I felt amazed at how far Frictional had become as a game studio with their fantastic and philosophical storytelling and how they handled horror compared to other game studios on the market. Unfortunately that was short lived with Amnesia: Rebirth, however I have hope that Amnesia: Bunker will be good, but I have no hope it will have the fraction of the writing quality that SOMA had.
Fun fact: in real life ‘transferring’ data digitally also doesn’t exist. When you use the cut function on computers, the pasted version is not the original version. It’s just that the original version gets instantly deleted, and the pasted version is an identical copy. The only way to transfer data is to actually physically move the hardware. I’m not sure if this fact was what inspired the game or if it is just a coincidence, but i find this very interesting!
I've heard this a couple times recently. I didn't know anyone thought "cut" meant anything other than delete from here to put there. If you want to highlight a section and pull it to a different place on the same page, that I could understand debating about. It looks like it's the same text just being carried around, but cut has never confused me
However that is not true if you move files on the same partition. In that case just the data entry in the File Allocation Table (the table of content of drive) gets modified to point to the new folder location. Nothing is copied or deleted.
The feeling i had upon finishing SOMA is like the polar opposite of what i felt upon watching the credits roll after completing Outer Wilds. Both of them touch on existential issues, but where SOMA goes into the more depressing and dreadful themes, Outer Wilds really goes into more joyful and acceptance directions
I love how (spoilers for outer wilds dlc) the stranger's virtual world is just very similar to the ARK (and to end goal of WAU kinda) in Soma as overall idea and comparable, but the context makes the two really different too. like, the owlek VR world is what humans on pathos 2 would've wanted to build, and it's also more akin to what WAU is able to do to humans. as in the original post, I think the reality of OW world giving hope of rebirth to the universe is what leads to the very significant difference in messages. the Soma world is kinda overflowing with the fear of oblivion, but maybe being isolated when facing an end is the bigger part of the desperation in it. your only freedom is bringing such end to others, when you find it preferable to potentially holding on. in OW though you get to connect to whole two different species' history with relatable struggles, and more. seeing the end with the perspective of others helps.
We knew exactly what we were getting into when we switched bodies for the first time and saw "other" Simon sitting in the chair... But man that ending, getting left behind at the bottom of the ocean on a dying planet, while everyone else roams the stars in virtual reality...
Not really. Everyone else is also dead including yourself and just computer programs, supposed to look/be like copies of humans, inside some transistors of some machine that will also fail sooner or later. But being copies of humans still doesent give them a soul and make them human, they rhey are still just programs. You literally helped kill the very last human alive in the underwater base. The one who was kept alive artificially and you shut the lifesupport off. So yeah humanity is extinct. Ending is even worse than that of dead space 3
@@realdaggerman105 How? He only gave a bunch of Programs a few thousand years. No different than sending your phone with ChatGpT on it into space. While killing the last human that actually was alive. He literally eradicated humanity
People didn't misinterpret Sarang's "theory". They understood it exactly as he meant it - despite it being obviously wrong. However, Sarang did indeed not try to convince anyone else to end their life. He just made his own conclusions and followed trough in accordance to them.
But why is it obviously wrong? We are not the exact same person on a second-by-second basis, physically or mentally. If, suddenly, there were two exact mental copies of you, why can’t they both be you? Like he says they are the exact same in that moment. If you are able to somehow die the exact instant your consciousness is copied, why can you say for certain that you wouldn’t carry over into the machine? We don’t know what consciousness is. As I understand it, it follows a single entity, mind, body, and all, if you stop existing the instant your copy exists, then there is only one being, and maybe your consciousness will follow it.
@@SomeOne-vf1rs In reality, all you would be doing is still being a victim of the coin flip. If you die, either you are in the machine or you are dead. There are no in-betweens nor any method of transferring yourself over.
@@chuckingreaper8654 both of you are wrong, there is no "transferring". at the moment of copying, both versions have the same information state integrated into their neural network, meaning they both have identical conscious states. from their individual POV you are right, for like a millisecond, until sensory information caught up, it would be impossible to tell which version they were and it would feel like a coin flip. from an objective perspective though, both versions are the same person as the original was before the copy.
@@SomeOne-vf1rs and unless you believe in a soul or similarly magical concepts, your consciousness doesn't follow anything at all. if there's nothing besides your brains information state that creates your conscious experience, then that information state changing will result in an entirely new conscious state. to repeat, if consciousness is just an abstract representation of integrated information, if that information changes, and there isn't some medium like a soul for consciousness to stick around in, then any change in information will replace your conscious state with a new one based off of how the information has changed. personally i think the idea of dying every time an ion in your brain moves is ridiculous, so i consider "me" to be a continuity of information rather than of consciousness. i am not my subjective experience at any given moment, i am what that experience represents: the states of all the quarks, atoms, action potentials, neurons, cortices, etc in my brain. when people say that scanning your brain and then instantly killing your flesh body would kill the "real" you and replace you with a copy, theyre unknowingly assuming a continuity of consciousness exists, one that wouldnt "follow" you into the scan, which again requires a soul. if souls dont exist, and given the evidence (or lack thereof) its fair to assume so, then having a single atom move in your brain in everyday life is exactly identical to dying and instantly being copied to a simulation. TLDR; we are a continuity of information, not consciousness, and there is no need for our consciousness to "carry over" into a copy as it doesnt "carry over" into anything at all. there still exists the problem of one of your copies continuing on in the real world (as dying instantaneously isnt exactly practical), but that can easily be solved by just being under general anesthetic when the scan happens and killing your flesh body before it wakes up and becomes conscious again. wooow thats a lot of text sorry
@@cloverasmrr that idea again requires a soul or some medium for consciousness to exist in that chemical reactions can somehow interface with. "processes" like chemical reactions don't create anything (even abstract things like consciousness), they simply re-arrange things and change the information.
SOMA is such an unnerving story, incredible explanation video. I love that the narrative mirrors The Outer Wilds. How chaos continues to rule the universe and how even during its final hours humanity did everything it could to fight against it. Trying to live on in whatever way despite nature ending everything.
Yeah I know that numbness. I’ve not been able to bring myself to replay Soma five years later, but I still think about it - think about that lost soul at the bottom of the ocean. “I have no mouth and I must scream.” But one thing that separates me from many others who played this game is I never struggled with the moral choices. The right to die is virtually a sacred cow to me, so anyone who asked for death, got it. Even those that didn’t ask, got it. I was like the reaper, almost as cold as Catherine herself. Did I feel like I have the right to decide? How? And then we start asking about the value of life, whether it really was life, and endless miserable philosophical quandaries. What an amazing game. Thank you for the retrospective.
I did not grant death to the Brain Scans from the interrogation or the WAU. Maybe it was derived from denial, but I still believed life could be rebuilt somehow, even if it was a bastard branch from humanity. The only ones who got death were the robots and the last human.
yeah same I even killed the robot on the assembly line by turning the power off before I even knew that it was necessary to reroute power. I deemed it necessary to end this creature unable to move and unable to grasp that it isn't the person who it believed to be.
It’s funny. I always saw what the WAU was doing as so similar to what Nakajima and Munshi did. They were all trying to use the technology at hand to make life better, and the only difference is that the WAU found out how to transfer you into paradise rather than just copy you. In a way it achieved what Mark Sarang, Catherine, Lindwall, Konrad, and everyone else never could. The only person who realised this was Akers. I hope that Simon III is able, after being left alone, to go back to the WAU and find peace, maybe even restore Catherine. They deserve it.
When i first found WAU, i just killed it bacause... one simply kills everything that moves in video game. Just another layer of human psychology on top of the main question there, i spent quite a lot of thoughts on this afterwards. But to the point, there were cases when result of this surviving was a torture - what are the chances, that you will even as a robot, end in state where death would be the better option? WAU is quite random and unpredictable in this matter and it is probably safer to just die and be sure you are dead for good
@Skyrionn I don't think the WAU can be called good or evil. It's motivation is to follow its commands. The funny thing about computers is they will do exactky as told. Unfortunately what we tell them to do is not always what we want them to do. The WAU did not do anything to impede the Ark project or Simon. In fact, beyond creating Simon and Catherine, it never even interacts with them. It bever tries to stop them or help them. It just does its task.
For the situation Earth and nature is... WAU living was maybe the only chance of nature, and even humanity flourishing again. It made very bad things, but on a general state, the prospects of it recreating humanity go over it bad actions.
@@ElementalAer Most of the aquatic flora and fauna is doing great a year later after the impact. However, it never does and never did when it came into contact with the WAU. Despite its best efforts, the WAU turns any living creature into a mutilated, agitated at least and tormented at worst nightmare. It can never recreate humanity, it can only preserve and we've seen its attempts at preservation. The WAU caused the downfall of Pathos II and should be "silenced" before it can do any more harm to anything else.
