Hey! Future Tiptoe here. Thanks for checking out these videos! If you'd like to keep up on UA-cam Community info, I'll be posting extra bits of info here in the future: ua-cam.com/users/TiptoeTheTankcommunity As of this post, this is a relatively young channel. I've only really been around since the end of 2020. I hope to be around for the foreseeable future; I'm excited to watch this little passion project grow. More info and content will come with time! Thank you for being here so early in the game. PEACE! -Tip
I killed everybody except the wau now my reasoning was because these people were effectively in data loops they were either unable to recognize what they were or we're just stuck in a loop of consistently thinking they're in one spot with the only 2 exceptions being the 2 humans I meet both of which I killed out of mercy do the fact the 1 at the trams is effectively stuck, her heart and lungs have clearly been damaged and let's just say there's not gonna be any donors available With the one in the abyss well I rather let our species die out if there's only 1 of us left then watched that 1 left suffer slowly. My reason for sparing the wau though Was because it clearly showed the ability to learn The reason I noticed this was because I found a human body but it wasn't an organic one it was 1 that had completely robotic internal organs that look like they were being developed. My other reason for this belief that it can learn is the fact that you don't deal with the same type of monster twice they're very 1st when you meet clearly has a Understanding of what it's doing as if you listen to audio files you can hear it say shut up while it kills someone behind a door Implying that there is a consciousness there but it has gone insane as Catherine States because it has no other way of perceiving the world as it is now. The next one is The corrupted helper unit that clearly knows what's going on around it but it's just looking for areas to get more structure jail structure gel which as it says it's a thirsty which could imply that its low on power due to its flashing lights. If you consider Catherine a monster as well she's clearly a more successful iteration due to the fact that she's aware of what she has and where she is but isn't driven insane because of it. The wound has clearly shown it has an ability to learn hence why I spirit since it knows what it's doing when it comes to humanity it's learning as it goes along doing a classic human move of trial-and-error till you get it right.
if you want to check out a much happier version of a story like this then i would highly recommend the bobiverse books by dennis e. taylor, "we are legion (we are bob)" is one of my favourite light sci-fi stories.
Poor Simon. I feel like he is repressing the truth, subconsciously forcing himself to misunderstand. It's something I think would happen to me. Coping by misunderstanding.
Right? It's easier to "misunderstand" and blame others for your situation rather than accept your fate. With everything going on, it might also be easier to be mad and upset, rather than fully acknowledge that you basically sent a copy of your brain to an Eden, while you, in your body, were left to exist in a crumbling ruin, likely the last soul aboard beneath the sea
@trevor3013 True. He was the first scan. A scan that was done on older technology too, so we have no idea how primitive his scan was by comparison to everyone else's.
@@RosesTeaAndASD not only that, he also was in a car crash and has brain damage so he's a prototype brain damaged legacy scan, so of course he's going to be a little misunderstanding
SOMA managed to struck a perfect balance between telling a meaningful story with philosophical themes, questions about existence, AND evoking feelings like sense of dread, horror, isolation and loneliness in the player by making the game world as immersive as it is. The amount of lore and fantastic world building here deserves nothing but praise. It wasn't scary like Amnesia, yes, but I think that was exactly by design. A lot of people judged this game after Amnesia that the monster encounters are less scary, but for me in this case, the horror came from it's physical world and the environment itself (coupled with the story): it managed to invoke those aformentioned feelings in me that made me uneasy, but at the same time, it made me appreciate it even more. For example, there is a very detailed descending sequence in the game that straight up almost invoke thalassophobia in me, it was that perfectly executed :) In today's "made-for-youtube-jumpscare" horror game releases, this game was a breath of fresh air and a unique gem that focused on the world building and story before everything else.
yeah i agree. its a game that appeals to any intellect. a deep thinker will love the philosophical aspect. a simpleton will just get a kick out of the horror/chase scenes. if they happen to click onto some of the deeper themes then great but its not essential for a good time. i love a good existential crisis but i also love a good sphincter-clenching chase sequence haha. regardless, thats how you do a game right
the bigest mistake the company made when they learned that the earth was going to die was double down on their ai projects, instead of sending down something to help sustain them, like an algae farm, or something to that effect.
As an acute care nurse, the Sarah Lindwall encounter stroke a deep cord in me. The scene was incredibly just in its writing and almost brought me to tears.
On my second playthrough, I decided not to kill Carl, Simon 2, Sarah and the WAU because I knew Simon 3 would be left behind. I thought that maybe Simon 3 would try to go back to the other stations and help them, so they wouldn't be alone. They could try to heal Carl and Sarah, fix one of the stations (technology seems to still work, so they could use the helper robots to restore a station and make new technology), form a small community and maybe Simon 3 could restore Catherine and make more Simons.
Actually, I think there is no way out of the abyss for Simon 3. Can you remember our long walk from the climber? At the last part of this walk we turned on a little helper robot so he can guide us to Tau cuz there were no lights. So, basically you won't get back to climber because you won't find a right path to it in the darkness and you'll probably end up being killed by WAU monsters. So there is no good ending for Simon 2 if he was left alive :(
I always kill Simon 2 for mercy exactly because, to advance in certain areas, we made the way impassable for anyone supposedly coming later. We ourselves couldn't go back, as if it's an open world, if we wanted, because of those obstacles. He would be trapped, without a Catherine to guide him, the same dangers that already threatened us and the same information that was already insufficient to make us understand wtf is happening. He would be stuck alone and ignorant until his power pack dies off and maybe in total darkness because the energy station we restarted is already running and we don't know how much energy his power pack still has. Cat's cortex chip short-circuited, the tram and the climber are not available, and apparently Ypsilon doesn't have a hatch to go outside. Even if it had, there's no tool for him to use anyway.
The thing that SOMA left with me is, if you are alone and I mean *TRULY* alone, your worst enemy is yourself. With perhaps the exception of Catherine, the only person that can judge you or your actions (Or I guess Simon's actions), is yourself and depending on who you are that can be worse then any amount of condemnation from another person.
Well, if you are alone as you say, there is nobody else. There's only _you_ . Therefore, you are at the same time your own best friend and your own worst enemy. So uh yeah :|
This game has one of the best stories in gaming history. If not THE best. I literally cried at the end and was constantly in a strange conflict of emotions during the game. This game is an emotional horror game. Not a traditional scarry one.
Ain't it a kick in the teeth, too? For a huge part of the game, we knew tragedy was waiting for whoever wasn't the Ark copy. But watching the left-behind Simon have the realization that he didn't make it on the Ark was tough.
Wow that's an incredibly well-made video covering all the events in SOMA from the start to the end! Thought it had *waaay* more views than just 5000. Damn, good job, really!
I feel there is a fundamental difference between being alive and "living". What good is years of maddening loneliness left not knowing what went wrong, why was I chosen to be alone? Left as the sole "survivor", left alone forever in a cold deep unforgiving world. It is human nature to search for company, comfort in any form. A human isn't human without others in some form, and as sad as it is sometimes true death is the only truth there is.
*addition* I realized this has been proven even more given the past pandemic. People were forcibly separated and in lue of face to face interaction, people found new ways to connect with other humans. Video chat became the new norm if only for a short while given human history. People dove into virtual reality to try to garner that feeling of human to human interaction regardless of their digital forms. Humanity has always found a way to have human interaction but it only truly works if there is more than just one sole "person" left.
I played SOMA a few years ago now and still can't get it out of my mind. Still teared up at Simon's final recording as he was dying. A complete triumph of a game, with some of the best and more detailed backstory and consistent world-building ever made, and consistently great performances by voice actors. Great video.
