The Game That Broke Me - A SOMA Video Essay

what makes us human soma is a first-person horror game developed by frictional games released in 2015 following in a similar vein to their prior releases the penumbra and amnesia series somewhere along the way I purchased this game whether through a Humble Bundle or steam sale regardless the icon has been sitting in my desktop for over two years recently I decided to give the game a shot honestly it's figuring I'd play it for a few hours not be super invested in it and finally be able to cross it off my list delete it and move on with my life what I experienced playing it was one of the most profound stories and dialogues regarding humanity the apocalypse and the natural desire to exist but let's start from the beginning soma in a Greek word meaning body which is defined as the physical structure of a person or an animal including the bones flesh and organs now this definition forces a distinction from the body to the soul mind and or psyche and take body this single word beautifully encapsulates and represents the deep themes throughout this game in your playthrough you'll be forced to develop your own philosophical understanding and definition of what it means to have a body really be human ultimately what it means to be and this definition will constantly be challenged and altered as new situations and circumstances occur forcing you to reevaluate over and over throughout your harrowing journey are you okay Simon I think you're bleeding oh that's nothing it's just my brain can't stop bleeding from the accident here take this no that that's for later for the scan it's green Ashley I need to tell you something Simon please don't make this weird no no it's not like that why now David is there never enough time the year is 2015 our protagonist Simon Garrett wakes up from a recurring nightmare a car crash Simon was involved in a blind side car crash and his passenger Ashley Hall died whilst he survived but with complicated results leaving him with permanent brain damage and cranial hemorrhaging with no other solutions working and only months left to live Simon agrees to work with two graduate students Paul Berg and David Munchie on an untested study their new procedure will allow for a scan of a brain to be saved and with this brain scan administer all kinds of treatments without risking actual harm to the real brain one of the quotes from the game we could try giving your brain an overdose of painkillers while running a marathon suggests Berg it's just a computer model we are able to fail treating you a million times over only to find the right way once the optimal treatment has been found that's when it's applied to the real patient however upon completion of his scan Simon awakened somewhere new what happened hello mr. Moochie the remainder of our story takes place in an underwater research facility designated pathos 289 years in the distant future of 2100 pathos is another Greek word meaning suffering or to safely launch projectiles without risk of damaging the payload [Music] including hydrant culture turbulence and deep sea construction overseeing virtually all life support climate control and maintenance tasks across the many pay those two facilities the warden unit or Wow is an embedded computer system or artificial general intelligence however one year before Simon awakens and our story begins at 5:13 a.m. January 12th 21:03 the comment labeled Telos crashed into the Pacific Ocean tell us yet another Greek word this one meaning end purpose or goal the Telos impact ranks is one of the largest collisions ever recorded on earth and all evidence indicates that the surface has gone completely barren and is no longer able to sustain life with pathos to's unique location at the bottom of the ocean providing unparalleled safety for its staff in the distance I can see land according to navigation it's Lisbon and the coast of Portugal any signs of life over hopper it's on fire everything is on fire the flames they're reaching all the way into the sky it's unreal any signs of life over no nothing but a massive firestorm covering the continent attention crew this is your captain speaking efforts to stop the Carnot have officially failed impact is imminent Fury is safe while submerged the crew what's left of it is still okay the rest of the world there's no good way to describe it the destruction is absurd just gone after the catastrophic impact event that wiped out all surface life the crew of pathos too unexpectedly became the last remaining people to exist on earth surely after the Wow's primary protocol changes to become preserving humanity to achieve its goal the Wow uses a material called structure gel to physically manifest itself which then spreads and infects all other machines and life-forms in and around the pathos to facilities the Wow modifies the pilot seats originally used to operate the machines around pathos to allowing them to also be used to generate brain scans of any occupants lacking a proper definition of the human condition or an acceptable mode of human existence the Wow begins uploading brain scans of pathos to employees to robots throughout the station these constructs are bioengineered and placed in trance-like comas completely unaware of their surroundings and what was happening to them in short the Wow determined that the best way to preserve humanity is to ensure that they never die it takes a scan of an employee puts that consciousness into a machine and reanimates their corpse allowing that consciousness to exist in perpetuity part human part machine part structured gel life at any cost jumping back to the current timeline Simon wakes up in one of the facilities of pathos to you explore around a little bit realize that you're underwater realize that something had happened and an indeterminate period of time right before you woke up the facilities and ruins it looks thrashed and torn about and all the supplies have been looted things are broken eventually you establish radio contact with a lady named Suren Chun she's at another site in Patos - she urges you to come find her you guys can connect and she can help answer some of the questions that you have now very quickly after you have that conversation with her you encounter the first situation that I want to talk about Carl Simkin now I had heard Carl before actually seeing him this disembodied human voice begging for help and once I encountered him I was initially thrown back I couldn't quite figure out if he was joking or not for lack