Compulsion Games and Gearbox Publishing’s We Happy Few is out and about for Xbox One, PS4 and PC. The game is set in a dystopian, alternate reality of England during the 1960s called Wellington Wells. It’s a police state where the citizens are forced to stay on a mood-altering, hallucinogenic drug called “Joy”. The game features three protagonists, each with their own kinetic stories. For gamers curious about how the game ends for each of the characters, you’ve come to the right place.
Arthur Hastings’ Ending
The game starts with Arthur Hastings, who one day decides to stop taking his Joy pills after reminiscing over a news article featuring his brother, Percy. Arthur is chased out of town by the police for having come off his Joy, which the citizens refer to as being a “Downer”.
Arthur makes it up in his mind to find his brother Percy, who is mentally retarded. The duo were separated when they were younger when Percy and Arthur were supposed to get on a train to Germany together to leave Wellington Wells during the war, but Arthur got cold feet and pretended to be his brother Percy, acting mentally challenged in order to avoid being taken away with all the other kids to Germany.
The guilt ate away at Arthur until he decided to stop taking Joy and attempt to leave Wellington Wells and go find his brother in Germany.
Arthur has to complete a number of oddball tasks for a variety of colorful characters in order to make his way to the train station in the Parade Street district. This includes raiding a supply base with former war veteran and an old friend, Ollie.
After successfully making his way through various districts, Arthur meets up with Sally, a former love-interest and friend. They, however, have bad blood because Sally dilly-winked Arthur’s dad in Arthur’s mom’s bed. Even still, Sally is one of the only few people not on Joy and helps Arthur obtain transit papers to get out of Wellington Wells.
During his journey, Arthur discovers a heinous plot involving Dr. Verloc, who is trying to cover up the fact that the Joy supply is going bad and turning people into crazy, mindless, ravenous killers.
Arthur sneaks his way onto Parade Street and attempts to escape from the quarantine zone in order to access the old train tracks, but the sadistic Doctors that have been capturing and attempting to “re-educate” people who are off their joy, capture Arthur.
He manages to escape after the equipment malfunctions, causing a lot of the mad patients to escape and start attacking the sadistic Doctors. While the ruckus ensues, Arthur makes his way to the Broadcast Tower and attempts to use an old mine chasm to escape.
During his departure through the mines, Arthur discovers the body of Prudence, one of Arthur’s coworkers who came off her Joy and attempted to escape from Wellington Wells years before. However, Prudence died in the mine tunnels while trying to trek through the caves.
Arthur has little time to mourn, given that activating the machinery to reach the exit tunnel from the mine causes the shaft to collapse. During a daring escape Arthur finally reaches the train tracks where he encounters an old station guard. It’s here Arthur recounts the memory of having betrayed Percy in order to avoid getting on the train to Germany. The guard comforts Arthur, telling him that he must never forget the past, but still move on with his life. Arthur’s segment ends with him coming to terms with having betrayed Percy, and wandering out of Wellington Wells while ruminating on how he could find Percy or where he would even begin looking.
Sally Boyle’s Ending
Sally makes illegal drugs, specifically providing the cops with Blackberry Joy, a more potent version of Joy. She also has a daughter named Gwen.
Sally uses her feminine wiles and chemistry skills to give and gain favors from various residents throughout the city.
Despite her wiles and wit, Sally runs afoul of the coppers who run dry on the Blackberry Joy. Worse yet, Sally’s lab catches fire and goes up in flame, forcing her to have to scour the city for supplies and chemicals.
One of the groups Sally encounters are the three Wiccans, who reveal that they were on the original team who helped create Joy. They also help Sally remember her mother, who committed suicide and poisoned Sally’s sisters and father.
Sally recounts why her mother committed suicide, noting that it was because she didn’t want the Germans to take the girls, and she couldn’t live with herself knowing her girls were in Germany all alone. She also couldn’t live with knowing her husband would live knowing what she had done, so she killed him, too. She also committed suicide because she couldn’t live with herself for what she had done to the family. The only one who lived was Sally.
