about invisible inc, an infodump
Jan. 7th, 2019 01:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hagaardso I've decided that before I make a million posts (approximately) about how much I love entrapta from she-ra and how she's my spirit animal, I would do an actual somewhat serious post, which is why I'm going to talk about an underrated game that I'm in love with and that is very great and very cheap for the content it has, also I like the lore and the art is super neat, Invisible Inc.
I guess that also makes this post a game review. Yay. Don't count on me doing more of these. I prefer the video format for game reviews, but since that's going to be game-reviewey ramblings about how iinc is great and nice and excellent and I love the devs and they're the best and 150 hours blah blah blah. Here's a cut!
Okay, so, Invisible, Inc is a turn-based tactical stealth game where you, the Operator, lead a team of elite agents as they infiltrate in enemy territory to gather resources and fight for their survival. Yes, you read this correctly: Invisible Inc is a turn-based stealth game. This means every turn is divided in two phases; First is Agents Turn, where each of your agents can move, run, hack, loot, knock out guards, or whatever super-spies do when they're on a mission. Each agent has a limited supply of Action Points. Once you're out, you'll have to wait until the next turn. Once you've finished moving your team around, you'll have to end your turn, which begins the Enemy Turn, where the security guards will move around. While they won't be actively seeking you out at the beginning, they may still spot you if you carelessly let an agent in the middle of a room (or were just unlucky with patrol patterns). While getting detected is rarely immediately lethal, enemies that are alerted of your presence will run around the level, trying to catch your team. Don't expect them to go back to state: the only way to escape an alerted enemy is to leave the level. In practice, this means you'll always want to stay out of sight. You will find that ending your agents turn behind cover (or at least against a door) will considerably lengthen their life expectancy.
I guess I better touch on the plot real quick. (Real quick for now, by the way. I'm not planning to just talk a little about it. Oh hey that's the plot and it's not important? No. But uh, I still need to contextualize this a little.)
The game begins by a cutscene that will serve as the plothook. The year is 2074, and corporations rule the world with brutal efficiency. Invisible Inc, a world-class intelligence agency, is one of the few entities that still fight back against them after the end of Resource Wars (corporations/governments war in ~2040, ended in a corporate victory). You had been hitting the corps for years, but they never were able to follow you back home.
Until now.
Somehow, the corporations found your headquarters. Invisible has lost nearly all its assets and its agents, leaving you with only basic weapons and a few scraps to fend off for yourself. Hopefully, with the help of the powerful AI Incognita, programmed/refitted by Centrale (your leader) you will be able to get back on your feet and rebuild a team to fight for what may be your last chance of survival. But you don't have the luxury of time on your side. The jet stealth rig won't keep you hidden forever. The batteries will last 72 hours, tops. And if you run out of time, well... Have you ever seen the inside of a corporate deprogramming chamber? No? Good. You don't want to.
Between missions, you'll be on the world map. There, you can see the time you have left, the missions you can choose from (eight mission types, I think?), your current location (travelling to the next mission may take a different amount of time depending on distance), and upgrade your agents' stat. Anarchy allows you to get more creds, Strength allows you to carry more stuff, Hacking allows you to get more PWR from consoles (PWR is used by the AI to hack corporate security measures such as cameras or drones) and speed allows you to... uh... be faster.
Each level is procedurally generated, filled with safes, guards, drones (which are technically guards), maybe a shop or two. Add a mission objective, an exit elevator (teletransporter? teleporter? they just call it an elevator), and you're good to go. The game is surprisingly beautiful. Its graphics, and its music, really plunge you deep inside. Missions can last anywhere from 20 minutes to an hour of IRL time, depending on the number of agents you have and your possibilities (also, whether or not you like to ponder a decision for ten minutes, which I do). The soundtrack is mind-blowing. IInc has a way to plunge you deep into its ambience that few other games have. Years of browsing the internet and seeing crappy art had "ruined" cyberpunk for me. That's fixed now.
You will infiltrate four different corporations during your playthroughs.
First there's Kelfried & Odin, abridged K&O. They have a knack for heavy weaponry, so you may expect turrets in their facilities, which will shoot you if you get in their cone of vision. Unfortunately (for them), the turrets are hackable, and will target their former allies when hacked. Whoops? Alternatively, hack their power supply to disable them completely. They have a weird European Renaissance theme in their facilities I'd say it's renaissance? or is it more XVIIIe? I'm no expert, but they want to be the "refined and distinguished" corporation. Paradoxically, the game hints at them being the most violent.
