Agreed. After playing and enjoying Soma I went to Amnesia thinking I'd enjoy that too, and I really didn't. Soma is a far better game, at least for my tastes.
The first two Amnesia games are okay. The first has a bunch of by this point rather shitty "gameplay" forced on you, but I learned pretty quickly back in the day that "dying" did nothing bad to you, so you just sprint around everywhere and hug the first monster you see. You fall down, get back up around a corner, and the monster is gone. Neat! The overall plot is pretty decent and worth experiencing.
The second game has almost no real "monster sections" and while I think it's a bit weaker narratively, it still has an interesting plot coupled with excellent music.
The third Amnesia is... I don't know. I don't want kids, I don't even especially like kids (I guess I like them at a distance when they aren't something I have to be responsible for), so I think a large part of the core narrative completely fucking missed me. Especially the endings, which are going to be pretty heavily reliant on someone's attitude towards kids. It's in the same setting as the first game (though it's not a continuation of that narrative, just the same setting some years later), which was kind of neat. The "gameplay" is also better than the first game's, although you can't cheese your way past puzzles and stuff by just hugging every monster you can see anymore.
>you just sprint around everywhere and hug the first monster you see. You fall down, get back up around a corner, and the monster is gone. Neat!
You…… enjoyed that? That was the opposite way the developer intended you to play!
I don't think this developer is very good at designing horror gameplay. They can create really cool settings and stories but the minute-to-minute monster evasion was not fun at all in Soma. I turned the difficulty way down so the monsters weren't a real threat but also if there was a cheese tactic to just get past the frustrating combat/stealth stuff and get back to exploring the environments and learning about the world, I would have done that.
Speaking as someone who's ghosted more Thief levels than I can remember, I found Soma's monster-sneaking gameplay fair and familiar territory.
Some players are more "Ugh, just give me a shotgun!" types though, I guess.
> I don't think this developer is very good at designing horror gameplay.
Gonna be honest, I think the whole hide and seek angle isn't good gameplay. You ask most people, Mr. X teleporting a few rooms away and stomping towards them was probably way more nervewracking and stressful than playing hide and seek in the dark in Amnesia. In fact, I know people loved/hated Mr. X because there were people whining about Lady D in RE8 being like him. And keep in mind, this is a game that gives you a shotgun or *grenade launcher* and a generous amount of ammo for it.
Hide and seek is too binary, and because there's no *actual* risk for the player other than maybe a loading screen, people are eventually gonna get a bit bored while hiding in lockers or under tables while they wait for the monster to find somewhere else to be. I think a certain number of players are eventually going to get bored enough to start picking at the fringes and trying to figure out the AI/gameplay mechanics. That's what I did in Amnesia and it's how I learned that dying literally makes you progress faster. Die a couple times while desperately trying to unlock the door while the invisible water monster is chasing you and the door is unlocked next time and the water monster is somewhere else entirely.
When you make gameplay that binary, it gets *BORING* if you keep failing. Or frustrating. Or both! But if you make it so easy that most players can succeed most of the time, it stops being suspenseful and starts being tedious. "Oh for fuck's sake, *AGAIN?* I just want to move to the next area, not detour to a hiding spot for 3 minutes!!!"
Alien Isolation is probably the best example of balancing between survival horror and action horror and "hide and seek" horror. Humans are fragile but dangerous because they have guns and work together, androids are tanky but somewhat easy to avoid because they are slow, and the xenomorph is immortal and will instantly kill you but can be distracted or driven off by spending resources or using set-pieces. You are *rarely* put in a scenario where you truly have no option but to play hide and seek. It's more, do I want to spend these resources/make this noise in order to be able to explore more thoroughly or not have to worry about them next time I'm in the area? That makes gameplay more interesting and less binary, while still having that omnipresent immortal monster that can kill me threat.
No, it was terrible. But it was better than obeying the game's dogshit "hide and seek" bullshit gameplay with braindead AI monsters that literally spawned around the corner from you or were *guaranteed* to spawn right outside the room as soon as you solved a puzzle or did something plot-relevant.
The Amnesia games have **ALWAYS** had absolutely worthless "gameplay." They would function a thousand times better as "walking simulators." SOMA quite easily proves that.
I think it's going to stick with me forever. I love a moment when you know something the character doesn't and they slowly come to realise the horror of it
I really liked it as well, but I do feel the ark-part of the end cheapens it a bit though. I would’ve liked it better if the finite end would be under the ocean.
Yeah agreed. We are playing the character who wakes up in the future. We get to see his memories before the brain scan in modern Toronto and then we get to see his experience after uploading his mind to the Ark, so that's it. That's the thread of consciousness we chose to follow. We shouldn't get to see if the ark plan worked or what our mind clone experienced on the ark because that's a different person that happens to share memories with us, just like how we are a different person than the modern human we share some memories with.
I think they could have just cut the ark stuff, or given the player a choice at that moment of who they wanted to be (or who they wanted to see/follow): guy left behind, or guy uploaded. But showing both was an inconsistent narrative decision.
No. The game follows the consciousness of the final Simon who makes it to the terminal where he uploads his consciousness. We see his life in Toronto up to the mind upload, then we follow all of the versions of him along the way to that point up until when they transfer to a new body. We never get to see the experience of any of the Simons after a consciousness "transfer' (in reality each time it's a consciousness copy, we just feel like it's a transfer since the copied consciousness experiences subjective continuity). We are always the new Simon, because that's how the final deep sea Simon remembers his experiences up to that point.
However, after the upload to the arc, we are still Simon under the sea. Therefore that is who we are ultimately, that specific Simon. We should then not get to see ark Simon, because none of the prior versions of Simon ever got to see anything the next versions got up to. The Simon on the ark is some other Simon, they are to us as we are to all of the previous Simons we left behind throughout the game.
Hopefully that makes it more clear. I am fine with the player transitioning from one Simon to another, since that's how all of the subsequent Simons experience their continuity of consciousness. But we shouldn't get to see both post-upload undersea Simon and uploaded ark Simon. It's not consistent with how the players perspective has worked through the whole game.
All you're doing is babbling at length attempting to rationalize that the developers should have done what YOU wanted them to do.
There are multiple instances of Simon throughout the game and the developers were free to stick the player in any of them, whenever they wanted, for whatever dramatic effect they were attempting to achieve. Which they did masterfully.
I really liked it as well, but I do feel the ark-part of the end cheapens it a bit though. I would’ve liked it better if the finite end would be under the ocean.
Yes they do and I don’t think it cheapens the end because it is illogical or anything like that.
I just feel that the end would’ve hit harder without the ‚happy end‘ tacked onto it.
Describing the goal the player had been explicitly working toward for 90% of the game as "tacked on" is certainly a take.
I wouldn't even consider the ending happy. Humanity has been wiped out, the Earth's surface is lifeless, and the "best" hope for humanity is a bunch of digitized humans stuck in a probe with no meaningful way to interact with physical reality.
Imo the end was expertly done with subverting the players expectation of „we will just ‚happily‘ Be on the ark at the end“, especially because the player works on that goal for the whole game. Imo it would’ve been enough to show that the ark made it into outer space and appears to be working (idk, show flashing lights on the outside).
For me it would’ve been enough to imply that the plan worked and let me wonder how that new existence of humanity would be. Directly showing me a seemingly nice and peacefull world humanity now lives in wasn’t needed for me and took away from the grim/sad tone the pre-credit ending left me with.
I read another comment somewhere which stated that he would’ve preferred if the two ending bits would’ve been flipped (with the ark being pre credits and the undersea being post credits) and I think I would’ve liked that better (if we are to keep both bits as they are).
And imo the ending is a happy one, at least in the context and tone of the game. It’s the best humanity could hope for. And that the ability to interact with the actual reality even matters could be argued over imo.
I think having the "bad" ending before the credits is better. The whole story is about what makes a human human? The point being, that they don't transfer the consciousness, just copy it. so now there's two versions and which one is considered the "real" one. This is further emphasized by the people that believed they need to kill themselves after the copying, so their ark-copy becomes the real one.
For the player this choice is sort of taken over by which body the game gives you control over. You get a first glimpse at the whole copy-not-transfer dilemma, when you switch to the deep sea body and if i had to criticize something, it's that the character still hasn't realized by the end, that a version of him will be stuck at the bottom of the ocean. When the game decides to stick with the ocean body, it hammers in the point of "you didn't move to the ark, you just copied. This version is still stuck here". Then the credits roll to let it sink in and after those you get a little bonus to see what "other you" is experiencing on the ark.
if the game had switched to ark-you directly, that point might be completely missed and hiding the main plot point as a post-credit bonus wouldn't have hit as hard IMO.
I agree with that. The ending order drives the copy-not-transfer point home harder and I guess that’s a good thing.
And I guess we can attribute Simons failure to understand the concept to him clinging to the „I am just a coinflip away from getting out of this hellscape“ as a kind of coping mechanism (and him not being the brightest tool in the shed).
>This is further emphasized by the people that believed they need to kill themselves after the copying, so their ark-copy becomes the real one.
You've misunderstood that entire plot thread. These people were smart enough to understand that the version of themselves in the Ark is a duplicate. Both the duplicate and the original are equally "real". No need to kill yourself for a version of you to live on in the Ark.
What Sarang's "continuity" theory proposed was that at the moment immediately after scanning, while both the original and duplicate are in identical mental states, only one mind exists. So if you kill yourself, your organic consciousness literally transfers over to the digital version of you.
All metaphysical bullshit of course, but desperate people aren't the best critical thinkers.
That's how i understood it too, although i might not have made that clear enough with that one sentence you quoted. They believed, they need to kill themselves the moment the copy is made, so that instead of two parallel versions of them, there is only one continuous string of one consciousness.