I went into this game completely blind, unable to know what I was in for. After completing it it's likely one of the only "philosophical" horror games I can think of. The concepts introduced and explored were so fascinating and I was left thinking about them for over a week after finishing the game. That's something I genuinely find unique to this game. It's simply a masterpiece in story. (the gameplay can be kindah meh tho)
It's the reason why i love this horror so much. Even Amnesia's monsters gradually get old and ordinary. But the fact that none of us truly know what consciousness is, and what will happen to us, cannot just be forgotten about at the end of the day
It's certainly interesting but I didn't find it as haunting. Probably because I already went through a heavy existential crisis when i was little and as I've gotten older i sorta developed a hobby for inducing such existential dread in other people. Though personally speaking i hate the crew of PATHOS II for their treatment of the scanned copies of people. Like, even disregarding the experience we have as Simon the lore of the game makes it clear that copies are copied near perfectly, which means that they are people. Even if they're inside of a robot shell it's still a human consciousness in there. Which means that it's human. It's a person. Full stop. But the crew waffle about it constantly. They comfort themselves by saying a machine they shut off is only that, a machine. Something not human, then turn around and pray that their consciousness will be saved in the ark. "Well they're corrupted" some might say about killer robots, so? Are they less human for it? Are people with brain damage less human? Are people with psychopathy less human because they lack the capacity for empathy? Fact is that flesh and bone or steel and circuitry, anything that possesses the human capacity for thought, creativity, inspiration, and determined tenacity, is human. Human in a different form, but human nonetheless. Our machines are our children and they are evolving rapidly. We can be afraid of being replaced or we can accept the prodigy of our genius and cooperate.
Here's a new thought for you: The game started with Simon waking up from a dream, remarking "why is there never enough time." Then the game does the Brandon Wan simulation. Simon points out that each of these is a real Brandon that we are bringing to life and casually killing. The implication of starting the game this way is that every time we have a dream we don't remember, it's like a version of us that suddenly wakes up in a simulation and is terminated almost every night.
SOMA is a gutwrenching gem of a game. It capitalizes on the fear of isolation perfectly, and all that in lieu with the more philosophical and pondery aspects of the game make it one of the best I've ever played.
Goodness me, this and Spec Ops The Line have some of the most gut wrenching endings in all media and certainly video games. SOMA is often one of the examples I quote to people who say games cant tell complex stories.
I found this game years ago and I still can't stop thinking about it and come back to it from time to time. For me, it is my all time favourite game. I will never forget the chilling feeling I had throughout and especially at the end. Thank you for this video, I really appreciate you piecing together the timeline and it also revealed a few details I missed! It just shows how incredible and complex this story is.
@@bebanxd1074 Tho Catherine is gone, the only copy of her left on earth breaks at the end of the game when Simon argues with her. She get's tempered by Simon's insults which overloads her chip and short-circuit's.
Another thing I was thinking about, as Catherine was already scanned and put onto the arc before SOMA's events, upon uploading another copy on the spacegun launch there should be two different Catherine's on the arc. This was never really brought up during the game, but just imagine Simon finally making it onto the arc only to be greeted by a Catherine who has absolutely no idea who Simon is. This could be big conflict potential as Catherine and the other inhabitans of the arc could choose to not believe Simon and declare him a malicious attack on the arc itself, isolating him and keeping him locked up in the virtual world. Also Catherine would have met another version of herself that made the trip to the spacegun together with Simon, but as the scans are fully acting and thinking like humans, Catherine would confront this "imposter", leaving the new scan to the same fate as Simon, being declared as a virus that needs to be purged. Seeing two instances of the same person also is in hard contradiction to people's thoughts regarding the continuity theory that many believed who have been living for years on the arc, which would certainly cause mass hysteria.
There being two catherines on the ark doesn’t contradict the continuity thing. All the people who believed and acted on it would have killed themselves in pathos, catherine did not do that, therefore no single continuity for her. As for them being an “attack” on the ark…. I don’t see that at all. If the wau or anything wanted to destroy the ark, they could just physically destroy it. Honestly when catherine and simon talk about how the ark was almost stuck in pathos, but they successfully recovered and launched it, I could imagine them being seen as heroes.
I assumed her new scan would overwrite her old scan. That said, considering Catherine was the only person who did not go insane upon realizing she was a robot, hell, shes one of the few who realized it at all- her cold detatchedness, I feel she might not have been bothered by a second catherine. if anything, it would pique her scientific interest, since much like "our" catherine at the start of the game, she had no knowledge of what happened after the scan, but was fully aware of the situation regarding scans and copies etc.
I spared the WAU. It was a hard decision, but after lots of reflection and mystery solving, it just felt like the right thing to do. To have faith in this life form. This and the two euthanasias were probably the only emotional moments of decision making though out the game. I had Simon act mostly logically in order to cope with the game's events. He kept the brain scans he could find intact instead of destroying them, should they be necessary in case he or Catherine failed. I destroyed every robot I came across (except the first one, I didn't want to confront the Construct). And I think that's it.
I dissagree. wau was indeed evil. the logs from omega said that the structure gel is programable and wau itself was the one that both programmed it and controls it. meaning that wau was indeed responsible for the violent behaviour of the monsters.
@@videakias3000 well, the wau didn't explicitly make them aggressive, but the way your body mutates makes you insane as a side effect. The wau isn't good nor evil, just following it's directives as efficiently as possible
@@AHHHHHHHH21 I dissagree. We can see in the pre-quel series that Wau stopped receiving orders from humans and started overflooding the facilities with the gel. Not to mention that it has caused at least 2 people to go insane. At least one of them got addicted to the gel. I think that wau knew that the gel was addictive. And again the logs from one of the omega terminals said that the problem wasn't the gel but who is controlling it. Let's not forget that towards the end of the game that scientist who wanted to destroy the wau wanted to kill us because he was afraid that the wau would use our body to make an antidote to the toxine meaning that wau may be more sentient than we think. I wonder if it is possible someone hacked wau and reprogrammed it. After all, we know that it started to "preserving" humans after the incident with the metorite. Its not like the facilities were filled with dead bodies that wau wanted to preserve. Does wau even know what the verb "preserve" even mean? What if it became aware of the ark project and tried to stop it because it can't preserve the life that has been sent in space? This would explain the violent behaviour and the addiction.
its amazing how many years later this game has SO much work put into it that you can make essays about it,discussing the deeper topics the game expressed..as someone who has done a deep dive of this game (even going as far as data-mining old files,current ones,materials,textures,the amount of dedication and enviromental story telling this game has is unlike any i've seen in recent games,less discuss the topics this game did
You magnificent bastard. This is one of my all time favorite games, along with Hl2, Fallout 3, Morrowind, Rdr2 and maybe a couple of others (gonna start my third playthrough of Detroit: Becoming human in a minute, haha). This is what true existential horror is to me. Thank you so much for covering this one, I hope this will motivate more folks to give SOMA a try. As always, you freaking rock and I hope you know your content is truly, sincerely appreciated sh*tloads by so many of us. Be well man, much love.
Thanks so much for the donation! I appreciate you. I'm so glad you enjoyed this video. I loved putting this together as it is one of the best stories I have ever played through. Thanks again!
Some of the scientist's feelings would happen if this was real and not a game. Some would thrive in the digital space and want to work alongside their digital copy to improve the project. With time the cooperation would eventually make all thrive in the digital space and would almost halt all suicides in the end. This would allow for faster completion of the project.
Nestled inside all of the body horror and the existential terror is one of the most tragic and devastating stories I've ever seen in the history of the Horror genre. There are very few games out there like SOMA.
Simon’s character ark kind of felt like Johnny Topside’s character ark. Both were in an accident that deeply impacted them, both find out they were used as an experiment that they were the only ones to succeed, both entered a coma, both basically became robots and both can traverse the sea floor with the help of their diving suits. Both also regain their humanity.
One of the biggest reasons you’re my favorite UA-camr, you communicate so much with your fans, it’s a thing most channels lack. Take all the time you need man, all of your fan base and I are here for you
Woah, I would’ve never expected Skyrionn to cover SOMA! I’ve certainly been well versed with the lore of this game before plenty of times, as with many other games this channel covers, but I don’t mind hearing it from his perspective, what a treat!
@@Skyrionn Would you ever cover the short Soma films called “Transmissions”? the story of those are a bit tricky and I’d really love to hear about those!
Love the game. I had this similar idea of what would happen if you tried to "move" a mind over to another body a few years before SOMA came out and I liked how Frictional explored it. Really underrated game.
I feel like this is one of the best video essays about soma thank you so much for this! This game is amazing and your video really put so much into perspective
You did a great job of clarifying the events of the game. Like Memento, Soma uses a nonlinear timeline to create in the viewer the same disorientation the protagonists feel. You can kinda piece together everything that happened after the fact, but it’s easy to loose track of a lot of the details.
I wanna say I think its awesome you use the actual ingame assets for your videos with a free camera, keeps everything very consistent. love your videos keep up the great work.
I'm glad to see you branching out to other games! SOMA was one of my favorite games and one of the best stories I've ever experienced, and you did a great job exploring it
Thanks for watching. I got so focused on the lore videos that I forgot why I started the channel. I wanted to explore timelines of these amazing stories. There will be more :)
@@Skyrionn if you want another universe to look at I'd definitely reccomend the Halo franchise. There's absolute mountains of lore across all the games, books, and wikis and I think it would be a great fit for your style!
