Fail message: Wrong kind of RPG for a controller. Still gave you control though!
- Controller + Wings (fail): The two combining the controller and the wings, but it ends up flying to the sky, leaving them behind defenseless. Fail message: Thank you wings, very cool!
- Rope + Wings: Attaching the rope to the wings, Henry and Ellie use it to fly away from the Wall squad and towards the rocket.
A helicopter knocks the rope over, and Henry and Ellie land inside the launch tower in the process. Konrad Bukowski and Calvin Bukowski jump after them from the helicopter and capture Ellie while Henry hides behind a corner. To save Ellie, Henry can use:
- Disguise Kit (fail): Henry attempts to use the device to disguise as the Commander, but he appears as Henry wearing a mask of the Commander's face. Calvin and Konrad immediately notice him and see right through his disguise leading to a fail for Henry. Fail message: Oh that's very convincing.
- CorrupTick (fail): Henry unleashes the said item, but it "bites" the game, corrupting it. The game reboots and reloads to the helicopter scene, but it is littered with errors and glitches. Animations fail to load, Henry is speaking instead of Ellie, and Calvin Bukowski's voice lines spaz out. "Fission Mail" message: I... Uh... I think something went wrong.
- Time Machine: Traveling two years into the past, Henry infiltrates a military training session and instigates a fight between the Bukowski twins, causing them to be discharged from the military.
With the timeline altered, Henry travels back to the present day. After being knocked down by the helicopter, no soldiers pursue them to the launch tower, allowing Henry and Ellie to proceed with their mission.
Henry and Ellie climb up and reach the bridge leading to the rocket, but Ivan Petroteva sees them and informs Matteo Gurtchev, who is inside a tank near the bridge. The tank shoots a missile on the bridge, and a part of it collapses. Henry is about to fall in the process, but there's still time to catch him. Henry and Ellie can use:
- Timeout (fail): If no option is chosen, Henry will fail to catch Ellie's hands or the ledge of the bridge and falls to his death. Fail message: Dang! He ain't gonna be in Henry 7!
- Grapple (fail): Ellie tries to use the grapple on him, but ends up shooting Henry and pinning his hand into the exterior of the launch deck, causing him to scream out in pain. Fail message: Henry will remember that.
- Catch (fail): Henry catches Ellie's hand but his weight pulls the two downward, sending them falling. Fail message: Fatso.
- Block: Henry lands on a note block and bounces on it, allowing him to land on the bridge normally.
Henry and Ellie board the rocket, encountering Reginald Copperbottom and the Right Hand Man there. While Reginald acknowledges Henry as the man who stole the Romanian Ruby from their possession, he also recognizes the skills of the two outlaws. He offers to recruit them if Henry returns the Romanian Ruby.
Immediately thereafter, Dmitri and Grigori board the rocket and draw their weapons on the escapee duo, demanding the Toppat leaders to surrender the two to their custody. Charles arrives in his military helicopter and blasts a part of the rocket open and notices Henry and attempts to recruit Henry and Ellie to the Government's side. Ellie asks Henry who to side with:
- The Toppat Clan: See "Toppat Recruits."
- The Wall (fail): The two surrender to Dmitri and Grigori and are escorted back to The Wall, where they end up in maximum security in cryostasis, never to see the light of day again. Fail message: If you can't leave 'em, join 'em.
- None (fail): The two jump away and Ellie catches Henry as she hangs onto the rocket using a knife. The rocket launches, and after arriving in space, Henry and Ellie are unable to breathe and therefore suffocate. Fail message: Normally you want to be INSIDE the rocket when it goes to space.
- The Government: Henry signals to Charles, who pilots his helicopter closer to the rocket, allowing Henry and Ellie to board it.
After collecting them both, Charles orders all remaining Government units to fall back from the rocket. Manning the helicopter's mounted turrets, the convict duo shoot at the rocket's support beams, which causes the vehicle to topple, and everyone inside dies in the ensuing explosion.