Factory to Market Wholesalers has advanced detection measures and security routers in their facilities. The routers make hacking harder, but the detection measures are generally harmless if you can bypass them correctly. Still, watch out. As the game tells you, "you'll need to move fast in order to avoid detection".
Plastech is annoying. They put augments on each and every one of their guards. Infiltrating them can really feel like a chore. Their guys aren't more threatening that, say, the 180° vision ones of K&O, but they're much more annoying, vastly thanks to their augments.
And then there's... Sankaku. Also known as Drone Hell. Most of their guards are drones. Sure, they are hackable. Go on, hack them. For one turn. It will cost you all your PWR. You better make that turn count, pal. Obviously, you can't knock out drones with your main melee weapons, since they are, well, robots. Whoops! Well, at least robots can't hear, right? So you can run all the time and always get these sweet additional 3 AP, right? Wrong! Sankaku has Sound Bugs in almost every room. When you run, you make noise. When you make noise next to a Sound Bug... well, you alert half of the level and they rush on your position. And drones still give cleanup costs when they're killed for some reason, so you can't just dump all your ammo into them (but uh, you really shouldn't, you'll run out of ammo fairly quickly).
The voice acting (there's not that much of it, but hey, Klei is a small studio) is extremely good. It's unfortunate that there's only two characters that you actually get to know... and, well, they can't be played unless you've completed (or lost) the game several times. Now, that could feel like a chore, but for me, it didn't. There is 10 agents, a myriad of augments (yes, you can and will need to turn your agents into cyborgs), and a ridiculous amount of items. The possibilities are endless, and no two campaign are the same. Plus, you will unlock new characters even if you lose campaigns, so lose away! Oh, yes, I forgot to mention that, I guess? Invisible, Inc plays like a rogue-like in that - a) your decisions are definitive (unless you blow a rewind, and you don't have a lot of these), and - b) if you lose a campaign, you lost that campaign. The game is over, the corporations have won, start anew.
...It's really good. It's really, really good. You may want to grab it with the DLC from start, through. It's playable without, but the DLC really adds to the game. Plus, as I said, it's really beautiful, and the soundtrack is excellent, and it's just so good, alright?
And if you get bored after a few playthroughs, well, despite being two and a half years old, and a lesser-known release, the game still has active modders. There's an incredible amount of user-generated content for a release of this scale, and some mods can significantly change the gameplay. (There's even one mod that adds a whole new corp to the original four - and that was only possible because Klei has given permission to modders to use one of their own internal tools... How many companies would do that? also the mod is really cool.)
So, uh, while I don't expect my "bad salesman pitch" review to have convinced anyone, I'm going to post the store pages.
(I didn't mention any bad sides... Well uh, you could argue it's repetitive, and I would argue back "mods", and you could argue that the plot is obvious, and I would argue back that it's still really well handled, and that the "three main characters" (as in, the only ones that talk) are really deep, and you would argue that the lore is scattered around and doesn't feel important, and you would be absolutely right. But it is important to me because I love it.
Klei website page
GOG store page
Steam store page
So, that's it for the reviewey ramble. Onto the good bits, now.
In 2053, corporations have grown enough in power and size that they feel like they have the right to be governing entities in their own rights (kinda like in Shadowrun, which is great and that I recommend), so they decide to wage war against the sovereign governments to earn that right. The corps definitely had the upper hand in the conflict, having more funds and equipment than their opponents, but said opponents still had some cards in their hands, and one of these cards was the Pan-Euro Infosec Agency, abridged PEIA.
Now, the PEIA is actually quite older than the war (at least ten years, since Olivia [Centrale] and Derek [Monst3r] joined the agency at some point before 2043). It follows the globalist trend of the century: local intelligence agencies have difficulty cooperating with each other and have to conciliate with their different laws and regulations. The solution seems obvious: creating a new super-entity made of the best agents of Europe, to allow them to do their work without too much hassle. Interestingly enough, the PEIA is implied to be made of agents from the entirety of Europe (not just the EU); so a general governmental fear even outside the EU may have motivated their agreement to this arguably extremely invasive plan. (apparently there were corporate "pacification sweeps" even as early as the 2020s, in the UK, which may be the "birth" country of K&O? that would explain the decoration choices)
At some point before 2043, Derek and Olivia join the PEIA. Olivia already had experience (ex MI5) and almost certainly joined first, especially considering the young age of Derek (he was at most 15 in 2043, and was recruited BEFORE that!) Olivia took Derek under her wing, acting as some kind of mentor/motherly figure? It is implied that Derek and Olivia had a strong bond back then.
