[Major Spoilers!] The ending is quite cool!


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Well, she clearly uses the corps' resources to start up factory production on some type of drones.  And she was obviously sinister enough to have Invisible Inc. nearly destroyed just to use Central and the Operator as puppets to serve her own ends.

 

That seems foreboding enough.

 

/shrug

 

If Incognita was planning on using Invisible from the start, it was a HUGE gamble on her part. She would be betting on a shattered, underequipped Invisible to evade multinational corporate security, rebuild itself, and crack into the biggest, baddest corporation there is and plug her into SecNet. In 3 days. While Incognita herself was hanging by a thread and risking her own consciousness dissolving into scattered photons.

 

It seems more likely that Incognita made a secret deal with the corps: the location of Invisible Inc. for administrator access to the OMNI SecNet. She was banking on the combined forces of the corps completely wiping out Invisible and its agents, and in return she'd get plugged into the most powerful supercomputer on the planet. She didn't expect a handful of agents to escape, but they still got her to where she wanted to be. And if they were caught, the corps would still hold up their end of the bargain. She would win either way.

 

Or not. I'm not sure why the corps would want to plug her in, but this theory makes more sense to me than Incognita just using Invisible to her own ends.

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Also - I'm really curious what happens if you pick Central / Monst3r as starting agents. Do you have to do the final mission with just your original team? Because that would be *nasty*.

Yes, it is. You have to do the final mission without additional help.

It was quite easy at expert mode, with Central's Shock Trap III& some holographic projector.

Actually, I managed to keep everyone to the final center room - although some of them were noticed by some enemy.

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It's really hard to deal with guards when they spot you (unless you got some really good gear, but nothing really prepares you for what you will have to face), so it's ultimate sneaking mission for the most part.

 

I wonder where multiple level-missions went... I know they planned to do them (or at least they said they did), but in the game all you have are single-floor missions.

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I just completed the game.

 

I don't think Icognita is necessarily the villain if you pay attention to what she says. Like, she mentions that global temperatures are rising by 3% per year (I think)? And that the corporations are forming armies to invade each other. And someone's already built space lasers. Basically it seems like the future of 2045 has the world in crisis, on the brink of war and climatological disaster. Even in the hands of Central, it's not clear whether things may be much better - Central would rather profit from the status quo. It's not like Incognita is mindlessly violent: at the end she's wiping out the HQs, not killing *everyone*.

 

All of saying, is, I for one welcome our new AI overlord. Join the winning team!

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Just beat easy mode and thought that the whole Incognita going rogue was the 'bad' ending and there was a better ending for beating it on expert mode. I gotta say, that would have been nice; for example, having incognita have a more neuromancer or deus ex-like ending where it sort of achieves god-like status and uses its powers for good (well, without necessarily wiping out the major corps with orbital lasers)

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If Incognita was planning on using Invisible from the start, it was a HUGE gamble on her part. She would be betting on a shattered, underequipped Invisible to evade multinational corporate security, rebuild itself, and crack into the biggest, baddest corporation there is and plug her into SecNet. In 3 days. While Incognita herself was hanging by a thread and risking her own consciousness dissolving into scattered photons.

 

It seems more likely that Incognita made a secret deal with the corps: the location of Invisible Inc. for administrator access to the OMNI SecNet. She was banking on the combined forces of the corps completely wiping out Invisible and its agents, and in return she'd get plugged into the most powerful supercomputer on the planet. She didn't expect a handful of agents to escape, but they still got her to where she wanted to be. And if they were caught, the corps would still hold up their end of the bargain. She would win either way.

 

Or not. I'm not sure why the corps would want to plug her in, but this theory makes more sense to me than Incognita just using Invisible to her own ends.

 

Well, no. If the Corps get their hands on her, they could really cause trouble for everyone and her. Who wouldn't want to pry into an AI's programming?

 

No, she quickly deduced that the corps would have a centralized security system and tech from the Resource Wars and immediately formulated the plans to get herself into the system. She needed the team to not know to avoid petty morality issues and knew that they would triumph in the end. It was a gambit, but she knew it'd pay off.

 

I think she knew how bad things where on Earth and decided that the only way to do right is to have it all for herself.

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Or the Incognita didn't do anything. The corporations simply teamed up to destroy all opposition, and that's how the Invisible Inc.'s headquaters were located. The rest was the Mon3ter and Central coming up with a plan to stabilize Incognita in order to keep Invisible Inc. afloat (and to raze corporate records to help that). Incognita itself didn't have any say in any of this.

