The ending is phenomenal. Before you launch the ARK, Catherine says "I'll never get used to that" as you plug her in...implying she's fully aware that she'll need to live on within the omnitool after she's copied to the ARK. When Simon questions this by saying "you won't have to get used to it", she deliberately gives a vague answer, leaving no more room for questions. Catherine wants to keep Simon ignorant. She knows that simon struggles to understand the concept of being copied, he views his copy as a different entity rather than a continuation of himself, despite having existend as two such copies. Catherine knows he'll be reluctant to launch the ARK if he's aware that he won't be transferred, as Simon will believe that it isn't HIM on the ARK ("They're not us!"). So Cath deliberately hides this from him so the ARK will be launched. She's not a bad person for doing this though, she's essentially helpless without Simon and the ARK is the only thing left of value to anybody. She can't let Simon's selfish conceptualisation of the 'coin toss' jeapordise her life's work and humanity's future. At the same time, I really feel for Simon. He was unwillingly forced to be humanity's saviour, trapped in a body which should not exist, in a hopeless almost-alien world filled with nightmarish remnants of humanity. That'd be enough to drive anyone to the brink of madness, and I can forgive him for struggling to understand the brain scan concept. And from the perspective of Simon-3 (power suit simon) at the ending, all choices which seemed morally justified until that point (putting Simon-2 out of his misery, killing the WAU etc.) only make things worse now. Without the WAU, no more sentient human copies can be created. Without Simon-2, there is no other "sound mind in a sound body" to keep Simon-3 company. He truly is alone. And for the rest of his life he will feel nothing but regret, until his battery drains or something else kills him first. Simon-4 on the ARK has no idea about any of this. What a game.
Actually Catherine left him alone, she got transfered but Simon has another copy. His other copy living in paradise until something happens to the ark and they fade, while he's all alone trapped in the deep. Also i would call WAU keeping machines is any better, being trapped and unmoving is worse than death. The WAU is what terrified me the most, imagine being stuck for eternity trapped in unmoving state.
I take issue with you implying that Simon is incorrect about the copies being different entities. Simon is absolutely correct that the copies are not at all the same entity as him. The entire message of the game is that consciousness is inseverably linked to and dependent on the physical hardware that it's stored on, be that a brain or a computer chip or a hard drive. It is impossible to transfer a consciousness from one hardware to another. The "coin toss" and "continuity" ideas are entirely just copes. Your experience of the world, you reading this right now, feeling thirsty or hungry and whatever else, is entirely dependent on your brain. The moment your brain stops the flow of consciousness, you die in all senses of the word. If it was possible to deconstruct you atom-by-atom and then put you perfectly back together atom-by-atom one microsecond later, you still would have died. A new consciousness would have formed with all of your experiences and memories up until the moment your brain was taken apart, but the break there effectively ends that consciousness' run and you therefore have died. To expand on this, if Simon had put Catherine's omnitool chip into the ark, then the Catherine we know and talked to the whole game would have made it onto the ark. Since instead a copy of her was uploaded, the Catherine on the ark is an entirely different entity no matter what copes you could have about that. If you don't agree with this take, I think you actually just don't understand how these things work.
@@PARAN0IDxGERBIL I agree with what you're saying here, absolutely. That's how it works. I know the continuity isn't true, I know the coin toss doesn't actually happen. Consciousness can't be transferred, its SOMA 101. I think I could've phrased it better when I said Simon views his copy as a separate entity, there's been some miscommunication as to what I meant by that. I'll do my best to clear it up now: I think Simon views his copy as a separate *person* . When the ark is launched and Simon-3 realises his copy (Simon-4) was inserted but he wasn't, he's resentful and angry, instead of being happy that Simon-4 gets to live on. He doesn't consider how, in the moment the ARK copy was made, these two versions of his consciousness are identical *people* (despite being housed in different hardware, making them different entities). Of course, they become different people the moment afterwards, where the experiences of the two copies begin to diverge. But Simon's goal was to put himself on the ARK. He achieved that goal, a version of him is on the ark. But Simon-3's emotional outburst comes from how he views this version as something other than himself, which is true in the sense that Simon-4's consciousness (not the entity within its physical facility but Simon-4's experience of consciousness) has become something other than Simon-3's due to diverging experiences. But not true in the sense that Simon-3 post-launch and Simon-4 both stem from Simon-3 pre-launch. To me, it seems as if Simon-3 fails to make the connection that the Simon on the ARK, despite being housed in different hardware, has all the same personality traits, strengths, weaknesses, memories, desires and fears as himself. He can't look beyond himself and see this because he still believes he is the 'only Simon'. He knows himself to be Simon, and therefore believes all his copies are not Simon (despite the fact that every copy would claim the same). This is different to how Catherine-3 views the copy concept, where she is happy for Catherine-4 on the ARK because she recognises that copy as being a direct continuation of herself as a person despite it being a different entity. note: I'm finding it hard to articulate exactly what I mean here, so if it seems like I'm talking in circles or failing to reach the point that's probably why. Call it a cope or whatever, but I do kind of suck at articulating things in words sometimes. I find discussions like this helpful because it opens up weak points in how I relay information to other people, even if we need to go through misunderstandings to get there.
@@deviateedits I see what you're saying. As with everything related to this game, it speaks to the philosophical conception of what personhood is. Simon isn't mad that HE didn't make it onto the ark, because HE most certainly did! There's definitely a Simon on the ark, lol. He's mad that he doesn't get to be the consciousness that is on the ark, which obviously would be hard to articulate in his position at that time.
I don't think Simon is dumb, I think he held onto this coin toss delusion because it was the only thing giving him hope and keeping him going. It's like the continuity people, a coping mechanism.
"if you're completely insane and somehow have the superhuman ability to gaslight yourself into believing falsehoods, resulting in your entire worldview being objectively wrong and all the decisions you take being mistakes, that doesn't mean you're dumb!" yeah I'll beg to differ on that one chief tl dr if the effects of a "coping mechanism" are the exact same as those of extreme stupidty, and that you can't tell them appart under most definitions of what intelligence is, then how are those "coping mechanism" just not a ctegory of stupidity?
Can someone explain how Simon thinks the coin toss theory works? Because to me, it sounds like when you are taking a scan, you have a 50% chance to 'continue' in your own body and a 50% chance to 'wake up' in a new one, which would explain the name
It always throws me off whenever i hear it. Im so used to scripted voice acting that Soma's more natural (imo) voice acting felt uncanny. Add that to the inhuman bodies where the voices were coming from, it was hella strange.
I'd have to somewhat disagree. During the most important moments, yes I'd agree. His back and forth with Catherine was often gut-wrenching. But the game goes back and forth between "totally understandable human emotions" and borderline "silent, stoic protagonist" moments. Like the lack of a reaction after being put in the body of a headless corpse (something that caused me to genuinely curl up in discomfort) or seeing the ghost of Ross repeatedly showing up and even shattering the glass at that one moment
@@pAWNproductionsDE That's a valid take, but I think it's important to remember that 1) Simon might not vocalize these more emotional reactions due to fear, and 2) that he's already been through a lot - In the intro, his good friend (almost girlfriend?) died because of him and he found out he had less than a month to live, yet he's still relatively chipper when talking to his friend and Dr Munshi; I think Simon has greater mental fortitude than most.
That part really does stick. A helpful, cute little robot now sees the player as a monster to be feared, because the player does something monstrous enough to truly warrant that reaction. The literal only wholesome thing down in the ocean of nightmares rejects the player because they've become part of the nightmare.
In 48 years, no other story has haunted me as much as Soma did. Too many people nowadays think horror is jump scares. It’s not. Horror is deeply unsettling stuff that makes you lose sleep for months.
@@ash_1419 yeah…but it didn’t hit me the same way. I think if it was made today, with today’s graphics it would really set the atmosphere & make that already fantastic story truly horrifying. But as it stands the janky controls and visuals just distract me too much from the story. Plus there aren’t the kind of choices in SH2 as there is in soma. Stuff that makes you question your actions for months afterwards. SH2 is definitley spooky as hell and the story is just so disturbing but its a very different kind of horror. I kinda put it in the level of stressful that Alien Isolation is. It’s that something is lurking that I can’t see feeling without the jump scares so it keeps your level of anxiety up for hours. Isolation literally almost gave me a heart attack just from hours of tension. All of the above are 1000% better then the cheap thrills from FNaF though. Lol.
Oh boy! I have this story for you about this Japanese girl from the 80s or 90s. Except that it actually happened. Although I really wouldn't recommend it to anyone except sadists and psychopaths, because otherwise a part of you will die irrecoverably.
One of my favorite parts of the game that most other people I imagine either overlooked or didn't have happen to them was being fooled by the light of the angler fish. Never in my life did I think something like that could fool me, a human with a mental capacity way beyond any prey animal meant to be fooled by it. It caught me so off guard in that stressful moment of just trying to follow the light in that underwater storm that when I got close enough to see it was the fish, it gave me the biggest sudden scare I had in the entire game. In that moment, I felt no different than a small insignificant prey animal.