The Government emerges from their battle, victorious. At the jungle base, General Hubert Galeforce is surprised to find Henry and Ellie in alliance with his forces, considering that both were convicts, alongside Henry going rogue during the Airship operation. Out of gratitude for their assistance in stopping the Toppats from launching into space, Galeforce agrees to have the pair pardoned. Now free from their lengthy criminal records, Henry and Ellie celebrate with a toast.
Characters
- Henry Stickmin - Protagonist
- Ellie Rose - Deuteragonist
- Dmitri Johannes Petrov - Main Antagonist
- Grigori Olyat - Major Antagonist
- General Hubert Galeforce - Tetartagonist
- Charles Calvin - Tritagonist
- Reginald Copperbottom - Secondary Antagonist
- Right Hand Man - Tertiary Antagonist
- Matteo Gurtchev
- Ten Pence
- Weaksauce
- Mr. Angery
- Dima Pentsky
- Dolan Torkov
- Todd Tater
- Bill Cook
- Konrad Bukowski
- Calvin Bukowski
- Bob Pants
- Paul Penn
- Ivan Petroteva
- Heath Stone (Flashback)
- Isaac Binderson (Flashback)
Italics indicate they only appear in this pathway, as well as its auxiliary ending, "Toppat Recruits."
Trivia
- This is the only route in which all the main characters (Henry Stickmin, Ellie Rose, Charles Calvin, Hubert Galeforce, Reginald Copperbottom, Right Hand Man and Dmitri Johannes Petrov) appear.
- The fail message from the Catch choice alludes back to the "Sneaky Escapist" ending of Escaping the Prison and "Ghost Inmate" ending of Fleeing the Complex about having a similar thing for Henry being fatty.
- This is arguably the ending with the largest amount of deaths due to the collapse of the rocket.
- The purple and black texture during CorrupTick is a reference to the famous Garry's Mod (and many other games) missing texture (Mostly due to missing textures from Counter-Strike: Source, which many maps in Garry's Mod rely on).
- The fail message of Controller and RPG is a pun that plays on role-playing game and rocket-propelled grenade having the same acronym.
- The Controller in the first set of options is the controller used for the Nintendo 64.
- The Block option is a reference to the Note Block (A.K.A. the Jump Block and/or the Music Block) from the Super Mario series.
- The Disguise Kit option is a reference to Team Fortress 2 (where it's also known as the Spytron 3000 Disguise Kit), where the Spy uses it to disguise as any class from either team.
- The disguise was supposed to work on them however due to the way he said greetings to them they easily found out that he was a fake.
- The Grapple option's fail message ("Henry will remember that.") is a callback to Fleeing the Complex, where the Ghost Inmate route involves Henry abandoning Ellie after she helped him escape, prompting the text "Ellie will remember that" to appear. It is also a reference to Telltale Games' choose-your-own-adventure games.
- The fail text for the Controller and Wings is a reference to a tweet by Donald Trump, 'Thank you Kanye, very cool!'
- The Timeout's fail message references a blooper from the 2001 film Rush Hour 2, where Chris Tucker's character exclaims "Damn! He ain't gonna be in Rush Hour 3." after witnessing another character fall to their death.
- When Henry and Ellie pick Rope + Wings, Ellie can be heard saying "Let's try and get up to the-", only to be cut off by the Bukowski twins' helicopter. Henry says this line during the CorrupTick fail.
- During the final choice both The Government and The Toppat Clan appear as options. This may be a callback to Fleeing the Complex, where Henry can phone either Charles or Reginald, leading to either International Rescue Operative or The Betrayed.
- This is the only PBT path to be allied with the Government.
- After joining sides with the government to get the Pardoned Pals ending, there is a spelling error with a closed caption for one of Ellie's lines when she says "Well... now that you mention it... We do have kind of a criminal history problem..."
- The error is in the 'criminal' which was written as 'crimal'. This can only be seen if subtitles are on.
- This is one of the endings of the only two forks in Completing the Mission.
- The other is "Toppat 4 Life"/"Multiverse Correction."
| Track | Composer/Artist | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| 🎧 "Ellie's Theme" | Ockeroid | First half of the opening theme. |
| 🎧 "End of the Road" | Ockeroid | Second half of the opening theme. |
| 🎧 "The Big Play" | PuffballsUnited | Ending theme. |