of a better definition the robot was talking with the human voice human emotion human inflection human distress there's this machine sort of trapped under more machinery begging for assistance and there is a line where your character says I'm not seeing it I'm just seeing a robot and Carl replies something like get your eyes checked look at me and I couldn't quite tell if that was like kind of on the nose yeah dummy of course I'm a robot but hey I'm still trapped I need help but once you continue the conversation it becomes pretty clear that that's not the case Carl believes he's a human he sees his hands he sees his body his feet he feels the pain and conversing with him you uncover that throughout pathos - there are pilot seats that the crew would strap themselves into - remote control with these robots but there's really no way for someone to get trapped in one of the robots and not realize it as once you're interfaced with a robot there's this very distinct video feed you don't see yourself anymore but that's what Carl sees anyway it was very interesting talking to him and hearing that but ultimately I was like okay well that's pretty cool but I can't really do anything to help you out sorry however the very next corridor that you go down you find the body of Carl Simpkins slumped on the side and that paired with to progress to move further you need to sort of drain power from one of two rooms the room Carl's in or the engine room I believe the engine room if you drain power from that it sort of lowers this barrier that the enemy can follow you through so all of a sudden there's an enemy in this sort of safe space if you drain the power from Carl's room you don't have to deal with the enemy now there are a bunch of signs saying you know beware there's no turning back don't do this on the engine room so I decided okay let me let me pull the lever in Carl's room let me take power from this and then I can open up the exit however as soon as I flipped that lever he started screaming in pain and it really shocked me so I immediately tried to throw the lever the other way oh no no no no it's like put the power back on but at that point the kind of damage had already been done his dialogue had completely changed he was very high GERD he was out of breath he was begging me for help and this was a moment where I just had to look at this and recognize that I was thinking about things I'd never been forced to think about before I've been exposed to before here's a human who is dead who's now inhabiting this robot but sees himself not as a robot doesn't recognize that yes I am a human consciousness unit in a robot it's I'm a human consciousness and I'm still human I don't see this robot body that you're I'm in and just a lot of different thoughts ran through my head okay well clearly you're dead this was just some remnant of a human so you know it's great that you see your hands and feet and stuff but you're not real but as soon as I flip that lever the emotions were very real the screams were very real and I didn't like it I couldn't quite figure out everything but I didn't like it I didn't enjoy causing this robot pain so ultimately I you know drained the engine room and progressed with with the story but that was just a very interesting scenario completely unique and there's so many great scenarios like this that I want to keep talking about as we go further and further through the story progressing further from Carl you soon run into Amy his coworker and the person he was crying out to for help when you originally met him nothing is about to die what happened an accident fixing the power I was going to say that anything I can do if you see masters at Holland it's how the way you okay unfortunately another issue with power arises and you're required to divert extra power in order to get the tram up and running again [Music] I'm right next to you oh not you too was really hoping you were human I was human once progressing further in the story you encounter Catherine Chun however similar to Carl Simkin Catherine is also not human anymore unlike Carl Catherine doesn't seem to mind she's completely aware that she's no longer a human she's aware that she lacks mobility that she's in a helper robot and it doesn't bother her at all your character upon realizing that she's not human starts to lose himself this is [ __ ] oh my god why am I even here everything is destroyed nothing's worth fighting for anymore and Catherine tries to bring him back hey before you go off the rails can you just help me finish this project I was working on the project codenamed the ark involved Catherine collecting brain scans of pathos two employees with these brain scans they would be uploaded into this virtual server called the arc this arc not only would house those brain scans but also would generate various environments lifestyles locales weather effects essentially a virtual world for these brain scans to live in if you can visualize it like the matrix it's a fully fleshed-out world the brain scans don't necessarily know they're in a virtual world this was kind of a pet project she had been working on but once news of the Telos comet started becoming more real all of a sudden it took on a completely different attitude and became kind of the last hope for Humanity uniquely enough with Catherine and I'm not sure it's fully explained in the story she's aware that she's an older brain scan than her human counterpart hey how far did you get in the project Simon asks well this is an older brain scan so the human version of me could very well have finished the project unfortunately I don't know where it is and I just need to double check and make sure it's taken care of so you decide to help Catherine that pushes the story further I expect much more sex if that was the case there's really no way around this African comic killed the planet so you're all stranded don't you say something sorry still trying to figure out here keep at it I'd really like to know who thought sending a Canadian to the bottom of the sea was a good idea which is not necessarily restricted to our digital is this from inside the Ark yes there's some early renders of the world inside looks a whole lot comfier than this place I'll take us there I can move jump swim sort of you're stuck in the door opener the Omni tool I'll just carry you there and you'll show me what to do come on Catherine this is what you wanted to do your final mission let's launch the arc when we need to find a way to get into the abyss can't date the