SOMA

[Quijibo69]

Looks like nobody made a thread for this game and it's coming out Sept 22. Looks like Frictional Games saw that people liked Bioshock, Dead Space, System Shock 2 and Portal 2 and put them all in to one game.

 

[Quijibo69]

A 3 month bump later..

Looks like nobody cares but there's a good reason. I just heard it sucked!

Spoiler! The end of the game:

https://a.pomf.cat/nyabtj.webm

 

[Bugaboo]

Soma is a Chinese company that makes cheap toys
At least in the 80's, dunno what they're doing now

 

[Nguyen Van Phuoc]

I saw this for $1.49 on PSN is it worth even that or no

 

[Dollar Store Sentai]

That's a hell of a 10 year necro.

To answer your question: Yes, SOMA is phenomenal

 

[Need for Sped]

Holy necroing, Batman!

To put it shortly, very much depends: If you like coherent stories, no. The plot turns itself into a fucking pretzel to work, and if you're paying any attention, you (the player) will notice the final twist way before the main character does, so when it comes, it'll fall fucking flat. There's a contingent of people who fellate this game as if it's the Matrix of videogames, but the themes it brings up are fairly fucking retarded. Happy to elaborate more if you want to.

 

[DeadwastePrime]

I saw this for $1.49 on PSN is it worth even that or no

i mean its not a terrible deal

 

[Nguyen Van Phuoc]

That's a hell of a 10 year necro.

To answer your question: Yes, SOMA is phenomenal

i mean its not a terrible deal

Holy necroing, Batman!

To put it shortly, very much depends: If you like coherent stories, no. The plot turns itself into a fucking pretzel to work, and if you're paying any attention, you (the player) will notice the final twist way before the main character does, so when it comes, it'll fall fucking flat. There's a contingent of people who fellate this game as if it's the Matrix of videogames, but the themes it brings up are fairly fucking retarded. Happy to elaborate more if you want to.

Seems like a pretty divisive game, I think I’ll just buy it and see what I think of it

 

[Kether]

mandolore gaming reviewed this awhile back. he spoils the game but explains how it makes sense when you consider the player is playing a retard who is following the instructions of an autist.

there is no "twist" its just misunderstandings from people who clearly have tons of misunderstandings. its like saying Dumb and Dumber has a "twist" ending or has a difficult to follow plot.

 

[StacticShock]

Seems like a pretty divisive game, I think I’ll just buy it and see what I think of it

it's really not but the lore is basically everything is fucked and some people read descartes.
in a way, everyone you see and mostly interact with aren't the same, even you.

 

[peachlover669]

for some reason i always assumed soma 2 was an actual thing that released years ago and i alway put off playing it even tho i loved soma 1, a few days ago i finally decided i would download and play it and only then i realized that ive been hallucinating this game existing for a decade or so. i swear this game existed and i saw youtubers playing it but i guess im just insane

 

[Fig Kommandant]

if you're paying any attention, you (the player) will notice the final twist way before the main character does

It's not supposed to be a twist, there are repeated allusions establishing the so called "twist" and it is extensively telegraphed. The event you're referring to isn't supposed to be a twist to the player, it's supposed to be a scary realisation that you're stuck on a railroad.

the themes it brings up are fairly fucking retarded. Happy to elaborate more if you want to.

Please do. From what I remember, the themes are mostly the nature of humanity and life/lineage, the story isn't groundbreaking but it supported those themes well I thought.

 

[Shartavius]

This game desperately needs a mod that has all of the retarded main character's lines spoken in Josh's voice.

 

[Need for Sped]

Please do. From what I remember, the themes are mostly the nature of humanity and life/lineage, the story isn't groundbreaking but it supported those themes well I thought.

Sure thing, answering in spoilers.

Spoiler: Autistic analysis

In a nutshell, the main issue with the theme is that it's delivered in a way that's so aggressively contrived, it actually hurts it:

1) The game establishes that digitizing your soul produces nothing but a copy, it's never a transfer. You can sit down and be copied a million times, you're never going to move from your body (At best it looks like a transfer to the copy). The game proceeds to screw around with this rule twice: At the very beginning and when you go from Simon 2 to Simon 3 (Original Pathos II suit to Power Suit) by the game switching POVs and giving the player the impression that you actually got transferred (But then it suddenly remembers that rule at the end for the twist). If the game played by its actual rules, you'd be the original Simon, go to Dr. Munshi's office, get scanned, then leave and die a couple of months later due to brain damage.

2) The grand objective of launching the Ark is pretty hard to connect to. It may be a matter of personal beliefs, but when I heard "Humanity is for all intents and purposes extinct and Earth is profoundly fucked. Let's launch this thing that contains the digitized copies of the minds of a couple dozen people of Pathos II and put it in orbit", it was too bad you couldn't ask "What the fuck for? So we can have the equivalent of an interactive tombstone for humanity?". If you don't think that the digitized copies are people worth saving, it's pretty hard to get on board with the idea, especially when the game doesn't allow you to question it at all.

