1. An Uneasy Alliance Settles The Score... Only It Doesn't
Standing on the porch of your mansion - the mansion your life of crime has given you - and you've made your choice: you're not letting your friends go down at the hands of that rich d*ck Devin Weston or the corrupt FIB and their leading man Steve Haines. Franklin makes the call, telling Lester to get the gang in the loop because it's about to go down. If you're all going to make it out, you'll make it out shooting like a bunch of maniacs. The rest of it all plays out the same as it does if you choose Option 3 in the game as it stands. You all survive. You kill all of your enemies, and push Devin into the ocean in the trunk of his car, celebrating the tying up of your loose ends. The music hits, the credits roll, and the three dudes you've become oddly attached to in the past 30+ hours are all out alive. Or are they? When you fire up the game after the credits, regardless of who you switch to, their map is stripped of all details save for one: if you're Trevor, an orange 'M' and an orange 'F' is on your map; if you're Michael, a blue 'T' is to the north and a blue 'F' to the south; for Franklin, a green 'M' and a green 'T' appear. You're all killers, degenerates, thieves. You can't be trusted, no matter how much you've worked together, how much cash you've collected, or how many external factors have been eliminated - you'll never be able to live your life knowing that the other guys are still kicking. For Trevor, he's still furious at Michael for the past. He can't trust Franklin not to side with Michael in a conflict. Both have to go. For Michael, all he wants is his family and his freedom. With Trevor still out there tweaking on meth and harboring a grudge and Franklin knowing everything there is to know about his recent crime sprees, they have to go to let him have what he wants. Franklin, tired of his mentors bickering and seeing them as far less professional than he originally thought, realizes they both have to go if he's ever going to be free to enjoy his newfound wealth and status. The details of the post-credit missions aren't the point. The point is that, no matter how much money you make in the life, crime doesn't pay. The majority of guys end up dead, regardless of which character you choose. And there's precedent there in a Rockstar game, as the near-perfect finish to Red Dead Redemption showed us. Sounds good to me.
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