An Open World TMNT Game: a Rant

 With the looming threat of GTA 6 coming, my mind has been thinking of Open World games. Only one license kept popping Up: Teenage Mutant (something) Turtles.

I know what you're thinking: where's the Ninja in TMNT? Why did I purposely leave it blank?

This is the reason. The Turtles are also known as Heroes instead of Ninjas. 

So, the whole premise of the game literally hangs on Ninja or Hero for the Turtles. Think RDR2's honor system. I'm thinking of a TMNT game that would operate on Manhattan both Above and underground. PLUS the Northampton farm and surrounding woods area.

The game's continuity should be a brand new one as a hybrid of Mirage and 1987, in addition various other sources sprinkled in. Like say: the Introduction/Tutorial is based on TMNT 1 culminating with the apparent death of Shredder. Here the Turtles start with red bandanas, beating up thugs from The Purple Dragons, until they face off Shredder. Then we get the Mousers, the TCRI incident and hinting to the Return of Shredder before everything takes a more Mature take on 1987. (The D'Hoonib stuff will unfortunately, be relegated to DLC, among other stuff. A "Miles Morales" styled expansion game based on the Punk Frogs is in the cards as well.) Mission Replay will involve Renet. (If possible a Turtles in Time inspired DLC featuring Renet would be made)

The conclusion to the game would be infiltrating the Technodrome, facing Krang and the Cyber Shredder.

Intended bosses:

Purple Dragons (Hun Mason, Rocksteady, Bebop, among others)

Shredder

Baxter Stockman's Mouser mob

Casey Jones

Skonk and his CRAP

Rat King

Pizza face

Fly Baxter (not Mirage Stockman, but his adoptive brother, based on the 1987 toon)

Mutated Bebop and Rocksteady

Scaletail

Slash

Traag

Granitor

Cyber Shredder

Krang

D'Hoonib DLC Bosses

Triceratons

Federat

Stone Warriors

Punk Frogs Bosses:

Nightwatcher

Leather head

Anthrax  

Robotic Bebop and Robotic Rocksteady

Scratch

Dirk Savage

Ch'rell 

Mini Shredder

Claw Shredder

4 arm Shredder

Worm Shredder

Null

There would be other characters involved including new Mutations to fight.

But back to the "honor system."

The idea is that going more "Ninja" by relying on Stealth, operating mostly at night, avoid NPCs, would keep the Turtles more Mirage-esque. But on the other hand, going out by daylight, openly fighting in view of civilians, relying on flashiness, would tilt the scale towards Hero. When Vehicles become available, the Hero or Ninja status is more obvious.

Ninja:

Generic Van.

Hero:

Party Wagon 

Post D'Hoonib DLC:

Neutrino Cruiser.

Some missions would have different cutscenes, objectives, and approaches, depending on your status.

For example:

The final Mission to infiltrate the Technodrome changes cutscene, starting point and objectives depending your status:

Ninja: infiltrate from underground.

Hero: Use the Turtle Blimp and Rappel from the blimp. April or Casey will be the pilot.

Renet's Mission Replay would allow you to play the missions from the opposite status, ie: you beat the Mission first as Ninja, now you can beat it as Hero. 

On free roam, each Turtle goes out on their own and you.can occasionally catch up woth one of your brothers and do tandem missions/challenges. Each trutke would have their own individual missions. For example:

Mikey has Skateboarding checkpoint races, Raphael has Brawl challenges, Donatello has bomb defusing challenges, and Leonardo has Stealth Challenges.