Yeah, it was one of the best gotcha moments I've ever experienced. I was so on edge during that part of the game, and I just wanted to get out of the stormy current and the caves, and ran with hope and delight towards what looked like any other light pole before.... and in the last moment see those dead eyes and that ever growing mouth with razorsharp teeth behind the light. It's one of the few times a game actually made me scream out loud lmao.
I just watched a gameplay on twitch and the guy playing got killed by it 🤣 I can't remember if I got fooled but I remember that I always spent a lot of time time in the watery sections.
Ironically that was the one and only time I saw the angler fish. I emerged out of the cave n made a break for the closest light only to get a face full on ungly that I had to quickly side step. Definitely wasn't expecting that.
It happened often in real life. The reason fairies exist myth as mischievous little creatures is because light bugs existed. In Celtic society, if you lived near the bogs where the light bugs swarmed and you went to find the light of a candle or fire at night you could unwittingly walk into the bog, which is like quicksand, and be swallowed up and killed.
Soma is one of my absolute favourite games of all time, but I will never play it again. It broke something within me the first time around and it took me 3 weeks afterwards to get over that feeling. A true masterpiece, that touched me to the core. 10/10
100% agree. The part where you are abandoned ranting in rage in the dark then slowly begging for Catherine to return.... Existentialist dread at its peak
Thats almost an exact echo of my experience. Its probably the best horror game Ive ever played but it made me think in ways Ive never thought before. Took me about 2 or so weeks before I felt normal again.
Listening to that again, there's actually a certain tone to it that felt mildly sarcastic, like 'of course robots don't "feel" anything', perhaps a little derisively to Simon, since she appears very self aware, and seems aware of Simon being a robot on first meeting.
@@dragontear1638Cartherine always felt a little psychotic to me on my first two playthroughs. One, she's totally obsessed with the Ark and doesn't actually seem to care about Simon at all, as long as he gets her magic school bus into space. Secondly, even though Cath _knows_ that the robots are the brainscans of people, complete with their personality and memories, she just shrugs off every one of them as "just robots." Yeah, technically speaking, but they are still her friends and colleagues. Just because they aren't *living humans* means to her they aren't human at all. She doesn't even really care about the scans in the Ark, she just wants the Ark itself to be safe because it's her legacy, because of what it means to *her.* I like Catherine because I hate her. She's so selfish and unsympathetic, but we need to help her to preserve something of humanity, and we need her to survive Pathos II, as our little masterkey.
@@xshullawactually unironically one of the least selfish out of most of the characters who chose killing themselves to preserve "continuity" rather than assisting the rest of the team or helping in the stations ai malfunctioning they chose to end their lives early out of untested theory and fear of missing their chance. She was trying her hardest to ensure the human race would still live on. If any person's copy in a robot, Simon, or even herself dies. It doesn't matter as long as the ark leaves into space.
This is the secret answer few people have figured out. She was telling the truth from the beginning. None of them feel anything because they are all robots and she should know. She is just the most aware of the truth. All of them are just ones and zeros simulating humanity.
@@TTHJJD100Yeah, she's not psychotic, she's a rational person and a realist. Earth is gone. The battery in the station will drain in a few decades and kill any living robots anyway. If anything, her drive to launch the ark is out of her deep care for the people in the station and humanity as a whole. I would be interested though in seeing how the copies cope with being alive in a known simulation for hundreds of years. If the "minds" would deteriorate or if their lives would become meaningless without traditional flesh and blood mortality being a part of their being.
The ending to this game, with that incredible soundtrack, Simons voice fading out in all that darkness, was one of the most haunting endings to anything I've ever experienced. I'm never gonna forget this game
this game accidentally messed with me at the start. when you're looking through the office you need to find a key code. for shits and giggles i put in my phone passcode at the time. and the door opened. then i remembered that my passcode was a reference to ghost in the shell's Project 2501, which was the code name for the AI puppet master. And the reference made so much sense. Don't know how many people picked up on it. pretty cool detail
Also- Simon's resiliance might also be due to him being "The Legacy scan", in addition to the fact of Simon being a simple dude. Yeah, he does have times of self reflection and big thinking, but overall his mind has simplicity to it that he doesn't feel like worrying about it more. And his "scan type" might have something to it, since it's just a simple old tech being forced to fulfill a point of a "evolving" brain... the evolving scans that are possible in future of soma. Long story short- Simon's simplicity both saves him from going mad but also fucks him since he is easy to manipulate.
There's also the factor that his scan was done after he was brain damaged, and depending on what parts of his brain were damaged in the accident it's entirely possible (and was my personal reading of the situation) that he actually just can't log and fully comprehend the information Catherine is telling him and that's why he's not understanding how it works
@@MxchiefMaykr Might be too... But I didn't want the argument to sound like "He is safe because he's retarded" ya know? Even tho with explanation it's a other fascet that allows Simon to survive his cognitihazardous situation
@@MxchiefMaykr he is a flat scan of a damaged brain - take your pick, but I think its the flat part that matter. The only truly self aware and 3D/round people we see in robots, mad or not, used updated tech via the WoW - stuff that has never existed before.
I feel like it’s also the fact the WAU is improving. It’s not just sticking people into regular robots, it’s trying to combine previous techniques with Simon. Who knows how many copies of Simon the WAU stuck into coffee machines or whatever until it eventually figured out a success, which ended up being Simon we play as.
@@bobograndman So, this is pre-alpha stuff from Supersecret file- in early versions of Soma you supposed to find "old versions" of Simon, making ot more clear that WAU indeed brought him back multiple times before
I still watch every video about SOMA even now, I will endlessly love this game and will never forget what it taught me It really made me think of something that I had never thought about, and showed it flawlessly A 100/10 masterpiece
I think a point to remember in regards to Simon is we’re playing as a copy of a guy who is dying of major brain damage. Explains why he can’t seem to really grasp what’s going on. Also not like he’s alone in that regards, bunch of people in Pathos II killed themselves because they thought they could cheat death even though they understood what was going on a lot better
Lot of people disliked how dense he was about the whole situation during the ending but the way I saw it, he did understood the concept he was just not willing to accept that that is how it works cause it's grim and he would lose his mind. Which he kinda did once he could not pretend otherwise. Well and to me that felt pretty damn human. It's same as crew members killing themselves well and they had way more time to think about it. They did not have to accept this whole situation in span of a single day.
actually, the problem is players do not realize he cannot, because he is based on a flat scan, so they miss that detail even though it's spelled out and get whiny he is "dumb" The next time someone complains about games dumbing down, remind them of SOMA proving such dumbing down is in fact necessary.
@@xBINARYGODx LOL the flat scan thing being the reason he is dumb is a complete speculation, its not the reason simon is "dumb", if you think he is then you are misunderstanding one of major themes this game presents, which is pretty sad, people are looking for an in-game explanation of something that happens to many humans, as I said flat scan is a cop out/ rationalization people desperately make to cover their ignorance.
Given that his only experience with it was going in to get scanned, like, 100 years ago and then waking up in a new body it's not unreasonable for him to think of it as a transfer. His only point of reference is one minute he was conscious, and now he's conscious in what he eventually realizes is a different body in a future-science world that this normal dude who lived in a crappy little apartment doesn't understand. It was frustrating the second time it happened but, yeah, having a mere 24 hours to process that 1) you actually died a century ago along with everyone you ever knew or loved 2) Earth is ruined and humanity is effectively extinct because of a chance cataclysmic event and 3) you're never actually going to make it out of there is kind of a lot. So I can't really blame him for trying so desperately to cling onto a little bit of hope while denying the reality of his impending doom, that is, to die alone at the bottom of the ocean while "someone else" gets to live forever. It also doesn't help that during his second scan, when Simon comments about cameras "stealing your soul" Catherine says "they'd be right in this case" which might lead one to think of it as a transfer rather than a copy. Then after their argument over Simon 2, when Simon 3 asks her what she's going to do once she gets on the ARK Catherine says she'll watch the clouds after he specifies the "first human thing" she'll do. Evidently missing that he's still not quite grasping the idea that their current versions aren't going to be the ones doing anything on the ARK. BTW, you killed a few people along the way, your arm got eaten (with another person's dead body inside so you're perceiving actual flesh and bone in there while simultaneously being reminded of the corpse you kinda desecrated,) and you discovered the original body of the person you were talking to the entire time was killed by her own team. That probably doesn't help either.
The last video I watched didn't go into his whole denial thing, I just couldn't understand how anyone could be so stupid. At first it was like *Katherine:* "Once we make a copy of your brain, the copy will do the work." *Simon:* "So it's like a brain transfer, right?" Which only becomes more stupid around the midway point where he is objectively confronted with the reality of how it works. Now it's like *Katherine:* "There is no coin toss. It is a copy. There is a 100% chance that you will be copied and not transferred." *Simon:* "So it's a double-sided coin?" *Katherine:* [pregnant pause] "In a way?" *Simon:* "So I'm transferred, heads or tails? Cow-a-bunga!" *Katherine:* [turns to audience] _"This man was allowed to vote."_
The ending of this game gave me such a massive existential feeling. It was like, yes on one hand they're both saved through scans but on the other Simon is just left in the dark alone and with no one else to talk to. That gave me such a horrifying feeling.
