“Soma”, like many games, can be split into two parts: there’s gameplay and there’s story. The vast majority of games can be segmented like this. What makes “Soma” exceptional is which part it executes well. I can’t remember how many times I’ve said to myself: “Well, the story is terrible, but there’s some good gameplay here…” “Soma” is the opposite. The story here is quite literally outstanding – elevated far from the usual stuff you see in video games, but the gameplay side is a total failure. For me, that’s okay. I can play some games for the story, as long as that story is good. And just because the gameplay is, in my opinion, a waste of time, doesn’t mean that “Soma” fails to use interactivity in any meaningful way. There are definitely moments that are made more poignant because it’s been told in a video game, that simply wouldn’t have the same effect in a movie or a book. I’m not saying we should go dig up Roger Ebert so he can play “Soma”, but this is one of the strongest stories I’ve seen in a game. “Soma” is a science fiction horror game that is not nearly as scary as it may first appear. If you’re easily startled and don’t like that kind of experience, then you still may want to avoid it, but the story in this game is worth your time if you play games for that reason. And that’s the end of my spoiler warning. The beginning of “Soma” proves how important expectations and tone are when you experience anything. Virtually anyone who plays this game will find out beforehand that it’s meant to be scary. A horror experience. So, after the game gets through its introduction and you wake up in the main character’s apartment, you are going to be immediately on edge. You might even ask: “What’s wrong with this picture? Why does the apartment seem so ominous, even though it’s normal?” This may seem like a minor observation – that if you know what genre a movie or a game is ahead of time that you’ll immediately start to anticipate certain things, but it’s important to know for later, when we get to how the game starts trying to scare you. But that’s well after this introduction, because there is nothing lurking in this apartment, or the subway ride that follows it, or the eerily empty office that you arrive at. “Hello? Dr. Munshi?” Let’s rewind for a minute though. “Soma” is a game about a handful of things, but at the center of it all is a man named Simon. He was recently in a car accident that resulted in one of his friends being killed, and left him with a terminal brain injury. This is told in a sort of awkward way at the beginning – first, with a nightmare sequence, and then with some forced dialogue after Simon wakes up. The first few minutes of this game are the weakest part of the story. The voice acting is also less than stellar here too, and the only reason I’m pointing that out is so I can commend how much better it gets as the game progresses. “…Munshi. We spoke earlier.” “The brain scan? I remember.” “Are you alright?” “Yeah… Yeah, just a bad dream… Are we still on for today?” The events here are about Simon going to visit a doctor-in-training that is developing an experimental procedure that could resolve the damage left by the car crash. It’s a chronic bleeding problem in Simon’s brain. The doctor thinks he can use a scanning machine to identify the issue in Simon, and then run him through a rapid series of stimuli. Basically, putting a simulated version of Simon’s brain through a massive amount of different treatments, until one works, which can then be used on the real Simon, once the simulation confirms that it’s effective. You can see in this conversation that the game is still awkward here. This exchange didn’t feel natural, especially given the earlier phone call and that Simon should really know all of this already. Ultimately, it doesn’t really matter though. “We’re gonna do a scan of your brain. Then we build a computer model of it and bombard it with stimuli.” What I want to say about this part is more about me personally, because it was really surreal at first. This game starts out in Toronto – that’s where I live. The doctor here is a student at York, which is where I went to university. I also have a problem with regular nightmares like Simon appears to suffer from, and my Mom died of a brain aneurism, and I’ve had several scans to make sure I didn’t have the same problem. So, even though this was a coincidence, I’ve felt like the game was screwing with me on a second level, in addition to the usual bracing for the jump scares, because I knew it was a horror game. This isn’t important for the review of course, I just thought it was funny enough to mention, because the game got to me a little more than I think it would have otherwise. “You know I have a serious condition, right? You heard about the car crash? The X months to live deal?” “Soma” abruptly changes at this point, and, arguably, this is where the game properly starts. The brain scan commences, and when it’s over you’re no longer in the doctor’s office – you’re in some foreign, industrial-looking room. It’s dark, you’re alone. You, nor Simon, have any clue about what’s going on. This first area gives you a lot of hints about where you’ve been apparently teleported to. There’s some technology that is clearly advanced, despite its bulkiness; the corridors are reinforced, imposing and abandoned; parts of it are locked away. There are some robots, one of which promptly goes crazy and runs away, shortly after you leave it alone. Your vision isn’t functioning as it used to, as you can see here, and you’re able to access memories from some places around the area, like you’re hallucinating some sort of ghostly echo of the people that were here before you. “It’s working better than expected. They’re having a really hard time getting the doors open.” If you’re like me, you’ll immediately guess that this is the “stimuli” that the doctor was talking about. It’s pretty obvious that this is the test he’s running. Somehow, it resulted in this weird futuristic base that is a representation of Simon’s brain. Blocked passages around you are blocked pathways that need to be opened in his head. Something called “structure gel” that appears like black blood that the robots leave behind represents the bleeding that keeps happening in his brain. The corrupted vision and the broken memories you can access are glitches – twisted versions of his own memories and the friend Simon has, along with the simulation threatening