climber without a power suit we probably had to go to seda and pray the dumb bats still working okay so we go to theta Catherine look around what else is there to do maybe there's still a working shuttle train that can take us to theta I got it just have a look around push comes to shove I'll walk there okay don't forget to take me with you I won't forget can I pull the omni-tool out wait wait okay just be sure to plug me in again at some point you got good luck moving further along it's never explicitly stated but in some of the unique ways you interact with the environment as well as some of the conversations that you have with Catherine it becomes very clear that Simon is a robot himself and this causes some existential crisis for him when Catherine says hey we can't get this lift running we need another tool chip and the easiest way to get a tool tip would be to just take it from one of the robots floating around the area Simon wonders if they're different from the robots that he's about to take a chip from he asked Catherine if she could do it kill a robot like that and to Catherine's credit she doesn't even think about it that way it doesn't bother her she doesn't view them as real human beings Simon is the one who's going through this sort of existential crisis and asking these questions similar to how the player can thanks Simon don't be mad okay we really needed that ship we'd be stuck here could you do it kill it robot like that I get attached to them too I'm not a monster but in this case it had to be done he was talking I mean it was delusional but he seemed sincere present yeah well I'm sure it's a volume was he really that different from us it's just beginning to sink in I mean really sink in I'm a robot didn't my cover this already I said no one ever since I woke up and I'm so on just keep suppressing it but my brain doesn't want me to think about it it's really getting hard not to think about it yeah could you maybe hit that switch over there so we could get moving oh yeah sure that's good and then we can start listening to other people when they talk because that's how conversations work what oh sorry I just can't stop thinking about what we've become it's clear that we're no longer human but then how can I feel like Simon how can I feel like anything at all I mean technically I don't have any ears no mouth I mean I'm making sounds I'm still saying things you sure okay your new body most likely has senses similar to those you had as a human and your mind only knowing one way to perceive the world superimposes that skill set on top of your new features so my mind is covering it up pretending nothing's different if it didn't you'd probably be incapable of interacting with the world at all and this dress would either kill you or make you go insane so I've found a good balance between awareness and ignorance does that mean I shouldn't think about this stuff or are my thoughts actually making me go did I tip the balance by suddenly gaining some inciting and go insane I wouldn't worry about it I mean we have real things to deal with saving mankind remember the next encounter I want to talk about is with Robin bass a field service technician stationed at the Pecos to facility theta you encounter her in a robot at the bottom of the sea by itself Robin was involved in the project to get a brain scan however around the time that this project really started to ramp up a ideology evolved wherein if you killed yourself shortly after your brain scan was completed there would only be one version of yourself thus you would guarantee that you would persist on in the arc now objectively this doesn't quite make sense there is a scan of your brain that's going into the arc that contains all of your thoughts and memories up to that point and at that point they sort of diverge there's going to be a human that lives on here and your brain skin is going to in the arc but these people desperate for salvation believe that if they killed their human body they would go into the ark with this brain scan they didn't want two versions of themselves living around they didn't want to persist on at the bottom of the sea in this decrepit world they wanted to guarantee that they lived on in the ark in Robins case she never made it to the ark here's someone who believed so firmly in the idea that once her brain scan is completed and it's pushed to the ark she'll kill her human body to persist on in this virtual world with her friends and family in perpetuity but that brain scan never made it for some reason and unfortunately she doesn't know the difference and Simon doesn't reveal the truth to her she's stuck by herself not in the Ark she never made it no reason for her human body to die and she's just alone now she doesn't feel afraid or fearful she kind of remarks that man I thought there'd be more people in the Ark but this is pretty amazing and you are presented with the option to sort of unplug this robot and let it drift off in that decision to do that can depend on your idea of mercy do you think it's okay to let this robot exist here thinking it's in the ark when it's truly not not really experiencing all that the ark had and not being able to walk around and interact and communicate with people just existing in this cold isolated prone State at the bottom of the ocean floor or hey Robin doesn't know any better maybe it's okay to just let her live in this fantasy for a little while longer Kat what's it like inside the Ark is it like a movie or a virtual reality no of course not you know like real life but slightly better pleasant temperature they're good weather so people in the arc just walk around pretending it's the real world you don't have to pretend it's perfectly immersive and it can just sustain itself yes attached to a pro fueled by solar panels it could survive for thousands of years that's amazing just thinking about the earth being what it is and us setting out to save the final remains of humanity's it's heroic at least it feels worth doing moving further into theta you find Catherine's lab or she would do the brain scans of the pathos to employees in the back of that lab there is another computer terminal if you dive into the computer terminal you'll see there are a few files there one for Paul Berg one for Dave and Munchie one for the corporation they were with and one for you Simon Jarrett if you dive into this file you'll see there is a death year stated in there in 2015 there's some audio logs you can listen to which basically catalog his journey from the