No, i agree, i was teary eyed by the end of it as well, but, not because it was sad really, just... overwhelmingly impactful, the whole aspect of it, the notion the planet is FUBAR, the people and creatures abandoned down in the deep, and how the rest of humanity is now within a simulation on a small satellite orbiting the ruined planet. When i first finished this game after its release, it felt like it had changed me. Nowadays, i know that isn't really true, but what it did was make me see things in a way i never did before.
Definitely check out Outer Wilds. It starts as a cute exploration game, then transforms into a mystery solving game, and ends with similar existential dread as SOMA.
Reminds me of the movie “The Prestige” That movie really scared me as a Kid. “Don’t forget your hat” “Well, which one is mine?” “They are all your hats, Mr. Angier” Gives me shivers to this day.
@@palexinchina Heck yeah! ✋ I was around 11 when I watched that movie in theaters. It changed something in my brain permanently. Not in a bad way, just a… persistent way. Tickling the back of your mind, a basilisk lays dormant. Anyway. Before there was The Dark Knight, before there was Inception, there was The Prestige. It’s a copy and paste not a cut and paste. Ties into legacy, memory, identity, belief. And I’m getting a bit tired and loopy. Good luck, and stay safe out there!
Playing Soma then going and watching The Prestige, is a trip down a really dark well. You draw some utterly horrifying conclusions about what is going on with Angier and his headspace during the Transported Man act because of Soma. Because the machine copies him (like in Soma), the copy that survives thinks it's a teleportation machine that leaves a copy behind (and maybe it does, from a certain point of view). BUT, every single time, he will be surprised to be the one dropped into the tank, because he only remembers being the one that survived during ALL the previous performances. And it's even worse if he doesn't think the machine works this way. In that case, then he KNOWS that he will be the one in the tank under the stage. EVERY...SINGLE...TIME. And he is willing to do it for revenge. Now THAT is horror.
@@valen98 Well he knew what was gonna happen. He is telling it to Borden at the very end when he says you have no idea what is a real sacrifice. He most likely realised that when he first tried the machine and found out that it is a copy that is teleported away. He then decided to kill himself via drowning under the false assumption it is a peaceful death (because his engineer told him a lie to comfort him when his wife died that way).
I had my hopes for SOMA and they were met, shattered above & beyond once I saw the credits roll. It wasn't just a frightening experience, it was a thought-provoking one. That is a true achievement
TBH it is great, but I think it was frictional's weakest. Not counting A Machine for Pigs which was made by another team. Penumbra remains the best. Especially the first part. At least for me. I actually prefer to have at least some chances at self defense. No need to be doom guy, but I'm pretty sure a rusty pipe is something anyone could use to at least stay somewhat safe.
I chose no to the survey on the ARK for a totally different reason. I felt devastated for Simons 2 and 3, and for that very exact reason, I didn't want his efforts to be meaningless. I wanted, as Simon 4, to live out the life Simon 3 dreamed of, so that though it might be a bitter thought, Simon can at least know that he succeeded at a big goal that took a lot of effort and sacrifice, down to every drop of structure gel in his body. Because if I was Simon 3, though I would be bitter, I would be even more resentful if after all the crap I went through, Simon 4 chose death anyways
Simon's coin toss theory actually isn't completely about transferring, but it's more of a dreadful look at the reality of what has been done to him twice now. He's coming to terms with the idea of copying, and processing it in his own odd layman's way. His theory is that when the copy is made, it's a coin toss as to which "simon" actually gets the copy. It doesn't make a lot of terrible sense but in the scene it helps sink the stomach and set in the Dread of what you just did. It's also the games way of foreshadowing what will happen later as it's a way to reference a narrative perspective to the copying. Of course we follow the copy and thus their story and thoughts and choices and LIFE, but that can't always be the case...
yeah, i think gingy actually somewhat backed simon’s theory without realising it in this video. he says that he felt emotionally attached to simon 2 and 3 because that’s who he was controlling, and who he grew to sympathise with. he says that his simon is the one he left behind, not the one that got on the ark. in that way, simon did actually lose the coin toss. from our perspective, the simon we played as and grew a connection to, lost the coin toss. it’s not necessarily as simple as that but it puts it into perspective
The theory wasn't really stupid to me, in fact it's something I thought of before Simon even said it. It's not even really a theory, it just is how things work: when you are Simon 1 being copied, you have a 50% chance of waking up as Simon 1 again, or a 50% chance of waking up as Simon 2. Yes, yes it's only a copy and whatnot and so on and blah blah blah, but in the end, due to how continuity works for the person scanned, you have no way of controlling or knowing who you will wake up as after the scan is over. Will you be original Simon? Simon tested upon as a lab rat? Simon revived for his relatives' amusement? Simon brought back to the real world by the WAU? You can never know and never control which one you will wake up as, as the person sitting in that brain scan seat
@@Amodh1257 I agree, the coin toss theory made perfect sense to me. I think the only person who really doesn't understand it is Simon - he's still convinced that somehow there is a "real" Simon and a "fake" Simon, and that the "real" Simon didn't make it onto the ARK, when in reality they are both identical, and in fact they are both fake since the "real" Simon died 100 years ago.
@@Amodh1257 >you have a 50% chance of waking up as Simon 1 again, or a 50% chance of waking up as Simon 2 No, "you" will always be the original. Both the original and the copy will be "you", both will have the same memories (up to the point of copying), both will think they are the original, BUT only the original will have a continuous consciousness. Let's assume the scanning does not interact with the original brain (i.e. you only observe the electrical activity of the brain, it's structure and so on, without changing anything. From the brain's perspective, you can't tell you're being scanned). (We could argue that assumption, on the grounds of quantum mechanics, but neurons are not really subject of that quantum effect.) When you then reconstruct a copy of that brain, there is no way for the original consciousness to transfer to the new brain (and the "new" consciousness to go to the old brain). The 'you' from before the copying will ALWAYS be the one left behind. (And the scariest part is: It won't even be able to prove it is the original)
It's kind of like a ball and cup game you know what cup the ball will be in but until it's lifted you can't really know it's fully predetermined and you know that but until you see it isn't set in stone
I absolutely loved SOMA. I pirated it years ago and then bought it later on steam because the developers fully deserved my money. Themes of what it means to be you, to exist, what denotes consciousness etc are some of the most terrifying and interesting concepts. The Talos Principle was another good example of this genre despite being primarily puzzle driven.
SOMA is nothing short of pure brilliance. It's a transformative experience and made me feel a far more profound horror than any other game in the horror genre could, at least up the point in my life when I played it.
And this story wouldn’t be as impactful as a book or movie. You could maybe get a similar feel from things. But the interactivity is fundamental to the experience of the story. It really is brilliant.
I knew Katherine wasn't real very early on (or at least I had my suspicion based on the game setting) but god damn, that actually makes it even worse in some ways...you're really hoping she's not what you think she is and then the world crashes on you once again
EXACTLY, i knew she wasn't real but I wanted her to be. Then the realization that nothing really was, changed the way I though about life and my purpose in it.
What does it matter? She is a truly thinking being, she has free will, and is self aware. She has personhood, and therefore a soul. She is a moral agent. All the most important aspects of human life and sentience went on in catherine, she had a soul and free will, and they are not doomed in that world, though it may be filled with vast suffering, so was life before we humans made it livable.
23:18 Catharine didn't scan Carl or Amy, Some of the logs you find while playing let us know that the WAU was taking scans of people in the pilot seat without anyone's knowledge. Carl say he was in the middle of fixing the heat shields when he blacked out,. This means that the WAU took a scan of him while he was doing his normal job in the pilot seat. Poor Carl was in the middle of a normal day at work and then suddenly hes stuck in that robot, hurt, on the floor.
Finished this game fairly recently and haven't been able to stop singing its praises! For you to make this seemingly out of nowhere brings me immense pleasure.
@@colbyboucher6391 How is it hopeful? Most people kill the WAU. and for those who didn't, the WAU didn't really "make" anything. It took a scan that was already there and then used a body that was already there. As soon as all boddies have rotten away the WAU needs to start from scratch and actually CREATE life. And that will be almost impossible, since its resources will only get more and more limited in time.
Nah, you can actually have a pretty happy ending if you were Simon3. The way to have that happy ending would be. First off, don't kill Simon2 and don't kill the WOW, after lunching the arc (as Simon3) grab Cathrin's data pad (we can make her a body later) climb back up to Simon2 (you don't get tired because you are a biomechanical robot so it will just take a while). Then wait for Simon2 to wake up (also plug Cathrin into something), explain to Simon2 that a version of you both is on the arc, it's not what you both wanted but what's done is done. You say you're going to make a body for Cath since she is actually a pretty good person and we can see that now that we aren't throwing a hissy fit about excepting hard truths. You 3 are now (as far as we are aware) immortal and can simply wait for the WOW to fix Earth, sure it won't be Earth as it was and it will take a long time to fix the surface but there will be life. You also have a backup of all the other humans that ever had a brain scan, so not only is there a set of humans in space that should last a very long time, there is also the "neo humans" that are a kind of biomechanical race down on earth. Oh and worst comes to worst, you are still deadly to the WOW so if it remakes the world and tries anything dodgy just go on down and punch that sucker, problem solved!