to distort or crash if he becomes too stressed out. The game will be about opening all of these pathways, and then defeating whatever personification that the simulation creates to serve as an adversary for the bleeding in his brain. Likely linked to the friend that was killed in the car crash at the start, since he’s brimming with guilt about it. “Ashley…? What are you doing here…?” And if you guessed all that – you are completely wrong, just like I was. I don’t feel bad about this, and neither should you, because I think it was deliberate. There are two reasons why the narrative gives so much attention to Simon’s life in Toronto at the beginning, and this is one of them, along with opening with a nightmare. It’s misdirection, and I think it’s great. It also gives you a reason to accept why you are suddenly in a vastly different place, because otherwise, really, how the hell did you get here, after just being in a doctor’s office? The information you’re finding says that the year is now 2104. There’s seemingly no rational explanation for it. The real answer involves going through the entire plot of “Soma”, which is mostly about the events that happened here in the future. The place you’re in is an underwater base called “PATHOS-II”, and it's more of a research base or a factory than Rapture was a city in “Bioshock”. It has several different sites that serve different functions, and you’ll go through most of these places throughout the game. So, before we get to that, let’s put the story on hold for a moment, for two reasons. The first is that I think the video will flow better if we come loop back to the story after looking at gameplay, and secondly because I want to show a massive problem that “Soma” has, before spoiling the story, just in case this problem ends up being strangely positive for a lot of you watching. This might convince you to play it yourself before I go on to spoil it. And that problem is: “Soma” isn’t really a horror game. It’s not scary in the same ways that a lot of other spooky games are. While I’ve ultimately decided that this is a good thing, it’s abundantly clear to me that this isn’t intentional. “Frictional” was trying to make “Soma” a scary, tense experience… and they failed. This is the main reason why I said earlier that the gameplay in “Soma” is a waste of time: because it’s largely about the robotic monsters that you encounter throughout the “PATHOS-II” facility. And the game tries so hard to get you on edge with the tense, suffocating music, the loud noises and crashing sounds. It tries to assault all of your senses. It’s screaming at you like a nervous dog: “Hey, be scared! You should be scared right now! Are you scared?! You scared?! You scared yet?!” instead of actually scaring you. The enemy robots don’t even LOOK scary. The first time I saw one, I ran right up to it to get a better look, because I thought it looked COOL, not creepy. It also feels like “Frictional” realized they weren’t that visually intimidating either, and used that “screen tearing” effect to make it so you can’t always get a great look at the things and have to fill parts of it with your imagination instead. Again, trying to convince you to be scared, instead of being actually scary. Let’s rewind even further. There’s something that was said near the beginning: “Expectations matter a lot”. So does the player’s willingness to meet the game on its own terms, which, I imagine, is a really complicated issue when it comes to designing a game. There will be people who go into horror games with the specific intent to not be scared, because they want to prove to themselves, or the world that they aren’t creeped out, or are so rational, or brave that the silly game and its silly scares don’t work on them. Or, far more favorably, they simply don’t enjoy being scared, and separate themselves so much that they don’t engage with the game on that level, and play it for the story or something, instead. The issue “Soma” has is that you have to meet the game MORE than half way, in order to be scared by it. You basically have to role-play as the Lion from the “Wizard of Oz”, because even if you ARE spooked by the visuals, and find the robots genuinely scary, eventually you’re going to get caught. And this is the final nail in the underwater coffin that hammers home that you have no reason to be scared of these enemies. Because when you die, you come immediately back to life and get to try again with no penalty. Even after a “game over”, you just reload and try again with frequent checkpoints. The game itself nudges you toward this realization, because at first the gameplay in “Soma” is basically hide-and-seek. You don’t have any weapons or tools or anything to use against the monsters. I’m not saying the game should give you the option to fight them, but there’s nothing else to do with them except hide at the beginning. But later on the game adds a couple of mechanics that really push you to learning that the enemies are simple AI constructs – in video game terms now, not story ones – that you often manipulate or toy with in order to proceed. Like: make a noise to lure the shambling thing to a spot so you can get past, or lure it to a circular hallway, so you can run around it, and through the corridor that it was previously blocking. It shows you that you’re actually FASTER than most of the robots, so, even if you are spotted, chances are you can still get away. These turn the monsters into roaming inconveniences rather than scares, because they’re not a threat, they’re not interesting – they’re getting in the way of the good stuff instead. Two examples are the blind monster about half-way through the game that is in a dark room with a lot of stuff on the floor. The challenge here is not to trip over any of it so you don’t make a noise. That’s it. Really slow and boring. If you make a mistake, you can usually run away and hide again to reset the monster. Even if you don’t, you get to try again immediately if you’re killed. Or how about the Flesher monster that goes berserk and kills you if you either get too close or if you look at it? Eye contact sets it off, so you’re supposed to look away or down at the floor. It’s like the opposite of SCP-173 or the Boos in “Super Mario World”. There is a part where one of the things is roaming between rooms and blocking your path. I got so tired of waiting for its slow movement that I just went crab-walking right in there with it, making sure