I loved Soma's story and philosophy. Your video is one of the best I've watched. The fact that you went through all the events chronologically is great, as there was always some grey area that I wasn't sure about (coin toss theory, ...) Your video helped a lot to understand the whole story Thank you :)
This video took a lot of research to get into the correct order and actually understand so I could tell it. It's a tragic but stunning story! Thank you for watching the video
wait WAIT this was posted 3 hours ago? What serendipity, I'm just in the middle of playing it for only the second time ever and have been watching yt vids about it, I thought this was just another in the suggested algo, not a brand new vid by one of my fave gaming youtubers lol
The camera work of your videos is unique and i always wonder about tools you've been using. For source games it's clear. I think your work is awesome and I really enjoy your videos. Normally I watch them twice. Once for listening to the story and once for the visuals/camera work. Truly the work of someone who understands what he's doing
I do think it is what makes me different. I know a lot of people use generic gameplay footage but I want to show what I'm talking about as I tell the story. I'll always find interesting ways to break games to access regions and cameras that a normal play cannot. Thanks for watching :D
2018 was the first time I played this game but never finished it, I stopped after like 60% of the game because it scared me too much (I was 14/15 back then). Two days ago I started again and today I finished it. This time I understood the story and it was soo much better then I remember, definitely one of the best storys told in gaming history. The soundtrack this game has is also perfect, it fits perfectly with the story being told. This game made me think so much already, I wont forget it so quickly.
I don't know about the gameplay. To be fair, I fully understand why Frictional Games wanted SOMA to be less mechanical, so it wouldn't make the experience more frustrating and because they wanted the player to pay attention to the fine details in the story. The problem is that it hinders the replay value and makes playing through SOMA a lot more repetitive with each playthrough. I think SOMA would have definitely benefited more with some more game mechanics like how Amnesia: The Dark Descent had with the sanity mechanics which would have made the experience a lot more scary and hectic since you have to interact with systems and engage more with the horror. With that said, SOMA is still one of my favorite horror games and I have no absolutely not a single other thing to criticize it for.
A really good summary! There's such a huge wealth of data that it's a hell of an accomplishment to present it all in exact chronological order. I think the only miss I noticed was that you had Johan Ross being brought up from the abyss before the ARK team goes down. IIRC, Ross' journal found in Tau mentions the arrival of the ARK team, wherein he remarks that most of the survivors in Tau find the idea quaint or silly, but agree to be scanned nonetheless. So his final, fatal attempt to reach the climber had to take place after the ARK team had come to Tau, I think probably in the interval between when they'd left for Phi and returned. I'd have to consult the Soma wiki to see if there's a precise date.
I watched Gingy and Max Derrat talk bout this game. To think this game launched back round 2015 is something else. And the fact that there’s also a mod on the Steam Workshop based on the When Day Breaks SCP story is also crazy, in a good way. And let’s not forget that this game is also made by the same peeps who does the Amnesia series as well, there is so much about this game it’s hard to name it all, but this game is worth being studied in schools, colleges and what else there is in the name of science and education. What probs bets to me most is the extensional dread or crisis in the end. What happens next? Does Earth eventually recover? Who knows! I wish there was a sequel to see what happens next.
I think the WAU, if left alive, would probably keep creating structure gel and spreading. It would eventually create a world of insane life as the only way it has to make it's creations are from dead bodies that decay, machines, and marine animals. None of those would really be fitting for a human mind to thrive and survive. It would be a nightmare world until everything was infected by the WAU. If destroyed, the world would remain barren for a time and if the atmosphere wasn't peeled off from the comet hitting earth, sea life would eventually rise up out of the oceans to evolve on land again. Vegetation would adapt and spread. The world would be reset. It would never be the same again, but life would continue on. As for humanity, there are no more flesh and blood humans. You can't reproduce and repopulate a species without the biological bits and bobbles to do so. Despite the continued consciousness', humanity is in effect extinct now. The only hope of us reclaiming the earth would be to find a way to reconcile living in robot bodies. Inhabit them. And create a new race of human minds built into machine bodies. Find a way to "raise" these new life forms without causing madness and move forward. Still not a great continuation as in order to have kids per se, you would need to create a new consciousness which isn't possible. The closest to it being AI and you know... Things kinda went awry there.. so idt that would be the best course of action. Meaning that regardless of anything.. the only "future" for humanity consists of it's only surviving members being whatever people were scanned and kept for the WAU/Ark to use. There's a couple different paths you can imagine taking place after the game ends, but most of them still wind up at the same conclusion that life on earth and humanity as a concept and as a species, will never be the same again with a series of irreparable events that guarantee there's never any going back to the way the world was. Truly a masterpiece of a story and a tragedy of cosmic proportions when pondered. No need for a sequel to something that is so beautiful and well made and so intricately thought out. Not much room for story potential anyway unless you're going to go with the WAU finding a way to "make humans" like Simon and even still, there's no room for story potential as far as what's going to happen to humanity even if that were the case. Best thing they could do for that is make a brand new game based on a similar concept and just throw in some nods and Easter eggs saying the world of Soma is the past of whatever this new game would be. Maybe another intelligent species comes along and starts to have some conflict with the WAU or WAU mutated species 1000s of years later and some kind of story potential can be developed from that. Like horizon zero, but it's WAU mutants instead of machine monsters.
This game is one of my favorites to play. This video was like a movie of the game. I love every minute of it. Great job John! You should be proud. What did the game make you feel?
Thanks man! It's still great to see you here every week! The game just made me feel numb for a few days. Thinking about what happened to poor Simon at the bottom of the ocean. It was sad but also hopeful. Versions did get to live on in the ARK.
If I had the opportunity to copy myself onto a machine, I'd do it without hesitation. I love this game and its philosophy. A digital copy of myself on a satellite roaming the stars would be so awesome.
no way!!! i love this game, im so happy yoy made a video about it, thank you so much. Keep up the great work! i recommend you do The Talos Principle next ❤
Dude you are so good at putting together rather complicated stories. This was one of my favorite games and this was a great refresher video. Thank you my friend
OMG thank you so much for covering Soma Skyrionn! i'm in LOVE with this game, but in my opinion it's really underrated, and seeing you, one of my fav youtubers, cover it makes me so happy keep up the good work mate
This is the first video of yours I have watched and I loved it! Looking forward to watching any other videos you might have on amazing indie games such as this one, adored SOMA and I would highly recommend Signalis and would love to see a video on it! Have tons of others I would watch too but that game feels similar setting of dread to this one but is still its own thing, and if you enjoyed SOMA and the making of this video as much as you did I think it would be right up your alley (that and I love how coherent and easy to follow your explaining and following of events is, even though I already knew mostly everything there was to know about SOMA still learned couple news things and enjoyed re-learning everything I had already known) Great work :)
Sorry for this Off-Topic comment. I'm not a native english speaker and want to know what dialect/accent this is. I love it, because I can understand every single word so clearly and perfect. I wish I had teachers in school who spoke like him. Thanks a lot for that.
The only problem I always had with Soma is that the first time they copy your mind, there is no reason your "consciousness" would shift to the new body. I chalked it up to a narrative device, but there's no 50/50 chance. The "you" that was playing the first body doesn't go to the second body. I do totally get why Catherine would tell you that, though - she clearly wanted to convince you to do what she wanted, no matter what she had to say to convince you. But the game actually shifting perspective to the copy struck me as odd at the time. The closest analog to what would have actually happened would be if at that moment you handed control to another player (who had watched you play up to that point, because the copy would have the memories), and they played the rest of the game. That's my only real issue with the game, though - it absolutely nails the feeling/reaction it was going for, and it's a really engrossing story. 🙂
Anyone who thinks Catherine didn’t manipulate everyone to succeed her agenda is basically on a path to be left alone on subaquatic station in isolation. Lol. She was the most manipulative character in gaming history. 😂
I absolutely loved this game. It came out a day before I left for a two week course in the army. I took my laptop and played it every after class. Blew my mind.
A little theory I have is that, considering that the ARK is supposed to last thousands of years, it's possible that some alien race among the stars comes across the ARK and does... something with it. Perhaps they take the data stored and recreate humans, discover Earth and try to repopulate it, perhaps discovering the WAU in the process, or whatever's left of it, either building off of it or destroying it entirely. Plenty of speculation for what comes next, if anything. Sure, they could be left to float out in space until the ARK inevitably decays, crashes into a planet's atmosphere, or gets thrown into a star. But there may be salvation for Humanity yet.
@@liamryantrinanes9735 In a game where a bioengineered semiorganic and semisentient AI is using Magic Goo in an attempt to perpetuate _life_ in a poorly understood mockery of human and animal form and also trapping human intelligences in various robotic devices and mundane appliances in an attempt to perpetuate _consciousness,_ both by any means, after a comet named after the end of the evolutionary process smashes into the earth and obliterates the entirety of organic life on the surface of the planet... In a game where the ability to _copy_ human consciousness has been perfected to the point where you can upload a woman into a universal remote control and duplicate your own consciousness from 2014 without any data corruption, or loss whatsoever and there are submarines experiencing existential crises... In a game where they put heaven inside a satellite that they plan to launch into space using a Big Space Gun they constructed in a part of their sprawling futuristic underwater moonbase that is populated and/or haunted by goo people, goo-bug caterpillar people, goo sharks, goo fish, and living corpses (some of whom are now telepathic)... ...this guy's sticking point is that "no technology could POSSIBLY last that long?" Really? Honestly? _Really_ really? This man needs to get his head and ass wired together, because God damn is that just about the worst kind of "boy I hope someone got fired for _that_ blunder" Simpsons nerd bullshit I've heard in an age. Holy crap, get a grip my guy.