In Simon's defense, the developers made this with the idea of someone who hasn't experienced any of these brand new concepts before. I had a hard time comprehending the brain scan and body switch, partly because I was too focused on dealing with the situation at hand and getting to what's next. And then the part with Herber's body happened. This game keeps one particular thing to the wayside that is far too important no to mention and that's the human subconscious. Our brain fills in gaps to better help it understand the situation. The coin toss and human continuity were respectively rationales formed by confused minds to help come to terms with a situation that their brain can't properly understand. In reality, Simon isn't stupid, he isn't delusional, he's just terrified and confused, as we all would be, letting his psychology put the pieces together with parts that somewhat fit together. That all on top of the slither of hope to live in paradise with what's left of humanity. I'd experience grief too. I'm sure as would everyone else.
yep exactly what i was feeling as well i did understand it was copying but my mind buffered with the coin toss as well so that the situation is manageable
Yeah man, you said it perfectly. It's perfectly understandable for Simon 2/3 to think he's gonna be on the Ark considering his situation. It's bleak, miserable, lonely and filled with dangerous creatures. If anyone were in his shoes they would be feeling the same things he has and wanting to get the fuck out of there. Brain injury or not, legacy scan or not, he's acting just as anyone would in that situation: being human. Which is what the game is telling us. That ending scene with him breaking down couldn't have been more perfect. All that effort, all that hope to avoid a horrific and dreary fate to get scanned and launch a paradise into space with you inside it only for your hope to be squandered and told that someone other than you did make it into that paradise while you live on in this depressing and wretched place... alone. It also doesn't help when (Simon) you have someone next to you leading you on believing your coping mechanisms so they can get on and finish this project just so they can feel accomplished. Catherine wasn't evil but certainly could've been upfront and trusting of the people around her so then at the least everyone could've been on the same page and confronted the issues together head on. No manipulations or lies.
one thing I always liked about the coin toss idea is that, while it is factually incorrect, there is some truth to it. before the process, it's guaranteed that you'll be the one to stay, sure, but it's in the moment where the process happens that it comes into play. you don't know that you're actually the one who was already destined for that to happen. those could just be fabricated memories. it's the moment before you open your eyes, when you can't rely on that previous experience, where from your perspective there's an equal possibility of being either outcome
If the coin toss is proven to create two, there's no reason to believe, on the other side, that you just transferred. You were aware of the copy and paste system so, you'd be aware of the other you still existing, just pissed off.
@@Dravianpn02 true, I think his logic in the game is flawed regardless, but I think the theory itself has some interesting elements to it that might have some truth to them, yknow?
That’s actually a good explanation that I haven’t heard before. The coin toss is finding out whether you are the new copy or the old original. There’s no way for you to know until you start perceiving your environment.
@@Dravianpn02 there's still a reason to believe. The memories of the copy are indistinguishable from the original, so up until the moment the copy is actually finished, you have a 50/50 chance of being either one of them. It doesn't matter if you know you didn't get transferred, and that there's still a copy of you that got fucked. You "won". You didn't know if you were the lucky copy or the unlucky one that was left behind.
@@justopena8842 no there's not. You'd be aware of the other version of you who's still there. So yeah the new you is fine, with the knowledge of another you suffering until they die.
One thing I don’t see enough people talking about is the appreciation of setting in this game. The use of location to further convey a sense of isolation is brilliant. The ocean is something everyone is familiar, most having been in it at some point, yet not at the depths depicted. It is both familiar and alien to us- which is exactly how Simon is feeling. It creates a sense of entrapment, again reflecting Simon’s uncomfortableness with no longer residing in a human body. It also serves to tell the audience that there is no hope for humanity this deep below the ocean. There is no chance of exploration- we aren’t in space and we cannot go to the surface. Playing underwater- far from the humanity that once was further alienates Simon’s familiarity, sense of humanity, and hope for any sentient connection.
I always thought that Safe Mode was more lore accurate, since the 'monsters' see Simon as a robot like themselves, rather than a person. I don't know if there's any evidence that the monsters attack other robots, but it's clear that they 'allow' other AIs to live, meaning that they can discern alive from dead. So normal mode is Alive, while safe mode is Dead.
One of the best games of last generation in my eyes. Truly underappreciated. The writing, acting, atmosphere, and story are simply unmatched. It's probably one of my favorite sci-fi stories, in any medium. But it truly shines in a first person game. Learning what is going on along with Simon is handled flawlessly, and the game often plays with expectations to great effect. The whole intro sequence up to the mirror reveal is amazing. The acting is consistently fantastic and really hits hard on multiple occasions. And it honestly just had some of the most memorable moments I've ever experienced in a game.. I can still vividly recall the first time I took that elevator down into the abyss. Standing at the top overlooking complete blackness was terrifying. Catherine telling the story of her childhood memories. Watching the depth tick deeper and deeper... Absolutely amazing sequence.
the choice to end the last humans life is more than 'just waiting for 2 minutes' that was the most real a human death could be i left that interaction shaken even though we just meet the there its so personal of an interaction that it hits hard i cant believe you just blew it off like that
that was, honestly such a beautifully written script. well done, really. it almost made me want to cry with how well you go into everything, and how it makes one feel. I think i'll be sitting with this one in my head for a while
I think Sarang and the others were not "wrong" about the continuity. I think they perfectly understood that killing themselves would not "move" them onto the ark and they were aware that it was a copy thing. They are supposed to be scientist so I think assuming basic intelligence from them is not to much to ask (although with how much of an idiot Simon is being its maybe understandable the other NPCS are assumed to be idiots as well). What Sarang meant with the continuity was not literal but philosophical. If you continue to stay alive after being copied you copies will diversify and the copy on the ark is no longer "you" but what actually is the difference between copy and paste and cut and paste? The answer is deletion of the original. Sarang understood that even in a best case scenario he was looking a a few more desolate years at the bottom of the ocean and so he decided to give his self that would be copied onto the ark the peace of mind that it truly was the real him because no other him exists anymore. There are only two reasons why you would not go for the suicide thing that I can reasonably think of a) you dont care that your copies will represent different people after a while and have no issue with the fact that the you on the arc will be aware of the fact that it left another you behind that could now be different from "you" and since it was the "original you" you as the arkcopy might be "outdated" or b) You think the project is too risky and you might need to either be scanned later or need your body to make sure it suceeds.
Yeah, that's the view I took as well. They understood the process but concluded only one "you" should exist and decided to eliminate the old version that had no prospect of survival anyway.
You might be right about Sarang, but probably not Robin (and likely others as well). From what she says it sounds like she really thinks it's magic (possibly misunderstanding the original intent). And it doesn't make her an idiot. Like it was pointed out in the video, the people at Pathos-II (mostly engineers, not scientists, by the way) are desperate and they don't see any other options. And it's not like Robin (the original) necessarily believed she would survive her death -- according to her suicide note she was rather taking a leap of faith because "we're all dying anyway". But coming back to Sarang, a counterpoint: he does talk about "actual survival", not "kind of, if you look at it from a particular perspective survival". If I wanted to argue he wasn't wrong, I'd rather go a different route, pointing out that consciousness is not continuous anyway, as we loose it every time we go to sleep or faint. For all we know we might be copied and deleted every day, because there's no way to tell from the perspective of the copy. And with that in mind, scanning and killing yourself is as continuous as it gets. Also, I have another reason for not committing suicide -- you enjoy living at the bottom of the ocean. Catherine found enjoyment in her project. Sarah liked the people she was stuck with. Akers liked his chess and then moved on to other hobbies, like plucking his eyes out and such. Point being: bottom of the ocean is not so bad if you're having fun.
So... I'm a bit less of an idiot than Simon, but - Basically YOU are the battery for your brain scan? If your body dies, so does it, no matter where it is, because you're plugged in providing the scan power? You just... won't know it's offline because you have no updating experience of anything anymore?
@@Roadent1241 for the simons they had a power source, just like the other robots did, they drained simon 2's battery (if you picked that option) so he never woke up again, if there was anyone else, or if the wau got to him, then they/it might re-power the battery, letting him wake up again whenever that happened...
The reason that the scientists seemed like idiots is easily explained: Take anyone, dumb or smart, and put them in a stressful situation. Non of them will act like they usually would. And when we are talking about the absolute last chance for something of humanity to live on, I would say that counts as a stressful situation ^^ And just to add to it, there is a chance that "you" can live on.