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Well, no. If the Corps get their hands on her, they could really cause trouble for everyone and her. Who wouldn't want to pry into an AI's programming?

 

No, she quickly deduced that the corps would have a centralized security system and tech from the Resource Wars and immediately formulated the plans to get herself into the system. She needed the team to not know to avoid petty morality issues and knew that they would triumph in the end. It was a gambit, but she knew it'd pay off.

 

I think she knew how bad things where on Earth and decided that the only way to do right is to have it all for herself.

 

I think even an AI like incognita, perhaps even one programmed to be fluent in prediction knows well enough that there's known unknowns and unknown unknowns. Being able to be certain of something like that would require much more omniscience than Incognita has access to.

 

In that case, contingency planning would be vital. Hedging your bets, and adapting to change, as it were. It would be reasonable for incognita to be able to convince the corps that she could be of some service to them since she is fluent in data mining and prediction.

 

Omni is a joint venture formed by the four corps (each of which represents a different industry). If she couldn't get plugged into Omni's network through her betrayal plot, the other solution then would be to find out where Omni is and have Invisible Inc insert her into the network of their own free will.

 

Either way, falling into the hands of a single corp would not give her the access she wants.

 

That said, her attack on the corporate headquarters of the four corps could either mean

 

1) She no longer needs those corps, and can use her newly found networking and computational power to evolve (spread herself through the net)

or

2) The destruction of the corps was her aim all along

 

Maybe even both, regardless of whether the 'Incognita had it all planned out' hypothesis is correct or not.

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Or the Incognita didn't do anything. The corporations simply teamed up to destroy all opposition, and that's how the Invisible Inc.'s headquaters were located. The rest was the Mon3ter and Central coming up with a plan to stabilize Incognita in order to keep Invisible Inc. afloat (and to raze corporate records to help that). Incognita itself didn't have any say in any of this.

 

Except that Central very clearly says that it was Incognita herself who tipped the Corps off.

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Except that Central very clearly says that it was Incognita herself who tipped the Corps off.

And who said that she is right about it? That's just angry words in moment of frustration (she can be right of course, but can be wrong).

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I don't know that Incognita took down the corporations because she felt like it's what Mother wanted her to do.  I felt that her plaintive questions as she rebooted ("Mother, why must we do these things?  Why?  Why?") indicated that she'd really rather not do the things Mother was telling her to do.  As she did with the betrayal of Invisible, Inc., it seems likely that she saw the destruction of the megacorporations as a means to an end.

 

(She also seemed to loathe the human sense of self-importance.  Corporations are not capable of self-importance; they're not individuals.  It seems to me that she's not done taking care of the human problem.)

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If Incognita was planning on using Invisible from the start, it was a HUGE gamble on her part. She would be betting on a shattered, underequipped Invisible to evade multinational corporate security, rebuild itself, and crack into the biggest, baddest corporation there is and plug her into SecNet. In 3 days. While Incognita herself was hanging by a thread and risking her own consciousness dissolving into scattered photons.

 

Well, my headcanon rationalisation for this would go back to the unexplained 'Rewind' ability that the player gets, which I would read as making use of Incognita's predictive abilities. (As is other stuff like the Observe ability predicting guard movements.) Basically Incognita's modelled all of this already, she already knows that the player is going to succeed because she's set up the game and all the pieces.

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Also - I'm really curious what happens if you pick Central / Monst3r as starting agents. Do you have to do the final mission with just your original team? Because that would be *nasty*.

 

Did this the other day, yeah, you start with Central and Monst3r and anyone else you picked up along the way, I'd had a pretty good run mostly due to an Econ Chip and a solid set of programs, so it went surprisingly perfectly without the extra agents. I'd recommend it.

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I'm hoping Klei has some big update or expansion in the making, something like Reign of Giants for Don't Starve, it would be great to see where everything ends up months later. Besides Invisible Inc. having to deal with the nightmare they've created, there's Banks' growing instability and I wonder if some of the agents would stay loyal to the agency now that they've got no one on their back and no paid corp jobs coming their way, maybe Sharp would be happier with the machines.

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I think the stage is set for a longer, more detailed type of campaign. This is how I might see an expansion panning out.

 

1) The events of the initial campaign have caused the governments of the world to unleash an EMP against Incognita's network, limiting her power and processing capability

2) The world's networks have also been sequestered to prevent infiltration by the remnants of incognita

3) Corps still fight amongst themselves. With the four big corps gone, smaller more numerous corps have taken their place.

4) Invisible Inc still runs missions for and against corps while hunting incognita.