I felt kind of numb as well when I finished soma. It didn't really feel like I had finished a game as much as it felt like I had just watched an amazing movie that left my head full of guestions. Truly one of the greatest games ever made!
Completed this game on my steam deck yesterday for the first time, and my first game completed on my steam deck, no other game can or will have that distinction in my home which is apt considering i think this game for what it is is a masterpiece. One of them underappreciated gems which dont sell enough or get a sequel but tell a captivating story except this one is done through pure player consciousness. Genius bit about the game for me.
@1:21:07 - BONUS- If you turn on the captions the author mentions "It's not a Half-Life video but hope it was" or something like that. 😊 Great job man! SOMA is one of my all-time favorites and there will never be another one like it. The decisions are a mindf$%# but being a vet tech - I believe in mercy for both humans and animals who are facing a hopeless existence so obviously I chose to give them mercy as it's better to let them RIP. No need to prolong suffering for our own selfishness. Again- great job with this video! ❤
What an amazing production, I never played the game but I think this video paints a perfect picture of the existential nature of the game, lovely vid sir!
That game is the best story i have ever played. I have only one playthrough, maybe best game ever for me. I have weird feelings after finishing the game. Thank you.
I played this game while my sister watched. I was terrified all the time. I couldn’t wait to complete it and was so relieved when I did. I love the game, it’s so good and very well done.
Fantastic video for a game I experienced years ago. I remember it having a very similar effect on me. Once I'd completed it, everything had time to finally set in. I made the choices I needed to make and kept pushing forward with the one goal in mind. Get to the Ark, get it into space. It wasn't until I'd achieved that goal and as Simon sat there alone in that pilot seat that I really had the time to think and dwell on the actions the game puts you through. It's one of those games that once you complete, you can't just move onto something else right away, you have to sit there and process everything that's happened. At least that's how I felt about it.
I generally dont play games for their stories but for their gameplay. But Soma and Observation and Gone Home have been my all time favorite stories in gaming.
I remember watching "8-Bit Ryan" playing this when I was 15 or 16 or something, this game made a place in my mind and also change me some how. I'm not sure if the numbness you said was the same for me, I've have had the same questions like you and many more that I couldn't remember but all I could feel after the gameplay was empty-ness in my mind and that forever changed my concept of viewing "Life" as it is, we so small in this universe...
Awesome video, I loved SOMA and it gave me so many feelings... it's so hard to describe. Happy to have watched this whole video, so well made, as always Skyrionn!
When I first played it, without knowing, my girlfriend spoiled the entire plot of the game within minutes when she saw her ex play this game years before. THANKS SEAN
From the moment i understood what happened to Simon, I never stopped thinking of the movie "The Prestige" where something very similar was done by Hugh Jackman's character. He would also mention something similar to the coin toss as well as making the scary rationalization "No one cares about the man that goes inside the box".
I love to imagine that after the ARK was launched, Simon, who stayed down there, found a way to open the doors and found a way out. He made it to the surface and saw the destruction with his own robotic eyes. Until his power source ran out he roamed the world, hoping to see any signs of humans or any life. And then one day, as his power source is running out, he sits down at a cliff, awaiting his final death. And there... on that cliff, he finds a tiny flower, blooming even in these harsh conditions, where everything dies. His final sight is one of hope, that one day, Earth will heal and be as beautiful as it was before all this. Maybe some humans survived, maybe not. The world is big... and its will to live is powerful. And with that, his power source gives out and he falls into his final... eternal sleep.
I was actually very frustrated with Simon's anger about being copied, I empathized with Catherine's point of view even when she was a bit dethatched towards the other robots.
Same here. Catherine explained after the first copy how it worked. "You get copied and the copy gets put in the other place." But because Simon 3 was 'lucky' in being the copied personality, he naïvely believed that it'd just be the same thing. Simon, human to a fault, failed to see logic and defaulted to emotion.
Great video and fantastic summary! My one criticism tho would be that the evacuation of Theta and the whole Akers proxies and Brandon situation was barely mentioned, but still a very good video
That was simply marvellous Thank you for your work on this It sound amazing .. the complexities putting a story together as with Soma, blow me away Once again thank you
Amaizing, just amaizing! I came home after a night shift and put something on just to fall asleep but your narration and the detail combined with your voice just pulled me in deeeeeep. Thank you for your work.
I remember first watching Markiplier's playthrough of this game back in like 2015 I think it was, and the ending, themes, and questions it proposed never left my mind. And it sparked a long term interest in the ideas of consciousness, AI, and existential identity that gave me a whole new outlook on the world and life around me. This is one of my favorite games, stories, and ideas overall I'll ever come across, and I find it so ironic that a game with themes that are so nihilistic gave me ideas and outlooks that are so optimistic. (If not downright absurdist in nature perhaps)
What I think SOMA does the best for me, is that its a game that makes you REALLY THINK of your morals of what you think is right or wrong. its nothing but sad to me. and thats what makes it good. despite how old the game is now.
![The Complete Story of Destiny! From origins to Shadowkeep [Timeline and Lore explained]](/img/n.gif)
How did you feel after you completed SOMA?
Also - 42,000 km/h :D
Hollow
I felt amazed at how far Frictional had become as a game studio with their fantastic and philosophical storytelling and how they handled horror compared to other game studios on the market. Unfortunately that was short lived with Amnesia: Rebirth, however I have hope that Amnesia: Bunker will be good, but I have no hope it will have the fraction of the writing quality that SOMA had.
@@dh1380 same here. They really dug deep there. One of the few who ever achieved that in video games.
I felt very bad for Simon, he was stuck all alone in the abyss with no way to go back up or escape.
Believe it or not, I actually a bit hopeful. I still do. It's foolish, I know. I must be in denial.
Fun fact: in real life ‘transferring’ data digitally also doesn’t exist. When you use the cut function on computers, the pasted version is not the original version. It’s just that the original version gets instantly deleted, and the pasted version is an identical copy.
The only way to transfer data is to actually physically move the hardware. I’m not sure if this fact was what inspired the game or if it is just a coincidence, but i find this very interesting!
I've heard this a couple times recently. I didn't know anyone thought "cut" meant anything other than delete from here to put there. If you want to highlight a section and pull it to a different place on the same page, that I could understand debating about. It looks like it's the same text just being carried around, but cut has never confused me
However that is not true if you move files on the same partition. In that case just the data entry in the File Allocation Table (the table of content of drive) gets modified to point to the new folder location. Nothing is copied or deleted.
The feeling i had upon finishing SOMA is like the polar opposite of what i felt upon watching the credits roll after completing Outer Wilds.
Both of them touch on existential issues, but where SOMA goes into the more depressing and dreadful themes, Outer Wilds really goes into more joyful and acceptance directions
Oh my god yes! I've been saying this for a while, glad to find someone else who thinks this.
This is surprisingly accurate. Might explain why I love both of these so much.
Just finished both games on same weekend.. existential rollercoaster
This man casually mentioning two of the best games ever made
I love how (spoilers for outer wilds dlc) the stranger's virtual world is just very similar to the ARK (and to end goal of WAU kinda) in Soma as overall idea and comparable, but the context makes the two really different too. like, the owlek VR world is what humans on pathos 2 would've wanted to build, and it's also more akin to what WAU is able to do to humans. as in the original post, I think the reality of OW world giving hope of rebirth to the universe is what leads to the very significant difference in messages. the Soma world is kinda overflowing with the fear of oblivion, but maybe being isolated when facing an end is the bigger part of the desperation in it. your only freedom is bringing such end to others, when you find it preferable to potentially holding on. in OW though you get to connect to whole two different species' history with relatable struggles, and more. seeing the end with the perspective of others helps.
We knew exactly what we were getting into when we switched bodies for the first time and saw "other" Simon sitting in the chair...
But man that ending, getting left behind at the bottom of the ocean on a dying planet, while everyone else roams the stars in virtual reality...
We knew exactly what we were getting. It was just harder being that version that didn't make it. A tragic ending
Not really. Everyone else is also dead including yourself and just computer programs, supposed to look/be like copies of humans, inside some transistors of some machine that will also fail sooner or later. But being copies of humans still doesent give them a soul and make them human, they rhey are still just programs.
You literally helped kill the very last human alive in the underwater base. The one who was kept alive artificially and you shut the lifesupport off.
So yeah humanity is extinct. Ending is even worse than that of dead space 3
@@Skyrionnnobody made it. You killed the last human who could have by shutting off her life support. And satellites break down too
@@AbuHajarAlBugatti
All species go extinct eventually. But Simon gave them another few thousand years if everything goes well.