Eventually, Olivia gets captured during a solo mission. The agency wrote her off, but Derek chose to go against the opinion of his superiors and attempted to rescue Olivia. He managed to remotely hijack a nano fabricator to provide his mentor with a weapon. Said weapon was used to great effect, since Olivia managed to break out. However, she would never completely recover from her "jailtime"; not only was she indefinitely out as far as "field work" was concerned, she hints at that at the beginning of the game. "If [the stealth shield runs out of batteries], we might as well crash that thing in the ocean. You've never seen the inside of a Corporate deprogramming chamber; I won't see the inside of another." She would rather die than lie down in a corporate cell. Perhaps because she's not ready to admit defeat? She wouldn't hesitate to die if it meant denying the corps a complete victory. She probably was quite headstrong before her time in the deprogramming chamber; said chamber probably worsened that trait. It is hinted that Olivia drastically changed after escaping, in her demeanor and her vision of the world. This is especially noticeable in her interactions with Monst3r, which repeatedly voices concerns about Incognita, the mysterious corps that you face off against, and occasionally the recklessness Centrale sometimes demonstrates. These concerns (when voiced to her) are systematically denied or ignored. That's not to say that Centrale isn't able to take responsibility for past events (she blames herself for losing the Istanbul run; on the contrary, Monst3r believes that loss was inevitable: "We put up a good fight, but in the end, the Corps had the most toys."
(The Istanbul Run happens at a later point in the timeline; here, we are still in 2043. Note that while the Resource Wars haven't begun yet, there were already plenty enough tensions between the different factions to warrant active conflict, even if hidden by the secrecy of intelligence agencies and corporate interests.)
Since Olivia wasn't able to get back on the field, she took another position, as an Operator, leading other agents in corporate-controlled areas (much like the player). She was "formidable behind the screen".
2045, June 27th: this date is important because it marks the earliest point in time at which Incognita exists. She is a climate AI. She is supposed to be reset "every couple of years".
2053, Resource Wars begins. In the time frame between 2053 and 2057:
- Incognita is repurposed to predict troop movements. That may not seem important yet, but she is still reset every couple of years.
- The director of the PEIA realizes that all the cards are in the hands of the corps and defects. Olivia takes his place and directs an operation to track down said director. he is found, and then executed by Olivia herself. "I pulled the trigger myself, and would do it again in a heartbeat."
- 2057, July 8th: The Istanbul Run occurs and is a failure. Two of the involved agents (Draco and Rush, available in the Contingency Plan DLC) are publicly executed on a live feed. Corporate bounties force Derek and Olivia in hiding.
Then:
Derek becomes a freelance hacker and trader, eventually becoming extremely rich: "My personal income as a freelance is bigger than a small country's GDP!" He never attempts to contact Olivia during that time.
Olivia becomes Centrale and repurposes Incognita. She never resets her, and will form an unlikely bond with the AI, effectively adopting her (in a somewhat convoluted way). This never shows in game until the end sequence, as Incognita is losing both power and composure, and as Centrale becomes more and more desperate. Centrale undoubtedly sees Incognita as her daughter (username "Mother" during the end scene, her unique dialogue if you fail during the Contigency Plan extended campaign where she gets visibly angry, and that is the only event where Centrale gets actually angry, she breaks her calm and professional demeanor to insult you). The bond is of course recognized by Monst3r: "Our children do grow to surprise us, don't they?" Incognita becomes an espionnage AI, and the human and the AI build Invisible Inc together.
