MIO: Memories In Orbit: How to Unlock the Alternate Ending

MIO: Memories in Orbit has a lot they never tell you, and one of the biggest is that there's an alternate ending you can get. While you're welcome to simply fight Ati and take the regular ending, there is more left to do on the Vessel.

It isn't obvious, and in a way, the game will sort of fool you into thinking that you've actually finished the game. Luckily, whenever you finish the game for the first time, you can just pick up from before the final fight, which gives you the ability to run down all the things you'll need to do first.

There are a good number of things you'll need to finish, so this guide will cover the broad strokes of it all with some other guides linked in for the specifics. Don't stress too much because it's going to take at least a few more hours to find everything and get what you need.

How to Get the Alternate Ending

For starters, you'll need all the abilities, and if you finished the game, you may have noticed that you're actually missing one. Well, you might be if you weren't able to find some of the hidden pathways.

To snag this ending, you'll need to activate the Wheel by finding the severed finger to attach to the hand that sits next to the Wheel. It's easy to miss, but hopefully you'll be able to find it with the help of this guide.

Getting the Severed Finger

You'll need to head to the Redacted area and find your way to the Lab. Once you're here, all you have to do is fall to the bottom and then follow the path until you hit the severed finger.

You'll unlock a shortcut just above where you snag the finger, so take that to get back up to the spawn point. From there, you'll make your way back to the Labs' spawn point to attach the finger and activate the Wheel. It gets a little specific from here, but you'll need to turn the wheel to unlock the Crucible, which is where you'll head next.

Gaining Access to the Crucible

This is a bit of a doozy and will have you running all over the place. To break it down for simplicity's sake, you'll need to repair the Wheel and use it to unlock the fast travel points once you've gotten the Overseer to the Vaults.

To snag the Overseer you're missing, you'll need to head to the Vaults spawn point and head left. Go all the way until you reach the large empty room and drop down. There's an open drawer with a bunch of pieces of robots that operates as a secret entrance.

From there, you simply have to follow the path in front of you until you take a tube that spits you out across from another tube in a large room. Drop down and head left here after you grab the Old Core from the broken-down machine there.

You'll need to activate all the Gloomwater Pumps to be able to cross the large pools of it down here. If you come across a lot of Gloomwater you can't cross, odds are you missed one of the pumps. The Crucible guide should give you an idea of everything you'll need to do here.

After you find and mend the Vaults Overseer, you should pass by a robot and then a tube in the ground. This is where you'll get Mel back, but you can skip that for now and unlock the door to the Vaults. From there, you just need to do the following things:

1. Fast Travel to the Labs spawn point.
2. Activate the Wheel
3. Fast Travel to the Vaults
4. Take the tube above the spawn to get back to the Shuttle
5. Make your way up the Shuttle tube to unlock the Vaults' Shuttle spawn point
6. Fast Travel to the Promenade Entrance spawn point
7. Take the Shuttle below the Promenade Entrance
8. Activate the Wheel
9. Fast Travel back to the Vaults' Shuttle spawn point
10. Fall down the tube for the Shuttle there

There's a bit more complexity to it than that, but it gives you an idea of what you'll need to do. Once you've reached the Crucible, you'll need to complete it to unlock the last ability you need, Flowing Steps.

How to Get Flowing Steps

Completing the Crucible is, well, in a word, a crucible. This is almost entirely platforming puzzles that will make you want to rip your hair out. They are difficult, long, and incredibly unforgiving.

It'll be covered more in-depth in the Flowing Steps guide, but you'll basically need to go one of the two available ways and complete the platforming puzzles to unlock the data you need.

Once you do that and bring it back to Tomo and Samsk, you'll unlock the last ability you need, and now you will be able to unlock the alternate ending. Be prepared, though, as there's still plenty of challenges ahead.

Making Your Way to the Library

You may have already seen a part of the library, but you're missing a much larger part. To begin, make your way to the top of the Bell Tower and head to the right side, where you can stand on the branch. There's a small gap in the leaves you can walk through.

Follow this path until you reach an area with large hanging lights. Head along these lights until you reach the Gloomwater waterfalls. With your new ability, you can now scale these and head straight up.

After a bit of climbing, you should reach the library and head past Kassandra, the robot standing there, to get inside the building. All the way on the right, you'll find an elevator that has four stops.

You can take this down to each floor, but most importantly, you should take it down to the Lecture Hall, where you can snag a new spawn point. After that, you'll head down to Precious Samples, where you'll face off against your friend Shii, who's adamantly keeping you from something.

Defeating Shii

This is pretty well covered in our guide for beating Shii, but basically, you'll get a short cutscene and some heartbreaking truths about what Shii was doing all along. It's a pretty big twist, and certainly one that re-frames a lot of the game's story for you.

Once you've defeated them, you'll get access to what they were trying to hide from you, and you'll achieve your secret ending. It's a decently long cutscene, so you'll finally have a chance to breathe and really enjoy what's happening.

Rewards for the Alternate Ending

The only real reward you'll get will be the achievement Welcome Home, which means you managed to get the alternate ending. You'll also get a nice little walking part after the credits that lets you see the fruits of your labor.

This is considered the good ending, but technically speaking, that's really up to how you view what happened on the Vessel. Perhaps you have a different viewpoint than most, but what matters is that you managed to find the alternate ending.

Even if you managed to do all of this, the journey in the Vessel may still not be over, but now you can explore to your heart's content as you hunt down anything you might have missed. This Metroidvania is far from complete.