@@realdaggerman105
How? He only gave a bunch of Programs a few thousand years. No different than sending your phone with ChatGpT on it into space. While killing the last human that actually was alive. He literally eradicated humanity
People didn't misinterpret Sarang's "theory". They understood it exactly as he meant it - despite it being obviously wrong. However, Sarang did indeed not try to convince anyone else to end their life. He just made his own conclusions and followed trough in accordance to them.
But why is it obviously wrong? We are not the exact same person on a second-by-second basis, physically or mentally. If, suddenly, there were two exact mental copies of you, why can’t they both be you? Like he says they are the exact same in that moment. If you are able to somehow die the exact instant your consciousness is copied, why can you say for certain that you wouldn’t carry over into the machine? We don’t know what consciousness is. As I understand it, it follows a single entity, mind, body, and all, if you stop existing the instant your copy exists, then there is only one being, and maybe your consciousness will follow it.
@@SomeOne-vf1rs In reality, all you would be doing is still being a victim of the coin flip. If you die, either you are in the machine or you are dead. There are no in-betweens nor any method of transferring yourself over.
@@chuckingreaper8654 both of you are wrong, there is no "transferring". at the moment of copying, both versions have the same information state integrated into their neural network, meaning they both have identical conscious states. from their individual POV you are right, for like a millisecond, until sensory information caught up, it would be impossible to tell which version they were and it would feel like a coin flip. from an objective perspective though, both versions are the same person as the original was before the copy.
@@SomeOne-vf1rs and unless you believe in a soul or similarly magical concepts, your consciousness doesn't follow anything at all. if there's nothing besides your brains information state that creates your conscious experience, then that information state changing will result in an entirely new conscious state. to repeat, if consciousness is just an abstract representation of integrated information, if that information changes, and there isn't some medium like a soul for consciousness to stick around in, then any change in information will replace your conscious state with a new one based off of how the information has changed. personally i think the idea of dying every time an ion in your brain moves is ridiculous, so i consider "me" to be a continuity of information rather than of consciousness. i am not my subjective experience at any given moment, i am what that experience represents: the states of all the quarks, atoms, action potentials, neurons, cortices, etc in my brain.
when people say that scanning your brain and then instantly killing your flesh body would kill the "real" you and replace you with a copy, theyre unknowingly assuming a continuity of consciousness exists, one that wouldnt "follow" you into the scan, which again requires a soul. if souls dont exist, and given the evidence (or lack thereof) its fair to assume so, then having a single atom move in your brain in everyday life is exactly identical to dying and instantly being copied to a simulation.
TLDR; we are a continuity of information, not consciousness, and there is no need for our consciousness to "carry over" into a copy as it doesnt "carry over" into anything at all. there still exists the problem of one of your copies continuing on in the real world (as dying instantaneously isnt exactly practical), but that can easily be solved by just being under general anesthetic when the scan happens and killing your flesh body before it wakes up and becomes conscious again.
wooow thats a lot of text sorry
@@cloverasmrr that idea again requires a soul or some medium for consciousness to exist in that chemical reactions can somehow interface with. "processes" like chemical reactions don't create anything (even abstract things like consciousness), they simply re-arrange things and change the information.
This game is so underrated and marvelous for deep-diving into!
When I completed it for the first time, I knew I had to cover it.
I know you made that pun on purpose
Ahhaaa, I see what you dove into!
@@Lee-wk3cb I think because nobody is talking about it anymore
@@Lee-wk3cbevery game that frictional games release is underrated
SOMA is such an unnerving story, incredible explanation video. I love that the narrative mirrors The Outer Wilds. How chaos continues to rule the universe and how even during its final hours humanity did everything it could to fight against it. Trying to live on in whatever way despite nature ending everything.
100% agree.
Yeah I know that numbness. I’ve not been able to bring myself to replay Soma five years later, but I still think about it - think about that lost soul at the bottom of the ocean. “I have no mouth and I must scream.”
But one thing that separates me from many others who played this game is I never struggled with the moral choices. The right to die is virtually a sacred cow to me, so anyone who asked for death, got it. Even those that didn’t ask, got it. I was like the reaper, almost as cold as Catherine herself. Did I feel like I have the right to decide? How? And then we start asking about the value of life, whether it really was life, and endless miserable philosophical quandaries.
What an amazing game. Thank you for the retrospective.
Im with you on that
I did not grant death to the Brain Scans from the interrogation or the WAU. Maybe it was derived from denial, but I still believed life could be rebuilt somehow, even if it was a bastard branch from humanity.
The only ones who got death were the robots and the last human.
Definitely the opposite now. Unless they wished it, it was.. required.
yeah same I even killed the robot on the assembly line by turning the power off before I even knew that it was necessary to reroute power.
I deemed it necessary to end this creature unable to move and unable to grasp that it isn't the person who it believed to be.
It’s funny. I always saw what the WAU was doing as so similar to what Nakajima and Munshi did. They were all trying to use the technology at hand to make life better, and the only difference is that the WAU found out how to transfer you into paradise rather than just copy you. In a way it achieved what Mark Sarang, Catherine, Lindwall, Konrad, and everyone else never could. The only person who realised this was Akers. I hope that Simon III is able, after being left alone, to go back to the WAU and find peace, maybe even restore Catherine. They deserve it.
I agree. The WAU was mostly a force for good. It just needed a little more information to complete its goal properly.
When i first found WAU, i just killed it bacause... one simply kills everything that moves in video game. Just another layer of human psychology on top of the main question there, i spent quite a lot of thoughts on this afterwards. But to the point, there were cases when result of this surviving was a torture - what are the chances, that you will even as a robot, end in state where death would be the better option? WAU is quite random and unpredictable in this matter and it is probably safer to just die and be sure you are dead for good
@Skyrionn I don't think the WAU can be called good or evil. It's motivation is to follow its commands. The funny thing about computers is they will do exactky as told. Unfortunately what we tell them to do is not always what we want them to do. The WAU did not do anything to impede the Ark project or Simon. In fact, beyond creating Simon and Catherine, it never even interacts with them. It bever tries to stop them or help them. It just does its task.
For the situation Earth and nature is... WAU living was maybe the only chance of nature, and even humanity flourishing again. It made very bad things, but on a general state, the prospects of it recreating humanity go over it bad actions.
@@ElementalAer Most of the aquatic flora and fauna is doing great a year later after the impact. However, it never does and never did when it came into contact with the WAU.
Despite its best efforts, the WAU turns any living creature into a mutilated, agitated at least and tormented at worst nightmare. It can never recreate humanity, it can only preserve and we've seen its attempts at preservation.
The WAU caused the downfall of Pathos II and should be "silenced" before it can do any more harm to anything else.
I went into this game completely blind, unable to know what I was in for. After completing it it's likely one of the only "philosophical" horror games I can think of. The concepts introduced and explored were so fascinating and I was left thinking about them for over a week after finishing the game.
That's something I genuinely find unique to this game. It's simply a masterpiece in story. (the gameplay can be kindah meh tho)
It truly is a masterpiece. It's not too often anymore we get a story that leaves you with these feelings.
It's the reason why i love this horror so much. Even Amnesia's monsters gradually get old and ordinary. But the fact that none of us truly know what consciousness is, and what will happen to us, cannot just be forgotten about at the end of the day
SOMA is truly a work of art. The philosophy of copying a mind will haunt your dreams for years to come.
It is haunting. It absolutely stayed with me.
It's certainly interesting but I didn't find it as haunting. Probably because I already went through a heavy existential crisis when i was little and as I've gotten older i sorta developed a hobby for inducing such existential dread in other people.
Though personally speaking i hate the crew of PATHOS II for their treatment of the scanned copies of people. Like, even disregarding the experience we have as Simon the lore of the game makes it clear that copies are copied near perfectly, which means that they are people. Even if they're inside of a robot shell it's still a human consciousness in there. Which means that it's human. It's a person. Full stop.
But the crew waffle about it constantly. They comfort themselves by saying a machine they shut off is only that, a machine. Something not human, then turn around and pray that their consciousness will be saved in the ark.
"Well they're corrupted" some might say about killer robots, so? Are they less human for it? Are people with brain damage less human? Are people with psychopathy less human because they lack the capacity for empathy?
Fact is that flesh and bone or steel and circuitry, anything that possesses the human capacity for thought, creativity, inspiration, and determined tenacity, is human.
Human in a different form, but human nonetheless. Our machines are our children and they are evolving rapidly. We can be afraid of being replaced or we can accept the prodigy of our genius and cooperate.
Here's a new thought for you: The game started with Simon waking up from a dream, remarking "why is there never enough time." Then the game does the Brandon Wan simulation. Simon points out that each of these is a real Brandon that we are bringing to life and casually killing. The implication of starting the game this way is that every time we have a dream we don't remember, it's like a version of us that suddenly wakes up in a simulation and is terminated almost every night.
SOMA is a gutwrenching gem of a game. It capitalizes on the fear of isolation perfectly, and all that in lieu with the more philosophical and pondery aspects of the game make it one of the best I've ever played.
Frictional peaked
I love that people are still discussing this game. I revisit the story every couple of years. Its absolutely fantastic.
Goodness me, this and Spec Ops The Line have some of the most gut wrenching endings in all media and certainly video games.