3) Dovetailing from the last point, Simon is retarded (Sure, it's explained in universe that his is a legacy scan from a literally brain-damaged individual) . He barely questions anything, even when there's strong evidence that Katherine is withholding the truth at best. The main issue here is that there's a disconnect between what Simon knows and what the player can infer, which gets frustrating as the knowledge gap becomes wider.
- The player can easily infer Sarang's "coin toss" analogy is moronic (i.e referencing the idea of killing himself at the very moment he gets copied to guarantee there's only one copy, yet everyone kill themselves after the fact), Simon doesn't question it.
- The player sees that Simon 2 is clearly still there when he gets copied to Simon 3 (Showing that it's indeed a copy, not a transfer), Simon barely questions it.
- The player sees that Katherine is incredibly evasive with everything surrounding the copy/transfer thing (Especially towards the end), Simon doesn't question it (Even though all he'd have to do is tell her that the Ark doesn't get launched if she doesn't explain herself, and he has her by the balls)

So he's retarded enough to not question anything, but not that retarded that he can't complete his mission. It's hard not to see this as plot convenience on some level.

4) The WAU is also highly underutilized as a thematic vehicle and it's basically a side element in the game compared to the Ark, which is kind of weird considering its relevance. Is there a trajectory to the quality of its creations? Has it actually improved its definition of what "being alive" is? Is it worth killing it? The game is so focused on the Ark plot it kind of glosses over this.

 

[robobobo]

For a buck and a half, sure, buy the game. It's a walking simulator, but it has some interesting moments and occasionally a pretty good creepy vibe, though it's not as deep as it thinks it is.

 

[Racist Parrot]

The gameplay itself itsnt like revolutionary or anything but the story and world are absolutely fantastic. I loved it.

 

[Fig Kommandant]

spoilers

Spoiler: More autism

To your point 1, I wouldn't call it rule breaking that we switch POVs from copy to copy, the game does uphold that with the ending scene seeing Simon 4 on the Ark still not realizing what actually happened. It's a narrative choice, but I can see why the inconsistency bothers some people.

2, again if you weren't on board with the story then yeah the Ark is pointless. For me it worked, especially after euthanasing Sarah Lindwall, there really isn't anything left of humanity and there is nothing to be done in the physical world. I think calling the Ark a tombstone is acurate, I didn't see it as a continuation of humanity but just as a final reminder that we existed. As for questioning the nature of the copies, if they're people, the game does touch on it when you have to run a few simulations of Brandon Wan, Simon is also uncertain if he's still him/a person/human/alive and talks a little about it with Catherine. She is pretty dismissive of Simon's questions so again I can see that not working for people who wanted more of that aspect. But I don't think that the story is about giving an answer, you came to your conclusion that they're not people enough, for me they were people enough for the story to work.

3, I wouldn't say he's retarded, he's just stranded at sea and Catherine is the closest thing to a rescue ship that exists. In game, the events take place over a little more than 25 hours, with some of it being uncounscious, IRL the game is about 8-10 hours long if you don't rush it so if we want to be generous let's say Simon spent somewhere between 12 and 20 hours in Pathos II. That means Simon had to contend with being transported in time, processing the grief over the death of everyone and everything he knew and try to survive weird abominations trying to kill him. For us, we jump in knowing it's a story, but within the story I don't think it's unreasonable for a 2010 average guy to not ask philosophical questions firsts when being transported to a strange apocalypse. I would agree that it's a slight plot convenience, but again I don't think it's unreasonable given the character, it's more that some people will want more of certain storylines or characters instead of where we ended up going.

4, in a regular run I would agree, but if you do read the notes and audio logs, Ross and Dahl elaborate a bit more on the WAU. I would have liked to know more about the WAU but the story isn't about AI, so I can understand them trimming that away. As far as I remember, in earlier versions they did have a WAU specific faction and it would have played a bigger role but they cut that.

Overall, it looks more most of your objections are about the direction the story went in rather than elements of the story being inconsistent to its themes.

On an unrelated note, there's a short story similar to Soma called Lena that's pretty good, it's a SCP style "article" about a brain scan and how to use it.

 

[Need for Sped]

@Fig Kommandant

My main contention is that, if the theme relies on that degree of contrivance to be delivered, it's not that good/effective of a theme. But fair enough, agree to disagree.

 

[Shartavius]

Though I enjoyed SOMA, I'm glad to see others finding fault with the exposition of the entire plot being necessitated by and predicated upon the protagonist being dumber than the player. The fact that progression of the plot has to happen as a consequence of the protagonist being too fucking retarded and/or stubborn to understand what's going on means it's on the same level as a ton of slasher films - Yet Redditors the world over pretend this game was so clever that they lament there is no sequel (demonstrating their utterly contemptible misunderstanding of the story they're so proud of themselves for "appreciating").

The game is a fine sci-fi writing exercise premised upon Theseus's paradox. But if there's anything profound about it, it will never be discovered by the audience that slobbers all over its structure gel cock.

 

[Most Wanted Banana]

I always found the game's world and secondary themes far more interesting than the main story, and I wish the game had given them more importance instead of focusing solely on Simon's stupidity.

Stuff like "is Simon human?" The mind of a man in an artificial body, capable of feeling, thinking, remembering, and dreaming, yet forever trapped in the depths of the ocean, wandering alone among the dark remnants of an extinct species.

Or 'should the WAU be allowed to "live"?' Despite the subject's stupidity, Simon is an undeniable success, proof that the AI could ultimately complete its mission and save humanity if given enough time. Or are monstrosities like Akers and Ross enough evidence to demonstrate the futility of its protocols?

If we ever get a SOMA 2, I just hope it focuses more in the world itself and not on another character like Simon.