initial brain scan being finished to a recovery plan being initiated and finally unfortunately the failure of that recovery plan to help save him in the last audio log Simon kind of jokingly says well hey sorry it didn't work but you have my brain scan maybe it'll help your research moving forward now his brain scan did become a legacy template and it was used to progress the research of artificial intelligence moving forward the idea of the legacy scan helping artificial intelligence and progressing the research sounds great on paper however soma presents a slightly darker twist to this that will uncover very shortly listening to the audio logs also explains why at the beginning of the game when you wake up in pathos to not understanding where you are not having any memories of how you got there that perfectly makes sense if your brain scan was done in 2015 in Toronto Canada you're only gonna remember the feelings the emotions the friends your life right up until that snapshot was taken the model was sound it should have worked it's not your fault Enid I really wish things had turned out differently yeah me too I'm 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 like a donated organ you know what sucks about dying but the crash everything up till now the brain damage you guys everything it's made my life so much more real I started thinking about all the things I was going to do I'd never been more excited to be alive all that hope wasted what's a legacy scam their historic templates bran construction any self-respecting engineer would use legacies anymore but they're grateful learning they come with every development kit so my brain scan turned into a template for artificial intelligence you should be proud so much for that mystery no magic or time travel needed I was here all along waiting for someone to shove a picture of my brain into a suit we hit the power button there we are what are we doing exactly we're gonna have a talk with mr. wanna use the computer to activate the simulation take it easy mr. Wan it's okay it's all part of the scam okay calm down mr. Wong did we just bring that guy to life I mean he's a perfect scan meant for the arc he's the real deal we turned him off in order to progress further you're required to get a passcode now this passcode is not written down Knorr saved in any of the computers around the facility it's passed verbally between the employees however there's a slight problem in that all the employees are dead Kathryn reminds you that she's taken brain scans of almost all these employees and wonders if you can look through the list of the brain scans that she's taken and see if any of them would know the passcode and basically ask them for it there is one such person Brandon and you collect his brain scan and put it in a device and run that program now the presentation of this is slightly jarring and that it's a video feed of Brandon waking up in the pilot chair that he was in when Kathryn originally took the brain skin however there's nothing else he's in a pitch-black room and rightfully so he wakes up afraid scared he doesn't see anyone near him and as soon as Kathryn starts to ask him questions he rightfully so freaks out now his stress level exceeds the safety parameters of the program so Kathryn shuts it down and you can view this one of two ways one hey it's just a brain scan of someone and you're running this sort of program over and over and over okay this one didn't work let me shut it down and restart it let me shut that one down and restart it and you run this program with Brandon several times you changed the environmental data you changed the location the setting just to try and get him to give you the info and none of that works and every time it doesn't work you simply abort that run and try again the other way to think about this in the way that I thought about it especially upon seeing a person there in the video feed was you're effectively bringing this person to life now they may not have a real physical body but this is a true brain scan of Brandon this is a live brains with all the feelings all the experiences up until that point and you're essentially bringing that character to life and killing them seconds afterwards when they don't behave exactly like you'd want them to and this has implications furthermore directly related back to Simon the idea that his brain was subjected to these various other tests to find a treatment plan that would actually work no longer becomes this abstract idea that it was a computer program and they just poked at it until a solution presented itself now it comes across as they brought Simon to life thousands millions of times in this supercomputer and seconds afterwards when they realized this treatment plan wouldn't work they would just kill him and restart over and over and over and over Simon exists millions of times especially since he's been a base template thousands and millions of people has used his brain scan and brought him to life only seconds later to kill him effectively and start over from scratch it's a very horrifying and scary thought now ultimately you do need to collect the pass code from Brandon and a solution presents itself when you enter his personal room you find a photo of him and one of the pay those two employees Katherine remarks oh I didn't know they were dating I wonder if I can impersonate her and get him to give me the info and that's exactly what happens you simulate the lab room that he was in originally and Katherine adopts the voice of his girlfriend effectively you lie to him for the next 10 seconds to get the passcode and once he figures out that he's been lied to you shut that program down one final time now there is an option to erase the brain scans you can erase the data for Simon Jerrod David Munchie Paul Berg and Brandon and effectively remove them from existence and how you view that choice ultimately depends on your definition of morality and humanity and do you think Simon can exist as this legacy scanner is it better if he simply dies with the rest of humanity exploring the ruins of theta for more info on Brandon there are several other rooms that you can enter Catherine Chun's room being one of them as soon as you walk in there your character makes remark about hey did he want a souvenir and Catherine replies no it's just memories here there's a cute little teddy bear and a locker that she had been tinkering on there's another room for mark Sarang the leader of the religious ideology of killing yourself to exist