They will eventually trade with Monst3r, but while he is aware of the identity of Invisible's leader, he never reveals his identity. He is not interested in fighting with the corps again, even through they hurt him a lot in his youth. He let go of his anger, decided that fighting the corps was useless, "a lost cause". But he knew that Centrale hadn't given up, and probably never would. Interestingly, Monst3r may secretly believe that Centrale's recklessness may have caused the loss of the Istanbul Run. Meaning that Centrale and Monst3r both blame Centrale for that loss, but for different reasons: Centrale believes they lost because she wasn't able to keep the agents coordinated enough. That's another interesting point of Centrale's character here: if the others fail, then it's her fault for not being able to keep them in line. During the campaign, if you fail to complete an objective or lose an agent, she will scold you, but doesn't get angry. Until Incognita dies and there's nothing she can do to prevent that, which is, again, the only case where she lashes out.
Monst3r waited several years before revealing his identity to Centrale. She doesn't see to hold a grudge against him, however. Maybe they have talked it out, or maybe she's simply not the one to hold grudges. Nevertheless, during the game, they're on friendly terms.
2064 marks an official end to inter-corporation war. The earliest point in time at which Invisible Inc is confirmed to exist is 2066. There is no date for the actual creation of Invisible.
It should be noted that the Istanbul Run was an event important enough to live through the collective memory. A movie was released on the "big screen" or whatever their equivalent is portraying the event, and having actor and celebrity Prism as the main character (she was playing Olivia). Critics had been particularly interested by the way the plot and the actress were able to make the Big Bad (corporate viewpoint of the PEIA is "terrorists", so Gladstone is THE terrorist leader and evil mastermind of her era) relatable and likeable. Olivia Gladstone is somewhat of a living legend in the mind of the people. An evil legend, but a legend nonetheless. A mysterious monster, that has been stripped of its humanity by the collective mindset to become inhumane and fascinating.
I did went on a tangent here, didn't I? Well, what can I say? She IS my favorite character. To be fair, she is among the three with... any character development (the other two being Monst3r which I too love, and of course Incognita, my insane AI daughter. Did I mention she was insane ? I'll have to write about her and her upbringing at some point.)
Now, I was far to find all of this out by myself (a lot of the infos I've written here come directly from the lore channels of the official invisible inc server), but even then I really wanted to do this and it feels really good to write everything down and talk about it, so I'll probably do it again at some point. I might consider posting this to Tumblr too. I mean, that's the plan. I don't know if I'll follow through.
Well, that got really long. Maybe I'll do a writing prompt next? This has been sitting in my "post" window for maybe a month? So I'm glad I finished it, even if I don't really expect anyone to read it in full, haha
definitely doing a writing prompt next tho. Anyways, I have to run naked in a forest now. Bye.
I guess that also makes this post a game review. Yay. Don't count on me doing more of these. I prefer the video format for game reviews, but since that's going to be game-reviewey ramblings about how iinc is great and nice and excellent and I love the devs and they're the best and 150 hours blah blah blah. Here's a cut!
Okay, so, Invisible, Inc is a turn-based tactical stealth game where you, the Operator, lead a team of elite agents as they infiltrate in enemy territory to gather resources and fight for their survival. Yes, you read this correctly: Invisible Inc is a turn-based stealth game. This means every turn is divided in two phases; First is Agents Turn, where each of your agents can move, run, hack, loot, knock out guards, or whatever super-spies do when they're on a mission. Each agent has a limited supply of Action Points. Once you're out, you'll have to wait until the next turn. Once you've finished moving your team around, you'll have to end your turn, which begins the Enemy Turn, where the security guards will move around. While they won't be actively seeking you out at the beginning, they may still spot you if you carelessly let an agent in the middle of a room (or were just unlucky with patrol patterns). While getting detected is rarely immediately lethal, enemies that are alerted of your presence will run around the level, trying to catch your team. Don't expect them to go back to state: the only way to escape an alerted enemy is to leave the level. In practice, this means you'll always want to stay out of sight. You will find that ending your agents turn behind cover (or at least against a door) will considerably lengthen their life expectancy.
I guess I better touch on the plot real quick. (Real quick for now, by the way. I'm not planning to just talk a little about it. Oh hey that's the plot and it's not important? No. But uh, I still need to contextualize this a little.)
The game begins by a cutscene that will serve as the plothook. The year is 2074, and corporations rule the world with brutal efficiency. Invisible Inc, a world-class intelligence agency, is one of the few entities that still fight back against them after the end of Resource Wars (corporations/governments war in ~2040, ended in a corporate victory). You had been hitting the corps for years, but they never were able to follow you back home.
Until now.