to face away while I bumped into walls and things, before making it to the other side. Because the game had taught me that this thing just appearing, means: “stop and look away, and then do nothing until it passes”. Not scary – tedious instead. At the end here you’re also forced into an encounter with the thing that has the intended solution of running away, canonically proving that Simon is faster than them. Death being meaningless in horror games is not a problem unique to “Soma”. It’s a topic I’d like to explore in a future video, because I think horror is the best candidate for some compelling experiences that couldn’t be reproduced in other mediums. But it is a glaring flaw in “Soma" that persists from beginning to end. The game is, sadly, more successful with its jump scares, which aren’t that common, nor they that terrifying, which is probably a good thing. Jump scares are cheap and have a misleading name: they’re more like “jump startles”, since that’s all they’re good for. In “Soma”, these are sudden loud noises, things breaking apart, abrupt crashes – that sort of thing. They are the most effective part of that assault on your senses that I mentioned earlier. For the other times, your screen starts to fizzle in warning when you’re in danger. This warning that something was nearby became a trigger for me to be annoyed, rather than frightened. It was an announcement that one part of the game was over, and that it was now “monster time”. “Soma” is split quite artificially like that. You rotate between a clumped together experience of puzzles, exploration and story, and then over to monster hide-and-seek. Most of the puzzles are okay. Some are too simple. A few feel like you’re actually messing with computer menus instead of playing a game, and there is one puzzle which stands out to me as one of the best moments in “Soma”. Exploring is engaging as long as you like that sort of thing in games: more walking and looking parts, with things to find that you can read, listen to or inspect for yourself. There is not an immense amount of environmental storytelling here, although, occasionally the game does do a very good job with it, especially in some of the later sites with the corpses left around. It’s the story told more directly with Simon and another character you meet that succeeds more than anything else here. So, let’s return to that now, with us being confused about how we traveled through time from present day Toronto to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean in 2104. Things become weirder before you’re given any answers or introduced to another character that isn’t a memory trapped in the panels around you. There is this strange mix of mechanical and organic growth that might make you think about the first robot that went nuts and ripped itself free at the beginning, leaving a trail of what we can call “blood” behind it – that structure gel. You discover that this part of “PATHOS-II” is used to generate power. You make contact with someone named Catherine, who is in another part of the facility, and is seemingly safe and detached from whatever catastrophe occurred here. “Oh, what is… what’s happening? Hello, is there anyone there?” You bring the power back online, and, guided by Catherine, have your first solid goal – to reach a communication center, so you can better speak with her. A few things happen here that are important. First, just so you can understand the context of what I showed earlier: this is where you meet your first robot enemy – the shuffling thing with a spotlight, which is a reasonably clever way of letting the player know that you want to stay out of sight, or out of the light in this case. This was the robot that I ran right up to, to get a better look at, and, really, I feel sorry for this thing. It seems so pathetic and incapable of doing anything, really. It’s like the Eeyore of crazy killer robot monsters. You lock it away when you reach the next area and it just wanders around hopeless for a while, I guess… There is another robot here that’s friendly. It’s stuck on some sort of thing that looks like an assembly line. The strange thing about this one though is that it DOESN’T KNOW it’s a robot. “Are you blind? It’s me Carl. Carl Semken.” It thinks it’s a human that can’t get up because it’s injured, and it can’t convinced otherwise, no matter how many times Simon tries to explain what he’s seeing. “Okay, okay! I… I’m just… I’m just gonna be… I’m not seeing it. I… I see a machine, a robot talking.” This part is great for two reasons. The first is that it’s unusual enough to get you wondering about what’s going on. It’s also a little creepy. Parts of the story in this game are much more horrific than any of the monsters, in my opinion. One of the biggest things that “Soma” does right. The other reason this interaction is great is that it will likely make a lot of players think: “How could this guy not realize that he’s a robot? How can he not tell?” Because there’s a revelation shortly after this, that reveals you’re in the exact same situation. “How is this possible?! This isn’t… this is insane…” Let’s address that directly now. How the hell does the game explain how you go from this… …to this? So, in the hundred or so years that passed after Simon’s first brain scan, this technology that the doctor-in-training is testing becomes the foundation for many advancements. Among those are artificial intelligence – although far from what you typically see in science fiction – and the ability to copy and paste the consciousness from one source to another. And that distinction is REALLY important: it’s not “CUT and paste”, it’s “COPY and paste”. Because Simon’s scan was collected in the early experimental phase, it’s been used and iterated upon many times, which is one of the many subtle details that becomes terrifying when you think about it after finishing the game. Essentially, even in the future, Simon’s stored and copied consciousness is still relevant, because he was involved so soon in the project. He’s kept under a “Legacy” section here. A lot has happened in these hundred years, and this is the beginning of what I think is one of “Soma's” greatest strengths. It’s not just about one thing, or one specific idea that’s been popularized in science fiction. It’s not JUST an underwater research facility – it also deals with the idea of what makes a consciousness, or even a soul, and how that might cause problems if it’s placed