I had (almost) forgotten how much I like the game

[Bahger]

I've played it since the early Alpha. My MO tends to be to put games aside for a while after heavy Alpha/Early Access play otherwise I will be burned out by the time they get to retail; that's what I did with Invisible Inc., picking it up last night for the first time in six months.

I was really impressed by the level of polish that has been applied to the game in its release version. I can also see that there are many gameplay enhancements (new agents, gadgets, threats, etc.) awaiting me in my newly started campaign.

I remember coming here in the early days to question what seemed to be a merciless level of difficulty; I hadn't played this genre of game before and was taken aback at how ruthlessly we were made to live with the consequences of our failures. Within a few weeks of concentrated gameplay, however, I began to admire the purity of this gameplay concept, especially as defeat always seems to occur as the result of genuine player error rather than from glitches or dice-rolls.

All this leads me to a question I wanted to address to you hardened veterans: does all the customization of difficulty dilute the core concept? I am sure there were very sound reasons for doing this, and it is very well executed. Of course you can choose your own difficulty level according to the intensity of the challenge you wish to face. However, by being able to set custom options for EVERYTHING, comparisons in achievement become meaningless because there are now so many variables. For this reason, I am sure I cannot be the only player who intends to stick strictly to the four (is that the right number?) predefined difficulty levels with no further customization within them. You can't really compete with other players if you all customize the individual aspects of gameplay difficulty beyond the parameters set out in the pre-made difficulty levels.

I am also interested in what you veterans think about the rewind and replay features; do these appear to signal that the devs might have second-guessed themselves re. the commercial potential of a game with such a "pure" concept of victory and defeat as this one had throughout its early development until now?

Anyway, I am glad to be back and happy to see how well the developers handled the final third of this great game's progress to completion.

[TheocraticalGoblin]

Being at day 11 in endless, I really appreciate the one rewind I get. Sometimes you just make a stupid mistake because you're paying attention to something else. It certainly doesn't feel too easy. Although I have all the tools to overcome everything, each mission is still hard and to some degree unique.

[Szjara]

Rewinds are nice to be honest. Many times you will get screwed by pure RNG, stuff like no less than 3 guards coming to the starting room (seriously, why this became a thing is beyond me, that's a blatant design mistake), and the Rewind allows you to counter the occasional unfairness of the game.

[HMV]

Rewinds are nice to be honest. Many times you will get screwed by pure RNG, stuff like no less than 3 guards coming to the starting room (seriously, why this became a thing is beyond me, that's a blatant design mistake), and the Rewind allows you to counter the occasional unfairness of the game.

It didn't become a thing. It's been a thing since day one as far as I can tell. It' at least been around as long as I have, because on my first playthrough, I encountered my first drone when it came in my starting room.

However now it's become a thing you can turn off in the game settings when you set up a new game.

[fernsauce]

Rewinds are a really good approach to making the game somewhat forgiving for people who are new.

 

One of the "normal" approaches is to make Ironman and everything else. IE, there are no restrictions on cheating, save scumming, etc. But this tends to mean that people who don't play on Ironman often save-scum, because they have the option and don't want to give up their long-term save, which actually dilutes the game pretty badly. It makes victory and defeat meaningless, because you are quite literally incapable of losing.

 

Note how in this game there *is* no option to save. At least, not save at specific points where you can reload from later. I'm sure you *can* save-scum, but it's certainly not easy. And that's really, really nice - it means that you can go back and fix some of your mistakes, just not all of them.

[Bahger]

Yeah, I am playing on the Experienced level and have grown to like the rewind feature. It can't get you out of the worst messes but it can save you from having to restart an entire campaign because of a distracted, rushed or thoughtless move.

As for "save scumming", there's a detailed thread here explaining how to do it. It's just sad.