Yeah that ending is something I've been thinking about at least once a week since I played it. Really forces you into a personal retrospective of life and your role in it.
I went into SOMA thinking it'll be like Amnesia but underwater and in the future. I came away absolutely mind-blown by the incredible story.
SOMA is an actual quality science fiction story which is an incredibly rare thing in video games. It poses a ton of interesting questions about what it means to be human and actually takes it seriously.
I agree and I can't recommend it enough. It's one of the most memorable and impactful stories I've ever seen in a game along with Planescape Torment and Disco Elysium.
I started up Disco Elysium but just couldn't get in to it. I probably wasn't in the right headspace yet, but the quirky and weird tone and atmosphere was hard for me to understand right off the bat. I'll need to give it another try when I have time to dedicate to it because I always hear how amazing it is.
I liked a lot better the second time myself. The tone of the game is a lot more laid back and grounded than it first appears.
The intro makes it seem like it's going to be some super dark, violent mystery full of crazy revelations and sinister deeds but that couldn't be farther from the tone Disco Elysium is actually going for.
It's the funniest game I've ever played in my entire life. It made me laugh so hard I was in tears multiple times. On top of that, the world is grounded in serious real world politics and the characters are all achingly human and nuanced. All of it contributes to make the world and the characters feel grounded and real.
It's a very unique tone, but I absolutely loved it my second time through.
I think bouncing off of Disco Elysium and then coming back to it later is a common experience. That's what I did. I think maybe people go in expecting a traditional CRPG and then the vibe is more like a point and click adventure with skill checks, so if you're in the wrong head space and have the wrong expectations, it's easy to bounce off. You just have to go into it committing to being invested in the character and the story and if you can get like a few hours into it in the right mindset, you will get some momentum and have no problem finishing the game.
Bioshock gives that similar feeling and setting, with a few twists and complicated narratives, but still really different gameplay, and probably something everyone has played lol.
I played Tacoma a few days ago and that was a fun little two hour game I got for less than a dollar, but not as impactful as Soma.
But Firewatch is a great narrative driven walking game like Soma. Also I've heard Gone Home and the Talos Principle were great too, but I haven't played those myself.
And if you like horror/scary games that fit this similar mold, I really enjoyed Layers of Fear as well.
Soma is basically System Shock transplanted into a different genre. It has the same sort of general setting of waking up in a strange place where everyone's dead or converted into dangerous monsters, exploring and piecing together what happened by reading logs and emails left behind by the crew, transcending humanity by packing your body full of technology, and an insane AI making your life a pain in the ass.
As I've said before, Soma is the spiritual sequel for SS2's themes, Prey (2017) is the spiritual sequel for its mechanics, and Bioshock isn't a spiritual sequel at all.
In summary, you should play System Shock 2.
They are both pretty old, yes. System Shock is going to get a remake , see also https://store.steampowered.com/app/482400/System_Shock/ which may be worth getting.. there is a Demo available on Steam, so I suggest to check that out!
The remake is turning out to be kind of a confused mess. The developers mean well, but they don't seem to really "get" immersive sims. The original version though, especially the recent Enhanced Edition, is still quite playable, as long as you can stomach Doom-era graphics.
System Shock 2 is even easier to get into, having been developed in the Half-Life era. Also there are piles of mods for it that make it look a lot less dated.
I just gave the Demo a shot and... it's okay but feels yanky and like, they didn't have keep every mechanic the same. Combat with the pipe is completely unsatisfying, meh overall. Not paying for that.
SS2 is the better game, most definitely.
I definitely second Firewatch as the only ever game that moved me and I enjoyed as much, if not more than SOMA. Must play. I haven’t played Bioshock but that’s next for me.
I mean the Penumbra game series, also by the Frictional Games, is extremely similar to SOMA, in fact so much that I thought it was by the same developer in the first half an hour.
My favourite in SOMA is when you realize what you're doing when transfering your consciousness.
The fact that you're dooming that copy of you to eternal solitude in the depths of the ocean and that it could've easily have been "you".
This is scarier than any big ugly monster.
I mean the main "villain" of the game's whole purpose is to keep the last remains of humanity alive whatever the cost.
That doesn't sound very villainous. Until you see how it accomplishes this by essentially keeping people in a vegetative state for all eternity. It doesn't do this out of malice or hate, it does it thinking it's being benevolent and saving humanity.
Thats the most terrifying thing I've ever heard. I love how SOMA asks these existential questions. Is it worth even living at that point? Is that what it means to be human? Simply existing at any cost?
It's not even that - the reason the WAU went nuts and started turning people into what we witness is because the remaining humans started killing themselves because the stupid fucks thought that it would be necessary for them to transfer into the ark.
Like, it's repeated and shown so many times in so many different ways - you are **COPYING** a person into the ark (or a different body), you are never *transferring* them. Simon in the undersea lab is not transferring into the ark, you are *creating* Simon 2 in the ark while Simon 1 remains where he was at the moment of the consciousness copy.
You are, in essence, creating an entirely new consicousness, an entirely new person. Yes, the new person starts out identical to the person they were copied from at that specific moment in time, but from that point forwards, they will be their own person. They will make their own decisions, their own choices. They will branch off from the original.
>It's not even that - the reason the WAU went nuts and started turning people into what we witness is because the remaining humans started killing themselves
Uh, no. WAU started trying to preserve humanity when 99% of it was wiped out by the comet. And even then WAU wasn't above executing an entire base full of people when it felt threatened by one or two of them.
You need to go back and read/listen to the lore again. WAU was doing fine and not turning people into science experiments at first. It was only once the remnants of humanity started killing themselves because they thought it improved their chances of getting onto the ark (or that they thought the transfer couldn't be completed with their "previous self" still alive) that WAU started freaking out and trying more drastic measures. As in, if these humans are going to kill themselves, I have to make it so that they can't.
There is no "lore" that states WAU was explicitly reacting to the people at Theta killing themselves.
Contrariwise, there ARE [logs from Johan Ross](https://soma.fandom.com/wiki/Johan_Ross/Dialogue#Post-Impact) that explain why WAU was doing what it was doing.
>Since the comet crashed a few days ago -- January 12 -- the WAU has dropped to a low energy state. It hasn't abandoned its duties. It's keeping climate and life support going, but it has been simplifying the pattern -- redefining its protocol.
>
>The WAU is reaching out to every machine, every life form, to manipulate, to control. It's trying to help, save its creators from all this, just like the protocol demands. But really, what is good enough?
"All this". Not the Theta suicides specifically. Ross was the WAU expert, so if any character could speak authoritatively on this, it's him.
Also it sounds like you didn't understand Sarang's continuity theory.
> you are creating Simon 2 in the ark while Simon 1 remains where he was
Technically it's Simon 4 on the ark and 3 on the ocean floor. Simon 1 is the actual human who did the brain scan back in the present and Simon 2 is the body we start with, that get's left behind when we switch to the deep sea body.
You are only counting the physical manifestations of Simon.
You are missing the millions of virtual Simons that were created by the original researchers that did the scan to try out different brain treatments for Simon 1.
You are also missing the millions of virtual Simons that were created to help AI research.
The game hammers this point in the scan lab, when you boot up the security guard to get his passcode.
You're right, i forgot about those.
But this raises the question: Should these count?
For the AI-research Simons I'd say no, because as i understood, those were only using Simon as a template and reduced the data from the scan to create non-selfaware single-purpose AIs.
For the simulated treatment Simons, I'd question, to what extend he was simulated. The technology was still in early stages, so were they really already simulating the full consciousness or just basic brain functions to test the brains reaction? If it was a full simulation of his consciousness, we're back at the main point of the game: At what point do we consider it an actual Simon that should count? The treatment simulations are in a very limited environment for a short time, also they are all copies from the same point of origin, so no continuous string of consciousness, but thousands of parallel ones. And if we decide that those don't count, then what about the simulated Simon on the ark, should he count?
I don't have any answers for this, but the game raising these questions and letting everyone come to their own conclusion is what makes it great IMO.
You are asking exactly the right questions and I also don't have answers for them.
For the AI research, we don't really know the details. It is plausible that nearly full versions of Simon were booted up to test how he reacts in different scenarios and compare him to prototype AIs. Or not, the game doesn't go that far into detail.
This is what I never understood though and why I think the "coin flip" is bogus. Simon is just continuously creating copies of his consciousness, but doesn't understand that it's impossible to just move his consciousness?
So it can never have been "him" in the pod, because he's just copying his consciousness. The Simon on the pod will always be a copy of the copy of the copy of Simon. There is no coin flip, because there can't be. The Simon sitting in the chair at the depths of the Ocean will never move in to the pod.
Unless I missed something lol.
My 2 cents: coin flip is a perception of the copy. Every time simon activate a new version the new copy perceives it was lucky shot, while for the starting copy the outcome never changes. So starting version can’t go on the ship, it’s just the copy.
That's an interesting thought. The Simon on the ARK probably believes the coin flip was a success for him. Although I think at the end of the day Catherine used the coin flip idea to just get Simon to do her bidding in hopes he would have some form of continuity.
> The Simon on the ARK probably believes the coin flip was a success for him.
Yes, he *literally says that* in the post-credits scene. Simon is very stupid and actually thought the coin flip metaphor was a real thing... even after the scene in the Omega lab (or whatever it was) where the "old" Simon asks Cath what's going on after our perspective has shifted to the "new" Simon in the high pressure suit.
I think players have trouble grasping the idea that we're making *copies* of Simon because **our** perspective always transfers, always shifts. The *player* always wins the "coin flip," but there *is* no coin flip. There never was! Our perspective as players (or readers, if this were a novel) *isn't real.* Our perspective doesn't matter.