I appreciated the tension in the lines between Simon and Cath, when starting the descent after taking the new body, which dissolved when they shared personal memories with each other. In general, I really like how the story and the characters develop as the game progresses. My mind started to associate Cath and Simon with reason and emotions during their quarrels. On the one hand, it may feel wrong of Simon to care only about his own qualia and not about experience of his other equally valuable versions. Like Cath said, “we” were sent to ARK after all and we saved the humanity along the way. On the other hand, we were not doing ourselves a favor per se because “they’re not us” as Simon accurately puts it. Mental states can be copy-pasted but not your self-experience (in the game universe). So it may feel like we did something completely altruistic by achieving nothing for ourselves and everything for “others” who are totally unrelated to us now. In terms of horror, I dig the style when throughout the game the protagonist discovers consequences of already occurred horrible events as we dive deeper into the worst while expecting or hoping for the best.
What a great analysis of what it feels like to play a story, that thing that only videogames can do. With SOMA I loved that I played right into Simon's point of view, and when I reached the end I also felt like "off course, they have been saying that it's copies throughout the whole game, why on Earth did I actually believe I would get to go?" It felt like a twist that had been hiding in plain sight from the beggining (if hiding at all). And it worked not because it was unexpected but because it was the culmination of the theme-conflict that we've been exploring all along. What a (relatively) quiet little master piece. And your video totally does it honor.
even if i play this game a hundred times i wouldnt be able to tell its story the way you did, i don't know how you managed to collect all this details and put it together, this is just so beautiful
I just finished this and I'm finding all the analyses of this great game. I personally felt pretty good about the ending. We got our copies on the Ark, and like Catherine said, I felt happy for them, and proud that we'd done something pretty great to save something of humanity. It's as much of a legacy as anything. Seeing Simon on the Ark was reassuring to me, giving me closure that it worked and wasn't all for nothing.
@@TiptoeTheTank No thank you! :D I'm currently driving cross country and have downed about 5 of your videos so far. I'll be done with all your content before the road trip ends. Keep up the amazing work!!
I would love a sequel to this game where on the Ark, something was causing glitches that manifest as some kind of monsters from their subconscious (like in the movie Sphere) -- and if you're not careful, you'll be hunted. While trying to keep a low, friendly profile, you notice strange messages in the Ark, but they're either in a language you don't understand, or the information is too scrambled to make sense of. Over time it becomes increasingly difficult to avoid detection, so you find yourself running for your "life". Ultimately, aliens have discovered the Ark, which had been floating through space for 50,000 years -- having lost power like after only 1,000 years. The process of powering the Ark back on, which no one on the Ark even realized had happened, scrambled all of the information, melding personalities together and causing their fears to manifest as threats to one another. Before the aliens can restabilize the information, you (and others) need to avoid the increasing danger of other people's manifest terrors. You survive, of course, and once you are extracted into a new physical body (thanks to the aliens) you find out how long you'd been floating through space. You tell the aliens about the planet you're from, what happened to it, and that you'd like to know what happened after all these years. That could make for an interesting 3rd installment...
I feel like SOMA is and was underappreciated. For me, I can truly say SOMA is a rare masterpiece and it deserved far more than it got. Would love to play more games in this universe but would lose impact. Glad we got this gut punch of a classic once. Worth anyone's time.
The fact Katherine would have non chalantly experimented with Simon's scan as part of her ARC project and KNEW who he was but kept silent about it the whole time is terrifying.
I love this game, truly. I've beat it a handful of times since I got it in 2015. I had just started my existential crisis stage in life, and thankfully this game helped ease me all the way overboard, and for weeks later I wasn't sure if anything was real and almost convinced myself I was in a synthetic purgatory. This game's more than an ambitious and interesting horror game. It's an amazing introspection into the meaning of reality and existence and exactly what a solid horror experience should be. Edit: Autocorrect fail
If you leave the WAU alive, I would love to see how it could evolve itself. With help from the brainscans it has, it would be neat to explore it retaking the surface.
This is one of the most beautiful videos I listened to on UA-cam. I was doing some calligraphy and put it on because I loved SOMA to the ends of the Earth and I had to stop several times because this video is just like SOMA: haunting and beautiful. Thank you.
Insane production value, this popped up on autoplay and I expected it to come from a channel with 300k subscribers. I usually avoid small channels like the plague (sue me 🤷🏽♂️) but this was really captivating.
Hi! Big fan of your stuff! You mentioned in one bit of this video that a woman from TAU managed to get ahold of a tether and make her way back to the surface. I sort of want to look more into that, so if you know more about it, I'd be hella grateful!
Hi there, and thanks for checking out the content! The old SOMA site by Frictional has some great extra stories/info! That particular story is here: somagame.com/item-4540.html
Someone on Frictional Games forums described Simon's apparent inability to understand the idea of the copying like this: "So far, the game has put you (the player) through two scans. Both times, it switched your perspective to the copy's. Based on this pattern, the game will switch your perspective again: immediately after the scan, you will control Simon on the ARK. (Some players have said that this would be a better ending, and that returning to Phi after the credits would have a greater emotional impact.) Expecting a perspective flip is only reasonable; after all, it happened both of the previous times. This is exactly how Simon feels. At this point in the game, his experience perfectly matches the player's: he remembers being scanned in Toronto, waking up at Upsilon, being scanned at Omicron, and descending to the abyss. It's only here, at the very end, that the game breaks its own rules. Instead of switching perspective, it shows you what the original Simon sees. It cheats you out of seeing the ARK (until the post-credits scene). And just as you feel cheated, so does Simon." It's also a possible perspective that maybe Simon does understand the process before firing the gun but as soon as it's gone, purposelessness sets in, with jealousy at the minds in the ARK. People have also suggested that he's so irrational and emotionally childish because by then he's the result of a scan of a scan (I don't think anything in-game mentions this as a potential issue) and also originally a 'flat' or 'legacy' scan, from before advances made it more completely capture the whole brain which I think is mentioned. These maybe aren't necessary to explaining his attitude but maybe were intended to be considered.
This was amazing! I could only watch the playthrough of someone else, I'm a mom who doesn't have a lot of time to game. But I honestly felt for the WOW, it constitutes as a living organism, sentient too. It literally mourned its creator and attempted to bring him back... reminds me of FMA in that sense.
It was told to preserve human life but wasn't given a set definition of "preserve" "human" or "life" and had a limited toolset. Given that, it was doing some pretty good work and seemed like it was improving at restoring people.
I was very religious for a couple of decades and understand very well the capacity and the "need" for ditching critical thinking for the sake of keeping the hope of living forever. Despite any evidence, or lack thereof. Despite what scientists may say. It's called cognitive dissonance. And even though this makes Simon look like a dummy by the end, most of humankind lives in this cognitive dissonant state of mind. To live in denial is the rule, not the exception.
Doesn't matter if there's a chance. I'd want to see the end. That's my greatest fear with dying normally, that the world carries on without me, a single blip on humanities radar. But no, I'd want to watch the last lights flicker, to see us fade from history, the last keeper of all of humanity, derelict.
I have to say, I absolutely adored this video. I've been feeling sick for quite a while, and horror game analysis videos have been quite a solace to me. SOMA is one of my particular favorites and I just discovered your channel through this video. I'm in awe of the way you present things and how the morality of Simon's / our own actions are described. I apologize for the rambling, I'm just very happy about this video and I'm looking forward to whatever content you put out in the future!
Soma is without a doubt the most brutal and impactful game I have ever played. A horror game where the monsters aren’t that scary, where the real horror is the existential questions and unease created by its world and story. That image of Simon 3 left alone on the bottom of the ocean will haunt me forever.
