When you first launch GTFO, you're presented with "The Rundown." This is the work order that The Warden has tasked you - its prisoners - with.
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~ Simon Viklund
The Rundown is a gameplay feature of GTFO. The Rundown is comprised of a series of "expeditions" in which the Prisoners complete objectives issued by the Warden. The overarching campaign comprises eight Rundowns.
The Rundowns have a number of expeditions over five tiers, each getting progressively harder the deeper in the Complex they take place in. Each tier of difficulty is given a letter: A, B, C, D, and E, with A-Tier the easiest and E-Tier the hardest.
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The Rundown is divided into different tiers where expeditions in the lower part of the screen take place deeper within the Complex. The deeper you go, the harder the expeditions get.
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~ Simon Viklund
Starting with Rundown 004, now replaced with ALT://Rundown 4.0, the game introduced Extensions. Instead of replacing the current expeditions, extensions added optional content to the active Rundown. The "extended" content is available in the game as Sectors.
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The Warden has discovered an unexplored section of The Complex - and so, the Rundown 004 / Contact has been extended to include four new deadly expeditions.
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Early Access and ALT Rundowns[]
During GTFO's time in Early Access, Rundowns were released sequentially and only available to players for a set period of time. The release of a new Rundown would replace the existing Rundown, and previous content would be inaccessible. The earliest test Rundowns were very small and were retired after a couple of weeks, whereas later Rundowns were maintained for several months.
In October 2022, GTFO introduced the Rundown selection menu and progressively reintroduced the six retired Rundowns as ALT Rundowns (those with the ALT:// designation.) For instance, ALT://Rundown 1.0 is an updated and re-released version of now-unavailable Rundown 001. GTFO's final campaign consists of the six ALT Rundowns, Rundown 7.0, and Rundown 8.0.
In GTFO's overarching narrative, the six now-defunct Rundowns and their six ALT replacements available in the final game are all canon and set in two parallel dimensions ("worldlines"), with effectively two separate teams of prisoners making they way along two alternative versions of the Complex. Despite small differences, the plot is essentially the same until Rundown 7.0, which follows the same "original" team from the removed Rundowns. The story culminates with Rundown 8.0, where both teams, the original party who completed Rundown 7.0 and their ALT doubles who never did it, find themselves in the same universe.