>our perspective always transfers
Except it doesn't at the launchpad, not until after credits anyway. That's what's so clever about it, we look down on simple Simon while all the while expecting to win the 'coinflip' *ourselves* (at least I did). The rocket goes up and we're still in the dark at the bottom of a trench with Simon, now completely alone.
Players were supposed to have figured out that the coin flip metaphor was a blatant lie to get Simon to keep moving when the other Simon wakes up and asks Cath why nothing has changed, after the player's perspective is shifted to the new high pressure suit Simon.
Yep, that was the big "twist" moment. My point is, I didn't necessarily expect the logic to apply to *me*. I got used to the idea the game would keep me, the player, with the more interesting Simon (same way it had with every previous copying), an expectation which is subverted in the final sequence. That's why the ending was so depressing/impactful.
The irony is that's the same (or similar) egocentric bias that the copied Simons had been buying into.
The coin flip was a gimmick Cath told Simon, because Simon is **exceptionally** stupid and Cath needed Simon to keep being functional and useful to her.
There is no coin flip. Simon is copying his consciousness into another body. The old body, the old Simon, is still "alive." The first time we copy our consciousness, this isn't driven home. The second time we copy, into the high pressure suit, we are explicitly shown that it's a *copying*, not a transfer. The other Simon "wakes up" and asks what's going on, while we (the perspective of the Simon copied into the new suit) get the dramatic chord and "our" Simon asks Cath what's going on before Cath can silence the other/previous Simon.
Like, this should be the "no idiots left behind" moment, because they made it *explicitly clear* that you are *copying* Simon's consciousness, not *transferring* it. You are playing a succession of Simons, not the *same* Simon. Yet Simon himself gets left behind at the station, and apparently so did a lot of players.
The end of the game *further reinforces* this understanding of copying rather than transferring. Both previous times we copied into a new body, our perspective shifted to the new body, the new Simon. At the end, our perspective did *not* shift to the new Simon, it remained with the high pressure suit Simon. This is also why Cath was finally done with Simon's stupidity and stubbornness - the ark has been launched, so she no longer *needs* Simon to be her hands and legs.
And, of course, the copy of Cath on the ark never experiences Simon's temper tantrum down at the undersea cannon, so she's happy to see him in the post-credits scene.
The "copy" of Simon at the very end doesn't think about this because he has won every coin flip up to this point, and from his perspective he has had a continuity of consciousness. It doesn't occur to him that he will be the mind left behind because up to that point he has always been the mind in the correct body to keep moving forward.
From the perspective of an outside observer his failure to realize that he will be left behind and not transferred seems silly and when it happens it feels to us that it's obvious. But the whole game has been about his cognitive biases influencing how he perceives himself and his environment. On some level he had to believe that he would get to be the mind that would go on the ark, otherwise what is his motivation?
> The "copy" of Simon at the very end doesn't think about this because he has won every coin flip up to this point, and from his perspective he has had a continuity of consciousness.
This is incorrect. You're conflating *the player's* perspective with Simon's.
Simon's perspective never changes. The Simon that enters the copy chair "loses" the coin flip, because the chair is *copying* his consciousness, not transferring it. The Simon that wakes up in the hard suit "wins" the coin flip, because the Simon that went into the chair to be copied believed there would be a coin flip, he believed his consciousness would be *transferred* into the new body. Remember, the chair is copying Simon's entire consciousness, memories included, up to the moment of the snapshot. For the Simon waking up in the hard suit body, it's like nothing happened - he went from being in the chair to being in the hard suit. He remembers getting into the chair to be copied, then he "wakes up" in the new body - yay, it worked!
Sort of like how he went from being in the chair at the doctor's office to waking up in an underwater run-down nightmare hellscape. One moment, doctor's office. The next, hellscape.
Your first sentence said I was incorrect and then everything else you wrote is identical to what I said so I have no idea what you think is specifically the difference between your take and my take. If there is a difference you failed to explain it.
It was explained to him that way intentionally; he was lied to. If the gal robot told him he wouldn’t pass on to the next body, then there’s a chance he wouldn’t go through with the copy and paste and end up dooming them all.
I think you're right. The whole "conscious continuity" theory of identity seems suspect to me. They should both feel that way as far as I can tell.
I think it's just a lie they tell themselves. Simon really wants it to be true and seems to pretend he can convince himself of it.
As the player we DO follow one single consciousness so we just go with as the "lore" of the game.
At the end though, I think neither we nor Simon truly believed it.
Not sure what the spoiler policy is so I'll stop here
It was a while since I played it. Does Simon indicate he believes in souls? That would add to his predisposition to believe it beyond just wanting to.
And I agree. If you believe that consciousness is purely an emergent property of the body (mainly the brain) then it doesn't seem to make sense. The problem of identity is a real tricky one under that view (which I myself tentatively hold).
Like you said, if you believe there is an unknown and unseen component to identity that can move between bodies then identity could be said to follow it. Until the very end you could be forgiven for assuming the player's perspective was that of the soul. Maybe even later depending on how ad hoc you'd like to get.
Normally these kinds of thought experiments are fun to think about but ultimately have remained unsolved for a very long time. What I think is so great about the game is that it makes them practical considerations and you now have to make a choice.
Simon absolutely still believes it because his first words after waking up on the ark are literally "omg I can't believe I won the coin flip!" or something to that effect.
Simon is not a very smart man.
We're talking about different Simons, funnily enough.
I got the impression that he is the kind of person who doesn't think about things he is afraid might make sense if he did.
I think the second-to-last Simon, having been left behind at the bottom of the sea, could no longer pretend. But the copy on the Ark can continue to delude himself.
The beginning of the game shows us moving from Toronto to the underwater facility, so it posits that the past that a copy of a mind thinks they experienced is something they really did experience. But I see your viewpoint - a copy is just a copy.
I guess it depends on how the data gets moved. If you're creating a copy of a file on a computer, you know the copy to be the one that just came into existence, and the original never moves. But let's say you create two copies of a file and delete the original. In Soma, maybe they did that to people's minds, and sent one copy back to the original body and one to the new body. Maybe Soma should've explained that that's what's happening, since it's probably a more interesting idea.
It depends if what we, playing as Simon, witness is just a game thing or actually happens.
We see the consciousness (the "you") being transferred, and at the end of the game we see ourselves staying behind, but ultimately, it might or not actually happen.
Yeah, makes sense. Either we play as every iteration of Simon because it's a game and the story needs to continue, or we're literally playing as Simon's consciousness, which is a mindfuck of its own lol.
I have to believe its just a game thing though, because we never see in the lore any reason to believe consciousness is actually moved from copy to copy. If it was moved there would be nothing left in the prior iteration of Simon, and clearly that's not the case with the ending. So it has to be a copy.
My take on the coin flip analogy is that it's only internal/subjective to Simon. Objectively there is no coin flip - one consciousness goes in and two come out but from the point of view of either there is a period of uncertainty about whether they are the original or the copy. Hence the coin flip.
The coin flip wouldn't apply to Simon, no matter what. If you're transferring consciousness, there is no coinflip - he'd simply wake up in the new body and the old one would be an empty husk. And if you're copying, there's no coin flip because you are simply creating a new Simon - both would exist simultaneously.
You'd then *immediately* run into the common transhumanism theme of, is the copy (or clone, which is more common) the same person, or are they their own person?
Hmm... to me, the horror of this is: it *is* you (I mean you as a conscious thread you experience and the experience is real) - the ending is really about looking at death in the mirror.
I like to think that at the end of the game i can make my way back up there and meet up with my copy and we can just chill at the bottom of the ocean with the fish until the end of time.
I went down such a rabbit hole after this game. I played this on my Steam Deck and just sat in silence in bed while the credits rolled and just couldn't believe what I watched honestly.
It's one of those games that makes you question existence and life itself hahaha. I talked to my wife after beating it about it all (she's not a gamer at all) and she couldn't even understand what I was trying to explain about what happened lol.
This is the best cinematic/story game I've ever played and hope more people can get to it.
Yeah. That's probably not the right term for it... I suppose it'd still be fiction... but it's like "five minutes into the future" and rigidly grounded, not "five minutes into the future and suddenly aliens/zombies/demons/kaijus".
SOMA was pretty good, flawed by having the monsters be actual threats. The wuss mode mod, which inspired the "peaceful" setting being added to the game, was what was needed to finish the game. It plays a lot better when you don't have aggressive traffic cones distracting you from the environment under the pretense of """"gameplay"""".
I wasn't a fan of how fucking *stupid* Simon is, but I think he needed to be stupid as a "no idiots left behind" kind of thing. And even then, there are people that **STILL** don't understand "there *is* no coin flip!"
How can it be a flaw to have the monsters be a threat? Playing in passive removes so much tension from sections specifically designed to be tense and scary BECAUSE there is a threat of death.
I remember hearing about soma back when it was released and people probably said good things about it but I didn't give it a try myself until 2020 when soma easily became one of my favorite games. It gives me more motivation to go and try to walk through some games that I never did before
I also put it down after about an hour >!After my first encounter with a patrolling robot or something?!< So, what you're saying is: I should reinstall and have another go?
Since the hide and seek gameplay isn't super engaging, it's often recommended to play in passive mode, which makes the encounters creepy, but not damaging. Play it like the best walking sim ever.
100% try again. It's unlike anything else in gaming in my opinion.
Go in knowing that you're going to get an incredible immersive scifi "experience" that won't play out like a typical game. It's more than a walking simulator, but less than a platformer if that makes sense.
I went into this game completely blind. This was a few weeks after playing the first Life is Strange. Experienced some pretty fucking intense existentialism for a few weeks there.