In a way, I think Simon 3/4 came up with the Coin toss hypothesis as a way to cope and negate the reality, just like Simon's brain negate that he was a robot, until there wasnt another option. I can only imagine Simon 3 (if Simon 2 is alive) would off each other, would either keep exploring the Abyss, until he dies by getting eaten, somehow manage to find the coast of any landmass and hope it isn't fireland, or who knows. The end of the day, he will loose his mind
"just like Simon's brain negate that he was a robot, until there wasnt another option." I disagree. This might just be me, but after watching the short videos of Soma(plus playing the game multiple times) I don't believe that it's a "natural" cause that makes them think that they are human, but something the WAU has done to them before activating them. To me it's too unrealistic that every single robot acts the same way. It doesn't matter if they have arms and legs, are swimming, broken down and can't movie. So to me, it is something the WAU has done to them to make them more "human", which is its goal after all. Like for instance with the movie "Replicas" (spoiler warning for the movie) Every time they transfer a canciones the robot starts freaking out after a few seconds to the point of killing themselves. I can't remember the 100% exact explanation, but it's basically because their human instincts and functions are fucking up the robot. Like as a human you automaticly breath, but as a robot, you can't. So the people who got transferred in the movie were experiencing not being able to breath and therefore paniced to the point of killing themselves. In my mind, it's pretty much the same way Soma works, the WAU has just kinda made a filter of some sort so that everything you see is what would WOULD'VE seen.
@@BeefMeisterSupreme If my "theory" is currect, then it wouldn't be unreasonable that she had already went through the "I'm a real human" part. Maybe one day she simply could've realised just how weird it is that she can only bearly raise her head above a table, despite being a normal sized person. Besides, she has always seemed very chill and understanding about how the copying works, so maybe there was just no reason to try and fool her. No matter how many Cathrin's has excisted, the one we know is and will always be Cathrin 2, which she is expressed multiple times throughout the game that she is happy about. To quote the christian god "I am who I am".
" just like Simon's brain negate that he was a robot" he doesn't have a brain though he is a robot "The end of the day, he will loose his mind" rarely in all of history has there been smaller losses
@@LoveToSpootch "but something the WAU has done to them before activating them." so what, all the insane and contrived decisions all the characters make is just due to the other AI of the game being terribly designed and filled with glitches? "To me it's too unrealistic that every single robot acts the same way." Sounds like YOUR coping mechanism to avoid the fact the writing is just terrible in this game yes you're right in realizing there is no internal consistency and things wouldn't play at all like that in reality no you're jumping the shark thinking there has to be some clever explanation by the writers to make all of that make sense, if they had realized how nonsensical everything was, they would put the reason that make all the nonsense seem sensible and realistic front and center, they wouldn't hide it so deep it's never stated inside or outside the game in interviews, if you're having to make up weird theories to bridge the holes left by the plot, theories that are neither in the game nor ever mentioned by the people behind the game, then more than likely they weren't even aware of the nonsense they were spewing and you're just completely delusional for thinking there has to be a way to make it make sense
I love this game. It's philosophy really made me think about the choices you made, and how you never know the outcome of some. The games atmosphere was amazing, and while the game alone didn't spook me but rather interest me, the story as mentioned did so much more about ethnical choices, what's considered human or not, is your life worth risking to give others a fighting chance. And the few chances you get to see Simon in his robo form! And transferring to the deep diving suit! Simon's a mental champ knowing he's a walking corpse.
This was an absolute amazing and terrifying experience…I don’t call this a game I call it an experience because of the emotions, story, voice narration all was perfectly put together and provided hours of amazement and awesomeness !
It's insane to me that you do a SOMA video out of the blue. I've been coming back to this game after reading Aion by Carl Jung. Which is also interesting because it can also be found in the game as well. I'm glad that this game is not forgotten because it is one of the best ever in terms of storytelling and philosophical questioning.
I disagree with how you blame Simon's way of reacting as lacking intelligence. This is criticism and should not be taken personally. As you stated earlier, the brain has various ways of coping with very, very abstract and downright surreal scenarios, such as the one Simon was in. His way of reacting made him happy to be in his position, in a world where positivity is scarce, having "won the coin toss". He also didn't want to accept the fact that he gets copiwd because of how incredibly bewildering it would be to a 21st century man living an ordinary life to suddenly see yourself cloned in an instant, "thinking they are you" (as he would put it), and having to come to terms with that. He wanted to have hope, something for himself to cling on, something ultimately very human. His reaction on realization is just as natural, subconciously knowing his analogy was wrong and not realizing sooner and having it settle in would have been a lot better for himself, so he lashes out at Catherine, trying to vent his frustration in some way, trying to cope, but not thinking ahead. As I said, a very human response, made so incredibly more chilling once Catherine leaves forever when the Omnitool dies. His only companion, gone. He is now alone. Without hope, in a despicably hostile decaying world. He would not go gentle into that good night.
Yesss, that last sentence. This is a man who survived a car crash and was surviving in a world without his SO. A will to survive comes with downsides, though, as it means his brain needs the light at the end of the tunnel in order to keep sane. His 'original' self still had a world and time that made sense to him, while he and his copies didn't. To grasp the truth means coming to grips with the fact that he has no chance of escaping.
I wanted to play this game for years, and finally, a month ago, I could purchase a good enough PC to play the game, and all the wait was worth it. Soma is one of those games that leave you thinking even long after playing, a masterpiece in it's class.
I considered it cruel to let anyone I came across live. It was a horrible existence for all of them and I was the only one capable of granting them any kind of mercy. It's interesting watching other people play the game and choose differently. SOMA is such an amazing game for providing that experience.
I’d like to believe there are other underground shelters around the world that people are still living. Out of the billions of people I’m sure there are bunkers like Soma deep underground. Also these people had a few years to prep for the comet. Maybe some scientist pulled a Hail Mary by making a terraforming system that could revamp the world. It’s highly possible especially since it takes place in the 22nd century. Maybe someone created an ELYSIUM bunker like in HZD and have enough food to last for 100 years so people can live out their remaining years. Remember it’s only been 2 years since the extinction event. Other underground shelters could last for years if they stocked it right. So technically Sarah wouldn’t be the ONLY living person left. They make us think Sarah is the only person because no one is getting response from the outside world… but that’s just it. They are hoping to receive contact ABOVE ground where there is nothing left. But all the bunkers worldwide are BELOW ground where all the survivors would be.. They are just looking in the wrong place.. also the world is HUGE… There would be millions of spots worldwide the satellite wouldn’t be able to pick up. So to think Sarah is the only one left is unlikely.
dude they can put their minds into machines we can make machines already today, probably 30 years ago that can work mining operations just fine in a post apocalyptic world, we can build automated factories, and the game takes place 90 years into the future, there is absolutely no way they wouldn't have the tech to do it, and we even see them have it So not even the other possible bunkers, but literally the underwater station where the game takes place could have just scanned their brains, put themselves in robots, worked together with their originals, sent drones remotely controlled by AIs (or make a ton of AIs depending on how wasteful they wanna be), and then just slowly set up mining operations, set up more manufacturing, build more robots, and just continue making robots that build robots until all of earth has been reclaimed instead they decide to live a fake life on a station for no reason (because it takes less effort? because it would be more pleasurable? Dude wtf just modify your mind to remove those subroutines), and then decide to kill themselves after making a copy even though there was absolutely no reason to do that the entire game is just a contrived mess where all the characters behave like imbecile lunatics to drive forward the plot, that's really what annoys me, maybe some people will say their behavior is realistic/believable but I still like to think that hopefully humans would be less stupid than the characters in that game, hopefully that stance is not too delusional, but reading the other comment where no one seem to be shocked by the insanely stupid behavior of the characters, and no one seem to find the flaws in their decisionmaking, well that make me doubt on wether I judge humanity too kindly
@@anonymous-rb2sr Kinda agree with you, I'm not an expert in comet collision damage assessment but at worst I see no reason why people killed themselves instead of just waiting down there for a few years before coming back to the surface to search for some semi-habitable land. What do they have to lose right?
Knowing nothing about SOMA before this video I can experience the feeling intended thru your narration and discussion. This is a piece of existential art.
Although he was very good at explaining the game, you should very much play it yourself, since the feeling you get from the video is at best 20% of what you would've gotten from playing the game. And if you don't have a lot of money, just add it to your steam list (assuming you're using steam), because every now and then it costs as little as a few euros. I'm pretty sure I bought it for 5 or 6 euros my self.
my favorite thing to think about thats similar to this that ive always thought about is the idea of teleporters, and how there is no real way to know that what comes out of the other end is you, or your copy just picking up where you left off and you just die the second you go through.
It's both, isn't it. It's like when you fall asleep and lose the consciousness. How do you know that when you wake up it's still you? We form identity from continuity, you still have all the memories and experiences of you even though there can be multiple you. You are all you, just on diverging timelines.
If the teleporter in question is more of a portal thing, where you physically stay intact while you walk through a portal, then you don't die. If it's anything else, your consciousness has died in the process and a new one has taken its place.
Catherine seemed so familiar with Simon and knew how to manipulate him... wonder how many copies of Simon had been used for testing by her. Like she knew his limits. Makes me wonder...
she wasn't manipulating him, there were other people transfered on the ARK. If you see the post-credits scene you will see that she was happy to see him.