solely and the art he has a very nice audio log explaining his thought process on this did you know that the human body consists of up to 75 trillion individual cells they typically don't stay with us till we die some live a few days while others live a few years we're not affected by their short lifespans and they're replaced by new cells which help sustain our bodies I don't think anyone would argue that we ever lose our due to this process how do we remain the same a continuous flow of thought and perception keeps an unbroken chain of continuity that we know as our self our conscious mind is not the pattern of our brain but a continuous emergent entity based on that when dr. John populates the arc she is capturing a moment of our existence and placing it inside the digital world we'll grow apart due to diverging experiences but for a tiny window you are the very same with unbroken continuity it will live on a fulfilling life no doubt no less William that the one from which it was plucked you are not your body you are the emergent entity that entity just happens to Omni by two places at once for a while if you took away your body you would simply be the only one you can be inside the ark like your body died and continued on digital paradise so you're not worried that there are other Simon's or Catherine's running around out there now I am jeez Simon some thoughts are better left alone and of course Brandon's room now there are several pieces of info here there is an intercom there's a photo as well as a note that you can look at but ultimately you collect a few pieces of data and Catherine remarks okay we have enough info I think I can take it from here I'll impersonate Alice and we can use that to get the info that we need and use it to impersonate her for the simulation we could trick them into feeling safe enough to open up definitely feeling good about this I compiled an ALICE module that we can use so she'll be with Brandon in the simulation sort of I also need to do the talking but it'll sound and look like Alice he's sending you to the news site for ASAP what should I tell him it's alright wait didn't just tell you to take it easy okay it's 1729 over 40 to 12 over 407 wait that's enough we got what we need is that what we are simulations yeah but it shouldn't make any difference you're still you I'm not sure what to do with the data you decide Catherine we just have extracted the cipher from Brandon's data somehow so cruel bringing him back like we did no that's impossible memories don't work like that let's just hope it was worth it the hunt for the art gets sidetracked when unfortunately the ship that you were gonna take down to the ark had already been taken over by the Wow and corrupted to that end you decide to go another route now along the way Simon and Catherine debate and discuss on whether it's possible to put themselves into the ark can they get a recent brain scan of each other and upload that so that they'll exist on with the rest of humanity Catherine remarks yeah that seems extremely plausible the only issue is she doesn't exactly know the biological makeup of Simon anymore what exactly is he to that end he steps in a machine called a compound examiner and essentially this provides a readout of all the materials that Simon is and it's quite a lot he's essentially a binocular and optical lens smashed into the skeletal frame of one of Catherine's ex colleagues Imogen Reed a female in addition to that image and Reed is tied into the diving suit that she was wearing and there's a large helping of structure gel keeping this Frankenstein's monster all tied together with their original plan going by the wayside with the Wow corrupting the ship their only means of getting to the art is for Simon to adopt an even heavier and more robust diving suit and they discuss how that would work a bit of a tight fit can you reach the on switch [Music] should I be worried about radiation how's that gonna work with the suit we're picking up at Omicron you should be able to wear them both in the gym who's that it looks like the basis for your body is one of my old colleagues a standard cortex chip for robots including the data reader and the ah cute or CH has just been forced through the skull what sure she jealous fused the whole construction together amazing staff no no no hold on back up I'm one of your old colleagues well your body is image and read it's disgusting hey don't say that she's my she was nice to me anyway the cortex chip is good news that means we can transfer your mind to the Ark with a pilot see ya I'm half a dead person yes it makes sense think about it all those simplistic minds we've run into just reviving a dead person doesn't seem to work that well a robot body seems to make people a bit unreliable you are the best of both worlds a sound mind on their way to the pathos to facility Omicron to get the new diving suit Simon and Catherine engage in some existential debates Simon wonders why the WoW made him in the first place what the point behind putting his brain scan in a body was and whether he's truly alive at all yeah why do you think I was made why did this AI the Wow bring me here tell me why do you think the well brought me here preserve humanity when the comet hit the earth killing everything leaving a freshman of humanity left a lot the Wow started to compensate its restoring humanity I think so but I don't think we share its definition of human or life for that matter Catherine are we aligned that's an impossible question to answer we lack meaningful definitions this figure there must be a way to know know if this life is worth living you assume you've changed so much I don't know I don't feel so different the world sure does I never realized how much the idea of myself depended on where I am I miss Toronto not because my friends and family are there but because I know where I fit in in Toronto I know who I am finding your way into the Omicron Facility Simon remarks about the very real possibility that he won't be able to fit into two diving suits at once Catherine had been thinking about this and had already come up with solution they simply take a scan of Simon's brain and put him in the new body this causes some discomfort for Simon but ultimately there's no other way around this and you reluctantly agree to move forward with this plan you think we'll find one that fits me I mean I'm kind of in a suit already Toronto proventil now how could I forget okay so we do it again you want to send me to the future no you idiot I want to