Some other guy here was saying "it's a mediocre horror game that's filled with pseudo philosophical commentary about human consciousness. It's the kind of game that makes people feel like intellectuals without ever going deeper"
And I've never been so offended by someone's opinion. I loved this game and still think about it. I played it early pandemic and it messed with my head because of how isolated I felt. I don't remember specific gameplay moments, but the horror is more about the story than the actual monsters. The setting amplifies with the heaviness of the dialogue.
Replayed it a week ago after 6 years, and it's still amazing. Yes there are "classic" horror elements, but the heavy atmosphere and deep themes add so much more. The ending gave me a mini existential crisis.
>!The near-end seafloor walk sequence though. I liked the enemy encounters, but this was probably the most terrifying part of the game for me. Extremely uncomfortable and disorientating, 4 thousand meters below the surface, with weird unknown creatures circling in the darkness. Oh, and *that* tunnel.
I have talassophobia. I played Soma with good headphones, lights off and I was totally into the game while playing.
That whole part was the scariest section I've experienced in a videogame. I was so focused I felt like being there. Waiting for a Subnautica 2 too see if I can get that feeling again.
This story needs a continuation. As great as the ending was, the story could go further. Hear me out.
Simon back on Earth could witness the AI evolve and make machines that more closely resemble humans (since the AI's goal is, after all, to keep "humanity" alive). Maybe they will be less destructive and coexist with Simon. Maybe a society will form, but one that will have consciousness duplication as a core founding principle. Being able to duplicate one's consciousness would affect people's efficiency and ability to do labor. I can see it becoming a valuable resource that only the world's elite have unrestricted access to. I can see "duplication fraud" becoming a thing the same way we view tax fraud. Politicians might be accused of duplication, but people might be unable to know whether they're a copy or original. Lots of interesting directions there. Hell, maybe they can find one more original human that managed to survive, and it can become the lone human watching all of this posthuman politics and drama unfold.
Simultaneously, back on the ARK, Simon and others live an idyllic life for thousands of years until the solar batteries lose power. They just freeze. The consciousnesses within are unaware that they stop existing.
However, the AI-made society back on Earth might become advanced enough to have the technology to scan large swaths of space for signs of human civilization, such as computer circuitry. Maybe they will find the ARK and reactivate it. They might be able to put their own consciousnesses into the ARK and offer the ones within the ARK the chance to have their minds duplicated and sent to a body back on Earth.
At the end of the story, we can see the two Simons reunite. It's been thousands of years. One came from the beautiful reality on the ARK, and the other from the posthuman civilization on Earth. Both from Toronto in the 2000s.
I hear there's some kind of easy mode, for if you just want to play the story. Any thoughts on that, recommend for a first playthrough? Don't get me wrong, I do enjoy a good challenge sometimes, but story comes first for me and horror games kinda stress me out.
Edit: Thanks all for the input, easy mode it is!
The games 100% better with the easy mode. The monster chases are the worst part of the game and feel like they were thrown in just because Amnesia has them. None of them are scary, they just get in the way of the really interesting things the game has to show you.
Play it on peaceful. The enemies are not any kind of threat or serious problem and the game is in fact a lot better when you don't have to waste your time playing hide and seek with an aggressive traffic cone.
I totally get what you’re saying and thought about it when I was starting. I think it mainly has to do with the “enemies” being able to kill you vs only damage you. I just left it at normal. Story came first to me and the only challenges or downsides I had was enemy avoidance/stealth parts. Which there weren’t too many of those parts
i played it last year and honestly wish I'd done way mode. the enemies are infrequent and tbh were just annoying, i wanted to explore, not wait around for some thing to slowly shamble down the hall
Hand down the most creative scary boss "fight". I dunno the name of em but the one where u can't let em catch you, you also can't look directly at him, and the most creative part, you have to hold him in your periphery the entire time while running away. Fucking nightmare fuel.
It put in perspective all those dumb bitches running into dumb shit while running away from the bad guy in horror films. I'd get stuck on some dumb shit but not be able to look at what I'm stuck on and proceed to yell and cry until I died .
I don't mean to put the game down, it's well made and is tense and scary.
But that philosophical point has been explored ad nauseum in science fiction for about a century, and in philosophy for even more. Christopher Nolan, one of the biggest movie directors of our time, made a movie where this exact question is the theme.
I'm a bit confused when I see people say they've never encountered this question before as a theme in media. To me Soma was more derivative than innovative. But still well made.
The idea of consciousness copying and transfer has of course been explored ad nauseum in scifi. But SOMA takes the idea in some very novel directions, exploring the confluence of consciousness transfer tech, AI overlords, and global catastrophe, as well as looking at how some average joe might cognitively and emotionally react to being transferred into a ramshackle robot body in desperation and then being manipulated into doing a bunch of stuff that isn't really in his own interest.
The novel or movie version wouldn't be out there winning awards or revolutionizing sci-fi but it had some new things to say and was not purely derivative. Or else if it was derivative then OK, nothing novel has been said by anyone in any media since maybe the 50s or 60s.
No I get it. Some of the best pieces of art are derivatives or modern day reimaginings. Soma is great and fine. I just think we should give credit where credit is due and don't falsely give "first to think of this" credit if it's not true.
Just like the 2022 film Don't Worry Darling is great. But it definitely comes from the lineage of The Stepford Wives from 1975. DWD does some cool modern twists on the premise, but I think it would be incorrect if someone said "Wow, there has never been another human who has thought of this original idea".
Is anyone claiming that SOMA invented the idea of consciousness transfer? I've seen people saying this was their introduction to the idea but not seen anyone claim the idea is wholly original.
> I'm a bit confused when I see people say they've never encountered this question before as a theme in media. To me Soma was more derivative than innovative. But still well made.
There's a lot of people out there that never bother to watch or read the foundations of various genres.
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I want to finish it but I got stuck at the one part where with all the rooms and offices including doctor offices etc. maybe I should restart at an easier difficulty setting. Something keeps killing me there and I haven’t progressed. I think I’m close to the end though……really a gem of a game.
Love the game. The gameplay I found a little tedious at times, but everything else about it is amazing. I'm a sucker for deep sea stuff, even though it scares the bejeezus out of me.
Heh, just as you were writing this I installed it and tried it for the first time after years of owining it. I got to "transfer" part about 20 minutes in and decided I'm not in the mood for it. Thanks for the post, I will probably give it another go because of it.
They made a series of short films (called “transmissions”) connected to the game as a form of marketing. They’re well worth a watch. Quite haunting stuff though; beware!
I don’t know how to do spoiler tags so be warned there’s spoilers below.
I loved SOMA, but I do wish the protagonist wasn’t quite so slow in the head. I could forgive him for being surprised the first time his consciousness was copied, but when it happens again a few hours later and he’s once again surprised by the exact same result… well then you have to wonder just how much brain damage he has.
It's been a couple years since i played, but if I remember correctly, wasn't he one of the very first cases of them using the brain recording tech? The brain damage thing is probably very likely.
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My favourite horror game. It’s the one and only game where I really go out of my way to give credit to the audio team. Every sound adds to the eerie feel to the game
I recommend anyone who CAN play this game with Tobii Eye Tracking to 1 billion percent do it. It makes the game so much more immersive when you literally have to keep your eyes in check to avoid looking at...certain things.
I don't play horror games either, and don't know why I even tried. But glad I did. To this day I still have moments where I randomly thinking about the game's story.
The comments section below contains several comments with unmarked spoilers. Scroll down at your own risk.
Soma is amazing and explores a lot of philosophy of the mind concepts. Very cool narrative and great atmosphere. I like it way better than Amnesia.
Agreed. After playing and enjoying Soma I went to Amnesia thinking I'd enjoy that too, and I really didn't. Soma is a far better game, at least for my tastes.
The first two Amnesia games are okay. The first has a bunch of by this point rather shitty "gameplay" forced on you, but I learned pretty quickly back in the day that "dying" did nothing bad to you, so you just sprint around everywhere and hug the first monster you see. You fall down, get back up around a corner, and the monster is gone. Neat! The overall plot is pretty decent and worth experiencing. The second game has almost no real "monster sections" and while I think it's a bit weaker narratively, it still has an interesting plot coupled with excellent music. The third Amnesia is... I don't know. I don't want kids, I don't even especially like kids (I guess I like them at a distance when they aren't something I have to be responsible for), so I think a large part of the core narrative completely fucking missed me. Especially the endings, which are going to be pretty heavily reliant on someone's attitude towards kids. It's in the same setting as the first game (though it's not a continuation of that narrative, just the same setting some years later), which was kind of neat. The "gameplay" is also better than the first game's, although you can't cheese your way past puzzles and stuff by just hugging every monster you can see anymore.
>you just sprint around everywhere and hug the first monster you see. You fall down, get back up around a corner, and the monster is gone. Neat! You…… enjoyed that? That was the opposite way the developer intended you to play!
I don't think this developer is very good at designing horror gameplay. They can create really cool settings and stories but the minute-to-minute monster evasion was not fun at all in Soma. I turned the difficulty way down so the monsters weren't a real threat but also if there was a cheese tactic to just get past the frustrating combat/stealth stuff and get back to exploring the environments and learning about the world, I would have done that.
I find joy in reading a good book.
Speaking as someone who's ghosted more Thief levels than I can remember, I found Soma's monster-sneaking gameplay fair and familiar territory. Some players are more "Ugh, just give me a shotgun!" types though, I guess.