@@Immolator772 Well, no, she was definitely manipulating the guy, it's just that her intentions in that manipulation weren't cruel. She initially TRIED to tell him the truth ("You're a walking talking diving suit with some electronics slapped on"), but backed off once she realized he wasn't able to accept that reality. Her priority was saving the ARK, but she put a reasonable amount of effort into keeping Simon sane; both to ensure the ARK got launched and also, IMO, because she pitied him and didn't want to upset him. However, either way, doing so required obfuscating the truth in his favor. I agree that she was happy to see him, and I think the fact that she lied to him - including at the end, when she doesn't insist on telling him about Simon 3 but just greets him and allows him to think he won the coin toss - is the same type of cruel kindness we're given the choice to display to all of the WAU's forcibly-preserved creations; it's just that this time, we're on the other side, and the decision is in her hands. She chooses not to pull the plug, and lets us live a happy lie.
What a story I was one of the people that played it when it came out,day one!I was a big fan of Amnesia dark descent and this had some of the developers or something. At first i was dissapointed,but then i realised i was playing something truly amazing and BETTER! One of the most atmospheric gaming experiences i ever had.And the ending was just perfect,i was only 15 back then but i just loved it,kinda got me into science fiction as well. I'm 22 now,every now and then i think about SOMA.About what it meant,about the philosophical questions it proposes.I know it wasn't very popular,i just hope the developers know how much it meant to some of us. Thank you for the video.
I am glad you talked about safe mode, I always wanted to be able to actually look at those wonderfully designed creatures the WAU cobbled together to see its attempts at life. It really helps to be able to experience them without endless aggression
I loved Soma when I played it first and subsequent playthroughs and been watching analysis of the plot every now and then. This video is one of the best analysis I've watched so far. Really well explained in a clear way and without confusing the spectator. Achieving that with such a complex plot like Soma's is no joke. Congrats, man, keep it up, love your analyses!
I still think about this game often before I sleep. Sometimes I wonder if the version of me who wakes is the same as the one who drifts away each night. In a way, our existence is iterarive. Our present mental state dies each night, and a new version of ourself is born each morning. Until we stop waking up at all, and we enter the night without end.
Fantastic video! SOMA is my favorite horror game of all time, and boy did you do the story justice with this video. There were even a couple of new tidbits I picked up on this time "experiencing" the story. For example, at the end of the game with Simon 3 and Catherine, I now think the reason Catherine "explodes" or shut down and break the monitor is because her scan got too stressed when dealing with Simon 3 not understanding the copying/scanning mechanism.
Not many games leave you feeling empty like that, you are so invested in the story and want to see where it goes and then it just ends and so you are left with that empty feeling that something was lost, just like simon 2 and 3
I remember playing this a year ago and as a lit major I looked at this and thought “yeah gaming is where storytelling will thrive from now on” and it gave me an existential crisis 😅
I feel Simon's "coin toss" justification is the same horror of realization I felt with the cookies in Black Mirror's Christmas episode. The cookies are scans of humans transferred into essentially a smart home device, but like the Simon copies that remember everything that happened up until the split from the copy, the cookies remember everything about their past life before being -trapped- put into the smart home device. They still believe they are person that made the choice to have the cookie made, not the actual cookie itself. The horror I felt from that episode and Soma, in the best way I can describe, is that if that happened to me, I don't know if my current self will continue in my prime body, or if it will be the one that gets placed in the cookie or robot body or whatever. Yeah, logically, I know that's not how it works. But emotionally, I'm scared that I'll lose the coin toss and be the one stuck making toast for eternity (seriously, watch the Black Mirror Christmas special if you haven't, specifically the segment with Jon Hamm and Oona Chaplin, it's my favorite thing from the series and the one that gets the most under my skin, as you can see).
PS It's kinda implied that that cute robot with a flashlight that follows you and even cuts you out of the Curie escape shuttle is also self aware. It runs away when you decide to cattle prod that other robot for his battery pack... I think it also was an option to cattle prod the cute robot btw
Yooooooooooooo. I was wondering what the Halloween surprise would be after you mentioned it in your ME2 video, but I didn't expect this. Soma is one of the craziest games I've ever played. Just a terrible feeling of dread and emptiness when I was done with it. I'm really glad you did a vid on it. Keep it up Gingy!
This is one of the few games that have stuck in my mind ever since playing it. You might have heard of it, but the NieR series also delves into these topics. If you haven't played already, I highly recommend them!
I love Catherine!! I love the comfort her voice brought along after getting through some of the darkest parts of the game. That climber ride is the best part of the game and for me, made it the best game I've ever experienced.
SOMA is the game you play once, cry for hours, feel empty inside, puzzle the story together and never touch it again. One of my favourite games, so glad people talk about it. There's too little content on it!
I recently attempted to play Soma and I have to really recommend safe mode. The enemy isn't really a huge threat on normal and is really more of a hassle that interferes with my exploration of the world which is really the content you don't want to miss. Being chased down a hallway and missing three rooms is a lot worse than not being killed by a "monster"
I haven't even touched the game but that finale of Simon screaming for Catherine to not leave him is just so raw and brutal, man I can't wait to play the game, specially knowing the accesibility settings thing at the start, for someone as anxious as me it sounds just fantastic
There seem to be many parallels between SOMA's brain scanning and Soulkiller from Cyberpunk 2077. Except, Soulkiller also made sure to solve a part of the existential problem - scanning a person's brain kills the instance of them hooked up to the device (u̶n̶l̶e̶s̶s̶ y̶o̶u̶'r̶e̶ t̶h̶e̶ e̶m̶p̶e̶r̶o̶r̶ o̶f̶ J̶a̶p̶a̶n̶). The name of the device also brings up another problem that I think wasn't mentioned here - what happens to the soul of a copied person? Does it somehow carry on? Or does it just die along the original person?
that also circles to altered carbon as well, the stacks they use also contains their mind but you always wonder if it actually holds their souls, then it actually makes a case about it when they create backups of their stacks
@@Stallionmilk Then how do we have ghosts? Lingering spirits that can be seen by the eye and camera and captured forever on such devices. (And no dumb answers like "Duh phutuhshup". I know there's no animal or dinosaur ghosts but still it's a bit of a concept to make up.)
37:30 i honestly always interpreted the coin flip as a coping method. It’s like deep in Simon’s mind it’s hit him that he won’t get on the Ark, but another Simon, another being will. So he comes up with the coin flip as a cope, hoping that he (as in Simon 3) will still be able to escape this nightmare.
SOMA and Eraserhead gave me the same existential dread, despite the two being NOTHING alike. Both times I went through like 2 days afterwards where I caught myself staring into space, questioning what it meant to be "alive"
Hey, thanks a lot for this video. I wouldn't lie saying that SOMA is the only game I keep thinking about years after playing. The only other story is the one told by Peter Watts in his Firefall book series asking closely related quastions the SOMA does about various aspects of the nature of mind and consciousness. Anyways, wonderful review - I really appreciate the work you did.
The other importnant effect of this game is that it actually makes you question your own existance - are you real or just a simulation? Waht if there is anothe you "playing" you playing SOMA? And so on...
I always come back to these kind of lore videos on this game, I can still remember how empty I felt after beating this game and how long it took me to recover from it. It really is one of the best games to ever lay hands on my playstation.
This is so good. Soma is the drug in Brave New World that people would take to “take a vacation” from their lives. The thematic integration of that from each step right up to the end when Simon 4 doesn’t realize he hasn’t won and he’s left a Simon behind keeps in that vein of the vacation. Truths are hard to confront no matter how many times we try, and that hope of trying again makes us, at times, human. That’s why it would be inhumane to kill new Simon. He’s still Simon. He still has a chance.
subscribed. I love SOMA so much and just recently came around playing it, finally. Your analysis is spot on, and even showed or explained some stuff i was missing in my playthrough!
I think Simon knows it, understands how it works but still like people in a crisis hes in shock and refuses to any logic, reminds me to a person who just lost someone close to them and denaying there gone.
Whoa. I'd heard of this game, but hadn't any clue as to its mega mind-fuck psychological elements. Absolutely outstanding video breakdown -- instant sub.
Great video! Thanks! Soma is such an amazing game. I've never played it, but I've watched a number of different people stream it and I love seeing how they react to various plot elements and hear what they think about the story. It's very different for everyone who plays.
28:00 What I wondered is how the WAU must have felt when all those people starting killing themselves off. I wonder if that had effected its routines in some way and ended up starting the events to happen the way they did. Maybe that is what started the WAU's trial and error attempts at keeping humans alive, not matter in what form. Not sure about the timeline on that one tho. The choice about killing the WAU is also interesting. You essentially choose between life created , which might seem alien to us, but in a sense is also just life and evolution from which something new can arise (although from out point of view it might seem artifical). Or if you kill the WAU, you essentially open the possibility for Earth to recover on its own and after millions of years it might be able to habitate new life (so the humans being similar to the dinosaurs).
