Keo keeps rewriting the axe murder ending, and it just keeps getting weirder because of it.
I don't know what the scene originally was, I only came around patch 0.28, I think. But I caught the tail end of someone giving Keo shit over changing it. I think it might have used to end with the axe sound, or maybe the axe sound was meaty, or maybe there was blood - something gruesome like that.
In 0.35.1, which I have kept, the cuffs were real(screenshots attached)
Now it's 0.51.1 and there's no blood, no axe, no cuffs... And since there's no Mikko - the scene now suggests that it was all purely imaginary, Arvo simply freaked out from being around Mikko and ran.
That feels more anti-climactic than the jumpscare of the worst ending, IMO. That one at least follows the motif of Mikko's repeating monologue about how nothing we do matters, and we're less than dust on the cosmic scale. You're dying, never having made up for your betrayal to your best friend/love, but at least you both happened, no matter how inexplicably unlikely, and managed to enjoy each other's company for a bit. And if it ended poorly - well... None of it mattered in the first place.
p.s. Imagine Travis' face in the morning when he found out that Arvo fucking DIED! 😳How would he try to make amends for his sticky paws? Would he tell Mikko? How would Mikko feel about it? I love exploring the doomed timelines like this, they are so rich for good meaty developments.
p.p.s. The Bad Ending, if read as "it was all a dream", shouldn't really be the end, as it invites a continuation of the story - Mikko going ballistic from Arvo not just leaving the lodge, but straight up dropping out of the university. Running way from him. FUCKING. AGAIN. It could actually lead to a satisfying ending where Mikko actually corners him with cuffs to make sure this time he stays around long enough for them to talk. How it would go from there - imagine for yourself, fanon is bae. ;)