Somehow, the corporations found your headquarters. Invisible has lost nearly all its assets and its agents, leaving you with only basic weapons and a few scraps to fend off for yourself. Hopefully, with the help of the powerful AI Incognita, programmed/refitted by Centrale (your leader) you will be able to get back on your feet and rebuild a team to fight for what may be your last chance of survival. But you don't have the luxury of time on your side. The jet stealth rig won't keep you hidden forever. The batteries will last 72 hours, tops. And if you run out of time, well... Have you ever seen the inside of a corporate deprogramming chamber? No? Good. You don't want to.
Between missions, you'll be on the world map. There, you can see the time you have left, the missions you can choose from (eight mission types, I think?), your current location (travelling to the next mission may take a different amount of time depending on distance), and upgrade your agents' stat. Anarchy allows you to get more creds, Strength allows you to carry more stuff, Hacking allows you to get more PWR from consoles (PWR is used by the AI to hack corporate security measures such as cameras or drones) and speed allows you to... uh... be faster.
Each level is procedurally generated, filled with safes, guards, drones (which are technically guards), maybe a shop or two. Add a mission objective, an exit elevator (teletransporter? teleporter? they just call it an elevator), and you're good to go. The game is surprisingly beautiful. Its graphics, and its music, really plunge you deep inside. Missions can last anywhere from 20 minutes to an hour of IRL time, depending on the number of agents you have and your possibilities (also, whether or not you like to ponder a decision for ten minutes, which I do). The soundtrack is mind-blowing. IInc has a way to plunge you deep into its ambience that few other games have. Years of browsing the internet and seeing crappy art had "ruined" cyberpunk for me. That's fixed now.
You will infiltrate four different corporations during your playthroughs.
First there's Kelfried & Odin, abridged K&O. They have a knack for heavy weaponry, so you may expect turrets in their facilities, which will shoot you if you get in their cone of vision. Unfortunately (for them), the turrets are hackable, and will target their former allies when hacked. Whoops? Alternatively, hack their power supply to disable them completely. They have a weird European Renaissance theme in their facilities I'd say it's renaissance? or is it more XVIIIe? I'm no expert, but they want to be the "refined and distinguished" corporation. Paradoxically, the game hints at them being the most violent.
Factory to Market Wholesalers has advanced detection measures and security routers in their facilities. The routers make hacking harder, but the detection measures are generally harmless if you can bypass them correctly. Still, watch out. As the game tells you, "you'll need to move fast in order to avoid detection".
Plastech is annoying. They put augments on each and every one of their guards. Infiltrating them can really feel like a chore. Their guys aren't more threatening that, say, the 180° vision ones of K&O, but they're much more annoying, vastly thanks to their augments.
And then there's... Sankaku. Also known as Drone Hell. Most of their guards are drones. Sure, they are hackable. Go on, hack them. For one turn. It will cost you all your PWR. You better make that turn count, pal. Obviously, you can't knock out drones with your main melee weapons, since they are, well, robots. Whoops! Well, at least robots can't hear, right? So you can run all the time and always get these sweet additional 3 AP, right? Wrong! Sankaku has Sound Bugs in almost every room. When you run, you make noise. When you make noise next to a Sound Bug... well, you alert half of the level and they rush on your position. And drones still give cleanup costs when they're killed for some reason, so you can't just dump all your ammo into them (but uh, you really shouldn't, you'll run out of ammo fairly quickly).
The voice acting (there's not that much of it, but hey, Klei is a small studio) is extremely good. It's unfortunate that there's only two characters that you actually get to know... and, well, they can't be played unless you've completed (or lost) the game several times. Now, that could feel like a chore, but for me, it didn't. There is 10 agents, a myriad of augments (yes, you can and will need to turn your agents into cyborgs), and a ridiculous amount of items. The possibilities are endless, and no two campaign are the same. Plus, you will unlock new characters even if you lose campaigns, so lose away! Oh, yes, I forgot to mention that, I guess? Invisible, Inc plays like a rogue-like in that - a) your decisions are definitive (unless you blow a rewind, and you don't have a lot of these), and - b) if you lose a campaign, you lost that campaign. The game is over, the corporations have won, start anew.
...It's really good. It's really, really good. You may want to grab it with the DLC from start, through. It's playable without, but the DLC really adds to the game. Plus, as I said, it's really beautiful, and the soundtrack is excellent, and it's just so good, alright?