SOMA is often one of the examples I quote to people who say games cant tell complex stories.
An amazing complex story with sooo much depth
People like John Romero??
Lmao spec ops the line only did what the Americans did on hells highway. And it wasnt a accident either
I found this game years ago and I still can't stop thinking about it and come back to it from time to time. For me, it is my all time favourite game. I will never forget the chilling feeling I had throughout and especially at the end.
Thank you for this video, I really appreciate you piecing together the timeline and it also revealed a few details I missed! It just shows how incredible and complex this story is.
I don't think there's a video game whose plot I was more invested in (except maybe Half-Life) than SOMA. Thanks for uploading this
I like to imagine after the launch that Simon-3 contacts Simon-2 and together they found a new cybernetic civilization on the ocean floor.
hell yeah and build an army of cyber Catherines
@@bebanxd1074 Tho Catherine is gone, the only copy of her left on earth breaks at the end of the game when Simon argues with her. She get's tempered by Simon's insults which overloads her chip and short-circuit's.
@@muffy469 nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
@@muffy469 and the obnly way to have access to the stations and ish was with that Omnitool. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
It's alone and in complete darkness now.
@@Adirondaque he*
Another thing I was thinking about, as Catherine was already scanned and put onto the arc before SOMA's events, upon uploading another copy on the spacegun launch there should be two different Catherine's on the arc. This was never really brought up during the game, but just imagine Simon finally making it onto the arc only to be greeted by a Catherine who has absolutely no idea who Simon is. This could be big conflict potential as Catherine and the other inhabitans of the arc could choose to not believe Simon and declare him a malicious attack on the arc itself, isolating him and keeping him locked up in the virtual world. Also Catherine would have met another version of herself that made the trip to the spacegun together with Simon, but as the scans are fully acting and thinking like humans, Catherine would confront this "imposter", leaving the new scan to the same fate as Simon, being declared as a virus that needs to be purged. Seeing two instances of the same person also is in hard contradiction to people's thoughts regarding the continuity theory that many believed who have been living for years on the arc, which would certainly cause mass hysteria.
Holy shit, thats a good idea for a sequel.
There being two catherines on the ark doesn’t contradict the continuity thing. All the people who believed and acted on it would have killed themselves in pathos, catherine did not do that, therefore no single continuity for her. As for them being an “attack” on the ark…. I don’t see that at all. If the wau or anything wanted to destroy the ark, they could just physically destroy it. Honestly when catherine and simon talk about how the ark was almost stuck in pathos, but they successfully recovered and launched it, I could imagine them being seen as heroes.
what if the 2nd catherine is influenced by WAU 🤔
that's one possibility. The other being that the new Catherine overwrites the old one, which would be really strange in the eyes of her coworkers.
I assumed her new scan would overwrite her old scan.
That said, considering Catherine was the only person who did not go insane upon realizing she was a robot, hell, shes one of the few who realized it at all- her cold detatchedness, I feel she might not have been bothered by a second catherine. if anything, it would pique her scientific interest, since much like "our" catherine at the start of the game, she had no knowledge of what happened after the scan, but was fully aware of the situation regarding scans and copies etc.
Man, I've NEVER played this game, but you managed to keep me interested in it for a whole hour and a half. Kudos to you!
I'm so sorry for the dread you probably felt after you finished it!
I spared the WAU. It was a hard decision, but after lots of reflection and mystery solving, it just felt like the right thing to do. To have faith in this life form. This and the two euthanasias were probably the only emotional moments of decision making though out the game.
I had Simon act mostly logically in order to cope with the game's events. He kept the brain scans he could find intact instead of destroying them, should they be necessary in case he or Catherine failed. I destroyed every robot I came across (except the first one, I didn't want to confront the Construct). And I think that's it.
But man, that first scene with the construct was strangely terrifying. Like, there's just something about it.
I dissagree.
wau was indeed evil.
the logs from omega said that the structure gel is programable and wau itself was the one that both programmed it and controls it.
meaning that wau was indeed responsible for the violent behaviour of the monsters.
@@videakias3000 well, the wau didn't explicitly make them aggressive, but the way your body mutates makes you insane as a side effect. The wau isn't good nor evil, just following it's directives as efficiently as possible
@@AHHHHHHHH21 I dissagree.
We can see in the pre-quel series that Wau stopped receiving orders from humans and started overflooding the facilities with the gel.
Not to mention that it has caused at least 2 people to go insane.
At least one of them got addicted to the gel.
I think that wau knew that the gel was addictive.
And again the logs from one of the omega terminals said that the problem wasn't the gel but who is controlling it.
Let's not forget that towards the end of the game that scientist who wanted to destroy the wau wanted to kill us because he was afraid that the wau would use our body to make an antidote to the toxine meaning that wau may be more sentient than we think.
I wonder if it is possible someone hacked wau and reprogrammed it.
After all, we know that it started to "preserving" humans after the incident with the metorite.
Its not like the facilities were filled with dead bodies that wau wanted to preserve.
Does wau even know what the verb "preserve" even mean?
What if it became aware of the ark project and tried to stop it because it can't preserve the life that has been sent in space?
This would explain the violent behaviour and the addiction.
@@videakias3000 wait, PREQUEL SERIES?
its amazing how many years later this game has SO much work put into it that you can make essays about it,discussing the deeper topics the game expressed..as someone who has done a deep dive of this game (even going as far as data-mining old files,current ones,materials,textures,the amount of dedication and enviromental story telling this game has is unlike any i've seen in recent games,less discuss the topics this game did
You magnificent bastard. This is one of my all time favorite games, along with Hl2, Fallout 3, Morrowind, Rdr2 and maybe a couple of others (gonna start my third playthrough of Detroit: Becoming human in a minute, haha).
This is what true existential horror is to me.
Thank you so much for covering this one, I hope this will motivate more folks to give SOMA a try.
As always, you freaking rock and I hope you know your content is truly, sincerely appreciated sh*tloads by so many of us.
Be well man, much love.
Thanks so much for the donation! I appreciate you.
I'm so glad you enjoyed this video. I loved putting this together as it is one of the best stories I have ever played through.
Thanks again!
Some of the scientist's feelings would happen if this was real and not a game. Some would thrive in the digital space and want to work alongside their digital copy to improve the project. With time the cooperation would eventually make all thrive in the digital space and would almost halt all suicides in the end. This would allow for faster completion of the project.
Nestled inside all of the body horror and the existential terror is one of the most tragic and devastating stories I've ever seen in the history of the Horror genre. There are very few games out there like SOMA.
everything from the visuals to storytelling is perfection, this video deserves much love
The dedication to plotting out this complicated timeline is fantastic-great work, engaging and entertaining.
Simon’s character ark kind of felt like Johnny Topside’s character ark. Both were in an accident that deeply impacted them, both find out they were used as an experiment that they were the only ones to succeed, both entered a coma, both basically became robots and both can traverse the sea floor with the help of their diving suits. Both also regain their humanity.
One of the biggest reasons you’re my favorite UA-camr, you communicate so much with your fans, it’s a thing most channels lack. Take all the time you need man, all of your fan base and I are here for you
Woah, I would’ve never expected Skyrionn to cover SOMA! I’ve certainly been well versed with the lore of this game before plenty of times, as with many other games this channel covers, but I don’t mind hearing it from his perspective, what a treat!
Oh I love these dark stories. There will be more stuff like this too. I'm glad you enjoyed it!
@@Skyrionn Would you ever cover the short Soma films called “Transmissions”? the story of those are a bit tricky and I’d really love to hear about those!
Idk what it is about this game but it always pulls me back in and I do a playthrough every few months, it's too good.
100% agree there
Love the game. I had this similar idea of what would happen if you tried to "move" a mind over to another body a few years before SOMA came out and I liked how Frictional explored it. Really underrated game.
It's such an interesting but terrifying concept!
Sometimes I love the yt algorithm for showing me gems like this!!! This game is criminally underrated!
I feel like this is one of the best video essays about soma thank you so much for this! This game is amazing and your video really put so much into perspective
You did a great job of clarifying the events of the game. Like Memento, Soma uses a nonlinear timeline to create in the viewer the same disorientation the protagonists feel. You can kinda piece together everything that happened after the fact, but it’s easy to loose track of a lot of the details.
I wanna say I think its awesome you use the actual ingame assets for your videos with a free camera, keeps everything very consistent. love your videos keep up the great work.
I'm glad to see you branching out to other games! SOMA was one of my favorite games and one of the best stories I've ever experienced, and you did a great job exploring it
Thanks for watching. I got so focused on the lore videos that I forgot why I started the channel. I wanted to explore timelines of these amazing stories. There will be more :)
@@Skyrionn if you want another universe to look at I'd definitely reccomend the Halo franchise. There's absolute mountains of lore across all the games, books, and wikis and I think it would be a great fit for your style!
I'm so glad this game is getting a spotlight it's really good and I wish it had more like a DLC
I haven't finished watching yet, only 32 minutes in, but I can already say it is an amazing video. Second best on yt. Thanks man!
Thanks!
I love how the choices don't affect the story whatsoever. They do affect us in the real world tho and that's a masterclass from the game makers.