transfer your mind into a new body what look we already know it can be done we don't need to make it a big deal it is a big deal Kath it's a huge [ __ ] deal there's got to be something else that can take us down there but done Bennett data was the only vessel that could take pressure and you saw what happened then think of something else Simon please you don't have to switch this instant just play along for now if we find something else then great if not I'm not promising anything Thank You Simon what are you waiting for find a power suit I found one of the power suits is a dead woman inside at least I think it's a woman just like the body we found in the Annex she's missing her head this could work in her favor though look for a terminal nearby see if you can put it up not exactly great a material don't write it up just yet remember what we found out at beta the suit you are wearing is basically just a cortex chip working utilizers structure gel powered by the on-state berry pack and a dead collagen read exactly if you think about it we're actually incredibly lucky we found a suit with an already dead body inside yes you're right what about the Wow but thinks do you think it'll play along it's not magic its algorithms a set pattern but I won't be able to deny us even if it was capable of what it's at this point in the Omicron facility where you perform various fetch quests you gather a new battery pack a new cortex chip a new optical lens and some structure gel for good measure once you have all these various pieces you head back to the room with the diving suits kind of mash it in altogether and now the idea behind the brain scan fully sets end if you've been very astute you'll immediately recognize what's about to happen but if you're like me and maybe didn't quite catch on to all the nuances you're gonna be in for something very unsettling and horrifying I can't believe you're doing this it will be fine then why don't we put you in the soup I was gonna suggest that if you refused you'd go without me I need to do this silent this is important I need to watch the dark you'd really do it change body yes if you want to stay here I'm not gonna stand in your way I don't want to tell you what to do won't be like before close my eyes and then and then open them again all right let's do it thank you go sit in the pilot's seat you know it is not photos would steal their soul right what was that why was it still talking Catherine why was he still talking that's how what do you mean you know it's not magic you are coffee to sleeping so I'm gonna see was copied in now you are here just like Simon lived on in Toronto god damn you Kath - Simon's there can't be - Simon's what did you think what happened that you're gonna take my mind and put it into another body like a brain transplant I'm sorry you realize how messed up this is how did you expect me to react to this [ __ ] stop you're [ __ ] disgusting what's gonna happen to him and then what wake up in his [ __ ] nightmare again all alone when we go into the abyss what if what if he didn't need to wake up no no maybe for those of you who caught on the idea behind a brain scan is quite literally copying a file and putting it in another location you don't only have one version of that file it's not like you cut it and pasted it you're literally copying it and putting it in a different body in that particular moment in time there exists two Simons and rightfully so this completely freaks out the protagonist who didn't quite understand how this worked now Katherine tries to quickly sedate the prior version but it is still very unsettling and afterwards you're presented with the idea of sort of pulling the plug on that sedated version do you let the sleeping Simon the character you've been playing as up until this point in the story do you let him pass away in the seat without realising that he did get copied successfully into that other character him his last thoughts being that this didn't work that everything failed or do you let him eventually wake up alone by himself his final thoughts of going into the brain scan not thinking it's working and waking up saying his only other companion catherine is also gone and the diving suit is gone maybe he'll realize that ok it did work and someone's moved on further but now I just exist here in this facility by myself for the rest of my days both decisions are valid and they're left completely up to the player you can simply walk away and let that version of Simon exist and eventually wake up or pull the plug and continue on but both are just really powerful decisions it's that impossible there's some kind of afterlife do you think my place has taken my real meat died like a hundred years ago is there still room for me what about the Simon I killed it Omicron what do you think Heather they're heaven full of redundant copies of the same people there's someone up there and call me an impostor you continue down the elevator for a long time and at the bottom of the ocean floor there's a couple more facilities that you move through but eventually you reach the penultimate facility and in this one you uncover some more unsettling things the Ark is basically right next to the Omega space gun but some of the dialogue hints that the people that had initially been tasked with putting it on the Omega space gun and launching it into space for some reason decided against it at the very last moment rummaging around the different rooms you'll find people in various states of existence some dead and others hooked up to the Wow with structure gel in some form of Perpetual life you also uncover some more info about the Wow people check to turn off all external control systems making a while a de-facto caretaker so far it's exceeding expectations since the comment crashed a few days ago January 12th the Wow has dropped to a lower energy state it hasn't abandoned its duties it's keeping climate and life-support going but it's been simplifying the path redefining its protocol the Wow has started to grow physically it's not just the core chamber all around pathos to structure gel is bursting through the pipes and bleeding through walls I don't know what wire could possibly stand to gain from this but I assume it is intentional the heart of one has claimed such a large part of the core chamber that there could no longer be any question - its heightened awareness not only does its expansion suggest an unexpected understanding of space but also its own physical manifestation within the world the Wow is