17 mins in， continuity theory seems a great way to make sense of the suicidal depression some of them must felt in pathos 2. Question 1: i am still an utilitarian so if i can't really benefit the mankind at that point i am not doing anything
the story of soma is very interesting, and the overall question I was able to glean from its tale is thus. "What would you do when presented with the end and no real conceivable way out?." Would you fight and struggle to give yourself or at the very least someone else just a few more days in the sun, or will you succumb to the end, after all, there is no grand savior in the story who will bring humanity back from the brink your just prolonging the inevitable. even knowing what I do now about the story wouldn't change the choices I would make I would likely fight for that last stretch of time in paradise and as I said if not for me then for the other clone because I don't see a point in dying afraid and alone.
Looking at all the pieces in this context, it really strikes me as borderline mythological or fantastical in its own grim manner. Like a Greek tragedy of the underworld. The souls of the living, and giving context on free will and what life and death really means. Its all very cool.
one note to make is that the player controls three entities. The gameplay up until the first, pivotal, scan in Munchi's lab, is the original Simon. Since we're talking about a _scan_ this existence continues on without us. The game continues from the point of view of a scan of Simon's existence (consciousness+memory). This, is a separate entity. It is not a continuation of Simon's _existence_ . Again, when a copy is created for the deep diving suit. At that point, it is the third instance of Simon we control. We do not know how many there have been, before the start of the game.
Fantastic video, really enjoyed this. Wonderful narration, writing, pacing, timeline, editing, everything. Great job! I forgot how fucking painful and bleak this game is. It really is one of the most moving and necessary games I could think to suggest to someone.
Thank you for the kind words! I honestly thought SOMA was just an 'underwater spooky horror' game before I played it. Dead Space and SOMA taught me to not have preconceived notions when going into a new story.
during the flashing images at 17:20 you can see some white text. This, is code, specifically written in LISP (or some variant of LISP, there are _many_ ). LISP was used in AI research _a lot_ :D
I only recently found your channel, and I adore it! Simon has experienced a tremendous brain injury before his scan. It's so tremendous that complications from it end his life. While they, his doctors, believe Simon has the capacity to make medical decisions for himself and consent to release ownership of his scans, I sincerely believe the brain trauma diminished his cognitive capacity to fully understand and comprehend many situations throughout Soma. I don't think Simon understands he's a copy of brainscans loaded into the bodies of others or onto the Ark. I don't think he has the capacity to understand that an equivalent copy remains in the upload source each time, since he had only experienced being the new copy. My own personal experiences with recognizing my possible cognitive impairments and a family member's experiences with developmental delays are certainly impacting my prospective though
I would have helped Amy. It just feels like the right thing to do, especially for someone who plans to destroy the WAU. And now after hearing your thoughts, it's easy to say leaving the WAU alive is the right answer. But I can't say I would have recognized that in the moment either. I would have recognized helping Amy as right, but I easily could have fallen into thinking that the WAU needed to die as I played the game. Leaving the WAU alive makes me wonder if someday human life in some form may live on Earth again. As for the Ark, the people unloaded to it, with perhaps the exception of Simon, all understand what it is. They have some concept of how long in Earth's measurements of time it will last. Depending on how Catherine designed it, she may be able to access the programming of the Ark from within. But without physical bodies, our physical concepts of time have no meaning. The only limitations of the Ark are its memory and power. In fact there's a light novel/anime/video game series that tackles this a bit, Sword Art Online. Specifically the third season Sword Art Online: Alicization. I'm only really familiar with the anime, and I recommend starting with season 1 to become appropriately invested in and knowledgeable of the main character and supporting cast. But season 3 can be a stand alone. Obviously the tone is VERY DIFFERENT than the overall tone of Soma. Thank you for the wonderful video!
This is the first game in a LOOOOOONG time that after I finished... I just sat... And thought. And for a long time I thought. This game changed the way I thought. And i love it
Q1: No, I wouldn't want to survive. Q2: Carl man, i don't like your sass die painfully bro. Q3: End her suffering Q4:: Leave him with the battery Q5: No i left her Q6: I left the wow on Last question: Yes
In terms of what makes us human I think this game highlights it with your choices. It's empathy. You tip toe for example second guessed each of your choices, think what could have happened, that's your empathy talking. A robot like the WAU has no empathy, it's given a job and its only purpose is to do that job consequences be damned. But if you were given the same job as the WAU you would think harder about what to do, weigh the pros and cons. That's what makes you human,
damnnn Im subscribed to this channel last month why did i not see this video sooner, this is dope af i loved SOMA because of its lore and philosophical subjects
I would love a sequel of Soma. Where you’re Simon, and you get to explore the ARK. Maybe a tiny bit of the WAU made it on the ARK, and you and Catherine have to stop the WAU before it destroys the entire system.
I know there are way more sad games out there, but this game just gave me the feeling of everything being senseless and depressing. it hit a different part of me that I don't wanna ever wanna touch again.
This was an exeptional video. I have just played through SOMA and faced all the moral questions like you did - making this video even more touching. However, i left the WAU alive. because when akers gets you in the subway station, you have this odd dream-state where things seem quite... uplifting? better? only to realise later that it was induced by the WAU - mimicking Caths Arc. But if everyone in the WAUs grasp gets to live through fond memories or even a less depressing hallucination of better times - then the WAU does humanities remainder quite a service. Sure their real bodies look like deformed flesh-masses, but i dont think they know about that. and the WAU tries to make sure they dont realise it. perhaps with the structure gel all around pathos-II, all the live bodies are also connected - like all the people in the ark, able to interact with eachother. The only thing im still wondering tho is how imogene reeds head was replaced with the robotic visor that simon nr.2 started out with. who put that there? was that really the work of the WAU? a helper-robot ripping a corpses head off putting a visor and a battery in, along with some Structure Gel and a cortex chip? Shouldnt it just have reanimated her instead? Anyways, thank you for this well made video.
I think it didn't have a working scan of Imogen Reed. In the Transmissions series of shorts, her brain reacted badly to the scanning interface and she had a seizure the first time, then she refused to try getting scanned again by Catherine because she'd kinda gotten disillusioned with the idea of the Ark. The scan of her that the WAU got and put into the vivarium in the first short doesn't seem to have worked properly I guess. That, or the WAU remembered she'd been hostile to it and had shut the main power down at Upsilon, and decided to boot up someone else.
Fantastic little video,this game makes you think,then question your decisions,just love that. I remember those lines from Star Trek,the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few,but what about the one,i.e. Us,were selfish sometimes,we can do great things,sacrifice ourselves for there's,but sometimes we're just selfish an don't do the right things.
i went into this game almost completely blind, the only media i saw was one trailer. so i experienced everything as Simon did which i think made the game all the better. you also missed a character, she is in a robot body resting on the ocean floor. but anyway i also left alot of death in my wake. the only one i felt any hesitation about was sarah, i had simon ask her several times if she truly was ready to die, her being the only completely normal human left on the planet. the rest were in a sorry state like amy or just machines. also i swear i was able to keep carl alive because i remember the robot walking in and beating him to death, before i escaped. so i figured he was doomed regardless.
heres something i love about this game. it appeals to any intellect. a deep thinker will love the philosophical and moral side and a simpleton will just get a kick out of the horror/chase scenes. or a youtuber or casual gamer can fire it up for a bit of fun on halloween. the deeper side to the game isnt essential but it makes for a better experience. i love a good existential crisis as much as the next galaxy-level god-mode genius (sarcasm) but i also love a good sphincter-clenching chase sequence haha. the world is full both kinds of players, so if your game or movie only appeals to one of those demo's, youre gonna alienate the other side completely. so this game did it right. dropped a like for the video. i'm only half way through but i'm enjoying it. nice one
A problem with Soma is that we don’t give the say-so to those we have to decide for. Being in a dangerous place, full of monstrous creatures and strange people, there was no luxury of sitting down and talking it out. We didn’t get to hear that other side of those topics. Not until the very end where we met the protector of the ARK.
