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When discussing the founding of Starward Industries<\/a>, game director Marek Markuszewski brings up all the points you might expect from a new team. The company wanted to gather a group of experienced but still-passionate developers, all focused on the idea of creating something ambitious despite the studio\u2019s smaller size. The surprise, however, comes from the studio\u2019s approach to narrative. According to Markuszewski, Starward looked for stories that weren\u2019t already \u201cexploited\u201d by media when figuring out its first project. It wanted to tell a story that hadn\u2019t been told.<\/p>\n Admittedly, where Starward landed was a story told before \u2013 almost 60 years ago, in the novel The Invincible<\/em>, written by Stanis\u0142aw Lem. In it, the crew of the Invincible<\/em> spacecraft investigates the planet Regis III for its missing sister ship. There they discover self-replicating machines that, over time, become more hostile. It ponders questions about what it means to be alive, the ever-increasing role of technology in everyday life, and has more than its fair share of retro-futurism, proper nouns, and heady jargon.<\/p>\n For Starward, comprised of developers previously from CD Projekt Red, Techland, and more, it was the right fit for its narrative ambitions \u2013 something dense and literary. And for what it\u2019s worth, video game adaptations of novels are relatively rare.<\/p>\n In Starward\u2019s The Invincible, you assume the role of Yasna, a scientist. In typical video game fashion, the protagonist is a somewhat unreliable narrator. She knows she\u2019s a scientist. She knows she came here with a crew that\u2019s since gone missing. But many of her memories are foggy. A voice on the other end of an earpiece, that of the \u201cAstrogator,\u201d helps you along your journey.<\/p>\n It\u2019s all fairly standard video game fare, though the source material is an interesting starting point. Lem was known for his approach to hard sci-fi, and the world of The Invincible<\/em> feels well-realized and believable within its fiction. It\u2019s perfectly conceivable to imagine it translating to a video game well, where players are incentivized to explore, experiment within, and discover the world around them. And for the next hour, with insights from the team, I have the chance to do just that.<\/p>\n My time playing an early pre-alpha build of The Invincible begins with Yasna exploring her surroundings, taking note of her findings, and reporting back to the Astrogator. I\u2019m looking for a lost convoy \u2013 and perhaps other survivors. Things aren\u2019t going well.<\/p>\n One of the most immediate things about The Invincible is that fidelity-wise, it looks great. Textures have lots of definition \u2013 I can really tell these are rocks everywhere I look \u2013 and the bright bask of the sun gives off a feeling of warmth as it bakes the ground around Yasna. Regis III mostly looks like Mars \u2013 red, arid, dull. But in a way that drives home the desolation of the setting. There isn\u2019t much to do in The Invincible other than go forward and look around. The environment gets that point across.<\/p>\n So, forward I go. I can go around stealthily or move directly to my objective. I choose to take the direct route. After a short drive, I find one of the convoy\u2019s vehicles trapped under a collapse of rocks. Yasna notes that the radiation levels in the area are high. I climb through the vehicle and out the other side of the collapse, running across a machine that will soon mean trouble: a mobile antimatter cannon. Well, two, to be specific. One intact. One destroyed. Nearby is a massive tunnel blown clean through a rock face. One final discovery awaits me: a corpse.<\/p>\n Yasna removes the onboard recorder from the antimatter cannon, and the scene of carnage in front of me begins coming into focus. Yasna sees the missing convoy marching towards its destination. Things seem to be going well. However, the plan goes awry upon reaching Yasna\u2019s current location.<\/p>\n One slide shows the team using the antimatter beam to make their own path through the rock, retrieving materials from the tunnel they created with the antimatter cannon. The next slide shows the convoy rushing out of their new hole. Another shows the cannon firing into the hole. And then, chaos. One of the antimatter cannons shoots at the other, obliterating it, before turning its beam onto the humans. As you might expect, it tears them apart. \u201cIt\u2019s monstrous what the antimatter beam does to the human body,\u201d Yasna remarks. Finally, she looks at the final slide, a still image of herself just moments ago inspecting the cannon. She\u2019s shocked but decides to continue her exploration, turning her sights to whatever\u2019s on the other side of the tunnel.<\/p>\n It doesn\u2019t take long to figure out The Invincible is a slow game \u2013 both literally and narratively. It takes time to do just about anything, from walking to your objective (there is, thankfully, a sprint button which I found after some time in the menus) to listening to Yasna and the Astrogator talk, which they do \u2013 a lot.<\/p>\n According to Markuszewski, this is a deliberate choice, which makes sense. The work of Stanis\u0142aw Lem is, again, dense. Lem is often categorized as a \u201chard\u201d sci-fi author, meaning the work is focused on being scientifically accurate and believable based on current technologies and theoretical possibilities.<\/p>\n \u201cHe was kind of a prophet, writing about things like [the] matrix, ebooks,\u201d Markuszewski says.