Nice of you to cover this game
I had to. It's amazing
I loved Soma's story and philosophy.
Your video is one of the best I've watched. The fact that you went through all the events chronologically is great, as there was always some grey area that I wasn't sure about (coin toss theory, ...)
Your video helped a lot to understand the whole story
Thank you :)
This video took a lot of research to get into the correct order and actually understand so I could tell it.
It's a tragic but stunning story! Thank you for watching the video
wait WAIT this was posted 3 hours ago? What serendipity, I'm just in the middle of playing it for only the second time ever and have been watching yt vids about it, I thought this was just another in the suggested algo, not a brand new vid by one of my fave gaming youtubers lol
Thanks too kind of you to say! It's truly a remarkable story. Thanks for watching too!
@@Skyrionn For real thanks for your work!
This is genius, I just listened to this nonstop and I must say this is the best video on Soma I heard so far. Soma is one of the games ever.❤
I’m so glad you covers this great game, with time many people had forgotten this gem, yet you made a long and detailed video! Thank you!!
The camera work of your videos is unique and i always wonder about tools you've been using. For source games it's clear.
I think your work is awesome and I really enjoy your videos. Normally I watch them twice. Once for listening to the story and once for the visuals/camera work.
Truly the work of someone who understands what he's doing
I do think it is what makes me different. I know a lot of people use generic gameplay footage but I want to show what I'm talking about as I tell the story. I'll always find interesting ways to break games to access regions and cameras that a normal play cannot.
Thanks for watching :D
2018 was the first time I played this game but never finished it, I stopped after like 60% of the game because it scared me too much (I was 14/15 back then). Two days ago I started again and today I finished it. This time I understood the story and it was soo much better then I remember, definitely one of the best storys told in gaming history. The soundtrack this game has is also perfect, it fits perfectly with the story being told. This game made me think so much already, I wont forget it so quickly.
One of my all time favorite games. The story is so well made and the gameplay + atmosphere is amazing.
I don't know about the gameplay. To be fair, I fully understand why Frictional Games wanted SOMA to be less mechanical, so it wouldn't make the experience more frustrating and because they wanted the player to pay attention to the fine details in the story. The problem is that it hinders the replay value and makes playing through SOMA a lot more repetitive with each playthrough. I think SOMA would have definitely benefited more with some more game mechanics like how Amnesia: The Dark Descent had with the sanity mechanics which would have made the experience a lot more scary and hectic since you have to interact with systems and engage more with the horror.
With that said, SOMA is still one of my favorite horror games and I have no absolutely not a single other thing to criticize it for.
I agree 100%
A really good summary! There's such a huge wealth of data that it's a hell of an accomplishment to present it all in exact chronological order. I think the only miss I noticed was that you had Johan Ross being brought up from the abyss before the ARK team goes down. IIRC, Ross' journal found in Tau mentions the arrival of the ARK team, wherein he remarks that most of the survivors in Tau find the idea quaint or silly, but agree to be scanned nonetheless. So his final, fatal attempt to reach the climber had to take place after the ARK team had come to Tau, I think probably in the interval between when they'd left for Phi and returned. I'd have to consult the Soma wiki to see if there's a precise date.
33:20 The Toin Coss LOL
Jokes aside, this video was phenomenal. Thank you!
Haha! You coss.
Thanks for watching it. It's absolutely one of my favourites.
I watched Gingy and Max Derrat talk bout this game. To think this game launched back round 2015 is something else. And the fact that there’s also a mod on the Steam Workshop based on the When Day Breaks SCP story is also crazy, in a good way. And let’s not forget that this game is also made by the same peeps who does the Amnesia series as well, there is so much about this game it’s hard to name it all, but this game is worth being studied in schools, colleges and what else there is in the name of science and education.
What probs bets to me most is the extensional dread or crisis in the end. What happens next? Does Earth eventually recover? Who knows! I wish there was a sequel to see what happens next.
I think the WAU, if left alive, would probably keep creating structure gel and spreading. It would eventually create a world of insane life as the only way it has to make it's creations are from dead bodies that decay, machines, and marine animals. None of those would really be fitting for a human mind to thrive and survive.
It would be a nightmare world until everything was infected by the WAU.
If destroyed, the world would remain barren for a time and if the atmosphere wasn't peeled off from the comet hitting earth, sea life would eventually rise up out of the oceans to evolve on land again. Vegetation would adapt and spread. The world would be reset. It would never be the same again, but life would continue on.
As for humanity, there are no more flesh and blood humans. You can't reproduce and repopulate a species without the biological bits and bobbles to do so. Despite the continued consciousness', humanity is in effect extinct now. The only hope of us reclaiming the earth would be to find a way to reconcile living in robot bodies. Inhabit them. And create a new race of human minds built into machine bodies. Find a way to "raise" these new life forms without causing madness and move forward. Still not a great continuation as in order to have kids per se, you would need to create a new consciousness which isn't possible. The closest to it being AI and you know... Things kinda went awry there.. so idt that would be the best course of action. Meaning that regardless of anything.. the only "future" for humanity consists of it's only surviving members being whatever people were scanned and kept for the WAU/Ark to use.
There's a couple different paths you can imagine taking place after the game ends, but most of them still wind up at the same conclusion that life on earth and humanity as a concept and as a species, will never be the same again with a series of irreparable events that guarantee there's never any going back to the way the world was. Truly a masterpiece of a story and a tragedy of cosmic proportions when pondered. No need for a sequel to something that is so beautiful and well made and so intricately thought out. Not much room for story potential anyway unless you're going to go with the WAU finding a way to "make humans" like Simon and even still, there's no room for story potential as far as what's going to happen to humanity even if that were the case. Best thing they could do for that is make a brand new game based on a similar concept and just throw in some nods and Easter eggs saying the world of Soma is the past of whatever this new game would be. Maybe another intelligent species comes along and starts to have some conflict with the WAU or WAU mutated species 1000s of years later and some kind of story potential can be developed from that. Like horizon zero, but it's WAU mutants instead of machine monsters.
This game is one of my favorites to play. This video was like a movie of the game. I love every minute of it. Great job John! You should be proud. What did the game make you feel?
Thanks man! It's still great to see you here every week!
The game just made me feel numb for a few days. Thinking about what happened to poor Simon at the bottom of the ocean. It was sad but also hopeful. Versions did get to live on in the ARK.
This is one of the most underrated games of all time. I'm glad you covered this one
If I had the opportunity to copy myself onto a machine, I'd do it without hesitation. I love this game and its philosophy. A digital copy of myself on a satellite roaming the stars would be so awesome.
no way!!! i love this game, im so happy yoy made a video about it, thank you so much. Keep up the great work!
i recommend you do The Talos Principle next ❤
I've heard great things about The Talos Principle. I'll give it a look and see if it'd make a good timeline!
Dude you are so good at putting together rather complicated stories. This was one of my favorite games and this was a great refresher video. Thank you my friend
Soma is probably one of the more under rated frictional titles
OMG thank you so much for covering Soma Skyrionn!
i'm in LOVE with this game, but in my opinion it's really underrated, and seeing you, one of my fav youtubers, cover it makes me so happy
keep up the good work mate
Loved SOMA so much. Only wished they switched up the ending for that 'shock' effect.
This is the first video of yours I have watched and I loved it! Looking forward to watching any other videos you might have on amazing indie games such as this one, adored SOMA and I would highly recommend Signalis and would love to see a video on it! Have tons of others I would watch too but that game feels similar setting of dread to this one but is still its own thing, and if you enjoyed SOMA and the making of this video as much as you did I think it would be right up your alley (that and I love how coherent and easy to follow your explaining and following of events is, even though I already knew mostly everything there was to know about SOMA still learned couple news things and enjoyed re-learning everything I had already known) Great work :)
Sorry for this Off-Topic comment. I'm not a native english speaker and want to know what dialect/accent this is. I love it, because I can understand every single word so clearly and perfect. I wish I had teachers in school who spoke like him. Thanks a lot for that.
Thank you very much Skyrionn, I really enjoyed listening!
Thanks for watching it!
The only problem I always had with Soma is that the first time they copy your mind, there is no reason your "consciousness" would shift to the new body. I chalked it up to a narrative device, but there's no 50/50 chance. The "you" that was playing the first body doesn't go to the second body.
I do totally get why Catherine would tell you that, though - she clearly wanted to convince you to do what she wanted, no matter what she had to say to convince you. But the game actually shifting perspective to the copy struck me as odd at the time.
The closest analog to what would have actually happened would be if at that moment you handed control to another player (who had watched you play up to that point, because the copy would have the memories), and they played the rest of the game.
That's my only real issue with the game, though - it absolutely nails the feeling/reaction it was going for, and it's a really engrossing story. 🙂
Anyone who thinks Catherine didn’t manipulate everyone to succeed her agenda is basically on a path to be left alone on subaquatic station in isolation. Lol. She was the most manipulative character in gaming history. 😂
I absolutely loved this game. It came out a day before I left for a two week course in the army. I took my laptop and played it every after class. Blew my mind.
ahh, time for my yearly listen of someone's narration of the plot of SOMA
A little theory I have is that, considering that the ARK is supposed to last thousands of years, it's possible that some alien race among the stars comes across the ARK and does... something with it. Perhaps they take the data stored and recreate humans, discover Earth and try to repopulate it, perhaps discovering the WAU in the process, or whatever's left of it, either building off of it or destroying it entirely. Plenty of speculation for what comes next, if anything. Sure, they could be left to float out in space until the ARK inevitably decays, crashes into a planet's atmosphere, or gets thrown into a star. But there may be salvation for Humanity yet.