into the wrong sort of body. It’s not JUST about a central AI that goes functionally crazy – there is this infected, plagued version of technology that’s constricting and consuming everything throughout the facility, like a cancer. And on top of this isn’t just a grim-dark future that Simon wakes up in – it’s also a post-apocalyptic one. This is one of two major events that has caused a lot of “PATHOS-II” to go to hell. A comet has crashed into Earth and wiped out all life on the surface. You discover this in pieces – reading on terminals, mostly – about how the efforts to deflect the comet failed. That the underwater facility was protected from the impact, but now they’re stranded and lost at the bottom of the Atlantic. The facility is more or less self-sufficient, but “more or less” isn’t exactly uplifting when the rest of the species just got incinerated. I really like this amalgamation of science fiction plot devices, and that, in a way, you play as one – a walking, talking one as Simon. A copy of his consciousness was placed into the body that you inhabit here, because the AI on “PATHOS-II” – The Warden Unit that they unfortunately called “The WAU” – has taken it upon itself to preserve all human life, whatever form that might take, in response to Armageddon. Like I said, this AI isn’t really one that’s seen in a lot of movies and games. It doesn’t speak or think, really. So, “AI” might not strictly be the best word for it. It can solve problems and make decisions, but it’s still following directives that limit what it can do. It’s just, sort of, twisted its interpretation of them in response to the world ending. “It won’t let me die. Nothing is allowed to die.” This might not be all that comprehensible yet, because I’m avoiding one part of the story until we reach the next area and meet Catherine. Despite all these different plot points and details about the setting, at a focus level, “Soma” is all about exploring the idea of what it means to be human, and the unsettling implications that “human” might not be the most important word that defines us. “Soma” brilliantly sets up the player to be open to the idea of consciousness being more important than a body, in three ways. The first is that confused robot that we saw earlier, the second is Simon’s perception eventually correcting itself and realizing that he is not in human body, and the third is Catherine, who is a perfectly normal-sounding human woman that you want to meet – another person that can help you, and speak to you, and work with you, who will have answers and can explain what’s going on. And then you meet her, and she’s another broken robot stuck on the floor. “There you are. Upright and everything.” “No, not you too. I was really hoping you were human.” This time it’s different though. Catherine knows what she is, and she doesn’t seem to care all that much. She understands what’s happening, and has accepted it. And the lead-up to this conversation, where it’s properly revealed that Simon isn’t the same Simon we started with, is really great in my eyes. “Have you looked at yourself lately? You are walking, talking diving suit with some electronics slapped on for good measure.” “I… I don’t…” “You don’t wanna think about it? Well, start thinking about it.” The robot thought he was human, you and Simon both thought YOU were human, you thought Catherine was human, and this eases you into concluding that maybe you weren’t wrong. The human body may not be there, but it’s still a person, they’re still alive, still a consciousness. You treated Catherine like a person before you saw her, just like you think I’M human, even though I’m only a voice coming through YouTube right now. Is the body really that important? And that’s the framework needed to understand the true horror lurking in “Soma”. “Catherine? Are we alive?” The final piece here is the player’s goal, which is also not so neatly intertwined with a lot of the things we just spoke about. Before she was stuffed into a robot, Catherine was leading the only project that had given survivors on “PATHOS-II” any sense of hope or purpose. She didn’t start it for that reason, but it became the only thing keeping most of the last humans going in their bleak, isolated life in the water that kept them safe from the fires on the surface. This is another science fiction idea that’s been used before. Catherine was working on a simulated reality that could be populated by scanned versions of the surviving humans. It could be a second world for them to inhabit and live on. An ARK that would be a backup plan if the people on “PATHOS-II” were to die, taking what was left of the human race with them. This ARK was to be launched into space with the intended purpose of flying on forever, powered by solar batteries. This was a romantic enough idea to get the survivors working toward completing the goal, with some taking to it far more obsessively than others. The tragedy here, and what functions as the second important trigger for Simon to be brought into the “Soma's” main plot, is an important detail I mentioned earlier: these brain scans are “COPY and paste”, not “CUT and paste”. There is a good comic by WHOMP that represents this fairly well. It’s a common enough idea that’s been explored in hypotheticals, about being uploaded to a robot body or some virtual utopia. Even about teleporting, or, some people say that even if you go to sleep, your consciousness breaks, and it’s a different person that wakes up. The issue starts here. Some people on “PATHOS-II”, clearly disturbed by the comet’s impact, started thinking about the ARK project as a way out. Some didn’t understand the difference between “cut” and “copy”. Others did, but convinced themselves that, if they were to die shortly after the transfer was made, that they would functionally be transferred into the next world, instead of being left behind when their new copy lives on. This doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, but, considering the situation these people were in, and that the idea of what comprises a consciousness isn’t fully accepted, you can sort of understand where they’re coming from. Sort of, I guess… Their situation is sympathetic, at least. “Konrad killed himself after the scan.” “Jesus, how?” “Uh, maser tool. What should I do?” So, after Catherine scans a lot of people and a handful of them kill themselves, because they think it’ll make them get transferred into the ARK, this causes The