Due to the war breaking out, Sally became a chemist and eventually began making Blackberry Joy.
After getting out of the jam with the coppers, Sally’s baby, Gwen, comes down with symptoms showing the measles, which prompts her to ask Arthur to get the cod liver oil from Dr. Verloc so she can make a remedy for Gwen.
Sally, however, eventually tells Arthur about the baby, which is later revealed to be Dr. Verloc’s child. However, Arthur walls off saying that it’s about “self-preservation”.
Sally devises a plan to steal a boat from one of her clients, General Robert Byng, and attempt to whisk away into the night with her baby Gwen.
After charming the boat guard and acquiring the parts, Sally attempts to steal the boat key from the General but gets captured instead. She fights off the general – who attempts to lock Sally in a safe house and take Gwen – and escapes.
Sally sneaks Gwen out of the city and onto the General’s boat, where the two escape from Wellington Wells.
Ollie Starkey’s Ending
Ollie’s act starts after he and Arthur part ways, revealing that the war wasn’t quite what they thought. It turns out that the enemy tanks were made of papier-mâché and weren’t actually real.
Ollie, meanwhile, suffers from delusions of seeing the ghost of a girl named Margaret Worthing. He eventually quit his post due to the trauma of seeing the dead girl Margaret Worthing.
After being informed about the enemy tanks being fake, Ollie decides to investigate for himself and confronts General Byng about the fake German tanks. It turns out that the General knew the tanks were fake but they let the Germans take all the kids from Wellington Wells anyway.
General Byng reveals that Ollie always knew that the tanks were fake and that he was the one who took the correspondence for the requisition that allowed the Germans to take the kids. Each year since the war Ollie would address Byng about the fake tanks, but Ollie would forget after taking Joy because the Joy distorted Ollie’s memories.
However, the grief of his daughter’s death began to weigh more on Ollie than the memory-altering effects of the Joy, and eventually the guilt drove him to make the rest of the people aware of what really happened during the war.
After capturing and interrogating Miss Victoria Byng, Ollie finds out that the people of Wellington Wells are starving, dying of plague, and that the Joy is becoming contaminated. Victoria Byng also reveals that if the people were told the truth they would go mad from learning the truth, since the whole purpose of taking Joy was to suppress the truth about having signed over all of their kids to the Germans, and as a result town had become sterile and no one had given birth to a child in 17 years, save for Sally.
Ollie presses forward and decides that people need to learn the truth. He makes his way into the Parade district and into the Broadcast Tower.
Ollie discovers the executive committee, who are drugged up loonies who have forfeited maintaining food processing, causing the people of Wellington Wells to starve.
Margaret tells him to go upstairs and get Jack, the face of Wellington Wells, to tell the people the truth about what’s going on. Ollie heads upstairs only to find out that the broadcast station is trashed and that the dead girl he’s been seeing wasn’t his daughter but his neighbor’s daughter. It turns out that Ollie – during the war – ratted out the hiding place of Margaret Worthing, Jack Worthing’s daughter. The German’s took Margaret and it caused Jack Worthing to have a mental breakdown.
Ollie takes the last tape that Jack Worthing made and broadcasts it from the tower, which informs people that the food has run out and that everyone is starving to death and that they need to get off the Joy.
Ollie’s story ends just like the movie They Live, where everyone in Wellington Wells are finally awakened to the truth while he takes an air balloon back to Scotland.
Joy And Non-Joy Endings
At the very end of Ollie’s story, the game cuts back to Arthur who is given a choice by the Constable to either take a Joy pill and go back to Wellington Wells, or to leave finally and see what the real world is like. If players choose to take Joy, then Arthur goes back to the city and lives a life of delusion while on Joy.
If Arthur chooses not to take Joy, he eventually comes across other people who are living a rugged and harsh life outside of Wellington Wells.