reaching out to every machine every life-form to manipulate to control its trying to help save its creators from all this just like the protocol demands but really what is good enough where is the line drawn for what is human and what is not with walking corpses do with a group of machines thinking their human be acceptable we can't trust a machine to know to understand what it means to be we have to terminate the wild project it can be done I just need to get some help from Omicron there is however one real person that you run into the last human you're different my me are you human Sarah Linde wall peggeleh technician at your service a rare sight all right I'd say so you're the first normal living human I've seen there's not many left down here most of them are up on the flight oh you mean at Omicron yeah there's no one alive at Omicron you've been there I've been all over the power plant at ups along the ruins of lambda the abandoned Delta Theta if in Nevada there's not a lot left to pay folks to and I'm the only living person that you've met you mean out in the last living human on the planet I'm sorry who are you again Simon Jarrett station de nowhere I used to work in a bookshop in Toronto long story then what the hell are you doing here we're trying to find the Ark why would you how do you know about that I've heard it's the last hope for mankind damn right it is now what do you want with it take it to the gonna file onto it into space how it was the plan all right I've been guarding in ever since we brought it back to town just couldn't bring myself to let go tell you the truth I don't have the strength to art and I certainly don't have the time to wait for the next sentient thing shuffling through here thank you get you anything do anything for you you could kill me good one you serious about me killing you no I loved in around here until I dry up to the size of it raisin Simon this [ __ ] sucks like this shouldn't we be doing something to keep you alive you're the last human I just find it disrespectful to our entire history not to fight this I'm sure we have the art but you're the real deal Thanks that's probably the best compliment I've ever got but the truth is that the arc is all we have we'll have to accept second best I still can't believe I'm the last one if I knew you'd come I would clean this place up a little bit this feels right I want to die Sarah think about it now this interaction with the last human on earth saralyn wall is extremely emotional desperate powerful and beautiful all at the same time here's a human who was tasked with firing the ark off into space but couldn't bring herself to let go someone who doesn't truly know that she is the last remaining person until you notify her of that someone who's hooked up to a life-support chamber who can't really move around the facility freely who can't enjoy conversations with friends or family and especially once you tell her there's no one left there's not much left for her to do the picture is painted that she's lived in this room for quite a while and there's photographs strewn about of better times of forests of mountains of landmarks of just earth when it was beautiful and eventually she does ask you to kill her and you can choose to walk away and leave her alive to essentially rot or in my opinion you can grant her the mercy that she desires and pull the plug and she asks you to stay in her final moments this scene was incredibly well done I really felt the emotion that Sarah was feeling this was so just gut wrenching having to play through this part would you stay with me please it won't be long now just please just stay what a crazy thing this one's life we still won't have to turn 30 you should get a dog at home you've ever been to Greenland it's very beautiful you know at least when you get out of the city yeah knock is busy and yes there's like 12 million people trying to get around it's a great place I'd rather it was a great place you know what I prefer it this way I like to pay this like to my colleagues in Nick Jasper even Catholic people thought she was weird as she was quiet but she was cool Simon you still there I'm here sir don't let him die okay send them out there [Music] it's here at the Omega space gun with the ark loaded into the shell almost ready to fire that you uncover some of the reasons why it wasn't shot off in the first place there's a mix of emotions that the crew was feeling right before they launched Kathryn was with the team and a hundred percent we're launching it today no questions asked this is going this is where hope lies out there in the stars and it sort of became her project she viewed herself as the savior of humanity others on that crew took a more cautious approach we're going to load this very fragile server into essentially a bullet and shoot it through this chamber that we don't even know if the structural integrity remains intact after the comment it's much less if it can successfully punch through the atmosphere and actually make it to the stars some of the crew decide it's better to hold on to it down here the people in the arc don't know we can just hang on to it and be protective of it we need to be more careful with the last shred of humanity that we have unfortunately this disagreement results in an accident are you suggesting we keep it down here doesn't it defeat the whole purpose eternity among the stars remember the people inside the Ark won't know the difference we could just keep it down here and we don't have to risk the art being shot through 5000 metres of broken barrel and then push through another hundred thousand metres of a dust filled atmosphere will a casing stab all that pressure oh the odds aren't great say something I don't care what you think I'm launching it no need to be like that let's just hang on to it for a while and think about it we can launch it later now that wasn't the deal we made it to save them to watch it out there it's hope down here it's a [ __ ] terrarium waiting to die with the rest of us come on Catherine it's not asking much let's just think about it before we risk the only hope humanity has to survive this hell no we launched it today this is my project my Ark it's bigger than that don't you get it it's not for you to decide we're talking about the fate of mankind get away from the armor I'm taking it no you're not [Laughter] it was an accident Catherine talked to me Kathir Oh God Catherine did you say it's you you had an accident what are you oh you mean Catherine don't worry it's better