WAU to freak out. Its directives are to preserve what little human life is left, and now they’re killing themselves. Now, some of these details aren’t explicitly clear, but the general idea is that The WAU recognizes both traditional human life and the copied versions on virtual space as worth protecting. I think it’s also implied that it eventually decides that the computerized versions of people are worth even more, since they’re easier to protect and maintain. The virtual copies can’t hurt the original versions, but the physical humans sure can destroy the computer ones. “Is this the ARK?” “I think we’re safe.” “Oh, I was so worried something had gone wrong.” So, using its influence throughout the facility and structure gel, it spreads and insures that the humans are safe, by forcing them to live on in some instances, or by experimenting with different ways to give them better bodies by transferring copied humans into robots. Which is why we have people confused about what they are, and think they’re human, or are roaming monsters that have gone crazy – these are The WAU’s successes and failures. Some are better fits to the robot bodies than others, and acclimate better to the change, even if it requires the consciousness filling in the gaps and lying to itself, so it can resolve those conflicts. Which is why Simon saw himself as a person at first, just like the "injured" robot did near the beginning. Some of these beings are also twisted attempts by The WAU at keeping traditional human bodies alive. The structure gel – the black blood we saw at the start – is like an all-purpose substance that’s used to repair or construct things. It can mesh robotics with organic matter, which is how the more creative-looking monster people came to exist. It’s important to know that all of this information is given to you in a steady drip through the first two thirds of the game. It’s not like you show up here, and Catherine says: “Let me tell you the story of my people!” and then starts blasting techno-music. She confirms that you’re not the same Simon, but she doesn’t know why or how you’ve gotten to your current body until a few hours later, when you learn that you are mix of both machine and human. A fusion of one of the dead people at “PATHOS-II” and a WAU experiment. It’s also why you can access those memories around the facility – you’re able to intuitively access the last audio file at each location, whether that’s a terminal panel or the neural implant every worker had in case they got into trouble in the dangerous environment so far under water. It also explains why your vision tears – because it’s a malfunctioning camera, not eyes. What’s unfortunate about this journey to each of the different sites of “PATHOS-II” is that everything I just explained is the good stuff, and I’ll have a few examples to back that up in just a moment. It’s the interruptions that are bad, and it’s not just the monsters, although they are the biggest problem, for reasons I already went into. Ironically, it feels like “Frictional” was of two minds when they were developing this game. There is the half that wanted to craft this really thoughtful, slow-burning thriller experience – so you have some great dialogue, exploration with some impressive visuals, and pieces of story to collect and understand, with actual answers to almost every question. And then you have the other half that wanted an intense experience. Not just with the monsters, but with the train car crashes and parts of the facility bursting open and so many loud noises after so much time spent in the quiet. “Hold on! The blast just pushed us off the plateau!” “What does that mean?!” “If I don’t hit Delta, we’re dead.” SNAAAAKE!!! Which is a real shame, because it was those quiet moments that I enjoyed the most, and they succeeded far more with their own kind of tension – feeling lost at the bottom of the ocean, wondering what might be coming next as you drift from one site to another on a platform. And another, even better version of this when you take the long elevator ride down to a much deeper part of the ocean. An event that carries weight, because you had to spend time preparing a new body to withstand the pressure when you got much further down. And once you reach here, you have the best part of all for an intense experience, when you feel like you’re so vulnerable in this alien place, exposed as you wander through it, hoping you’re going the right way. And it doesn’t resort to any of the jump scares or shoving stuff in your face to achieve that. The reason you’re going through all of these areas is the goal that Simon and Catherine set for themselves: to find the ARK full of virtual copies of all the humans on the base, upload themselves onto it, and then launch it into space. This is far more humble than a “save the world” ending, and more in line with making some last ditch token effort to do something, instead of sitting around, sulking. They have no other options, really. Or maybe they do… We’ll get back to this. “This was never about certainty. It’s about hope.” So, as you try to find the ARK, you go through a series of sections in the game: story, exploration, hide-and-seek, intense scripted sequence; and these keep rolling along until the end of the game with the story having some cool moments, the exploration being more enjoyable than in most games, the hide-and-seek parts being always a chore, and the scripted sections occasionally being exciting, but mostly not really. There are two things that I want to focus on in “Soma” that I think illustrate how the game uses interactivity to give the player a unique experience, or something close to it. Something that I think couldn’t really be replicated in a book or film, or at least it wouldn’t have the same impact. “Make sure it’s all bunched together, with structure gel connecting all of the parts.” The first is the game’s most compelling puzzle, which, like many in the game, is presented as more of a problem, instead of a screen announcing “It’s puzzle time!” This is a little over half way into the game. You need a passcode to unlock the way forward, and the only people who know what it is are dead. Except that Catherine made a copy of almost everyone. This part of the facility has her workshop, which is, coincidentally, where you learn how it is that a copy of your consciousness was available to put into a body by The WAU, when it started trying to create new people. “Cath, what