The Existential Fear of SOMA
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- Опубліковано 27 вер 2024
- X/Twitter - / muntchunk
During our last venture down the existential rabbit hole, we focused on the game The Stanley Parable. A game that had a heavy emphasis on meta, and primarily used as a way to convey some incredibly deep and interesting themes. SOMA, while perhaps not being as funny or self-referential, arguably features a narrative that's just as interesting, just as profound, and to many, perhaps even enlightening.
I am pretty sure that a human is just a miserable little pile of secrets.
*smashes perfectly good wineglass
imagine being in ohio... when yore the rizzler
Have at thee!
@@arighostea yup
FWIW there are choices with Carl Semken and Amy Azarro.
With Karl, if you go into the room just down the hall from his human body there's a lever in there, pulling that will shut off the power for the facility and turn the Karl robot off instead of leaving it screaming in pain.
With Amy, you can leave her alive if you only pull and transfer one of the power cords keeping her alive.
Nice, looked for something to watch, refreshed youtube and now i have something to watch. Looking forward to it!
i've formed my own theory during the playthrough
it's a sort of "playback" theory;
in short, whenever we see a jump from one vessel to another, it's not JUST copying thyself, our consciousness got transferred to a new body because our protagonist IS the simon 3.0 FROM THE VERY BEGINNING, but we are simply playing back the memories of simon that had led up to us getting transferred into a new body and gaining consciousness so that our mind sort of has "context" of what it is and who it is
this would also mean that every time mr wan was simulated, the ENTIRETY of his life was played back to him, making that episode so much more cruel
so, the simon that is on the arc viewed everything as a seamless experience: getting his brain scan in toronto, moving to a new body to get to the lower depths of the ocean and then just being moved to the arc; but for our simon, the simon 3.0, the experience is over at the moment when the scan was made and launched to the arc
if we were the simon 4.0 (a.k.a. simon on the arc), then the game would seemingly have a much more positive ending
It's easy to miss near the beginning after Simon sees his body change, but if you find a small bathroom you can look into the mirror and see that you have cameras of some sort crammed into the helmet of a diving suit.
So when Catherine said "You're just a pile of spare parts in a diving suit" she meant that quite literally.
as for brandon, erasing his data only "kills" the version of him yet to be woken up. At this point, we already killed multiple versions of him. We don't just send him to sleep and wake him up again for another round of interrogation, we snuff out the version we just talked to and go back to an earlier version.
Nier Automata also makes a huge point of the importance of just a few minutes of memories... or continuity... when the death of one of the characters means being reverted to their last update
i loved it when you said "amnesure" instead of "amnesia"
its like when brits say "figure"; it comes out as "figger"
also bretti cool video, i love long form video essays about existential topics
"when you're dead there's no going back" is surprisingly not true. My father died before I was born, in fact he died before he ever met my mother. He was hit by a drunk driver in a semi-truck at 3 years old, pronounced dead, most of his bones broken. He was legally dead, time declared, papers began to be written... and then, he cried. He just cried. They had no idea what to make of it, and frankly I dont either. During his physical recovery, despite being a toddler, my great grandmother would have him drink sugary coffee. The coffee made it hard for him to sit still, making him want to get up and fidget, which helped his physical therapy progress.
It's a fascinating story, further fascinating to me is the fact I drowned to death at 4 years old, and was resuscitated. My father and I have both technically died, i don't know how to feel about that, but it feels vaguely paranormal. The memory flows as such; My parent's friends moved to a new house, and we've come to visit. Everyone is inside, but i saw a pool, and sneak out to play in it. I jump in the pool and sink to the bottom... I never learned to swim. I try over and over to jump up and reach the ladder, i cant reach it. My cheeks are puffed out, my chest is beginning to burn from holding my breath. I look up, i see the sunlight through the water's surface. The next part of the memory, I'm laying on my back on the hot cement, the sun heating my face. One of my parent's friends is kneeling on top of me, hands on my chest. I'm spitting out water, coughing, it feels like vomit but different, more painful.
This looks great, Munt Lad. I love your content.
I don’t mind the idea of being cloned . For me so long as there is a form of me that can see the future. I can’t say I mind.
I'm so happy I'm not the only one who looked at it like 1.0-4.0 I'm happy someone else shared the same thought process as me on this
Another beautiful upload from the Munt Lad.