If no one knows: SOMA is heavily based on the concept of Human Conscious Transfer Thought Theory also known in Cyber Punk setting as Mind Uploading, the principle of this idea is this: What is human? What defines you being human? Are you still YOU if there are multiple copies of you? and most importantly... What is consciousness? ALOT of varitions of these questions can be asked and that will result in differing answers for each question but at the core of the concept it is "Just WHAT exactly makes you... well YOU!?"
There is no "coin toss" both copies exist the same existents "Level". We, the player get only one point of view until the very end, where we see both of them chronologically so we finally feel from first hand how truly terrifying this whole thing reality is.. Really great lore. Loved the video.. Was really surprised to see subscriptions in the 3 digits, Was expecting at least 6.. Great content
I like this take, that the 'coin toss' was a lie. The longer I've had away from SOMA and the more folks have shared, the more illusory/manipulative it seems to have been. They were always going to be the ones left behind. Because "they" are "them". Does that make sense? I'm going to have to give this game a second playthrough one of these days to really absorb it. Thanks for checking out the channel!
@@TiptoeTheTank Yea , I forgot to add "this is my take on this" instead of it sounding like im claiming it's the ultimate truth :D Actually I haven't even played the game. I just "play" through these kind of lore vids, which are fascinating.. Btw on the same note, Catherine seems like a heartless person in a way... When at the first stages of the game ignores completely of the fact actual human copies are in the robots, and she is kinda manipulates Simon, where she do understands that he is in denial so he will do what she wants.. Only after launch she changes the tone, because it's doesn't matter anymore.. Also not sure I fully understood all WAU aspects.. The proxies, and the monsters.. Also did you knew there is a secret file by the developers with a lot of content that did not make it to the game.. A lot of voice acting and whole plot parts that where left out
Exactly! The entire game until the credits is the experience-stream of Simon-3/powersuit Simon, from his memories of being flesh-and-blood Simon and then ductile suit Simon up til he discovers he's been Simon 3 remembering all that and not Ark-Simon remembering being Simon 3 as well. The post-credit scene is just an assurance that the Ark does work, to prevent the ending from being too grim, I guess. Catherine's interesting in that she's very cavalier about the lives of the mockingbird machines, because yeah, those are real digitised minds, though some are coping really poorly with their situation and have degraded. Simon's deliberate misunderstanding of the copying process... it seemed like she got sick of trying to correct it and figured he'd likely freak out and/or crash if he accepted the truth, and she'd be again without a pair of arms and legs to help launch the Ark. She's also probably the least phased by her digital state of anyone we meet, she's installed on an omnitool and connected to various non-humanoid systems and remains sane and even calm. She doesn't have any protective delusions like "I'm in my human body, I'm just injured and that's why I can't move around." or even "I must be in the Ark now in a digital simulation of my human body.". The other normally-functioning mind they meet, Johann Ross, has the most similar-to-pre-scan-self in that he's installed in his own reanimated corpse. Arguably, Johann and Simon are some compelling evidence that the WAU is getting better over time at preserving/recreating human life.
The background questions posed by Soma are the ones we already face in our world, which is being hit not by an asteriod, bur by our own actions. The difference, we don't have an ark
Another thing I let 2nd Simon live cause there's 2 people in that body if the structure cell came in contact with the body after you kill 2nd Simon then the other person's put into a life of torment
Even given the thesis, it truly is! It is a solid tossup between her and The Exploring Series ( an SCP and other pulp fiction content creator) as to which I will listen to over and over again for stress relief and lore.
i mean, you can see the end coming miles away. but when it then happened, it still hit me hard. i am wondering if it would have been better if after the launch of the ark, we instantly go to the ark simon. do that part etc. and only after that we go back to the earth simon? not sure if that would have hit even harder or not...
The thing I always wonder is are there people on Mars making a colony I mean if their was a comic coming to destroy earth would people get ready to go to mars to save humanity
Damn… I really thought deeply about my previous thought line of: “oh if shit goes the right of bang. Imma keep on going and fight through and survive the apocalyptic event.” As I’ve watched the walking dead series back when it was good. (Only up to the fall of the saviors arc. Imo, I wasn’t too impressed by the whispers. Though I love them as a character archetype. As you know there’s a pocket of humanity that would devolve into those types after they figured out the walker blood makes them invisible to other walkers” trick. So let’s use that to our advantage. (The crazed fuckers that would attack you for even looking at them.) it brung that to its logical conclusion.) That’s where it stopped being entertaining. Though I’ve struggled growing up, so I’m 50/50 on if I’d go on. As I could not only survive but thrive, but also do I really wanna struggle like that..?
This game is something else as it tries to ask what is you and present its representation of this idea as fact for the sake of the story. I love how it does so while making you think of the other interpretations of what makes you you, are they less true or something we hope to be true such as a soul. One thing I wish they had done was the idea of what if the digital copy was made along side the physical until the physical was no more. Would it still be you or a copy that destroyed the original so it could live. The only truth to this is that both the physical and digital would not know if it was slow enough, if it was quick one could say it was a copy.
![Shipwrecked 64: The Terrifying Lost Game ARG You Can Really Play [Guide, Lore & Review]](/img/n.gif)
Hey! Future Tiptoe here. Thanks for checking out these videos! If you'd like to keep up on UA-cam Community info, I'll be posting extra bits of info here in the future: ua-cam.com/users/TiptoeTheTankcommunity
As of this post, this is a relatively young channel. I've only really been around since the end of 2020. I hope to be around for the foreseeable future; I'm excited to watch this little passion project grow. More info and content will come with time! Thank you for being here so early in the game. PEACE!
-Tip
Copy and paste violates quantum mechanics
I killed everybody except the wau now my reasoning was because these people were effectively in data loops they were either unable to recognize what they were or we're just stuck in a loop of consistently thinking they're in one spot with the only 2 exceptions being the 2 humans I meet both of which I killed out of mercy do the fact the 1 at the trams is effectively stuck, her heart and lungs have clearly been damaged and let's just say there's not gonna be any donors available With the one in the abyss well I rather let our species die out if there's only 1 of us left then watched that 1 left suffer slowly. My reason for sparing the wau though Was because it clearly showed the ability to learn The reason I noticed this was because I found a human body but it wasn't an organic one it was 1 that had completely robotic internal organs that look like they were being developed. My other reason for this belief that it can learn is the fact that you don't deal with the same type of monster twice they're very 1st when you meet clearly has a Understanding of what it's doing as if you listen to audio files you can hear it say shut up while it kills someone behind a door Implying that there is a consciousness there but it has gone insane as Catherine States because it has no other way of perceiving the world as it is now. The next one is The corrupted helper unit that clearly knows what's going on around it but it's just looking for areas to get more structure jail structure gel which as it says it's a thirsty which could imply that its low on power due to its flashing lights. If you consider Catherine a monster as well she's clearly a more successful iteration due to the fact that she's aware of what she has and where she is but isn't driven insane because of it. The wound has clearly shown it has an ability to learn hence why I spirit since it knows what it's doing when it comes to humanity it's learning as it goes along doing a classic human move of trial-and-error till you get it right.
if you want to check out a much happier version of a story like this then i would highly recommend the bobiverse books by dennis e. taylor, "we are legion (we are bob)" is one of my favourite light sci-fi stories.
Poor Simon. I feel like he is repressing the truth, subconsciously forcing himself to misunderstand. It's something I think would happen to me. Coping by misunderstanding.
Right? It's easier to "misunderstand" and blame others for your situation rather than accept your fate. With everything going on, it might also be easier to be mad and upset, rather than fully acknowledge that you basically sent a copy of your brain to an Eden, while you, in your body, were left to exist in a crumbling ruin, likely the last soul aboard beneath the sea
Well his scan is a basic incomplete scan. It's possible he doesn't even know better
@trevor3013 True. He was the first scan.