is this? Why do you have a file of me?” “You are one of Dr. Munshi’s templates. A Legacy scan.” You collect the necessary components, identify the right person who would know the passcode, to create a simulation, so you can ask the person for the information. Once you grasp the idea, it’s pretty straightforward, especially if you’re being paying attention as you play the game. For me, I started this simulation the first time without much thought, and it wasn’t until it began to run, and the guy inside the computer was confused and borderline scared that I realized what I had done. Or rather, I realized that the solution to this puzzle wasn’t that simple. “Where did everyone go?” “Don’t be afraid.” “Chun? What happened? I can’t see anything. There’s nothing here.” And so began many attempts, guided by Catherine, to create an artificial environment, in order to convince this guy that he’s safe – that he isn’t in the simulation after all, and that he’s relaxed enough to give over the passcode. This is twisted enough on its own, since it involves tracking down different backgrounds to use to make him more at ease, and then raiding his private quarters for information, so Catherine can fake the presence of his girlfriend within the simulation, so that he trusts her. With a fabricated voice to go along with an equally fake model. “I think we got this, Simon. I can synthesize Alice’s voice from the intercom and use it to impersonate her for the simulation.” But the real horror of this part snuck up on me slowly, with layers that I didn’t really grasp until I thought about it hours later. The game laid down the foundation for you to accept that each consciousness is a person its own right. If you don’t accept this, then you can’t really resolve anything about you – the player character – and your actions. They hold no meaning, no weight, and I don’t know why you’d even continue playing the game if that was the case. If you got to this point, then I’d say it’s fair that you’re buying into this idea: the minds in the robots you find might be confused, but they’re no less real than yours. Just like Catherine is real too. The only difference between her and the other robots is that she’s sane. So, each time you run this simulation you are effectively bringing this person to life – a new version, each time – and then snuffing their existence out permanently when you’re done. For him, this transition from being scanned in the chair to being interrogated is just as smooth and sudden as your transition from the chair in Toronto to the room in “PATHOS-II”. And it’s so beautifully twisted when you think about it… Because you can try this simulation as many times as you like until you get it right. Hell, I thought giving him a tropical beach background would make him more relaxed and make him think that he was in the ARK, so he’d be open to speaking. And each time I was trying something like that, I was, both, resurrecting a dead person, and then killing them again seconds later, before doing it again, and again. Chair to scan to simulation, every time. And the amount of times I did it was determined by how quick or clever I was in identifying what pieces I should use, so he would be cooperative. Each player will do this a different amount of times, each player will bring this guy back to life and KILL him a different amount of times. The deeper horror here is the realization that there must be thousands or even tens of thousands of different “Simons” that have experienced this same thing, which is something I didn’t think about until I was finished with the game. His scan was used as the foundation for so many experiments. You can find old audio logs with the original Simon agreeing to let the doctor-in-training use the scans for this reason. Something with consequences that he didn’t understand when he went along with it. “I was supposed to save you.” “Hey, you got my brain on file. Maybe you can put it to some use.” “Yeah, who knows. You’d be okay with that? Using it for my research?” “Sure... It’s like a part of me lives on or something.” It’s been about a hundred years. Imagine how many times there’s been a “Simon” that’s been booted up and poked at? How many simulations like the one you just ran for the passcode? How many other “Simons” had a far different transition from the scanning chair to something far more short-lived? Or maybe even far longer and more horrific? Something that might be even close to torture while the technology was being tweaked. Even the original intention to flood simulated “Simons” with stimuli to find a treatment becomes terrifying. All because the wannabe doctor here didn’t realize his scan was functionally another consciousness. This is something I think about more than I care to admit, in part because I write science fiction, but also because it’s been brought up in the news a bit lately. Some people way smarter than you and me, have proposed that the chances are fairly high that we are in the simulation right now. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter, because the simulation is so good that it functions identically to reality as we know it, but… well… Think about it the other way. Think of the sorts of things we could discover or mysteries we could solve if we could run a literal 1:1 recreation of our history? If some technology that would look like magic to us, so far in the future, could process such a simulation? I’ve always thought of this as being something time travelers would do – send back probes that could catalogue and record our entire history, to have the primary source to end all primary sources about what happened throughout the entire lifespan of the human race. A simulation could do that. It could also do a lot of other things after you achieve the first one as a baseline. And if the way people have tinkered around with the guys in “Dwarf Fortress” is any indication to go on, it’s a deeply disturbing thought. It calls into question all sorts of things that should be impossible. Just like we were just screwing with this guy here to get something as boring as a passcode. Imagine a more “creative” possibilities that could exist here? Maybe this is too far out there though, especially for this video. Let’s just get back to “Soma”. “I’m sorry, Mr. Wan… Brandon. Goodbye.” “What do you mean? No, wait!” The other way the game builds on this idea is with two parts, but they are linked in my mind, so I’m going to count them as just