I bought Soma a while ago when a bunch of Frictional games were on sale, and I didn't play it until I watched this video. Thank you for directing me to play it, because it 's really sticking with me, and I'm so glad I gave it a chance. The video was great as always!
The coin toss makes sense to me. From the pov of the copy, they were on that chair, then on the ark. They had “won” the coin toss. The Simon on the chair “lost” the coin toss.
Yes exactly! The new Simon still feels like he was the old one. Which in a certain sense is true. But every time a scan happens the Simon we were was left behind.
I just played SOMA in October and the more I think about the game the more I realize how incredible it is. One part standard horror game, one part hard sci-fi, one part existential dread. Great video essay.
Usually not a fan of first person "walk and hide" horror games (way too much nowadays), but I got me this game so a friend of mine (who watched a lets play) can play it... at the end only I played it and honestly kinda glad I did. Kinda understood pretty quickly that simon was a copy in robot and was kinda worried they gonna use it as the big end twist. Luckely the revealed it pretty soon and instead made a story to fully explore this concept and it was fantastic. Also this and alien isolation made me release that I can enjoy first personwalk and hide" horror games when the setting (In this case scifi) is right, so i also learned it can actually good to try out game genres you are usual not much interested in.
Great video. I already knew and loved this game, and I think you capture very well what's good about it. It's one of those games that will kind of always be here with you.
Something that really caught up to me was how you were referring to the Simons as numbers, even though they are actually the same person. I know this was intentional and had a organizational value, but it made me think what makes someone different than the other person, beyond the physical body, and the thing is that the answer is actually pretty simple, and we all know it. Different experiences. It's the same reason twins are not the same person, even if their DNA is identical. If the hypothesis of the game is truly correct, and it is possible to copy one's mind/memories until the moment the process happens ( and even though the game does not explain how learning would happen in the new body ), it could indicate that what we think as a soul - a unique innate unalienable element of the being - might not be connected neither to it's brain or physical body, and it could even serve as proof that the soul does not exist and probably nothing beyond that also . Very terrifying . Gladly we are not in that reality ( yet ).
Iirc the brain scans work by being essentially Artificial Intelligences simulating the personality of the scanned person. I suppose Machine Learning is how they learn without actual neurons.
I loved this game so much. It consumed my thoughts as I played it, and I consistently wanted to know more, to see more, to see what would happen. Thank you for this clear summary and analysis of one of the best games I think I've ever played.
I loved this game, but Simon's reaction at the end pointed to a lack of a character arc, and it spoiled the final moments. If I had written the ending, I would have switched to the Ark Simon immediately and only then cut back to Pathos Simon and be more contemplative and resolved rather than angry. He knew in his heart that he would just be copied, and the final moments between him and Catherin involve a brief philosophical conversation intermixed with Simon and Catherine contemplating the future as they fade away in the darkness.
All I can say is thank you for making these videos. They are the highlight of my month every time and I never would've known of these stories without you. Cheers ❤️
The ending is phenomenal. Before you launch the ARK, Catherine says "I'll never get used to that" as you plug her in...implying she's fully aware that she'll need to live on within the omnitool after she's copied to the ARK. When Simon questions this by saying "you won't have to get used to it", she deliberately gives a vague answer, leaving no more room for questions. Catherine wants to keep Simon ignorant. She knows that simon struggles to understand the concept of being copied, he views his copy as a different entity rather than a continuation of himself, despite having existend as two such copies. Catherine knows he'll be reluctant to launch the ARK if he's aware that he won't be transferred, as Simon will believe that it isn't HIM on the ARK ("They're not us!"). So Cath deliberately hides this from him so the ARK will be launched. She's not a bad person for doing this though, she's essentially helpless without Simon and the ARK is the only thing left of value to anybody. She can't let Simon's selfish conceptualisation of the 'coin toss' jeapordise her life's work and humanity's future.
At the same time, I really feel for Simon. He was unwillingly forced to be humanity's saviour, trapped in a body which should not exist, in a hopeless almost-alien world filled with nightmarish remnants of humanity. That'd be enough to drive anyone to the brink of madness, and I can forgive him for struggling to understand the brain scan concept. And from the perspective of Simon-3 (power suit simon) at the ending, all choices which seemed morally justified until that point (putting Simon-2 out of his misery, killing the WAU etc.) only make things worse now. Without the WAU, no more sentient human copies can be created. Without Simon-2, there is no other "sound mind in a sound body" to keep Simon-3 company.
He truly is alone. And for the rest of his life he will feel nothing but regret, until his battery drains or something else kills him first.
Simon-4 on the ARK has no idea about any of this.
What a game.
Actually Catherine left him alone, she got transfered but Simon has another copy. His other copy living in paradise until something happens to the ark and they fade, while he's all alone trapped in the deep. Also i would call WAU keeping machines is any better, being trapped and unmoving is worse than death. The WAU is what terrified me the most, imagine being stuck for eternity trapped in unmoving state.
I take issue with you implying that Simon is incorrect about the copies being different entities. Simon is absolutely correct that the copies are not at all the same entity as him.
The entire message of the game is that consciousness is inseverably linked to and dependent on the physical hardware that it's stored on, be that a brain or a computer chip or a hard drive. It is impossible to transfer a consciousness from one hardware to another. The "coin toss" and "continuity" ideas are entirely just copes. Your experience of the world, you reading this right now, feeling thirsty or hungry and whatever else, is entirely dependent on your brain. The moment your brain stops the flow of consciousness, you die in all senses of the word.
If it was possible to deconstruct you atom-by-atom and then put you perfectly back together atom-by-atom one microsecond later, you still would have died. A new consciousness would have formed with all of your experiences and memories up until the moment your brain was taken apart, but the break there effectively ends that consciousness' run and you therefore have died.
To expand on this, if Simon had put Catherine's omnitool chip into the ark, then the Catherine we know and talked to the whole game would have made it onto the ark. Since instead a copy of her was uploaded, the Catherine on the ark is an entirely different entity no matter what copes you could have about that.
If you don't agree with this take, I think you actually just don't understand how these things work.
@@PARAN0IDxGERBIL I agree with what you're saying here, absolutely. That's how it works. I know the continuity isn't true, I know the coin toss doesn't actually happen. Consciousness can't be transferred, its SOMA 101. I think I could've phrased it better when I said Simon views his copy as a separate entity, there's been some miscommunication as to what I meant by that. I'll do my best to clear it up now:
I think Simon views his copy as a separate *person* . When the ark is launched and Simon-3 realises his copy (Simon-4) was inserted but he wasn't, he's resentful and angry, instead of being happy that Simon-4 gets to live on. He doesn't consider how, in the moment the ARK copy was made, these two versions of his consciousness are identical *people* (despite being housed in different hardware, making them different entities).
Of course, they become different people the moment afterwards, where the experiences of the two copies begin to diverge. But Simon's goal was to put himself on the ARK. He achieved that goal, a version of him is on the ark. But Simon-3's emotional outburst comes from how he views this version as something other than himself, which is true in the sense that Simon-4's consciousness (not the entity within its physical facility but Simon-4's experience of consciousness) has become something other than Simon-3's due to diverging experiences. But not true in the sense that Simon-3 post-launch and Simon-4 both stem from Simon-3 pre-launch.
To me, it seems as if Simon-3 fails to make the connection that the Simon on the ARK, despite being housed in different hardware, has all the same personality traits, strengths, weaknesses, memories, desires and fears as himself. He can't look beyond himself and see this because he still believes he is the 'only Simon'. He knows himself to be Simon, and therefore believes all his copies are not Simon (despite the fact that every copy would claim the same). This is different to how Catherine-3 views the copy concept, where she is happy for Catherine-4 on the ARK because she recognises that copy as being a direct continuation of herself as a person despite it being a different entity.
note: I'm finding it hard to articulate exactly what I mean here, so if it seems like I'm talking in circles or failing to reach the point that's probably why. Call it a cope or whatever, but I do kind of suck at articulating things in words sometimes. I find discussions like this helpful because it opens up weak points in how I relay information to other people, even if we need to go through misunderstandings to get there.
@@deviateedits
I see what you're saying. As with everything related to this game, it speaks to the philosophical conception of what personhood is. Simon isn't mad that HE didn't make it onto the ark, because HE most certainly did! There's definitely a Simon on the ark, lol. He's mad that he doesn't get to be the consciousness that is on the ark, which obviously would be hard to articulate in his position at that time.
Catherine is effectively a piece of shit but a necessary one. I hate her ad a character but understand why she did it. She's still an antagonist.
I don't think Simon is dumb, I think he held onto this coin toss delusion because it was the only thing giving him hope and keeping him going. It's like the continuity people, a coping mechanism.
"if you're completely insane and somehow have the superhuman ability to gaslight yourself into believing falsehoods, resulting in your entire worldview being objectively wrong and all the decisions you take being mistakes, that doesn't mean you're dumb!"
yeah I'll beg to differ on that one chief
tl dr if the effects of a "coping mechanism" are the exact same as those of extreme stupidty, and that you can't tell them appart under most definitions of what intelligence is, then how are those "coping mechanism" just not a ctegory of stupidity?