A scan that was done on older technology too, so we have no idea how primitive his scan was by comparison to everyone else's.
@@RosesTeaAndASD not only that, he also was in a car crash and has brain damage so he's a prototype brain damaged legacy scan, so of course he's going to be a little misunderstanding
SOMA is without doubt the most creative and best executed use of sci-fi in horror ever
SOMA managed to struck a perfect balance between telling a meaningful story with philosophical themes, questions about existence, AND evoking feelings like sense of dread, horror, isolation and loneliness in the player by making the game world as immersive as it is. The amount of lore and fantastic world building here deserves nothing but praise.
It wasn't scary like Amnesia, yes, but I think that was exactly by design. A lot of people judged this game after Amnesia that the monster encounters are less scary, but for me in this case, the horror came from it's physical world and the environment itself (coupled with the story): it managed to invoke those aformentioned feelings in me that made me uneasy, but at the same time, it made me appreciate it even more. For example, there is a very detailed descending sequence in the game that straight up almost invoke thalassophobia in me, it was that perfectly executed :)
In today's "made-for-youtube-jumpscare" horror game releases, this game was a breath of fresh air and a unique gem that focused on the world building and story before everything else.
yeah i agree. its a game that appeals to any intellect. a deep thinker will love the philosophical aspect. a simpleton will just get a kick out of the horror/chase scenes. if they happen to click onto some of the deeper themes then great but its not essential for a good time. i love a good existential crisis but i also love a good sphincter-clenching chase sequence haha. regardless, thats how you do a game right
Totally agree!
To be fair, Amy said "It won't let me die" which sounds an awful lot like she *wants* to finally rest in peace.
the bigest mistake the company made when they learned that the earth was going to die was double down on their ai projects, instead of sending down something to help sustain them, like an algae farm, or something to that effect.
50+ people can't revive a species
As an acute care nurse, the Sarah Lindwall encounter stroke a deep cord in me. The scene was incredibly just in its writing and almost brought me to tears.
On my second playthrough, I decided not to kill Carl, Simon 2, Sarah and the WAU because I knew Simon 3 would be left behind. I thought that maybe Simon 3 would try to go back to the other stations and help them, so they wouldn't be alone. They could try to heal Carl and Sarah, fix one of the stations (technology seems to still work, so they could use the helper robots to restore a station and make new technology), form a small community and maybe Simon 3 could restore Catherine and make more Simons.
This is a fast track to vault 108 "Simon" "Simon" "Hahaha Simon"
Actually, I think there is no way out of the abyss for Simon 3. Can you remember our long walk from the climber? At the last part of this walk we turned on a little helper robot so he can guide us to Tau cuz there were no lights. So, basically you won't get back to climber because you won't find a right path to it in the darkness and you'll probably end up being killed by WAU monsters. So there is no good ending for Simon 2 if he was left alive :(
Assuming any of the monsters doesn't kill him.
@@WarriorWOLF13 Siiiiimmmoooooooon!?
I always kill Simon 2 for mercy exactly because, to advance in certain areas, we made the way impassable for anyone supposedly coming later. We ourselves couldn't go back, as if it's an open world, if we wanted, because of those obstacles. He would be trapped, without a Catherine to guide him, the same dangers that already threatened us and the same information that was already insufficient to make us understand wtf is happening. He would be stuck alone and ignorant until his power pack dies off and maybe in total darkness because the energy station we restarted is already running and we don't know how much energy his power pack still has. Cat's cortex chip short-circuited, the tram and the climber are not available, and apparently Ypsilon doesn't have a hatch to go outside. Even if it had, there's no tool for him to use anyway.
The thing that SOMA left with me is, if you are alone and I mean *TRULY* alone, your worst enemy is yourself. With perhaps the exception of Catherine, the only person that can judge you or your actions (Or I guess Simon's actions), is yourself and depending on who you are that can be worse then any amount of condemnation from another person.
Well, if you are alone as you say, there is nobody else. There's only _you_ . Therefore, you are at the same time your own best friend and your own worst enemy. So uh yeah :|
This game has one of the best stories in gaming history. If not THE best. I literally cried at the end and was constantly in a strange conflict of emotions during the game. This game is an emotional horror game. Not a traditional scarry one.
The coin flip will forever be the biggest take away for me in this game. Such an amazing concept
Ain't it a kick in the teeth, too? For a huge part of the game, we knew tragedy was waiting for whoever wasn't the Ark copy. But watching the left-behind Simon have the realization that he didn't make it on the Ark was tough.
@@TiptoeTheTank its a copy lol .there are 2 Simons and game switched perspective to the one left behind . there is no REAL simon
@@gamesthatmatter9374 Who said it was a real Simon? What is real anyway?
@@gamesthatmatter9374 there was a real simon but he died. Its a what is a soul concept of philosophy that makes this game fun
@@arturoarturovich4773 Yeah this. You can't "win". The copy lives on after you copy it. You never swap to the copy.
Same kind of vibe as The Prestige.
I take "It won't let me die, Nothing is allowed to die" as a lamentation. She wants to die, but can't.
Wow that's an incredibly well-made video covering all the events in SOMA from the start to the end! Thought it had *waaay* more views than just 5000. Damn, good job, really!
I feel there is a fundamental difference between being alive and "living". What good is years of maddening loneliness left not knowing what went wrong, why was I chosen to be alone? Left as the sole "survivor", left alone forever in a cold deep unforgiving world. It is human nature to search for company, comfort in any form. A human isn't human without others in some form, and as sad as it is sometimes true death is the only truth there is.
*addition* I realized this has been proven even more given the past pandemic. People were forcibly separated and in lue of face to face interaction, people found new ways to connect with other humans. Video chat became the new norm if only for a short while given human history. People dove into virtual reality to try to garner that feeling of human to human interaction regardless of their digital forms. Humanity has always found a way to have human interaction but it only truly works if there is more than just one sole "person" left.
I played SOMA a few years ago now and still can't get it out of my mind. Still teared up at Simon's final recording as he was dying. A complete triumph of a game, with some of the best and more detailed backstory and consistent world-building ever made, and consistently great performances by voice actors. Great video.
I appreciated the tension in the lines between Simon and Cath, when starting the descent after taking the new body, which dissolved when they shared personal memories with each other. In general, I really like how the story and the characters develop as the game progresses.
My mind started to associate Cath and Simon with reason and emotions during their quarrels. On the one hand, it may feel wrong of Simon to care only about his own qualia and not about experience of his other equally valuable versions. Like Cath said, “we” were sent to ARK after all and we saved the humanity along the way.
On the other hand, we were not doing ourselves a favor per se because “they’re not us” as Simon accurately puts it. Mental states can be copy-pasted but not your self-experience (in the game universe). So it may feel like we did something completely altruistic by achieving nothing for ourselves and everything for “others” who are totally unrelated to us now.
In terms of horror, I dig the style when throughout the game the protagonist discovers consequences of already occurred horrible events as we dive deeper into the worst while expecting or hoping for the best.
What a great analysis of what it feels like to play a story, that thing that only videogames can do. With SOMA I loved that I played right into Simon's point of view, and when I reached the end I also felt like "off course, they have been saying that it's copies throughout the whole game, why on Earth did I actually believe I would get to go?" It felt like a twist that had been hiding in plain sight from the beggining (if hiding at all). And it worked not because it was unexpected but because it was the culmination of the theme-conflict that we've been exploring all along. What a (relatively) quiet little master piece. And your video totally does it honor.
even if i play this game a hundred times i wouldnt be able to tell its story the way you did, i don't know how you managed to collect all this details and put it together, this is just so beautiful
I just finished this and I'm finding all the analyses of this great game. I personally felt pretty good about the ending. We got our copies on the Ark, and like Catherine said, I felt happy for them, and proud that we'd done something pretty great to save something of humanity. It's as much of a legacy as anything. Seeing Simon on the Ark was reassuring to me, giving me closure that it worked and wasn't all for nothing.