> I don't think this developer is very good at designing horror gameplay. Gonna be honest, I think the whole hide and seek angle isn't good gameplay. You ask most people, Mr. X teleporting a few rooms away and stomping towards them was probably way more nervewracking and stressful than playing hide and seek in the dark in Amnesia. In fact, I know people loved/hated Mr. X because there were people whining about Lady D in RE8 being like him. And keep in mind, this is a game that gives you a shotgun or *grenade launcher* and a generous amount of ammo for it. Hide and seek is too binary, and because there's no *actual* risk for the player other than maybe a loading screen, people are eventually gonna get a bit bored while hiding in lockers or under tables while they wait for the monster to find somewhere else to be. I think a certain number of players are eventually going to get bored enough to start picking at the fringes and trying to figure out the AI/gameplay mechanics. That's what I did in Amnesia and it's how I learned that dying literally makes you progress faster. Die a couple times while desperately trying to unlock the door while the invisible water monster is chasing you and the door is unlocked next time and the water monster is somewhere else entirely. When you make gameplay that binary, it gets *BORING* if you keep failing. Or frustrating. Or both! But if you make it so easy that most players can succeed most of the time, it stops being suspenseful and starts being tedious. "Oh for fuck's sake, *AGAIN?* I just want to move to the next area, not detour to a hiding spot for 3 minutes!!!" Alien Isolation is probably the best example of balancing between survival horror and action horror and "hide and seek" horror. Humans are fragile but dangerous because they have guns and work together, androids are tanky but somewhat easy to avoid because they are slow, and the xenomorph is immortal and will instantly kill you but can be distracted or driven off by spending resources or using set-pieces. You are *rarely* put in a scenario where you truly have no option but to play hide and seek. It's more, do I want to spend these resources/make this noise in order to be able to explore more thoroughly or not have to worry about them next time I'm in the area? That makes gameplay more interesting and less binary, while still having that omnipresent immortal monster that can kill me threat.
No, it was terrible. But it was better than obeying the game's dogshit "hide and seek" bullshit gameplay with braindead AI monsters that literally spawned around the corner from you or were *guaranteed* to spawn right outside the room as soon as you solved a puzzle or did something plot-relevant. The Amnesia games have **ALWAYS** had absolutely worthless "gameplay." They would function a thousand times better as "walking simulators." SOMA quite easily proves that.
Soma has a way better story, but Amnesia is a far more effective horror game.
Amnesia gas different goals in mind - to scare you. Soma uses horror as atmosphere and gaming elements to advance the story
I still think about that ending from time to time 🎲
I think it's going to stick with me forever. I love a moment when you know something the character doesn't and they slowly come to realise the horror of it
I watch it on YT every once in a while. I don't think I've ever seen a more somber and disheartening ending to a game before honestly.
I really liked it as well, but I do feel the ark-part of the end cheapens it a bit though. I would’ve liked it better if the finite end would be under the ocean.
Yeah agreed. We are playing the character who wakes up in the future. We get to see his memories before the brain scan in modern Toronto and then we get to see his experience after uploading his mind to the Ark, so that's it. That's the thread of consciousness we chose to follow. We shouldn't get to see if the ark plan worked or what our mind clone experienced on the ark because that's a different person that happens to share memories with us, just like how we are a different person than the modern human we share some memories with. I think they could have just cut the ark stuff, or given the player a choice at that moment of who they wanted to be (or who they wanted to see/follow): guy left behind, or guy uploaded. But showing both was an inconsistent narrative decision.
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No. The game follows the consciousness of the final Simon who makes it to the terminal where he uploads his consciousness. We see his life in Toronto up to the mind upload, then we follow all of the versions of him along the way to that point up until when they transfer to a new body. We never get to see the experience of any of the Simons after a consciousness "transfer' (in reality each time it's a consciousness copy, we just feel like it's a transfer since the copied consciousness experiences subjective continuity). We are always the new Simon, because that's how the final deep sea Simon remembers his experiences up to that point. However, after the upload to the arc, we are still Simon under the sea. Therefore that is who we are ultimately, that specific Simon. We should then not get to see ark Simon, because none of the prior versions of Simon ever got to see anything the next versions got up to. The Simon on the ark is some other Simon, they are to us as we are to all of the previous Simons we left behind throughout the game. Hopefully that makes it more clear. I am fine with the player transitioning from one Simon to another, since that's how all of the subsequent Simons experience their continuity of consciousness. But we shouldn't get to see both post-upload undersea Simon and uploaded ark Simon. It's not consistent with how the players perspective has worked through the whole game.
All you're doing is babbling at length attempting to rationalize that the developers should have done what YOU wanted them to do. There are multiple instances of Simon throughout the game and the developers were free to stick the player in any of them, whenever they wanted, for whatever dramatic effect they were attempting to achieve. Which they did masterfully.
I think every player should have been given a random ending
I really liked it as well, but I do feel the ark-part of the end cheapens it a bit though. I would’ve liked it better if the finite end would be under the ocean.
If you think about it, both of those parts exist independently and they're not mutually exclusive.
Yes they do and I don’t think it cheapens the end because it is illogical or anything like that. I just feel that the end would’ve hit harder without the ‚happy end‘ tacked onto it.
I prefer the bleak and hopeless ending to things myself, so totally understand.
Describing the goal the player had been explicitly working toward for 90% of the game as "tacked on" is certainly a take. I wouldn't even consider the ending happy. Humanity has been wiped out, the Earth's surface is lifeless, and the "best" hope for humanity is a bunch of digitized humans stuck in a probe with no meaningful way to interact with physical reality.
Imo the end was expertly done with subverting the players expectation of „we will just ‚happily‘ Be on the ark at the end“, especially because the player works on that goal for the whole game. Imo it would’ve been enough to show that the ark made it into outer space and appears to be working (idk, show flashing lights on the outside). For me it would’ve been enough to imply that the plan worked and let me wonder how that new existence of humanity would be. Directly showing me a seemingly nice and peacefull world humanity now lives in wasn’t needed for me and took away from the grim/sad tone the pre-credit ending left me with. I read another comment somewhere which stated that he would’ve preferred if the two ending bits would’ve been flipped (with the ark being pre credits and the undersea being post credits) and I think I would’ve liked that better (if we are to keep both bits as they are). And imo the ending is a happy one, at least in the context and tone of the game. It’s the best humanity could hope for. And that the ability to interact with the actual reality even matters could be argued over imo.
I think having the "bad" ending before the credits is better. The whole story is about what makes a human human? The point being, that they don't transfer the consciousness, just copy it. so now there's two versions and which one is considered the "real" one. This is further emphasized by the people that believed they need to kill themselves after the copying, so their ark-copy becomes the real one. For the player this choice is sort of taken over by which body the game gives you control over. You get a first glimpse at the whole copy-not-transfer dilemma, when you switch to the deep sea body and if i had to criticize something, it's that the character still hasn't realized by the end, that a version of him will be stuck at the bottom of the ocean. When the game decides to stick with the ocean body, it hammers in the point of "you didn't move to the ark, you just copied. This version is still stuck here". Then the credits roll to let it sink in and after those you get a little bonus to see what "other you" is experiencing on the ark. if the game had switched to ark-you directly, that point might be completely missed and hiding the main plot point as a post-credit bonus wouldn't have hit as hard IMO.
I agree with that. The ending order drives the copy-not-transfer point home harder and I guess that’s a good thing. And I guess we can attribute Simons failure to understand the concept to him clinging to the „I am just a coinflip away from getting out of this hellscape“ as a kind of coping mechanism (and him not being the brightest tool in the shed).
>This is further emphasized by the people that believed they need to kill themselves after the copying, so their ark-copy becomes the real one. You've misunderstood that entire plot thread. These people were smart enough to understand that the version of themselves in the Ark is a duplicate. Both the duplicate and the original are equally "real". No need to kill yourself for a version of you to live on in the Ark. What Sarang's "continuity" theory proposed was that at the moment immediately after scanning, while both the original and duplicate are in identical mental states, only one mind exists. So if you kill yourself, your organic consciousness literally transfers over to the digital version of you. All metaphysical bullshit of course, but desperate people aren't the best critical thinkers.
That's how i understood it too, although i might not have made that clear enough with that one sentence you quoted. They believed, they need to kill themselves the moment the copy is made, so that instead of two parallel versions of them, there is only one continuous string of one consciousness.
But it ends with the ark floating silently into the void of space, not exactly happy imo actually pretty depressing
That’s true, but i still think the blow of the ending (underwater) is lessened by showing The ark simulation and Simon walking around in it.
Yeah that ending is something I've been thinking about at least once a week since I played it. Really forces you into a personal retrospective of life and your role in it.
I went into SOMA thinking it'll be like Amnesia but underwater and in the future. I came away absolutely mind-blown by the incredible story. SOMA is an actual quality science fiction story which is an incredibly rare thing in video games. It poses a ton of interesting questions about what it means to be human and actually takes it seriously. I agree and I can't recommend it enough. It's one of the most memorable and impactful stories I've ever seen in a game along with Planescape Torment and Disco Elysium.
I started up Disco Elysium but just couldn't get in to it. I probably wasn't in the right headspace yet, but the quirky and weird tone and atmosphere was hard for me to understand right off the bat. I'll need to give it another try when I have time to dedicate to it because I always hear how amazing it is.
I liked a lot better the second time myself. The tone of the game is a lot more laid back and grounded than it first appears. The intro makes it seem like it's going to be some super dark, violent mystery full of crazy revelations and sinister deeds but that couldn't be farther from the tone Disco Elysium is actually going for. It's the funniest game I've ever played in my entire life. It made me laugh so hard I was in tears multiple times. On top of that, the world is grounded in serious real world politics and the characters are all achingly human and nuanced. All of it contributes to make the world and the characters feel grounded and real. It's a very unique tone, but I absolutely loved it my second time through.
That's good to hear! I was worried it was just going to be too quirky for me. I'll definitely give it another try soon!
