What happens differently in the story if you spare Baker?

[sv3rige]

I killed him.

[BaconHer0]

You retain access to the black market so you can choose your load out in later missions

[sv3rige]

Sure but what about the epilogue about killing every single drug dealer?

[BaconHer0]

You can read the epilogue in my Hippy, Professional Boxer playthrough:

https://youtu.be/-BUKGbZ28qg?t=1232

In my Unrelenting Anger playthrough, Steve thinks about being a mercenary but then decides against it

Either way, by that point in the game The Baker is not mentioned. He kinda drops off

[sv3rige]

I think killing Baker is the better ending in exchange for not choosing your loadout. Epilogue doesn't change. It would have been nice to have a final mission where you have to kill Baker to finish the game if you spared him earlier. Empathetic is also a loose end.

[sрy]

the endings are mostly up for the player to interpret/etc.
I tried making Steve a somewhat quiet protagonist, so that he'd serve as sort of an insert for the player, since when I was working on the game I wasn't sure whether I'd ever make a second game, and that way the player can more or less come up with their own ending after the ending narration :)

[Taberone]

killing the baker means you have to do the last few missons without any loadouts, so doing it Metal Gear style (on-site procurement only, you start the mission naked and have to loot everything)

sparing the baker avoids that, you can use loadouts

[sv3rige]

I finished the game on masochistic difficulty and was disappointed that every enemy died in one hit. I would have liked for enemies to have super body armor so that it would require shotguns to one hit kill. Shotgun projectiles seem to travel slightly faster. There wasn't that much variety in playstyle it was basically go stealth knife, stealth silenced pistol and if you alert enemies go in guns blazing and camping in a corner since enemies had no grenades. I hoped there be some missions that involved having the police and military as antagonists. Maybe you could make a sequel based on that.

[BaconHer0]

The difficulty scaling in this game is an interesting choice for sure, I've not seen scaling reversed this way in other games. The difficulty increase in this game rests on limiting saves rather than tankier baddies.

On Easiest difficulty, because guns do less damage than on True, enemies can take up to 5 hits to put down. Ironically, this can actually make the game more difficult because you need to be more accurate with bursts and be more careful with ammo. But because you have infinite saves on easy you can make as many mistakes as you like

It's easier to get swamped while reloading on Normal than on higher difficulty

On Masochist, I just use the Scorpion EVO and spray across the screen. A 9mm is as strong as a 7.62 NATO. Usually 1 magazine is enough to take out 20 bad guys and there's lots of ammo for 9mm.

But because you only have 1 save you will be more strongly punished if you make mistakes
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In traditional games the difficulty would probably be scaled this way instead:

Easy - Enemies 1 hp, PC 5 hp
Normal - Enemies 2 hp, PC 3 hp
Hard - Enemies 3 hp, PC 2 hp
Insane - Enemies 5 hp, PC 1 hp

Nevertheless, I think the combination of reverse (effective health) scaling and limiting saves gives Intravenous a unique feel which sets it apart from other games. And during my Pugilist Masochist run I was glad it was scaled its way instead of the traditional way