The Invincible

Arriving earlier this week on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series, was The Invincible, a first-person narrative-driven adventure that is based on the 1964 novel of the same name from Polish author Stanisław Lem. Novel adaptations in video games aren't entirely a new phenomenon, with many of our favourite franchises such as The Witcher, Metro, and Assassin's Creed all having their origins in the pages of books, but does this one manage to stick the landing?

I'll be up front and confess that I haven't read the novel that The Invincible is based on, but I still didn't find it to detract from my enjoyment of the story. Here you play as an astrobiologist named Yasna, who sets out on a mission to find her missing crew members on the barren and desolate world of Regis III. As you start to uncover the fates of these missing members, a broader mystery surrounding the planet and its origins starts to unravel.

Without going into too much detail, I found the story to be well-paced and there were many twists and turns scattered throughout that kept me hooked. The two leading characters, Yasna and Novic, also deliver solid emotionally-charged performances, which was great to see given that their back-and-forth interactions take up the majority of the run time. I also found The Invincible not to overstay its welcome too, as it clocked in at around ten hours.

My main gripe with The Invincible's story is the illusion of choice that it attempts to inject. There were a couple of times along my journey where I was presented with one seemingly pivotal moment or the other, only to find out that the choice I made was completely inconsequential on the direction of the story. The same to a lesser extent can be said for the dialogue options. When responding to Novic, you have a handful of options to choose between, but it rarely felt like the options I chose really made a difference.

Moving over to gameplay and the title that I would most closely compare The Invincible to in this department is Firewatch. Your time is mostly spent walking across the planet's surface, solving basic puzzles, and tracking down your crew using a selection of gadgets inspired by 60s sci-fi. These gadgets include a tracker that enables you to trace the signal of your crew members and an X-ray machine that can give you a view of the planet's surface.

What I will say is that if games like Firewatch or What Remains of Edith Finch haven't done it for you in the past, this is probably not one for you. The bulk of the game is spent walking across one large linear path and there are no action sequences to break things up. Personally, I enjoyed soaking up the gorgeous visuals and listening to the unfolding panic filled conversations between Yasna and Novic, but I know this won't appeal to everyone.

I do wish, however, that there was a little more variety to spice up the moments of getting from point A to point B. Later in the story you do get a rover and it helps to speed up and vary traversal, but most of your journey is spent on foot. Navigating the environment I also didn't find to be the smoothest. Yasna can't jump and you need to look for prompts in the environment if you want to climb up a ledge or descend down. These prompts aren't always the easiest to engage with and the animation that accompanies them is painfully long.

Whilst it does manage to tell a compelling story, I found The Invincible to be a bit of a mixed bag overall. The game only offers an illusion of choice, with player decisions only mattering very little and I found traversing its world to lack any real variety. If you're a fan of the source material or get a kick out of these narrative-focused titles this one might be of interest, but if you don't fall into these two camps, I'd recommend giving it a miss.