And if you get bored after a few playthroughs, well, despite being two and a half years old, and a lesser-known release, the game still has active modders. There's an incredible amount of user-generated content for a release of this scale, and some mods can significantly change the gameplay. (There's even one mod that adds a whole new corp to the original four - and that was only possible because Klei has given permission to modders to use one of their own internal tools... How many companies would do that? also the mod is really cool.)
So, uh, while I don't expect my "bad salesman pitch" review to have convinced anyone, I'm going to post the store pages.
(I didn't mention any bad sides... Well uh, you could argue it's repetitive, and I would argue back "mods", and you could argue that the plot is obvious, and I would argue back that it's still really well handled, and that the "three main characters" (as in, the only ones that talk) are really deep, and you would argue that the lore is scattered around and doesn't feel important, and you would be absolutely right. But it is important to me because I love it.
Klei website page
GOG store page
Steam store page
So, that's it for the reviewey ramble. Onto the good bits, now.
In 2053, corporations have grown enough in power and size that they feel like they have the right to be governing entities in their own rights (kinda like in Shadowrun, which is great and that I recommend), so they decide to wage war against the sovereign governments to earn that right. The corps definitely had the upper hand in the conflict, having more funds and equipment than their opponents, but said opponents still had some cards in their hands, and one of these cards was the Pan-Euro Infosec Agency, abridged PEIA.
Now, the PEIA is actually quite older than the war (at least ten years, since Olivia [Centrale] and Derek [Monst3r] joined the agency at some point before 2043). It follows the globalist trend of the century: local intelligence agencies have difficulty cooperating with each other and have to conciliate with their different laws and regulations. The solution seems obvious: creating a new super-entity made of the best agents of Europe, to allow them to do their work without too much hassle. Interestingly enough, the PEIA is implied to be made of agents from the entirety of Europe (not just the EU); so a general governmental fear even outside the EU may have motivated their agreement to this arguably extremely invasive plan. (apparently there were corporate "pacification sweeps" even as early as the 2020s, in the UK, which may be the "birth" country of K&O? that would explain the decoration choices)
At some point before 2043, Derek and Olivia join the PEIA. Olivia already had experience (ex MI5) and almost certainly joined first, especially considering the young age of Derek (he was at most 15 in 2043, and was recruited BEFORE that!) Olivia took Derek under her wing, acting as some kind of mentor/motherly figure? It is implied that Derek and Olivia had a strong bond back then.
Eventually, Olivia gets captured during a solo mission. The agency wrote her off, but Derek chose to go against the opinion of his superiors and attempted to rescue Olivia. He managed to remotely hijack a nano fabricator to provide his mentor with a weapon. Said weapon was used to great effect, since Olivia managed to break out. However, she would never completely recover from her "jailtime"; not only was she indefinitely out as far as "field work" was concerned, she hints at that at the beginning of the game. "If [the stealth shield runs out of batteries], we might as well crash that thing in the ocean. You've never seen the inside of a Corporate deprogramming chamber; I won't see the inside of another." She would rather die than lie down in a corporate cell. Perhaps because she's not ready to admit defeat? She wouldn't hesitate to die if it meant denying the corps a complete victory. She probably was quite headstrong before her time in the deprogramming chamber; said chamber probably worsened that trait. It is hinted that Olivia drastically changed after escaping, in her demeanor and her vision of the world. This is especially noticeable in her interactions with Monst3r, which repeatedly voices concerns about Incognita, the mysterious corps that you face off against, and occasionally the recklessness Centrale sometimes demonstrates. These concerns (when voiced to her) are systematically denied or ignored. That's not to say that Centrale isn't able to take responsibility for past events (she blames herself for losing the Istanbul run; on the contrary, Monst3r believes that loss was inevitable: "We put up a good fight, but in the end, the Corps had the most toys."
(The Istanbul Run happens at a later point in the timeline; here, we are still in 2043. Note that while the Resource Wars haven't begun yet, there were already plenty enough tensions between the different factions to warrant active conflict, even if hidden by the secrecy of intelligence agencies and corporate interests.)
Since Olivia wasn't able to get back on the field, she took another position, as an Operator, leading other agents in corporate-controlled areas (much like the player). She was "formidable behind the screen".
2045, June 27th: this date is important because it marks the earliest point in time at which Incognita exists. She is a climate AI. She is supposed to be reset "every couple of years".