one conjoined piece. Near the end of the game you have to build the stronger body I mentioned earlier, to withstand the higher pressure deeper in the ocean. Your consciousness has to be transferred into that new body, which… well, I’m sure you see where this is going. Simon is not the smartest person in the world, even though there is only, like, five people left. Some say that he’s been through a lot, and being plucked from one life into another one so alien that to him it may as well not count as being on Earth at all, is enough to understand why he has trouble grasping concepts that the player probably won’t. There is even one of the best lines in the game that hints at this. It’s a really thoughtful take on another, more human perspective on consciousness and what’s happening to him. “I never realized how much the idea of myself depended on where I am.” “How do you mean?” “I miss Toronto… Not because my friends or family are there, but... because I know where I fit in. In Toronto... I know who I am.” The other explanation is that this copy of the consciousness isn’t as well integrated into the robotic body as it could have been, so it has limited intelligence, compared to how well Catherine functions. Personally, I just think the guy is a little bit slow. Either way, this doesn’t bother me much, because you’re not limited by what he thinks or says. The handful of decisions you make are still in your control. It’s worth bringing up though, because Simon doesn’t ever grasp the “COPY and paste” part, to the point that Catherine has to lie to him to make him proceed. She explains the transfer as a coin flip: that there’s a 50\50 chance that you’ll end up in the new body or are left behind in the old one. In reality, you’re always left behind. The copy and transfer are done at the same time and are written into the new body. This is just her way of placating him. In this scene, you actually become a new “Simon”: you go through the same process you did in the chair in Toronto, only this go around there is no time lapse – it’s immediate. “There must be something wrong. Can’t you run a diagnosis or something? Catherine…” “What was that?” So, when you start moving around, you hear the old Simon sitting in the chair, wondering why he wasn’t transferred. You can even go and look at him – look at YOU – the version you just were and are now a new copy of. A copy of a copy. I think that having just been in control of the old version, and then being pushed into a new one, with your control shifting and being taken away from the other “Simon” is a really strong moment for a game. This could and has been done in movies and books. Hell, even I’ve done something like it. More than once, actually, now that I think about it… But I think so much is added to this scene by having the player control it all. It’s a much more powerful shift, because it’s YOUR actual perspective that moves, instead of seeing a clone of the character with the same actor on the screen or something like it, and that the old version carries on without you, and you have to think about what you just were and who just took control of that person away from you, now that you’re not with them anymore. The end of the game has a similar moment that is, in my opinion, a bit less powerful. You arrive at the Space Gun, which is one of the main functions of “PATHOS-II”, and load the ARK to fire it. Catherine lies to Simon again that they’ll be transferred into the ARK just before it fires. This countdown then expires, and, of course, the COPIES of Simon and Catherine get to fly off into space. This time our perspective doesn’t change – we experience the other side of the transfer for this one. WE’re the ones left behind. The game ends with Simon screaming in the dark, just like the other “Simon” we abandoned earlier must go through when he wakes up later. “Catherine? Please, don’t leave me alone. Catherine… Catherine?!” There is a post-credit scene that is surprisingly happy: the ARK makes it to space, you fly off, you have a short scene as the other Simon, who is too stupid to see through Catherine’s white lies. There is no subtle hint that the ARK is corrupted or anything, nothing is wrong with it. At least not that I could tell. By now you should have fully accepted the idea that these people are alive, so this is a victory. A strange, albeit, minor one, since Earth is ruined, but still a victory. “I can’t believe we actually made it.” I don’t like this ending. Not because it’s optimistic or anything. I feel that it deflates, and doesn’t capitalize on the potential of the story. I think I’ve made it clear at this point how much “Soma's” story succeeds, especially in that the true horrors are in these narrative moments, instead of gameplay ones. Conceptually, it’s a fitting end that our third generation Simon – in our line, anyway – ends up alone and probably dead at the bottom of the ocean, and for a while I was happy with that moment of dread being the end of the game, before the tease after the credits. But the more I think about it, the more I wish the game went further. I get anxious when I make suggestions, because they change a lot of the game. I don’t think it’s truly fair to propose changes like this, but after criticizing so many games and thinking about them, I can’t help but do this sometimes and hope that it’s constructive. Especially with “Soma”, since I’ve already said too many times that the monsters in the game fail. There’s another big event before finding the Space Gun. It’s like the end to the other half of the game: you reach the heart of The Warden Unit and, guided by one of the crazy, but maybe not that crazy, robot monsters, destroy the AI. It’s not a very good moment in the game, and drove home to me how much I would have preferred “Soma” if everything to do with The WAU and its monsters were gone, and the story was different instead. The ARK could still exist, but it could have been PEOPLE experimenting with creating robot bodies, instead of an AI. With all of the work required by “Frictional” to make the monsters saved for something else, that development time could have been spent on different interactions with people and sites around “PATHOS-II” that explore more of the ideas surrounding what makes a consciousness. The game could have continued on after firing the ARK for another hour or two, with a different ending, with Simon finally understanding and working on resolving some of the issues in the