Invictus (The Guardian)

"I'm bound to all of it-this world, that world and our sweet little angels of death. Now, you're on the menu! All it'll take is one itty-bitty voidout to blow us all kingdom come! So how 'bout it? Aren't you getting tired of the grind? Isn't this what you have been waiting for this time? A game over?!"

- Invictus

Invictus, also known as the "Man in the Golden Mask", is the main antagonist of Life is Strange: The Guardian. He is based on the character of Death Stranding, Higgs

Background
Invictus was raised by his uncle early in his life after both of his parents died. He grew up thinking the shelter was the entire world, and his uncle would beat him whenever he asked about the outside world or tried to leave the shelter. Invictus would eventually kill his uncle in self-defense with a knife and witness the body going necro. Invictus took the corpse out and felt the Beached Thing s slowly approaching, unknowingly gaining his DOOMS in the process. In time, he would find out that his powers were triggered by death.

To stay alive, Invictus became a porter.

Personality
Highly meticulous and malicious, Invictus has no qualms nor moral boundaries when orchestrating ruthless acts of slaughter and gleefully participates out of fun and personal enjoyment. Holding an aura of unshakable confidence, charisma, and sarcasm, he rarely loses his cool and consistently maintains a composed and collected personality. He has no hesitation when engineering voidouts killing thousands to instill fear in the cities guided and united under the UCA Alliance, and to facilitate the extinction of humanity.

Invictus has a layer of dark humor when confronting Sam and Fragile as well as overall. Musing about death and destruction of the last POTUS, and noting that Amelie wasn't cut out for a similar role. He has no restraint over his men and sees them as infallible and loyal. Highly egotistical and arrogant, Invictus views himself as greater than humanity, yet also has accepted the inevitability of the sixth extinction event. In his dealings with other humans, especially Sam Bridges, he uses his chiralium control as demonstrations of his superior nature.

Invictus has also been shown to have a bit of a perverted side and makes no attempts to hide it nor is he above using it to intimidate his enemies. In particular, he is shown to be attracted to Fragile, licking her face and forcing her to strip down to her underwear before having her run out into the rain. It should also be noted that in an encounter with Sam, in which he removes his mask for the first time, he does much the same. Whether this insinuates a similar attraction towards Sam or if licking his enemies is just a weird intimidation tactic is left unclear. Later, after beating Sam in a gunfight, as he's carrying off Amelie he noticeably gropes her butt likely as a way to further taunt Sam.

Despite his violent behavior, Invictus demonstrates a very high intellect and understanding of various concepts prior to Sam and Fragile. Invictus displays his worst traits through an affable exterior that hides his more evil intentions. He once believed in the preservation of the UCA and actively supported their cause.

Due to him meeting Amelie, he finds out the truth about everything and becomes a hyper-fatalist hellbent on bringing about a mass extinction of humanity, the Sixth Extinction. He implores Sam to realize his apparent inevitable destruction. His philosophy is heavily influenced by his realization of extinction entities and their purpose. As noted above, he accepts this fate without pause, and even manipulates Sam into helping the acceleration of the 6th Extinction Event.

Physical description
Invictus wears a black gas mask that covers the entirety of his head. Over that, he wears a golden skull mask that covers the lower portion of his face as well as a black hooded cloak pulled up onto his head, the lining of which is striped blue and gold. The cloak covers his shoulders, coming down into two points at the back. On the cloak right shoulder is the Homo Demens Egyptian style symbol in white, with 'VOID OUT' in text. On his torso, he wears a black bullet proof vest on top of a dim greenish-yellow suit. Attached to his front is his BB as well as 3 smoke grenades. Invictus has a 3-pronged flower-shaped odradek attached to his back. He wears long black gloves with golden plates on the hands. He has black boots and dark green cargo pants, held up by a belt with many pockets. He wears Amelie's gold Quipu necklace. He also has two more Quipus worn on him, one larger one by his lower right torso side, and one on his left upper thigh.

Behind Invictus’ masks his face bears stubble but lacks both eyebrows, the removal of which resembles the practices by Egyptian priests. Four lines of text, the Invictus Boson equations, are inscribed (presumingly tattooed) upon his brow, two in the place of his eyebrows. Invictus’ blue eyes are encircled by thick black eyeliner inspired by the ancient Egyptian style makeup, which sometimes runs as a result of a chiral allergy.

At the end of chapter 3 he also dresses in disguise as a Bridges employee, complete with a Bridges hat, headphones, gloves, and jumpsuit uniform.