 

The features i'd like to see in a new expansion.

 

1) Bigger levels, with multiple objectives and multiple escape paths.

2) Hacking is now done by accessing a terminal directly. Hackers can hop around from node to node to assist the rest of the team but are vulnerable if their meat bodies are discovered while jacked in.

3) The network could contain varying different types of ICE, each with its own movement patterns. Some ICE will dump the hacker out of the network upon encountering its persona, others will attempt to trace the hacker's terminal and alert security, others will look for captured nodes and try to reboot them, etc)

4) Some countermeasures (such as tracers) can be suppressed by the ground team (e.g. by rebooting the box which control the countermeasure or disabling the guard which is actively inside of the network acting as the countermeasure), but they often need the hacker to disable obstacles on the way to the countermeasures.

5) Main quests and side quests. Side quests offer lesser rewards but are safer.

6) Main quests advance the story and have better rewards

7) No time pressure, but completing the campaign with fewer missions has an influence on the ending (so you could do a lot of sidequests to improve your team but it would result in a worser ending)

8) Agents are easier to acquire but also can be easier to lose (e.g. if things go sour, you might have to abandon agents)

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I think the stage is set for a longer, more detailed type of campaign. This is how I might see an expansion panning out.

 

1) The events of the initial campaign have caused the governments of the world to unleash an EMP against Incognita's network, limiting her power and processing capability

2) The world's networks have also been sequestered to prevent infiltration by the remnants of incognita

3) Corps still fight amongst themselves. With the four big corps gone, smaller more numerous corps have taken their place.

4) Invisible Inc still runs missions for and against corps while hunting incognita.

 

The features i'd like to see in a new expansion.

 

1) Bigger levels, with multiple objectives and multiple escape paths.

2) Hacking is now done by accessing a terminal directly. Hackers can hop around from node to node to assist the rest of the team but are vulnerable if their meat bodies are discovered while jacked in.

3) The network could contain varying different types of ICE, each with its own movement patterns. Some ICE will dump the hacker out of the network upon encountering its persona, others will attempt to trace the hacker's terminal and alert security, others will look for captured nodes and try to reboot them, etc)

4) Some countermeasures (such as tracers) can be suppressed by the ground team (e.g. by rebooting the box which control the countermeasure or disabling the guard which is actively inside of the network acting as the countermeasure), but they often need the hacker to disable obstacles on the way to the countermeasures.

5) Main quests and side quests. Side quests offer lesser rewards but are safer.

6) Main quests advance the story and have better rewards

7) No time pressure, but completing the campaign with fewer missions has an influence on the ending (so you could do a lot of sidequests to improve your team but it would result in a worser ending)

8) Agents are easier to acquire but also can be easier to lose (e.g. if things go sour, you might have to abandon agents)

 

So basically you want Shadowrun.

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So basically you want Shadowrun.

Eh, well, actually Shadowrun with characters drawn and animated like in Invisible inc and with Invisible inc's fast-combat mechanics could be a bomb.

(seriously, I can understand why Shadowrun creators use their classic-ish "We mercenaries, we come here to hack VR and steal data! So let's have two hours gun-fight for that one empty room!" but why they keep using so impossibly ugly character-models? Franchise tradition?)

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So basically you want Shadowrun.

 

Sort of.

 

Honestly, I didn't like Shadowrun Returns that much but maybe I just wanted it to be like the Sega Genesis version of Shadowrun (which IMO was a masterpiece).

 

Anyways, this is how it would be different than SR.

 

1) Simpler implementation of hacking than SR. Node based rather than just a different implementation of in-game turn based combat. (somewhat like DX:HR's hacking, except each node is a mainframe object on the actual map). Different actions for per-turn might cost a certain amount of AP, e.g. traversing to an adjacent (already pacified) node might cost 1 AP, attacking an unguarded node might cost 2 AP, using a program which teleports a nearby daemon to a random place on the network, or a ping program to try distract a daemon, might cost 3 AP, Using a program to TP you back to your origin node or hide from a patrolling daemon might cost 4AP, cloaking yourself and hoping the daemon overlooks you, but also preventing you from traversing nodes and performing actions till the daemon is no longer occupying your node. Some hacking programs would have long cooldowns, limited uses per map or even one time uses (like a program called data bomb which directly kills daemons with a range of, say, 2 nodes).

 

2) Combat which is not as ponderous as SR's. Invisible Inc's gameplay engine is great as its focus on stealth.

 

3) The very real possibility of losing agents, along with the possibility to live with losing them.

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