After watching your vids, I realized you always end each line in a falling intonation and going into vocal fry and dragging the last sound slightly. And now I can't unhear it,help
Resident Evil retrospective part 2 soon?
why does everyone that makes a video about this game think ashley is simons girlfriend when its such an important fact that she isnt
I think she was probably just his friend, however he obviously had a crush on her. It’s heavily implied by the dream sequences.
Commenting to comment for the sake of commenting.
i love your videos sm, your voice is soothing, the topics you speak about are interesting, just *chefs finger kiss* beautiful work 🫶🏼🫶🏼🫶🏼 appreciate the work you do 🥰
chunkiest video yet. thanks muntman
Once again, a great video!
Peak youtuber has returned
Loving the MGS retrospectives! I just have a single request: DO NOT SKIP Metal Gear Rising: Revengance. While considered a spinoff to the main series and has less stealth gameplay in favour of being more action focused, something akin to dmc or Bayonetta, I think the story still does a great job at having an in depth narrative/ commentary that you come to expect from a traditional MG game, one that scarily mirrors the current world every passing day
masterpiece
This was a great and interesting video ❤
More about the best horror game ever
There's no confusion. Downloading the RECORDED memories of someone into a robot attached to a corpse does not make it that person. That person is dead and only a simulation of him remains. Not him.
Well guess what 99.99% of all the atoms in your body have been replaced every 5 years. So that makes you an example of that. So I guess you are not you by your definition.
Well guess what 99.99% of all the atoms in our bodies have been replaced every 5 years. So that makes us an example of that. So I guess we are not ourselves by your definition.
In SOMA the brain scans uploaded to computers or robots are confirmed to not be the same beings as the original
however it is also confirmed that at least some of them have a perspective
because simon has a perspective for the player to inhabit
and he's just a cortex chip wired to a corpse
thinking of all the differences between the simon who got the brain scan and the following incarnations of simon on pathos II
I certainly don't think those incarnations are humans
but I do think they are people
the distinction having more to do with having a frame of reference and certain abilities like simons ability to socialize with the other characters
meeting the criteria of person for me with the medium this consciousness being hosted in being irrelevant
I don't really know what is meant exactly by free will so I don't know if any version of simon lacks it or not
there is no consensus among philosophers about the exact meaning of free will either
so it is apparently not obvious
@@ifstatementifstatement2704 then we aren't the originals. 99.99% of atoms in our bodies have been replaced every 5 years.
@@ifstatementifstatement2704 I am but a collection of downloaded memories. 99.99% of my atoms are naturally replaced every 5 years. So I am a copy. Meaning my past self is dead according to that interpretation. If I am already constantly dieing that interpretation loses it's so called lack of confusion. If I am as much me as I was me 5 years ago. Then so too is the copy. If I'm not as much me as I was 5 years ago. Then the copy isn't me either but what do I care if I die either way. I'd rather my copy live out its weak immorality in the ark.
Will we be getting the continuation of DAMN. Breakdown? 🫶
It really does take the existential part of _existential crisis_ too literally
In my book, Simon is not a bad person, just an idiot who rejects reality in favor of the delusion that he's gonna copied and pasted onto the ark. Which makes him more human on one side, but also annoying on the other side. There is no Coin flip, as Catherine says. Just another Clone.
And a comment for the almighty algorithm, because your channel rules.
This might sound cheesy, but that line near the beginning about (paraphrasing a bit) "Death might clear the anguish of life, but life goes on-and you'd be missing out. Those stresses could have been ironed out in time" hit really hard. And I just felt like you should know how effective it is in a video about a topic like this
The game draws parallels between Brandon Wan waking up and being reset, and the versions of us in dreams being reset after we wake up. The very start of the game has Simon in another recurring nightmare about Ashley, and not long after the Brandon Wan section of the game, is Simon put back in a dream state. This was intentional. The implication is that dreams we didn't remember are real versions of us that are abruptly aborted.
The existential fear of SOMA is that people like this game.
100th like on a Soma vid 🤌🤌
i love soma :D
Excellent video, and this game does have one of my favorite stories in sci-fi ever, up there with homeworld and xenogears
xenogears is a scifi masterpiece.
@@coreyrachar9694 literally the only game I want a remaster of.
Hello
Soma is what they would take when hard times opened their eyes.
Banger after banger, keep up the good work dude! Loving the content
That's actually a good philosophical question
I would say mind defines the body