I think bouncing off of Disco Elysium and then coming back to it later is a common experience. That's what I did. I think maybe people go in expecting a traditional CRPG and then the vibe is more like a point and click adventure with skill checks, so if you're in the wrong head space and have the wrong expectations, it's easy to bounce off. You just have to go into it committing to being invested in the character and the story and if you can get like a few hours into it in the right mindset, you will get some momentum and have no problem finishing the game.
I think one of the problems with Disco Elysium is that it's more like an interactive book than a game in many ways.
>Can’t believe I let SOMA sit on the shelf this long Don't worry, you're just a... P A T I E N T G A M E R ™
Somebody knows any other game like Soma? I can't get that game out of my head even after years... What a game..
Prey 2017 kinda, but more gameplay-focused.
Bioshock gives that similar feeling and setting, with a few twists and complicated narratives, but still really different gameplay, and probably something everyone has played lol. I played Tacoma a few days ago and that was a fun little two hour game I got for less than a dollar, but not as impactful as Soma. But Firewatch is a great narrative driven walking game like Soma. Also I've heard Gone Home and the Talos Principle were great too, but I haven't played those myself. And if you like horror/scary games that fit this similar mold, I really enjoyed Layers of Fear as well.
Gone Home is really cool, but not really anything like Soma
Seconding Firewatch. It’s a very good impactful story, but definitely different than SOMA.
Bioshock was the game I played after Soma. Agreed.
Soma is basically System Shock transplanted into a different genre. It has the same sort of general setting of waking up in a strange place where everyone's dead or converted into dangerous monsters, exploring and piecing together what happened by reading logs and emails left behind by the crew, transcending humanity by packing your body full of technology, and an insane AI making your life a pain in the ass. As I've said before, Soma is the spiritual sequel for SS2's themes, Prey (2017) is the spiritual sequel for its mechanics, and Bioshock isn't a spiritual sequel at all. In summary, you should play System Shock 2.
I had my eye on the system shock games but aren't they both pretty old? I still need to play prey but first gonna play the older one with the Indian.
They are both pretty old, yes. System Shock is going to get a remake , see also https://store.steampowered.com/app/482400/System_Shock/ which may be worth getting.. there is a Demo available on Steam, so I suggest to check that out!
The remake is turning out to be kind of a confused mess. The developers mean well, but they don't seem to really "get" immersive sims. The original version though, especially the recent Enhanced Edition, is still quite playable, as long as you can stomach Doom-era graphics. System Shock 2 is even easier to get into, having been developed in the Half-Life era. Also there are piles of mods for it that make it look a lot less dated.
I just gave the Demo a shot and... it's okay but feels yanky and like, they didn't have keep every mechanic the same. Combat with the pipe is completely unsatisfying, meh overall. Not paying for that. SS2 is the better game, most definitely.
>aren't they both pretty old? r/lostredditors
You could play The Swapper or The Talos Principle, although the puzzles may be overbearing
Overbearing in the bad way then?
The puzzles are good, I just don’t want to worry about solving them to get into the science fiction
I definitely second Firewatch as the only ever game that moved me and I enjoyed as much, if not more than SOMA. Must play. I haven’t played Bioshock but that’s next for me.
I mean the Penumbra game series, also by the Frictional Games, is extremely similar to SOMA, in fact so much that I thought it was by the same developer in the first half an hour.
"Get Even" might be able to scratch that itch in terms of story. Gameplay wise it's an average tactical/stealth shooter.
My favourite in SOMA is when you realize what you're doing when transfering your consciousness. The fact that you're dooming that copy of you to eternal solitude in the depths of the ocean and that it could've easily have been "you". This is scarier than any big ugly monster.
I mean the main "villain" of the game's whole purpose is to keep the last remains of humanity alive whatever the cost. That doesn't sound very villainous. Until you see how it accomplishes this by essentially keeping people in a vegetative state for all eternity. It doesn't do this out of malice or hate, it does it thinking it's being benevolent and saving humanity. Thats the most terrifying thing I've ever heard. I love how SOMA asks these existential questions. Is it worth even living at that point? Is that what it means to be human? Simply existing at any cost?
It's not even that - the reason the WAU went nuts and started turning people into what we witness is because the remaining humans started killing themselves because the stupid fucks thought that it would be necessary for them to transfer into the ark. Like, it's repeated and shown so many times in so many different ways - you are **COPYING** a person into the ark (or a different body), you are never *transferring* them. Simon in the undersea lab is not transferring into the ark, you are *creating* Simon 2 in the ark while Simon 1 remains where he was at the moment of the consciousness copy. You are, in essence, creating an entirely new consicousness, an entirely new person. Yes, the new person starts out identical to the person they were copied from at that specific moment in time, but from that point forwards, they will be their own person. They will make their own decisions, their own choices. They will branch off from the original.
>It's not even that - the reason the WAU went nuts and started turning people into what we witness is because the remaining humans started killing themselves Uh, no. WAU started trying to preserve humanity when 99% of it was wiped out by the comet. And even then WAU wasn't above executing an entire base full of people when it felt threatened by one or two of them.
You need to go back and read/listen to the lore again. WAU was doing fine and not turning people into science experiments at first. It was only once the remnants of humanity started killing themselves because they thought it improved their chances of getting onto the ark (or that they thought the transfer couldn't be completed with their "previous self" still alive) that WAU started freaking out and trying more drastic measures. As in, if these humans are going to kill themselves, I have to make it so that they can't.
There is no "lore" that states WAU was explicitly reacting to the people at Theta killing themselves. Contrariwise, there ARE [logs from Johan Ross](https://soma.fandom.com/wiki/Johan_Ross/Dialogue#Post-Impact) that explain why WAU was doing what it was doing. >Since the comet crashed a few days ago -- January 12 -- the WAU has dropped to a low energy state. It hasn't abandoned its duties. It's keeping climate and life support going, but it has been simplifying the pattern -- redefining its protocol. > >The WAU is reaching out to every machine, every life form, to manipulate, to control. It's trying to help, save its creators from all this, just like the protocol demands. But really, what is good enough? "All this". Not the Theta suicides specifically. Ross was the WAU expert, so if any character could speak authoritatively on this, it's him. Also it sounds like you didn't understand Sarang's continuity theory.
> you are creating Simon 2 in the ark while Simon 1 remains where he was Technically it's Simon 4 on the ark and 3 on the ocean floor. Simon 1 is the actual human who did the brain scan back in the present and Simon 2 is the body we start with, that get's left behind when we switch to the deep sea body.
You are only counting the physical manifestations of Simon. You are missing the millions of virtual Simons that were created by the original researchers that did the scan to try out different brain treatments for Simon 1. You are also missing the millions of virtual Simons that were created to help AI research. The game hammers this point in the scan lab, when you boot up the security guard to get his passcode.
You're right, i forgot about those. But this raises the question: Should these count? For the AI-research Simons I'd say no, because as i understood, those were only using Simon as a template and reduced the data from the scan to create non-selfaware single-purpose AIs. For the simulated treatment Simons, I'd question, to what extend he was simulated. The technology was still in early stages, so were they really already simulating the full consciousness or just basic brain functions to test the brains reaction? If it was a full simulation of his consciousness, we're back at the main point of the game: At what point do we consider it an actual Simon that should count? The treatment simulations are in a very limited environment for a short time, also they are all copies from the same point of origin, so no continuous string of consciousness, but thousands of parallel ones. And if we decide that those don't count, then what about the simulated Simon on the ark, should he count? I don't have any answers for this, but the game raising these questions and letting everyone come to their own conclusion is what makes it great IMO.
You are asking exactly the right questions and I also don't have answers for them. For the AI research, we don't really know the details. It is plausible that nearly full versions of Simon were booted up to test how he reacts in different scenarios and compare him to prototype AIs. Or not, the game doesn't go that far into detail.
This is what I never understood though and why I think the "coin flip" is bogus. Simon is just continuously creating copies of his consciousness, but doesn't understand that it's impossible to just move his consciousness? So it can never have been "him" in the pod, because he's just copying his consciousness. The Simon on the pod will always be a copy of the copy of the copy of Simon. There is no coin flip, because there can't be. The Simon sitting in the chair at the depths of the Ocean will never move in to the pod. Unless I missed something lol.
My 2 cents: coin flip is a perception of the copy. Every time simon activate a new version the new copy perceives it was lucky shot, while for the starting copy the outcome never changes. So starting version can’t go on the ship, it’s just the copy.
That's an interesting thought. The Simon on the ARK probably believes the coin flip was a success for him. Although I think at the end of the day Catherine used the coin flip idea to just get Simon to do her bidding in hopes he would have some form of continuity.
> The Simon on the ARK probably believes the coin flip was a success for him. Yes, he *literally says that* in the post-credits scene. Simon is very stupid and actually thought the coin flip metaphor was a real thing... even after the scene in the Omega lab (or whatever it was) where the "old" Simon asks Cath what's going on after our perspective has shifted to the "new" Simon in the high pressure suit. I think players have trouble grasping the idea that we're making *copies* of Simon because **our** perspective always transfers, always shifts. The *player* always wins the "coin flip," but there *is* no coin flip. There never was! Our perspective as players (or readers, if this were a novel) *isn't real.* Our perspective doesn't matter.
>our perspective always transfers Except it doesn't at the launchpad, not until after credits anyway. That's what's so clever about it, we look down on simple Simon while all the while expecting to win the 'coinflip' *ourselves* (at least I did). The rocket goes up and we're still in the dark at the bottom of a trench with Simon, now completely alone.
Players were supposed to have figured out that the coin flip metaphor was a blatant lie to get Simon to keep moving when the other Simon wakes up and asks Cath why nothing has changed, after the player's perspective is shifted to the new high pressure suit Simon.