2053, Resource Wars begins. In the time frame between 2053 and 2057:
- Incognita is repurposed to predict troop movements. That may not seem important yet, but she is still reset every couple of years.
- The director of the PEIA realizes that all the cards are in the hands of the corps and defects. Olivia takes his place and directs an operation to track down said director. he is found, and then executed by Olivia herself. "I pulled the trigger myself, and would do it again in a heartbeat."
- 2057, July 8th: The Istanbul Run occurs and is a failure. Two of the involved agents (Draco and Rush, available in the Contingency Plan DLC) are publicly executed on a live feed. Corporate bounties force Derek and Olivia in hiding.
Then:
Derek becomes a freelance hacker and trader, eventually becoming extremely rich: "My personal income as a freelance is bigger than a small country's GDP!" He never attempts to contact Olivia during that time.
Olivia becomes Centrale and repurposes Incognita. She never resets her, and will form an unlikely bond with the AI, effectively adopting her (in a somewhat convoluted way). This never shows in game until the end sequence, as Incognita is losing both power and composure, and as Centrale becomes more and more desperate. Centrale undoubtedly sees Incognita as her daughter (username "Mother" during the end scene, her unique dialogue if you fail during the Contigency Plan extended campaign where she gets visibly angry, and that is the only event where Centrale gets actually angry, she breaks her calm and professional demeanor to insult you). The bond is of course recognized by Monst3r: "Our children do grow to surprise us, don't they?" Incognita becomes an espionnage AI, and the human and the AI build Invisible Inc together.
They will eventually trade with Monst3r, but while he is aware of the identity of Invisible's leader, he never reveals his identity. He is not interested in fighting with the corps again, even through they hurt him a lot in his youth. He let go of his anger, decided that fighting the corps was useless, "a lost cause". But he knew that Centrale hadn't given up, and probably never would. Interestingly, Monst3r may secretly believe that Centrale's recklessness may have caused the loss of the Istanbul Run. Meaning that Centrale and Monst3r both blame Centrale for that loss, but for different reasons: Centrale believes they lost because she wasn't able to keep the agents coordinated enough. That's another interesting point of Centrale's character here: if the others fail, then it's her fault for not being able to keep them in line. During the campaign, if you fail to complete an objective or lose an agent, she will scold you, but doesn't get angry. Until Incognita dies and there's nothing she can do to prevent that, which is, again, the only case where she lashes out.
Monst3r waited several years before revealing his identity to Centrale. She doesn't see to hold a grudge against him, however. Maybe they have talked it out, or maybe she's simply not the one to hold grudges. Nevertheless, during the game, they're on friendly terms.
2064 marks an official end to inter-corporation war. The earliest point in time at which Invisible Inc is confirmed to exist is 2066. There is no date for the actual creation of Invisible.
It should be noted that the Istanbul Run was an event important enough to live through the collective memory. A movie was released on the "big screen" or whatever their equivalent is portraying the event, and having actor and celebrity Prism as the main character (she was playing Olivia). Critics had been particularly interested by the way the plot and the actress were able to make the Big Bad (corporate viewpoint of the PEIA is "terrorists", so Gladstone is THE terrorist leader and evil mastermind of her era) relatable and likeable. Olivia Gladstone is somewhat of a living legend in the mind of the people. An evil legend, but a legend nonetheless. A mysterious monster, that has been stripped of its humanity by the collective mindset to become inhumane and fascinating.
I did went on a tangent here, didn't I? Well, what can I say? She IS my favorite character. To be fair, she is among the three with... any character development (the other two being Monst3r which I too love, and of course Incognita, my insane AI daughter. Did I mention she was insane ? I'll have to write about her and her upbringing at some point.)
Now, I was far to find all of this out by myself (a lot of the infos I've written here come directly from the lore channels of the official invisible inc server), but even then I really wanted to do this and it feels really good to write everything down and talk about it, so I'll probably do it again at some point. I might consider posting this to Tumblr too. I mean, that's the plan. I don't know if I'll follow through.
Well, that got really long. Maybe I'll do a writing prompt next? This has been sitting in my "post" window for maybe a month? So I'm glad I finished it, even if I don't really expect anyone to read it in full, haha
definitely doing a writing prompt next tho. Anyways, I have to run naked in a forest now. Bye.