this way no what yeah we just need to get the show into the gun and then kaboom aren't you forgetting something how you gonna get us on board the ark don't we need to make another scan space gun with your bare hands you mean it's a pilot seat like back at Omicron yes and we can use it to transfer you to the Ark while operating the gun to birds and all that now take the AMA tool and plug it in next to the seat and I'll guide you to the final steps and finally at the end of our journey we launch the ark off into space we need to load it into the chamber and Catherine has rigged the pilot seat that we're using to operate this to initiate a brain scan of both herself and Simon as well as start the countdown procedure before the Ark actually gets launched this scene was extremely harrowing countdown is being initiated the timer is running out are they gonna get the scans completed in time yes or no but ultimately if you've been paying attention things don't work out like Simon thinks they will there we go okay ready when you are just hit the button and we're off but we need to transfer our minds to the ark we also need to make sure it launches it all so I tied them to a single switch just push the button and we're off [Music] time twenty seconds ten seconds 9:8 seven six what the hell happened what went wrong nothing they're out there among the stars we're here no we were getting on the ark I saw it finished loading just before it launched yeah I saw then why are we still here Simon I can't tell you how it works you don't listen you know why we're here you won't copy it onto the ark you just didn't carry over you lost the coin toss we both did just like Simon II don't lurk on just like the man who died in Toronto 100 years ago this is [ __ ] we came all this way we launched the ark I know it sucks but our copies are up there Kathryn and Simon are both safe on the art could be happy for them are you crazy we're gonna die down here with those [ __ ] look a large on a spaceship they're not us they're not us I'm sorry you feel that way Simon I'm proud of what we did be sure that something of the hundreds of thousands of years of human history survived that's something lives on [ __ ] this [ __ ] [ __ ] [ __ ] you Kathryn you lied and I believed in you and I trusted you I didn't lie please don't leave me alone Catherine Catherine now I've recorded this part it's going on about seven times here and every time I watch that clip it just breaks me down the idea that Simon's last words are a desperate cry for the one friend the one companion he's had since he's woke up in the pathos to facility in the future and a time he doesn't belong in as the power finally shuts off in the facility and he's left alone scared in the dark just existing is really horrifying now Catherine seems to understand how the brain scans work and even though Simon had undergone one previously he still views it as sort of a cut-and-paste the idea that his version of himself and the ark won't even mentally understand that there's another Simon in existence at the same time who's alone by himself surrounded by nothingness with nothing there he'll simply view it as hey I won the coin toss I'm here this is all that exists he won't even recognize that other possibility and in this game like BioShock Infinite and a few others are some of the only games that once I've finished them I had to stand up and go on a walk and just think about what had happened this this game pulls you on such an emotional rollercoaster throughout the journey there are some euphoric highs that you experience when when just anything goes right for Simon you feel it this game makes you feel it and when there's loes there are some brutal lows that you go through some horrific scary isolating depressing events that you'll see that you'll do yourself as you move throughout this game that'll force you to reconsider what it means to be human are these people human your own morality and it was just so beautifully done I had no words I was just in tears watching the credits go by and then this happened well it's this did it work [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] Catherine Catherine I can't believe we actually made it well we did I'm so relieved it's okay son everything's alright oh man getting to play a Simon waking up in the Ark walking through that beautiful forest looking at that city realizing they made it it worked everything that they had fought for and struggled for worked all the people whose brain scans have been uploaded to this Simon and Kathryn are there looking at them in their human bodies just oh man this this ending part was something else ladies and gentlemen I know this is a really long video this is by far the longest video I've ever published on this channel but I'm very proud of this I enjoyed making this video I enjoyed playing this game I enjoyed dissecting it and looking through the clips again and they still struck me even after I'd been editing editing this for weeks and months on end if I've encouraged any one person to download and play this game or to revisit this game I'd consider that a job well done this is truly a masterpiece and if you don't think you'd like first person horror games there's even an option where the enemies can't kill you and it's truly just a narrative experience and recognize that this video only covers the important story events that personally struck me and I tried to keep a consistent theme so you would understand what was going on as we move forward but there's tons of stuff I didn't touch on the different enemy types the WoW saving the WoW or destroying the WoW some of the other choices you can make some of the characters and dialogue trees that you have there's a lot more to this game that I didn't touch on here I strongly recommend you download and play this game Souma thank you so much I'll see you next time

Channel: Zygart

Views: 1,053,330

Rating: 4.9369459 out of 5

Keywords: SOMA, horror game, video game, analysis, critique, review, video essay, what makes a human, what makes us human, are we human, robots, scary, horror, alone, fear, emotions, pathos, telos, soma gameplay, frictional games, story spoilers, story discussion, ark, warden unit, wau, catherine chun, simon jarrett, simon jarrett soma, video, essay, explained, breakdown, soma, horror games, amnesia, penumbra, carl semken, carl semken death, story spoiler, soma story, soma ending, soma wau

Id: J5fpTvdExsY

Length: 79min 10sec (4750 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 18 2019