base, because things aren’t strictly speaking hopeless. “PATHOS-II” is almost self-sufficient, and with the notes you can find in some of the bases showing that they could resort to catching fish for food, you can begin to see how humanity didn’t have to go extinct after all. The main plot point could have been Catherine and the others splicing together new people from bits and pieces of different scans. Simon could be one of the first ones they make from the Legacy section. And there could still be a lot of scares here to explore if some of the hybrid scans don’t turn out as well as they hoped. This would effectively be a way that Catherine tries to repopulate the planet with robot bodies that can withstand the wrecked conditions on the surface. Or the people creating multiple copies of themselves for a bigger workforce, and how different factions comprised of multiples of the same people could form. There’s a lot of cool potential for a story here. Played now, there are moments in the game that require the player to make a choice. Some of these aren’t as clearly presented to you as others. There’s other stuff like that in the game too – the game screws with your head a bit. Corpses will move when you leave a room and come back to it. This bloodied door is closed when you first arrive at this area, and later it’s open, like something got out. Little things like this which are ultimately meaningless for scares or dangers. It’s something you might not even notice. I’m sure there are a couple I didn’t catch. They contributed a lot to the feeling of unease for me, and was a much more effective way of creeping me out, rather than monsters and jump scares, and I have to wonder if they’re still effective, even if you’re not consciously aware of them. The choices you can make involve killing the last human you find on life support (she asks to be killed). You can also kill your old self after you’re copied and pasted into the new body. You’re also given a choice to kill a living robot or a helper drone in one part, so you can salvage a piece of tech from them to proceed. These choices don’t change anything, but they still made me stop and think, and the potential was there for some really thoughtful situations if the story had been built around them. More interactions and decisions, instead of hide-and-seek with monsters. More conversations and goals about finding a solution to the last humans being stuck at the bottom of the ocean, instead of destroying a misguided AI. “Soma” is a great experience, even if I question how successful it is as a game. In the end, I can’t help but wonder how much of it was lost by forcing monsters into the story, like it wasn’t confident enough to stand on its own. Which is a real shame, because, even sort of mangled as it is today, it still managed to be something special. “If not, you still have…” “Catherine? Cath? Hello, Catherine?”
Just to piggyback, Peter Watts, a science fiction writer cited as an influence wrote about SOMA recently on his blog.
A few things I'd like to note though:
Afaik, Catherine did not lie to Simon about the transfers. It was just Simon being ignorant. I would not call him stupid though - he's an everyday Joe from the present, how would he comprehend the precise meaning of copying a conciousness? For a present human the only me is I. Having a copy of oneself is unthinkable.
There is an option to kill WAU, it is not mandatory. It felt like the youtuber thought that it is.
It's been some time since I played the game but I'm pretty sure that Catherine talked about the need for the Arc to be put into orbit because it has a lot more chance to survive in space than at the base because the base will malfunction sooner or later. Based on the degradation that happened so far this seems to be a plausible explanation.
SOMA was great. The audio and video design was top notch and it had an intricate story with depth. It's not everyone's cup of tea but if atmosphere and nuanced storytelling is your thing vs active gameplay, it's worth a pickup.
As inherently flawed as SOMA might be: I love that it exist.
It's just so unique, having lots of really cool places, ideas and setpieces that I've never seen in game before. Or at least not in such a way.
I'm watching this right now and just want to say, watch Joe's videos and subscribe. If you like well thought out long form reviews and critiques, it's well worth your time to at least listen to his commentaries.
If you're looking for more videos on SOMA I'd recommend the 5 part series "Game Lore: SOMA" by Gameological Dig. It goes deep analyzing and explaining the story of the game. A lot of it is very easy to miss in the game unless you explore extensively and pay close attention.
Dude is just too hard-boiled for this game's level of "horror".
I was crapping my pants quite a few times.
That aside, spot-on review.
I think he hit the nail on the head: SOMA really put a lot of effort and care into doing something relatively untouched story-wise, and did it well, but the rest of the game suffered.
EDIT: I don't mean it was intentional.
To your comment about how the game is divided into exploration and 'scary robot', I think this is very true. I think that Frictional games have done this with most of their titles. It's their version of pacing the game. They really enjoy making their horror game build suspense and then still having calmer parts of the game where you're off guard or enjoy exploring. They probably should have made it a lot more unforgiving if you actually got caught by a monster, because I felt it was really awkward when you just get dizzy and the monster disappears, and you get up from the same spot. The health 'holes' cluttered periodically where you stick your arm in felt a bit unneeded. In all of their titles, gameplay (in my opinion) has been the biggest flaw. There's puzzles, hiding and 'avoid looking at monster for your sanity meter' mechanics that seem a bit monotonous and out of place.
But by god are they good with immersion and story. In this department, I would say that they really improved themselves in SOMA. Another thing I wanted to mention is the amount of content. I personally remember that on my playthrough I had just gotten to chapter 3 and at that point wouldn't be surprised if I reached the ending soon. This was a 30$ game at release (If I recall correctly) and the game is really long, and I'm not talking Mafia 3 type long. For it's price point you really get so much.