Absolutely best video I've found on Soma I've found discussing the entire lore condensed.
SUBSCRIBED!!
Thank you very much! That's an immense compliment.
@@TiptoeTheTank No thank you! :D I'm currently driving cross country and have downed about 5 of your videos so far. I'll be done with all your content before the road trip ends. Keep up the amazing work!!
I would love a sequel to this game where on the Ark, something was causing glitches that manifest as some kind of monsters from their subconscious (like in the movie Sphere) -- and if you're not careful, you'll be hunted. While trying to keep a low, friendly profile, you notice strange messages in the Ark, but they're either in a language you don't understand, or the information is too scrambled to make sense of. Over time it becomes increasingly difficult to avoid detection, so you find yourself running for your "life".
Ultimately, aliens have discovered the Ark, which had been floating through space for 50,000 years -- having lost power like after only 1,000 years. The process of powering the Ark back on, which no one on the Ark even realized had happened, scrambled all of the information, melding personalities together and causing their fears to manifest as threats to one another. Before the aliens can restabilize the information, you (and others) need to avoid the increasing danger of other people's manifest terrors.
You survive, of course, and once you are extracted into a new physical body (thanks to the aliens) you find out how long you'd been floating through space. You tell the aliens about the planet you're from, what happened to it, and that you'd like to know what happened after all these years. That could make for an interesting 3rd installment...
Right ON! That sounds AWESOME!
Yo……that sounds awesome
I feel like SOMA is and was underappreciated.
For me, I can truly say SOMA is a rare masterpiece and it deserved far more than it got.
Would love to play more games in this universe but would lose impact.
Glad we got this gut punch of a classic once. Worth anyone's time.
Soma doesn't scare you with monsters, it horrifies you with it's choices.
The fact Katherine would have non chalantly experimented with Simon's scan as part of her ARC project and KNEW who he was but kept silent about it the whole time is terrifying.
I love this game, truly. I've beat it a handful of times since I got it in 2015. I had just started my existential crisis stage in life, and thankfully this game helped ease me all the way overboard, and for weeks later I wasn't sure if anything was real and almost convinced myself I was in a synthetic purgatory. This game's more than an ambitious and interesting horror game. It's an amazing introspection into the meaning of reality and existence and exactly what a solid horror experience should be.
Edit: Autocorrect fail
OMG i am forever going to use this, "what would the consequences be if you took a dump under their windshield wipers?" FOREVER, best analogy EVER
After 2 years it's still the best analysis of Soma that I've seen
Such a great analysis of my all-time favourite game and story. You've earned yourself a sub!
I LOVE Soma, I watched too many videos one it. And yours's. Your video is the one I keep returning to.
I don't really think there's good or bad ending here I think it's just people making choices that they think we're right at the time.
If you leave the WAU alive, I would love to see how it could evolve itself.
With help from the brainscans it has, it would be neat to explore it retaking the surface.
Never played myself, but this Lore always gets me reflecting on the concept of what is a soul
Wish you the best for your channel, loving those vids. It's nice to have something else than an overdramatic deep voice trying to be creepy.
This is one of the most beautiful videos I listened to on UA-cam. I was doing some calligraphy and put it on because I loved SOMA to the ends of the Earth and I had to stop several times because this video is just like SOMA: haunting and beautiful. Thank you.
This video is pure gold, buried in the desert of UA-cam algorithm
The least I can do is to leave a like and subscribe!
This is wonderfully laid out. just makes me wonder what could've happened if this were made into a fully fledged film series
I think it would be great for a show honestly
Insane production value, this popped up on autoplay and I expected it to come from a channel with 300k subscribers. I usually avoid small channels like the plague (sue me 🤷🏽♂️) but this was really captivating.
Thank you for giving it a chance! And for the kind words
May i ask why you avoid small channels? /genuine
Hi! Big fan of your stuff! You mentioned in one bit of this video that a woman from TAU managed to get ahold of a tether and make her way back to the surface. I sort of want to look more into that, so if you know more about it, I'd be hella grateful!
Hi there, and thanks for checking out the content! The old SOMA site by Frictional has some great extra stories/info!
That particular story is here: somagame.com/item-4540.html
@@TiptoeTheTank Thank you!!!
Someone on Frictional Games forums described Simon's apparent inability to understand the idea of the copying like this:
"So far, the game has put you (the player) through two scans. Both times, it switched your perspective to the copy's. Based on this pattern, the game will switch your perspective again: immediately after the scan, you will control Simon on the ARK. (Some players have said that this would be a better ending, and that returning to Phi after the credits would have a greater emotional impact.) Expecting a perspective flip is only reasonable; after all, it happened both of the previous times.
This is exactly how Simon feels. At this point in the game, his experience perfectly matches the player's: he remembers being scanned in Toronto, waking up at Upsilon, being scanned at Omicron, and descending to the abyss. It's only here, at the very end, that the game breaks its own rules. Instead of switching perspective, it shows you what the original Simon sees. It cheats you out of seeing the ARK (until the post-credits scene). And just as you feel cheated, so does Simon."
It's also a possible perspective that maybe Simon does understand the process before firing the gun but as soon as it's gone, purposelessness sets in, with jealousy at the minds in the ARK. People have also suggested that he's so irrational and emotionally childish because by then he's the result of a scan of a scan (I don't think anything in-game mentions this as a potential issue) and also originally a 'flat' or 'legacy' scan, from before advances made it more completely capture the whole brain which I think is mentioned. These maybe aren't necessary to explaining his attitude but maybe were intended to be considered.
This was amazing! I could only watch the playthrough of someone else, I'm a mom who doesn't have a lot of time to game. But I honestly felt for the WOW, it constitutes as a living organism, sentient too. It literally mourned its creator and attempted to bring him back... reminds me of FMA in that sense.
It was told to preserve human life but wasn't given a set definition of "preserve" "human" or "life" and had a limited toolset. Given that, it was doing some pretty good work and seemed like it was improving at restoring people.
I was very religious for a couple of decades and understand very well the capacity and the "need" for ditching critical thinking for the sake of keeping the hope of living forever. Despite any evidence, or lack thereof. Despite what scientists may say. It's called cognitive dissonance. And even though this makes Simon look like a dummy by the end, most of humankind lives in this cognitive dissonant state of mind.
To live in denial is the rule, not the exception.
Doesn't matter if there's a chance. I'd want to see the end. That's my greatest fear with dying normally, that the world carries on without me, a single blip on humanities radar. But no, I'd want to watch the last lights flicker, to see us fade from history, the last keeper of all of humanity, derelict.
I have to say, I absolutely adored this video. I've been feeling sick for quite a while, and horror game analysis videos have been quite a solace to me.
SOMA is one of my particular favorites and I just discovered your channel through this video. I'm in awe of the way you present things and how the morality of Simon's / our own actions are described.
I apologize for the rambling, I'm just very happy about this video and I'm looking forward to whatever content you put out in the future!
Soma is without a doubt the most brutal and impactful game I have ever played. A horror game where the monsters aren’t that scary, where the real horror is the existential questions and unease created by its world and story. That image of Simon 3 left alone on the bottom of the ocean will haunt me forever.
Congrats, incredible thorough analysis, you really went so deep into the details of it.
fuck me, sarah gets me crying everytime.