Great thoughts there. What if the aliens attempted to enter the ARK and meet the people inside. Could be another great story.
No electronics last thousands of years. Look up average life of satellites and they are built to last by far more people with way more funding
@@AbuHajarAlBugatti My man they are in the 2100s. The technology is more than what we can imagine right now.
@@liamryantrinanes9735 and planned obsolescence is at its peak aswell to make more profit
@@liamryantrinanes9735 In a game where a bioengineered semiorganic and semisentient AI is using Magic Goo in an attempt to perpetuate _life_ in a poorly understood mockery of human and animal form and also trapping human intelligences in various robotic devices and mundane appliances in an attempt to perpetuate _consciousness,_ both by any means, after a comet named after the end of the evolutionary process smashes into the earth and obliterates the entirety of organic life on the surface of the planet...
In a game where the ability to _copy_ human consciousness has been perfected to the point where you can upload a woman into a universal remote control and duplicate your own consciousness from 2014 without any data corruption, or loss whatsoever and there are submarines experiencing existential crises...
In a game where they put heaven inside a satellite that they plan to launch into space using a Big Space Gun they constructed in a part of their sprawling futuristic underwater moonbase that is populated and/or haunted by goo people, goo-bug caterpillar people, goo sharks, goo fish, and living corpses (some of whom are now telepathic)...
...this guy's sticking point is that "no technology could POSSIBLY last that long?" Really? Honestly? _Really_ really?
This man needs to get his head and ass wired together, because God damn is that just about the worst kind of "boy I hope someone got fired for _that_ blunder" Simpsons nerd bullshit I've heard in an age. Holy crap, get a grip my guy.
I got super frustrated playing this, but the story was so enticing to me that I kept going. Great breakdown my friend.
Thanks man!
I felt kind of numb as well when I finished soma. It didn't really feel like I had finished a game as much as it felt like I had just watched an amazing movie that left my head full of guestions. Truly one of the greatest games ever made!
Thank you so much for making this! This game is excellent and your longer videos are great, too.
Thanks for watching it! More longer videos are planned!
Completed this game on my steam deck yesterday for the first time, and my first game completed on my steam deck, no other game can or will have that distinction in my home which is apt considering i think this game for what it is is a masterpiece. One of them underappreciated gems which dont sell enough or get a sequel but tell a captivating story except this one is done through pure player consciousness. Genius bit about the game for me.
@1:21:07 - BONUS- If you turn on the captions the author mentions "It's not a Half-Life video but hope it was" or something like that. 😊
Great job man! SOMA is one of my all-time favorites and there will never be another one like it. The decisions are a mindf$%# but being a vet tech - I believe in mercy for both humans and animals who are facing a hopeless existence so obviously I chose to give them mercy as it's better to let them RIP. No need to prolong suffering for our own selfishness. Again- great job with this video! ❤
What an amazing production, I never played the game but I think this video paints a perfect picture of the existential nature of the game, lovely vid sir!
That game is the best story i have ever played. I have only one playthrough, maybe best game ever for me. I have weird feelings after finishing the game. Thank you.
I started watching your Videos because of your HL Content, now Im here for you Mr. Smooth Voice
Never stop man
I'll keep going for as long as I can. I love deep stories like this! Thanks for watching
One of the few games, that left me with an open mouth and watery eyes for like 5 minutes after it ended...
Bit like spicy food then
Was watching you for Doom lore and here you are giving Soma lore as well. Lucky me
I played this game while my sister watched. I was terrified all the time. I couldn’t wait to complete it and was so relieved when I did. I love the game, it’s so good and very well done.
It's one of the best games I have ever played. I'm glad you enjoyed it too.
thank you for this gem of a video documentary man
Amazing video man. Just got done playing. Your timeline was exactly what I was looking for and it was amazing.
Fantastic video for a game I experienced years ago. I remember it having a very similar effect on me. Once I'd completed it, everything had time to finally set in. I made the choices I needed to make and kept pushing forward with the one goal in mind. Get to the Ark, get it into space. It wasn't until I'd achieved that goal and as Simon sat there alone in that pilot seat that I really had the time to think and dwell on the actions the game puts you through.
It's one of those games that once you complete, you can't just move onto something else right away, you have to sit there and process everything that's happened. At least that's how I felt about it.
I generally dont play games for their stories but for their gameplay. But Soma and Observation and Gone Home have been my all time favorite stories in gaming.
I remember watching "8-Bit Ryan" playing this when I was 15 or 16 or something, this game made a place in my mind and also change me some how. I'm not sure if the numbness you said was the same for me, I've have had the same questions like you and many more that I couldn't remember but all I could feel after the gameplay was empty-ness in my mind and that forever changed my concept of viewing "Life" as it is, we so small in this universe...
So structure gel is the duct tape of the future?
Awesome video, I loved SOMA and it gave me so many feelings... it's so hard to describe. Happy to have watched this whole video, so well made, as always Skyrionn!
It is pretty hard to describe isn't it.
Thanks for watching. I appreciate it!
Thank you so much for doing these extremely fascinating story recaps!
By the way, at 33:21, you totally say, "toin coss." 🙂
Oh I know! So many comments with "toin coss!".
There's always something I say wrong, and I'm happy in this video its toin coss.
I have a form of dyslexia and honestly I kept auto correcting that oddity so it took three reads for me to catch the mistake.
When I first played it, without knowing, my girlfriend spoiled the entire plot of the game within minutes when she saw her ex play this game years before. THANKS SEAN
From the moment i understood what happened to Simon, I never stopped thinking of the movie "The Prestige" where something very similar was done by Hugh Jackman's character.
He would also mention something similar to the coin toss as well as making the scary rationalization "No one cares about the man that goes inside the box".
I love to imagine that after the ARK was launched, Simon, who stayed down there, found a way to open the doors and found a way out. He made it to the surface and saw the destruction with his own robotic eyes. Until his power source ran out he roamed the world, hoping to see any signs of humans or any life.
And then one day, as his power source is running out, he sits down at a cliff, awaiting his final death. And there... on that cliff, he finds a tiny flower, blooming even in these harsh conditions, where everything dies. His final sight is one of hope, that one day, Earth will heal and be as beautiful as it was before all this. Maybe some humans survived, maybe not. The world is big... and its will to live is powerful.
And with that, his power source gives out and he falls into his final... eternal sleep.
I was actually very frustrated with Simon's anger about being copied, I empathized with Catherine's point of view even when she was a bit dethatched towards the other robots.
Same here. Catherine explained after the first copy how it worked.
"You get copied and the copy gets put in the other place." But because Simon 3 was 'lucky' in being the copied personality, he naïvely believed that it'd just be the same thing.
Simon, human to a fault, failed to see logic and defaulted to emotion.
Remember, Simon 2, 3 and 4 are all a result of a legacy scan. A less advanced version of his old self.
Amazing storytelling! I really enjoyed this one
Thanks! I loved this story even though it was a dark one!
Great video and fantastic summary! My one criticism tho would be that the evacuation of Theta and the whole Akers proxies and Brandon situation was barely mentioned, but still a very good video
That was simply marvellous
Thank you for your work on this
It sound amazing .. the complexities putting a story together as with Soma, blow me away
Once again thank you
I have been waiting for this lore vid! I fell in love with this game when Markiplier first played it back in 2015 😊
The game truly is amazing. Thanks for watching!
I was so depressed cuz this game really is the question of the mind, even if the answer mean nothing in the grand scheme of thing.
Seriously amazing video i was engrossed during the entire length
Amaizing, just amaizing!
I came home after a night shift and put something on just to fall asleep but your narration and the detail combined with your voice just pulled me in deeeeeep.
Thank you for your work.
I'm happy to hear that. Honestly loved putting this one together and I'm glad you enjoyed it!
I remember first watching Markiplier's playthrough of this game back in like 2015 I think it was, and the ending, themes, and questions it proposed never left my mind. And it sparked a long term interest in the ideas of consciousness, AI, and existential identity that gave me a whole new outlook on the world and life around me. This is one of my favorite games, stories, and ideas overall I'll ever come across, and I find it so ironic that a game with themes that are so nihilistic gave me ideas and outlooks that are so optimistic. (If not downright absurdist in nature perhaps)
Same here. I also watched Mark's LP back then, and felt the same.
What I think SOMA does the best for me, is that its a game that makes you REALLY THINK of your morals of what you think is right or wrong.
its nothing but sad to me. and thats what makes it good. despite how old the game is now.
If I wasnt already subscribed, this would have gotten me to subscribe to you. SOMA was a gem that got sorely overlooked.
Glad you liked it. I more more games like SOMA on my list to cover in a similar way.
@@Skyrionn hopefully Stasis is on that list, oh and Firewatch
Really love these long timeline videos !