Abilities
With his golden mask, Invictus is able to summon Hunter BTs in the form of chiralium, and subsequently a Catcher BT to attack Sam. Furthermore, he is shown to be able to control the weather in the form of timefalls; Invictus points his hand upwards to the sky in the shape of a gun, and fires off a blast into the clouds, triggering the timefall almost immediately afterwards.

Highly Advanced Chiralium Control: Invictus has the greatest control of Chiralium of any individual within the entirety of the storyline save Amelie herself, who granted him the ability. There is no apparent limit to his power, and he can subsequently create any object he desires out of Chiralium, as well as amplify his weaponry and attacks. Creating monstrous beasts and a variety of specialized creatures each with their own design and capabilities to attack Sam, he displays total control over any and all forms of BTs, wielding them with absolute ease while maintaining perfect and total control over said BTs.

Tar Manipulation: Tar is a viscous black liquid that manifests along with aggressive BTs, Invictus has shown the ability to create tar from apparently nowhere and creating tar-like strings.

Weather Manipulation: Due to the complexity and capabilities that Invictus has bestowed upon him by Amelie, he is shown to create Timefall whenever and wherever he pleases. He also chooses and can freely manipulate what will and what won't be affected, as well as the intensity of the rain and time to take effect. Due to his mastery, he is unaffected by the effects of Timefall and may wear armor solely to stay connected to his BB.

Telekinesis: Invictus was able to levitate displaying an ability for telekinetic flight, as well as telekinetically lift several boulders while standing on one of them, pull Fragile's umbrella out of her hand from a distance, and telekinetically lift move Amelie.

Clairvoyance Senses: Invictus has demonstrated limited clairvoyance, since only "smelling" directly to Sam could tell that Bridget was dead and that Amelie would take over as President. However, it isn't known if it's really is a power of Invictus, or he already knew this information because of being controlled by Amelie.

Precognition: Wrote about his defeat and loss of power in his journal and a mail he sent to Sam before it happened. While he appeared spiteful and self-deprecating in the journal, he was resigned in the mail indicating he accepted what is going to happen.

Teleportation: Invictus has the ability to teleport anywhere he wants as many times he wants to. This may be due to his direct connection to Amelie and her beach.

Nigh Immortality: It is heavily implied by Invictus that he may be a repatriate like Sam, when he says that if either of them die on the beach, they won't be able to go back. That it'll be the end for one of them.

In-universe

 * Invictus carries a portable tank with a fetus-shaped figure inside. Rather than emitting an orange-yellow glow when activated, as the bridge baby's pod does, his portable pod emits a red one. The bottom casing of Invictus' pod is also green, rather than orange like the bridge baby's.
 * Underneath his golden mask, Invictus wears another black mask.
 * Both he and Sam began as porters. Invictus' successes and admiration from the communities inflated his ego but made him susceptible to a fall to madness after he met Amelie. Sam managed to remain humble and remember the purpose of helping connect others and chose to carry on living even after learning of Amelie's true nature.
 * He mails Sam under the pseudonym Peter Englert. Each mail is about delivering a pizza, claiming to be Sam's greatest fan, and pleasing a (non-existent) relative.
 * Based on the stacks of pizza boxes and scrawling of "Hot Pizza Forever! Cold pizza is for the dogs!" in his hideout, Invictus seems to have strong opinions on pizza.
 * Right before his final battle against Sam, we can see Invictus kneeling in front of Amelie, showing respect to the Extinction Entity. When Sam sees this Invictus quickly attacks her to cover up the situation.

Out-of-universe

 * Invictus first appeared in the TGA 2017 teaser trailer, pointing out to Sam and the Corpse Disposal Team 6 operatives the presence of BTs. He again appeared in a short TGS 2018 trailer. His name was officially revealed in the 2019 release date reveal trailer.
 * Both Troy Baker and Satoshi Mikami previously voiced Ocelot in Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain; however, according to Kojima, their voicing the same character again was merely a coincidence.
 * Invictus is fully modelled after the likeness of Troy Baker, whose credited roles rarely have him portraying characters with his likeness.
 * Invictus shares his name with one of the equations of Sam's necklace, namely the equation.
 * "The Particle of God" is a nickname often given to the in popular media outside the scientific community.
 * The final mail message from Peter Englert, signed "I have the honor to be your obedient servant," references a song from the play Hamilton, in which the titular character's foil, Aaron Burr, begins a chain of antagonistic letters with falsely polite final lines, precipitating their final duel.
 * One of his diary entries paraphrases a section from Act 5, Scene 5 of Macbeth.