17 mins in， continuity theory seems a great way to make sense of the suicidal depression some of them must felt in pathos 2. Question 1: i am still an utilitarian so if i can't really benefit the mankind at that point i am not doing anything
the story of soma is very interesting, and the overall question I was able to glean from its tale is thus. "What would you do when presented with the end and no real conceivable way out?." Would you fight and struggle to give yourself or at the very least someone else just a few more days in the sun, or will you succumb to the end, after all, there is no grand savior in the story who will bring humanity back from the brink your just prolonging the inevitable. even knowing what I do now about the story wouldn't change the choices I would make I would likely fight for that last stretch of time in paradise and as I said if not for me then for the other clone because I don't see a point in dying afraid and alone.
Such a great video... And really evoking of the feelings I did had (and still have) while playing (living?)
This game truly broke me....
I love soma!!! I speed run it from time to time! Great work I’m enjoying these lore videos, keep it up!
Looking at all the pieces in this context, it really strikes me as borderline mythological or fantastical in its own grim manner.
Like a Greek tragedy of the underworld. The souls of the living, and giving context on free will and what life and death really means. Its all very cool.
one note to make is that the player controls three entities. The gameplay up until the first, pivotal, scan in Munchi's lab, is the original Simon. Since we're talking about a _scan_ this existence continues on without us. The game continues from the point of view of a scan of Simon's existence (consciousness+memory). This, is a separate entity. It is not a continuation of Simon's _existence_ . Again, when a copy is created for the deep diving suit. At that point, it is the third instance of Simon we control.
We do not know how many there have been, before the start of the game.
Woman. Your channel is just a brilliant and massively underrated. Let the algorithms bless you
Wow. Even after two playthroughs of this game, I knew NONE of this. Thanks so much for enlightening us!
Fantastic video, really enjoyed this. Wonderful narration, writing, pacing, timeline, editing, everything. Great job!
I forgot how fucking painful and bleak this game is. It really is one of the most moving and necessary games I could think to suggest to someone.
Thank you for the kind words!
I honestly thought SOMA was just an 'underwater spooky horror' game before I played it. Dead Space and SOMA taught me to not have preconceived notions when going into a new story.
Honestly? It's less about curiosity for me and more a fear of death. I'd like to be one of them but only because I'm terrified of dying.
during the flashing images at 17:20 you can see some white text. This, is code, specifically written in LISP (or some variant of LISP, there are _many_ ). LISP was used in AI research _a lot_ :D
Such an amazing game. I’ve played it many times over many years and I still think of its bigger themes often.
I only recently found your channel, and I adore it!
Simon has experienced a tremendous brain injury before his scan. It's so tremendous that complications from it end his life. While they, his doctors, believe Simon has the capacity to make medical decisions for himself and consent to release ownership of his scans, I sincerely believe the brain trauma diminished his cognitive capacity to fully understand and comprehend many situations throughout Soma.
I don't think Simon understands he's a copy of brainscans loaded into the bodies of others or onto the Ark. I don't think he has the capacity to understand that an equivalent copy remains in the upload source each time, since he had only experienced being the new copy.
My own personal experiences with recognizing my possible cognitive impairments and a family member's experiences with developmental delays are certainly impacting my prospective though
I would have helped Amy. It just feels like the right thing to do, especially for someone who plans to destroy the WAU. And now after hearing your thoughts, it's easy to say leaving the WAU alive is the right answer. But I can't say I would have recognized that in the moment either. I would have recognized helping Amy as right, but I easily could have fallen into thinking that the WAU needed to die as I played the game. Leaving the WAU alive makes me wonder if someday human life in some form may live on Earth again.
As for the Ark, the people unloaded to it, with perhaps the exception of Simon, all understand what it is. They have some concept of how long in Earth's measurements of time it will last. Depending on how Catherine designed it, she may be able to access the programming of the Ark from within. But without physical bodies, our physical concepts of time have no meaning. The only limitations of the Ark are its memory and power.
In fact there's a light novel/anime/video game series that tackles this a bit, Sword Art Online. Specifically the third season Sword Art Online: Alicization. I'm only really familiar with the anime, and I recommend starting with season 1 to become appropriately invested in and knowledgeable of the main character and supporting cast. But season 3 can be a stand alone. Obviously the tone is VERY DIFFERENT than the overall tone of Soma.
Thank you for the wonderful video!
Soma is by far one of my top 5 favorite games, I've played though the game at least several dozen times.
This is the first game in a LOOOOOONG time that after I finished...
I just sat... And thought.
And for a long time I thought. This game changed the way I thought. And i love it
Q1: No, I wouldn't want to survive.
Q2: Carl man, i don't like your sass die painfully bro.
Q3: End her suffering
Q4:: Leave him with the battery
Q5: No i left her
Q6: I left the wow on
Last question: Yes
In terms of what makes us human I think this game highlights it with your choices. It's empathy. You tip toe for example second guessed each of your choices, think what could have happened, that's your empathy talking. A robot like the WAU has no empathy, it's given a job and its only purpose is to do that job consequences be damned. But if you were given the same job as the WAU you would think harder about what to do, weigh the pros and cons. That's what makes you human,
Could you imagine if the ark was set to horror mode and no one could change it. Only to end up reliving everything month after month😳
That last choice at the end, seeing her on lifesupport, starving , truly sad and signifying thatvour days on earth are numbered,
honestly, Simon begging to not be left alone at the end still haunts me to this day.
damnnn Im subscribed to this channel last month why did i not see this video sooner, this is dope af i loved SOMA because of its lore and philosophical subjects
I would love a sequel of Soma. Where you’re Simon, and you get to explore the ARK. Maybe a tiny bit of the WAU made it on the ARK, and you and Catherine have to stop the WAU before it destroys the entire system.
I know there are way more sad games out there, but this game just gave me the feeling of everything being senseless and depressing. it hit a different part of me that I don't wanna ever wanna touch again.
This was an exeptional video. I have just played through SOMA and faced all the moral questions like you did - making this video even more touching. However, i left the WAU alive. because when akers gets you in the subway station, you have this odd dream-state where things seem quite... uplifting? better? only to realise later that it was induced by the WAU - mimicking Caths Arc. But if everyone in the WAUs grasp gets to live through fond memories or even a less depressing hallucination of better times - then the WAU does humanities remainder quite a service. Sure their real bodies look like deformed flesh-masses, but i dont think they know about that. and the WAU tries to make sure they dont realise it. perhaps with the structure gel all around pathos-II, all the live bodies are also connected - like all the people in the ark, able to interact with eachother.
The only thing im still wondering tho is how imogene reeds head was replaced with the robotic visor that simon nr.2 started out with. who put that there? was that really the work of the WAU? a helper-robot ripping a corpses head off putting a visor and a battery in, along with some Structure Gel and a cortex chip? Shouldnt it just have reanimated her instead?
Anyways, thank you for this well made video.
I think it didn't have a working scan of Imogen Reed. In the Transmissions series of shorts, her brain reacted badly to the scanning interface and she had a seizure the first time, then she refused to try getting scanned again by Catherine because she'd kinda gotten disillusioned with the idea of the Ark. The scan of her that the WAU got and put into the vivarium in the first short doesn't seem to have worked properly I guess. That, or the WAU remembered she'd been hostile to it and had shut the main power down at Upsilon, and decided to boot up someone else.
Fantastic little video,this game makes you think,then question your decisions,just love that.
I remember those lines from Star Trek,the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few,but what about the one,i.e. Us,were selfish sometimes,we can do great things,sacrifice ourselves for there's,but sometimes we're just selfish an don't do the right things.
i went into this game almost completely blind, the only media i saw was one trailer. so i experienced everything as Simon did which i think made the game all the better.
you also missed a character, she is in a robot body resting on the ocean floor.
but anyway i also left alot of death in my wake. the only one i felt any hesitation about was sarah, i had simon ask her several times if she truly was ready to die, her being the only completely normal human left on the planet. the rest were in a sorry state like amy or just machines.
also i swear i was able to keep carl alive because i remember the robot walking in and beating him to death, before i escaped. so i figured he was doomed regardless.