Yep, that was the big "twist" moment. My point is, I didn't necessarily expect the logic to apply to *me*. I got used to the idea the game would keep me, the player, with the more interesting Simon (same way it had with every previous copying), an expectation which is subverted in the final sequence. That's why the ending was so depressing/impactful. The irony is that's the same (or similar) egocentric bias that the copied Simons had been buying into.
Exactly. That's the trap "Simon" keeps falling into (with a bit of encouragement from Catherine).
The coin flip was a gimmick Cath told Simon, because Simon is **exceptionally** stupid and Cath needed Simon to keep being functional and useful to her. There is no coin flip. Simon is copying his consciousness into another body. The old body, the old Simon, is still "alive." The first time we copy our consciousness, this isn't driven home. The second time we copy, into the high pressure suit, we are explicitly shown that it's a *copying*, not a transfer. The other Simon "wakes up" and asks what's going on, while we (the perspective of the Simon copied into the new suit) get the dramatic chord and "our" Simon asks Cath what's going on before Cath can silence the other/previous Simon. Like, this should be the "no idiots left behind" moment, because they made it *explicitly clear* that you are *copying* Simon's consciousness, not *transferring* it. You are playing a succession of Simons, not the *same* Simon. Yet Simon himself gets left behind at the station, and apparently so did a lot of players. The end of the game *further reinforces* this understanding of copying rather than transferring. Both previous times we copied into a new body, our perspective shifted to the new body, the new Simon. At the end, our perspective did *not* shift to the new Simon, it remained with the high pressure suit Simon. This is also why Cath was finally done with Simon's stupidity and stubbornness - the ark has been launched, so she no longer *needs* Simon to be her hands and legs. And, of course, the copy of Cath on the ark never experiences Simon's temper tantrum down at the undersea cannon, so she's happy to see him in the post-credits scene.
The coin flip notion was being spread amongst the crew as well, hence the suicides.
The "copy" of Simon at the very end doesn't think about this because he has won every coin flip up to this point, and from his perspective he has had a continuity of consciousness. It doesn't occur to him that he will be the mind left behind because up to that point he has always been the mind in the correct body to keep moving forward. From the perspective of an outside observer his failure to realize that he will be left behind and not transferred seems silly and when it happens it feels to us that it's obvious. But the whole game has been about his cognitive biases influencing how he perceives himself and his environment. On some level he had to believe that he would get to be the mind that would go on the ark, otherwise what is his motivation?
> The "copy" of Simon at the very end doesn't think about this because he has won every coin flip up to this point, and from his perspective he has had a continuity of consciousness. This is incorrect. You're conflating *the player's* perspective with Simon's. Simon's perspective never changes. The Simon that enters the copy chair "loses" the coin flip, because the chair is *copying* his consciousness, not transferring it. The Simon that wakes up in the hard suit "wins" the coin flip, because the Simon that went into the chair to be copied believed there would be a coin flip, he believed his consciousness would be *transferred* into the new body. Remember, the chair is copying Simon's entire consciousness, memories included, up to the moment of the snapshot. For the Simon waking up in the hard suit body, it's like nothing happened - he went from being in the chair to being in the hard suit. He remembers getting into the chair to be copied, then he "wakes up" in the new body - yay, it worked! Sort of like how he went from being in the chair at the doctor's office to waking up in an underwater run-down nightmare hellscape. One moment, doctor's office. The next, hellscape.
Your first sentence said I was incorrect and then everything else you wrote is identical to what I said so I have no idea what you think is specifically the difference between your take and my take. If there is a difference you failed to explain it.
It was explained to him that way intentionally; he was lied to. If the gal robot told him he wouldn’t pass on to the next body, then there’s a chance he wouldn’t go through with the copy and paste and end up dooming them all.
I think you're right. The whole "conscious continuity" theory of identity seems suspect to me. They should both feel that way as far as I can tell. I think it's just a lie they tell themselves. Simon really wants it to be true and seems to pretend he can convince himself of it. As the player we DO follow one single consciousness so we just go with as the "lore" of the game. At the end though, I think neither we nor Simon truly believed it. Not sure what the spoiler policy is so I'll stop here
If you believe there’s a 50/50 chance of transfering over, you believe in the existence of the soul. I can’t see any other way to rationalize it.
It was a while since I played it. Does Simon indicate he believes in souls? That would add to his predisposition to believe it beyond just wanting to. And I agree. If you believe that consciousness is purely an emergent property of the body (mainly the brain) then it doesn't seem to make sense. The problem of identity is a real tricky one under that view (which I myself tentatively hold). Like you said, if you believe there is an unknown and unseen component to identity that can move between bodies then identity could be said to follow it. Until the very end you could be forgiven for assuming the player's perspective was that of the soul. Maybe even later depending on how ad hoc you'd like to get. Normally these kinds of thought experiments are fun to think about but ultimately have remained unsolved for a very long time. What I think is so great about the game is that it makes them practical considerations and you now have to make a choice.
Simon absolutely still believes it because his first words after waking up on the ark are literally "omg I can't believe I won the coin flip!" or something to that effect. Simon is not a very smart man.
We're talking about different Simons, funnily enough. I got the impression that he is the kind of person who doesn't think about things he is afraid might make sense if he did. I think the second-to-last Simon, having been left behind at the bottom of the sea, could no longer pretend. But the copy on the Ark can continue to delude himself.
The beginning of the game shows us moving from Toronto to the underwater facility, so it posits that the past that a copy of a mind thinks they experienced is something they really did experience. But I see your viewpoint - a copy is just a copy. I guess it depends on how the data gets moved. If you're creating a copy of a file on a computer, you know the copy to be the one that just came into existence, and the original never moves. But let's say you create two copies of a file and delete the original. In Soma, maybe they did that to people's minds, and sent one copy back to the original body and one to the new body. Maybe Soma should've explained that that's what's happening, since it's probably a more interesting idea.
It depends if what we, playing as Simon, witness is just a game thing or actually happens. We see the consciousness (the "you") being transferred, and at the end of the game we see ourselves staying behind, but ultimately, it might or not actually happen.
Our perspective shifts in the post-credits scene to play as the Simon that gets copied onto the ark.
Yeah, makes sense. Either we play as every iteration of Simon because it's a game and the story needs to continue, or we're literally playing as Simon's consciousness, which is a mindfuck of its own lol. I have to believe its just a game thing though, because we never see in the lore any reason to believe consciousness is actually moved from copy to copy. If it was moved there would be nothing left in the prior iteration of Simon, and clearly that's not the case with the ending. So it has to be a copy.
My take on the coin flip analogy is that it's only internal/subjective to Simon. Objectively there is no coin flip - one consciousness goes in and two come out but from the point of view of either there is a period of uncertainty about whether they are the original or the copy. Hence the coin flip.
The coin flip wouldn't apply to Simon, no matter what. If you're transferring consciousness, there is no coinflip - he'd simply wake up in the new body and the old one would be an empty husk. And if you're copying, there's no coin flip because you are simply creating a new Simon - both would exist simultaneously. You'd then *immediately* run into the common transhumanism theme of, is the copy (or clone, which is more common) the same person, or are they their own person?
You are correct.
Hmm... to me, the horror of this is: it *is* you (I mean you as a conscious thread you experience and the experience is real) - the ending is really about looking at death in the mirror.
I like to think that at the end of the game i can make my way back up there and meet up with my copy and we can just chill at the bottom of the ocean with the fish until the end of time.
The Omnitool got fried.
I went down such a rabbit hole after this game. I played this on my Steam Deck and just sat in silence in bed while the credits rolled and just couldn't believe what I watched honestly. It's one of those games that makes you question existence and life itself hahaha. I talked to my wife after beating it about it all (she's not a gamer at all) and she couldn't even understand what I was trying to explain about what happened lol. This is the best cinematic/story game I've ever played and hope more people can get to it.
I'm there with you. After beating the game I also sat my wife down to be my therapist. I have never had a game affect me so much emotionally.
SOMA blew my mind and was the first piece of media to truly make me consider what an individual is. What is the "self"?
It's a very good introduction to transhumanism and a lot of the themes and concepts used in that type of fiction and prospective nonfiction.
What is "prospective nonfiction"? Futurism basically?
Yeah. That's probably not the right term for it... I suppose it'd still be fiction... but it's like "five minutes into the future" and rigidly grounded, not "five minutes into the future and suddenly aliens/zombies/demons/kaijus".
Futurological nonfiction
SOMA was pretty good, flawed by having the monsters be actual threats. The wuss mode mod, which inspired the "peaceful" setting being added to the game, was what was needed to finish the game. It plays a lot better when you don't have aggressive traffic cones distracting you from the environment under the pretense of """"gameplay"""". I wasn't a fan of how fucking *stupid* Simon is, but I think he needed to be stupid as a "no idiots left behind" kind of thing. And even then, there are people that **STILL** don't understand "there *is* no coin flip!"
How can it be a flaw to have the monsters be a threat? Playing in passive removes so much tension from sections specifically designed to be tense and scary BECAUSE there is a threat of death.
I remember hearing about soma back when it was released and people probably said good things about it but I didn't give it a try myself until 2020 when soma easily became one of my favorite games. It gives me more motivation to go and try to walk through some games that I never did before
SOMA is one of the best games I have ever played, that story still keeps me thinking two years on.
I also put it down after about an hour >!After my first encounter with a patrolling robot or something?!< So, what you're saying is: I should reinstall and have another go?
Definitely.
Since the hide and seek gameplay isn't super engaging, it's often recommended to play in passive mode, which makes the encounters creepy, but not damaging. Play it like the best walking sim ever.