<\/p>\n \u201cInternet,\u201d art director Wojtek Ostrycharz adds.<\/p>\n \u201cInternet, cell phones,\u201d marketing manager Maciej Dobrowolski pipes in. \u201cAll those things, yeah.\u201d<\/p>\n It takes time for that information and exposition to be relayed to the player via visuals and dialogue. As Markuszewski points out, in a book, you can spend as many pages as you want to describe how something looks or a character\u2019s thoughts and feelings. Video games don\u2019t quite have that luxury; adapting The Invincible<\/em> into something interactive has been a challenge.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you\u2019re going with the much more conventional approach, like real-time action, leading a character, being in the place \u2013 normal pacing, normal speed \u2013 you don\u2019t have this stop-moment [to visualize] all the very attractive parts of the book,\u201d Markuszewski says. \u201cIt\u2019s tricky to have really short slots for describing all the emotions or concepts [that we want to discuss].\u201d<\/p>\n Based on my time with the game, I think Starward could work on that balance more. Contrary to what Markuszewski says, I spend a large portion of my playtime doing very little, just listening to characters speak, occasionally choosing a dialogue prompt. If there\u2019s one major issue I have so far, it is the game\u2019s pacing. It\u2019s hard to know how much Starward can fix this before launch, but with such an interesting story concept, it\u2019s a shame that it\u2019s delivered in often-tedious ways.<\/p>\n At the end of the tunnel, I find a little robot carrying a crate in circles around a cave. Yasna later notes the robot is stuck in his task.<\/p>\n Deeper in, I find metallic plants growing from the cave walls. Yasna and the Astrogator then debate the nature of biology \u2013 whether or not the metal in front of us can be classified as alive or not if it lacks things like membranes, organs, and the like. All very heady stuff, with the jargon theoretical science fiction fans eat up, slowly doled out as you stand still, waiting for The Invincible to give you your next objective.<\/p>\n On my way to my new point B, my little robot, for reasons never made abundantly clear, breaks his loop and begins walking out of the cave. I follow suit, making my way back to the location with the two antimatter cannons. As my mechanical companion walks along his new route, making his way on a new adventure, the in-tact antimatter cannon springs to life. It shoots the robot, completely disintegrating it, before turning its cannon towards me.<\/p>\n I ready my hands to dodge out of the way, then to fight back, to save my own life from what would otherwise be sudden death. I remember those slides I slowly looked through, recalling the way it tore through the convoy. I\u2019m ready to use their failures to my advantage, to save my own life from utter destruction. On the other end of the line, Astrogator begins panicking, knowing I\u2019m likely mere seconds from death. \u201cFight,\u201d he yells into my ear.<\/p>\n To not spoil anything, I\u2019ll stop short of revealing more of what I played. If you\u2019re excited for The Invincible or a fan of the novel, some of the narrative moments you\u2019re looking forward to come next. After this initial set-up and some further exploration, I will say that I\u2019m left with many questions about what\u2019s happening on Regis III and who is on the desolate planet.<\/p>\n My numerous questions stem mainly from seeing a later-stage mission largely out of context. One conversation between Yasna and Astrogator stands out to me \u2013 the earlier chat about the metal plants, biology, and the human condition.<\/p>\n I don\u2019t think that particular moment has anything interesting to say \u2013 or anything other games haven\u2019t already explored in great detail, such as 2017\u2019s Nier: Automata, for example. But I do like a video game asking these questions \u2013 if only because it\u2019s a rare example of a big-budget game taking the time to explore more nuanced, mature questions, even if a specific moment isn\u2019t adding too much to the conversation. In its current form, I have problems with how The Invincible is telling its story structurally, but I can\u2019t help but feel like its themes are a welcome change of pace. And I feel that\u2019s exactly what Starward was going for \u2013 that the developers want players to think about new concepts and ideas.<\/p>\n \u201cI had this one great feeling when I was playing Persona 5, where after an hour and a half of playing that game, I actually had to stop, go outside, have a cigarette, and go, \u2018Oh my God, I can\u2019t believe what this game is about,\u2019\u201d Starward\u2019s community manager Micha\u0142 Napora says. \u201cMaybe people don\u2019t need to go at [it in] this extreme way \u2013 go out and smoke cigarettes \u2013 but it\u2019d be cool if they finish the game and maybe thought about some things that they didn\u2019t think about before.\u201d<\/p>\n This article originally appeared in Issue 346<\/a> of Game Informer.<\/em><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/arcader.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/inside-the-invincible-1.jpg\")
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<\/p>\nSlides<\/h2>\n
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<\/p>\nDense<\/h2>\n
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<\/p>\nDanger<\/h2>\n
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<\/p>\nThink<\/h2>\n