Soma has gotta be one of if not my favorite sci-fi horror game.
The scary part of this game, aside the deep sea monsters, is the moral questions that the brain won't shut up around bedtime.
heres something i love about this game. it appeals to any intellect. a deep thinker will love the philosophical and moral side and a simpleton will just get a kick out of the horror/chase scenes. or a youtuber or casual gamer can fire it up for a bit of fun on halloween. the deeper side to the game isnt essential but it makes for a better experience. i love a good existential crisis as much as the next galaxy-level god-mode genius (sarcasm) but i also love a good sphincter-clenching chase sequence haha. the world is full both kinds of players, so if your game or movie only appeals to one of those demo's, youre gonna alienate the other side completely. so this game did it right.
dropped a like for the video. i'm only half way through but i'm enjoying it. nice one
I like your observations and takes of the themes of SOMA, nice video, wish I would have found it sooner
A problem with Soma is that we don’t give the say-so to those we have to decide for. Being in a dangerous place, full of monstrous creatures and strange people, there was no luxury of sitting down and talking it out. We didn’t get to hear that other side of those topics. Not until the very end where we met the protector of the ARK.
enchanting voice. amazing vid. suscribed m'lady
If no one knows: SOMA is heavily based on the concept of Human Conscious Transfer Thought Theory also known in Cyber Punk setting as Mind Uploading, the principle of this idea is this:
What is human? What defines you being human? Are you still YOU if there are multiple copies of you? and most importantly... What is consciousness? ALOT of varitions of these questions can be asked and that will result in differing answers for each question but at the core of the concept it is "Just WHAT exactly makes you... well YOU!?"
- what gives me the right to destroy the wau?
- it's a machine. it doesn't think. it's nothing. also because I can.
There is no "coin toss" both copies exist the same existents "Level". We, the player get only one point of view until the very end, where we see both of them chronologically so we finally feel from first hand how truly terrifying this whole thing reality is..
Really great lore. Loved the video.. Was really surprised to see subscriptions in the 3 digits, Was expecting at least 6.. Great content
I like this take, that the 'coin toss' was a lie. The longer I've had away from SOMA and the more folks have shared, the more illusory/manipulative it seems to have been. They were always going to be the ones left behind. Because "they" are "them". Does that make sense?
I'm going to have to give this game a second playthrough one of these days to really absorb it. Thanks for checking out the channel!
@@TiptoeTheTank Yea , I forgot to add "this is my take on this" instead of it sounding like im claiming it's the ultimate truth :D
Actually I haven't even played the game. I just "play" through these kind of lore vids, which are fascinating.. Btw on the same note, Catherine seems like a heartless person in a way... When at the first stages of the game ignores completely of the fact actual human copies are in the robots, and she is kinda manipulates Simon, where she do understands that he is in denial so he will do what she wants.. Only after launch she changes the tone, because it's doesn't matter anymore.. Also not sure I fully understood all WAU aspects.. The proxies, and the monsters.. Also did you knew there is a secret file by the developers with a lot of content that did not make it to the game.. A lot of voice acting and whole plot parts that where left out
Exactly! The entire game until the credits is the experience-stream of Simon-3/powersuit Simon, from his memories of being flesh-and-blood Simon and then ductile suit Simon up til he discovers he's been Simon 3 remembering all that and not Ark-Simon remembering being Simon 3 as well. The post-credit scene is just an assurance that the Ark does work, to prevent the ending from being too grim, I guess.
Catherine's interesting in that she's very cavalier about the lives of the mockingbird machines, because yeah, those are real digitised minds, though some are coping really poorly with their situation and have degraded. Simon's deliberate misunderstanding of the copying process... it seemed like she got sick of trying to correct it and figured he'd likely freak out and/or crash if he accepted the truth, and she'd be again without a pair of arms and legs to help launch the Ark.
She's also probably the least phased by her digital state of anyone we meet, she's installed on an omnitool and connected to various non-humanoid systems and remains sane and even calm. She doesn't have any protective delusions like "I'm in my human body, I'm just injured and that's why I can't move around." or even "I must be in the Ark now in a digital simulation of my human body.". The other normally-functioning mind they meet, Johann Ross, has the most similar-to-pre-scan-self in that he's installed in his own reanimated corpse. Arguably, Johann and Simon are some compelling evidence that the WAU is getting better over time at preserving/recreating human life.
The background questions posed by Soma are the ones we already face in our world, which is being hit not by an asteriod, bur by our own actions. The difference, we don't have an ark
Finest SOMA video I've seen. Very well done.
Another thing I let 2nd Simon live cause there's 2 people in that body if the structure cell came in contact with the body after you kill 2nd Simon then the other person's put into a life of torment
The most scariest thing about soma is the cholices you run into
Always love reading comments to see others view on this
Just found your channel, first video was the PREY video, I'll be binging most of your content soon.
I love your voice. It's so relaxing.
Even given the thesis, it truly is! It is a solid tossup between her and The Exploring Series ( an SCP and other pulp fiction content creator) as to which I will listen to over and over again for stress relief and lore.
@@Aramakie98 I love her style. Somehow, I've managed to stay away from the whole SCP universe, but I may give The Exploring Series a try.
The name "omicron" for a station hits do differently now-
I feel that the "coin flip" was the carrot before the horse. I just feel that there was no chance of Simon 3 transferring to the ark.
i mean, you can see the end coming miles away. but when it then happened, it still hit me hard.
i am wondering if it would have been better if after the launch of the ark, we instantly go to the ark simon. do that part etc. and only after that we go back to the earth simon? not sure if that would have hit even harder or not...
The brain injury equivalent to taking a dump under someone’s windshield wipers rofl ❤️❤️❤️
That was an excellent explanation/analysis, great video 👍
These vids give me hope for 2021.
Thank you. Having/making these vids gives me hope for 2021. The people that have been showing up are pretty cool too. ☺️
Gotta love it when the whole thing of "is life just code?" gets brought up...
Playing god is easy!
Playing god is fun!
The thing I always wonder is are there people on Mars making a colony I mean if their was a comic coming to destroy earth would people get ready to go to mars to save humanity
Woah, an MK Ultra reference less than 3 mins in, count me in!
Damn… I really thought deeply about my previous thought line of: “oh if shit goes the right of bang. Imma keep on going and fight through and survive the apocalyptic event.” As I’ve watched the walking dead series back when it was good. (Only up to the fall of the saviors arc. Imo, I wasn’t too impressed by the whispers. Though I love them as a character archetype. As you know there’s a pocket of humanity that would devolve into those types after they figured out the walker blood makes them invisible to other walkers” trick. So let’s use that to our advantage. (The crazed fuckers that would attack you for even looking at them.) it brung that to its logical conclusion.)
That’s where it stopped being entertaining. Though I’ve struggled growing up, so I’m 50/50 on if I’d go on. As I could not only survive but thrive, but also do I really wanna struggle like that..?
Clicked the 1st time for the Soma lore. Clicked another 10 or 20 times for Walking HR Department Julia Dahl ❤😂🎉
This game is something else as it tries to ask what is you and present its representation of this idea as fact for the sake of the story. I love how it does so while making you think of the other interpretations of what makes you you, are they less true or something we hope to be true such as a soul.
One thing I wish they had done was the idea of what if the digital copy was made along side the physical until the physical was no more. Would it still be you or a copy that destroyed the original so it could live. The only truth to this is that both the physical and digital would not know if it was slow enough, if it was quick one could say it was a copy.