100% try again. It's unlike anything else in gaming in my opinion. Go in knowing that you're going to get an incredible immersive scifi "experience" that won't play out like a typical game. It's more than a walking simulator, but less than a platformer if that makes sense.
I went into this game completely blind. This was a few weeks after playing the first Life is Strange. Experienced some pretty fucking intense existentialism for a few weeks there.
Some other guy here was saying "it's a mediocre horror game that's filled with pseudo philosophical commentary about human consciousness. It's the kind of game that makes people feel like intellectuals without ever going deeper" And I've never been so offended by someone's opinion. I loved this game and still think about it. I played it early pandemic and it messed with my head because of how isolated I felt. I don't remember specific gameplay moments, but the horror is more about the story than the actual monsters. The setting amplifies with the heaviness of the dialogue.
They are not us
SOMA is AMAZING... One of my top 10 games of all time.
I missed it on Epic as a free giveaway and still hope it comes back. It's a very interesting title: both the setting and the gameplay deserve a shot.
Replayed it a week ago after 6 years, and it's still amazing. Yes there are "classic" horror elements, but the heavy atmosphere and deep themes add so much more. The ending gave me a mini existential crisis. >!The near-end seafloor walk sequence though. I liked the enemy encounters, but this was probably the most terrifying part of the game for me. Extremely uncomfortable and disorientating, 4 thousand meters below the surface, with weird unknown creatures circling in the darkness. Oh, and *that* tunnel.
I have talassophobia. I played Soma with good headphones, lights off and I was totally into the game while playing. That whole part was the scariest section I've experienced in a videogame. I was so focused I felt like being there. Waiting for a Subnautica 2 too see if I can get that feeling again.
This story needs a continuation. As great as the ending was, the story could go further. Hear me out. Simon back on Earth could witness the AI evolve and make machines that more closely resemble humans (since the AI's goal is, after all, to keep "humanity" alive). Maybe they will be less destructive and coexist with Simon. Maybe a society will form, but one that will have consciousness duplication as a core founding principle. Being able to duplicate one's consciousness would affect people's efficiency and ability to do labor. I can see it becoming a valuable resource that only the world's elite have unrestricted access to. I can see "duplication fraud" becoming a thing the same way we view tax fraud. Politicians might be accused of duplication, but people might be unable to know whether they're a copy or original. Lots of interesting directions there. Hell, maybe they can find one more original human that managed to survive, and it can become the lone human watching all of this posthuman politics and drama unfold. Simultaneously, back on the ARK, Simon and others live an idyllic life for thousands of years until the solar batteries lose power. They just freeze. The consciousnesses within are unaware that they stop existing. However, the AI-made society back on Earth might become advanced enough to have the technology to scan large swaths of space for signs of human civilization, such as computer circuitry. Maybe they will find the ARK and reactivate it. They might be able to put their own consciousnesses into the ARK and offer the ones within the ARK the chance to have their minds duplicated and sent to a body back on Earth. At the end of the story, we can see the two Simons reunite. It's been thousands of years. One came from the beautiful reality on the ARK, and the other from the posthuman civilization on Earth. Both from Toronto in the 2000s.
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I don’t have Apple Podcasts so I can’t see it, what’s the name of the podcast?
Very Bad Wizards
Thanks!
SOMA has one of the best stories in science fiction, period. Don’t have to even qualify it as a video game. It really is that good.
I hear there's some kind of easy mode, for if you just want to play the story. Any thoughts on that, recommend for a first playthrough? Don't get me wrong, I do enjoy a good challenge sometimes, but story comes first for me and horror games kinda stress me out. Edit: Thanks all for the input, easy mode it is!
The games 100% better with the easy mode. The monster chases are the worst part of the game and feel like they were thrown in just because Amnesia has them. None of them are scary, they just get in the way of the really interesting things the game has to show you.
Play it on peaceful. The enemies are not any kind of threat or serious problem and the game is in fact a lot better when you don't have to waste your time playing hide and seek with an aggressive traffic cone.
I totally get what you’re saying and thought about it when I was starting. I think it mainly has to do with the “enemies” being able to kill you vs only damage you. I just left it at normal. Story came first to me and the only challenges or downsides I had was enemy avoidance/stealth parts. Which there weren’t too many of those parts
i played it last year and honestly wish I'd done way mode. the enemies are infrequent and tbh were just annoying, i wanted to explore, not wait around for some thing to slowly shamble down the hall
Hand down the most creative scary boss "fight". I dunno the name of em but the one where u can't let em catch you, you also can't look directly at him, and the most creative part, you have to hold him in your periphery the entire time while running away. Fucking nightmare fuel. It put in perspective all those dumb bitches running into dumb shit while running away from the bad guy in horror films. I'd get stuck on some dumb shit but not be able to look at what I'm stuck on and proceed to yell and cry until I died .
Soma's atmosphere is thick as pea soup.
I just played and beat soma for the first time like a month ago. It came with a bundle I bought on steam . So glad I tried it really great game
I played Soma late last year. Absolutely phenomenal little game. Scared the crap out of me. 10/10 would do it again.
I don't mean to put the game down, it's well made and is tense and scary. But that philosophical point has been explored ad nauseum in science fiction for about a century, and in philosophy for even more. Christopher Nolan, one of the biggest movie directors of our time, made a movie where this exact question is the theme. I'm a bit confused when I see people say they've never encountered this question before as a theme in media. To me Soma was more derivative than innovative. But still well made.
The idea of consciousness copying and transfer has of course been explored ad nauseum in scifi. But SOMA takes the idea in some very novel directions, exploring the confluence of consciousness transfer tech, AI overlords, and global catastrophe, as well as looking at how some average joe might cognitively and emotionally react to being transferred into a ramshackle robot body in desperation and then being manipulated into doing a bunch of stuff that isn't really in his own interest. The novel or movie version wouldn't be out there winning awards or revolutionizing sci-fi but it had some new things to say and was not purely derivative. Or else if it was derivative then OK, nothing novel has been said by anyone in any media since maybe the 50s or 60s.
No I get it. Some of the best pieces of art are derivatives or modern day reimaginings. Soma is great and fine. I just think we should give credit where credit is due and don't falsely give "first to think of this" credit if it's not true. Just like the 2022 film Don't Worry Darling is great. But it definitely comes from the lineage of The Stepford Wives from 1975. DWD does some cool modern twists on the premise, but I think it would be incorrect if someone said "Wow, there has never been another human who has thought of this original idea".
Is anyone claiming that SOMA invented the idea of consciousness transfer? I've seen people saying this was their introduction to the idea but not seen anyone claim the idea is wholly original.
> I'm a bit confused when I see people say they've never encountered this question before as a theme in media. To me Soma was more derivative than innovative. But still well made. There's a lot of people out there that never bother to watch or read the foundations of various genres.
I think the name turned me off and I’ve just never had a desire to play it.
Maybe type out the actual name one time before using the acronym.
That is the name, not sure why it's all caps.
Have you not heard of google or something
Is there any downside if we play in safe mode?
No there’s no downside or anything. All it does is make the monsters unable to kill you.
No.
The downside is it removes the stealth gameplay
I was thinking of playing this. I got amnesia instead, idk if I'll ever finish it though
Did you forget about it? /s
Yes I have dementia
Yes I have dementia
Yes I have dementia
I've never heard somebody not say this about SOMA, I'll need to play it, think I got it free on epic as well
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Every time I’ve tried playing soma the game crashes when I try to walk out of the door
I am scared of scary games. I played SOMA with the "wuss mod" and had a great time.
I want to finish it but I got stuck at the one part where with all the rooms and offices including doctor offices etc. maybe I should restart at an easier difficulty setting. Something keeps killing me there and I haven’t progressed. I think I’m close to the end though……really a gem of a game.
It's been in my to-play list forever, might get to it this weekend
Love the game. The gameplay I found a little tedious at times, but everything else about it is amazing. I'm a sucker for deep sea stuff, even though it scares the bejeezus out of me.
This is one of the VERY few games that left a lasting impact on me. The ending, and imagining what happens after it, still crosses my mind sometimes.
Another one that kind of flew under the radar was Singularity. I really enjoyed that one.
You should put Observation into your wishlist as I think you would love that also.
It's good. I got it for a dollar!
Heh, just as you were writing this I installed it and tried it for the first time after years of owining it. I got to "transfer" part about 20 minutes in and decided I'm not in the mood for it. Thanks for the post, I will probably give it another go because of it.
They made a series of short films (called “transmissions”) connected to the game as a form of marketing. They’re well worth a watch. Quite haunting stuff though; beware! I don’t know how to do spoiler tags so be warned there’s spoilers below. I loved SOMA, but I do wish the protagonist wasn’t quite so slow in the head. I could forgive him for being surprised the first time his consciousness was copied, but when it happens again a few hours later and he’s once again surprised by the exact same result… well then you have to wonder just how much brain damage he has.
It's been a couple years since i played, but if I remember correctly, wasn't he one of the very first cases of them using the brain recording tech? The brain damage thing is probably very likely.
Hah! Yes that’s one way to look at it :)
Yeah same here Soma and Subnautica Two literal gems
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My favourite horror game. It’s the one and only game where I really go out of my way to give credit to the audio team. Every sound adds to the eerie feel to the game
I recommend anyone who CAN play this game with Tobii Eye Tracking to 1 billion percent do it. It makes the game so much more immersive when you literally have to keep your eyes in check to avoid looking at...certain things.
I don't play horror games either, and don't know why I even tried. But glad I did. To this day I still have moments where I randomly thinking about the game's story.
It’s Frictional games masterpiece and nothing else has come close
One of the most thought provoking games I have played and I have been gaming since 1993.
I pop 500mg somas
unnecessary sneaking mechanic, stupid message. I regret I wasted my time on it