It's what we all do. Plan like we'll live forever though we know it'll end some day.
@@droptozro or at least we'd live all the hardships through while having this disillusional thought it will once turn around and get better
Dude was constantly lying to himself. He's a super-duper imperfect Human character.
Can someone explain how Simon thinks the coin toss theory works? Because to me, it sounds like when you are taking a scan, you have a 50% chance to 'continue' in your own body and a 50% chance to 'wake up' in a new one, which would explain the name
No one ever mentions how good the voice acting is in this game, it portrays the humanity in every character.
It always throws me off whenever i hear it. Im so used to scripted voice acting that Soma's more natural (imo) voice acting felt uncanny. Add that to the inhuman bodies where the voices were coming from, it was hella strange.
@@zigrakudo4092 Yeah same, that is why I can replay the game and get excited about the story everytime.
I'd have to somewhat disagree. During the most important moments, yes I'd agree. His back and forth with Catherine was often gut-wrenching. But the game goes back and forth between "totally understandable human emotions" and borderline "silent, stoic protagonist" moments. Like the lack of a reaction after being put in the body of a headless corpse (something that caused me to genuinely curl up in discomfort) or seeing the ghost of Ross repeatedly showing up and even shattering the glass at that one moment
the voice acting on this game is freaking EPIC, specially in the traumatic /plot twists scenes, is gloriuous
@@pAWNproductionsDE That's a valid take, but I think it's important to remember that 1) Simon might not vocalize these more emotional reactions due to fear, and 2) that he's already been through a lot - In the intro, his good friend (almost girlfriend?) died because of him and he found out he had less than a month to live, yet he's still relatively chipper when talking to his friend and Dr Munshi; I think Simon has greater mental fortitude than most.
Worth to mention that when you kill the other robot for the chip, the helperbot acts like it is scared of you.
poor thing
Bubble Butt! No! Oh, Bubble Butt…..
(Markiplier played this game half a decade ago - or more - and this part broke him. 😢)
That part really does stick. A helpful, cute little robot now sees the player as a monster to be feared, because the player does something monstrous enough to truly warrant that reaction. The literal only wholesome thing down in the ocean of nightmares rejects the player because they've become part of the nightmare.
I googled the choice beforehand and once I read that I uninstalled the game cause I just couldn't do that to the poor robot either way 😭
@@joshuakim5240 i felt so bad for that to happen but it had to be done
In 48 years, no other story has haunted me as much as Soma did. Too many people nowadays think horror is jump scares. It’s not. Horror is deeply unsettling stuff that makes you lose sleep for months.
Try Silent Hill 2.
@@ash_1419 yeah…but it didn’t hit me the same way. I think if it was made today, with today’s graphics it would really set the atmosphere & make that already fantastic story truly horrifying. But as it stands the janky controls and visuals just distract me too much from the story. Plus there aren’t the kind of choices in SH2 as there is in soma. Stuff that makes you question your actions for months afterwards. SH2 is definitley spooky as hell and the story is just so disturbing but its a very different kind of horror. I kinda put it in the level of stressful that Alien Isolation is. It’s that something is lurking that I can’t see feeling without the jump scares so it keeps your level of anxiety up for hours. Isolation literally almost gave me a heart attack just from hours of tension. All of the above are 1000% better then the cheap thrills from FNaF though. Lol.
Oh boy! I have this story for you about this Japanese girl from the 80s or 90s. Except that it actually happened. Although I really wouldn't recommend it to anyone except sadists and psychopaths, because otherwise a part of you will die irrecoverably.
@@aerynstormcrowyour not even a content creator anymore
@@aerynstormcrow Well we have news for you if you haven't already heard... Silent Hill 2 is being remade for today, out next year in 2023.
One of my favorite parts of the game that most other people I imagine either overlooked or didn't have happen to them was being fooled by the light of the angler fish. Never in my life did I think something like that could fool me, a human with a mental capacity way beyond any prey animal meant to be fooled by it. It caught me so off guard in that stressful moment of just trying to follow the light in that underwater storm that when I got close enough to see it was the fish, it gave me the biggest sudden scare I had in the entire game. In that moment, I felt no different than a small insignificant prey animal.
it's in the video, it happens to most people
Yeah, it was one of the best gotcha moments I've ever experienced. I was so on edge during that part of the game, and I just wanted to get out of the stormy current and the caves, and ran with hope and delight towards what looked like any other light pole before.... and in the last moment see those dead eyes and that ever growing mouth with razorsharp teeth behind the light. It's one of the few times a game actually made me scream out loud lmao.
I just watched a gameplay on twitch and the guy playing got killed by it 🤣 I can't remember if I got fooled but I remember that I always spent a lot of time time in the watery sections.
Ironically that was the one and only time I saw the angler fish. I emerged out of the cave n made a break for the closest light only to get a face full on ungly that I had to quickly side step. Definitely wasn't expecting that.
It happened often in real life. The reason fairies exist myth as mischievous little creatures is because light bugs existed. In Celtic society, if you lived near the bogs where the light bugs swarmed and you went to find the light of a candle or fire at night you could unwittingly walk into the bog, which is like quicksand, and be swallowed up and killed.
Soma is one of my absolute favourite games of all time, but I will never play it again. It broke something within me the first time around and it took me 3 weeks afterwards to get over that feeling. A true masterpiece, that touched me to the core. 10/10
100% agree. The part where you are abandoned ranting in rage in the dark then slowly begging for Catherine to return.... Existentialist dread at its peak
The closest I've been to that is playing pathologic by ice pick lodge
I agree. This game made me question everything.
Thats almost an exact echo of my experience. Its probably the best horror game Ive ever played but it made me think in ways Ive never thought before. Took me about 2 or so weeks before I felt normal again.
the game is very rich in aesthetics and morality. I agee game is really awesom.
Oh man knowing what’s going on and hearing her dismiss Carl’s “death” with “robots don’t feel anything, so.” _chills_
Listening to that again, there's actually a certain tone to it that felt mildly sarcastic, like 'of course robots don't "feel" anything', perhaps a little derisively to Simon, since she appears very self aware, and seems aware of Simon being a robot on first meeting.
@@dragontear1638Cartherine always felt a little psychotic to me on my first two playthroughs. One, she's totally obsessed with the Ark and doesn't actually seem to care about Simon at all, as long as he gets her magic school bus into space. Secondly, even though Cath _knows_ that the robots are the brainscans of people, complete with their personality and memories, she just shrugs off every one of them as "just robots." Yeah, technically speaking, but they are still her friends and colleagues. Just because they aren't *living humans* means to her they aren't human at all. She doesn't even really care about the scans in the Ark, she just wants the Ark itself to be safe because it's her legacy, because of what it means to *her.*
I like Catherine because I hate her. She's so selfish and unsympathetic, but we need to help her to preserve something of humanity, and we need her to survive Pathos II, as our little masterkey.
@@xshullawactually unironically one of the least selfish out of most of the characters who chose killing themselves to preserve "continuity" rather than assisting the rest of the team or helping in the stations ai malfunctioning they chose to end their lives early out of untested theory and fear of missing their chance. She was trying her hardest to ensure the human race would still live on. If any person's copy in a robot, Simon, or even herself dies. It doesn't matter as long as the ark leaves into space.
This is the secret answer few people have figured out.
She was telling the truth from the beginning.
None of them feel anything because they are all robots and she should know.
She is just the most aware of the truth. All of them are just ones and zeros simulating humanity.
@@TTHJJD100Yeah, she's not psychotic, she's a rational person and a realist.
Earth is gone. The battery in the station will drain in a few decades and kill any living robots anyway.
If anything, her drive to launch the ark is out of her deep care for the people in the station and humanity as a whole.
I would be interested though in seeing how the copies cope with being alive in a known simulation for hundreds of years. If the "minds" would deteriorate or if their lives would become meaningless without traditional flesh and blood mortality being a part of their being.
The ending to this game, with that incredible soundtrack, Simons voice fading out in all that darkness, was one of the most haunting endings to anything I've ever experienced. I'm never gonna forget this game
this game accidentally messed with me at the start. when you're looking through the office you need to find a key code. for shits and giggles i put in my phone passcode at the time. and the door opened. then i remembered that my passcode was a reference to ghost in the shell's Project 2501, which was the code name for the AI puppet master. And the reference made so much sense. Don't know how many people picked up on it. pretty cool detail
Oh wow!
Also- Simon's resiliance might also be due to him being "The Legacy scan", in addition to the fact of Simon being a simple dude.
Yeah, he does have times of self reflection and big thinking, but overall his mind has simplicity to it that he doesn't feel like worrying about it more.
And his "scan type" might have something to it, since it's just a simple old tech being forced to fulfill a point of a "evolving" brain... the evolving scans that are possible in future of soma.
Long story short- Simon's simplicity both saves him from going mad but also fucks him since he is easy to manipulate.
There's also the factor that his scan was done after he was brain damaged, and depending on what parts of his brain were damaged in the accident it's entirely possible (and was my personal reading of the situation) that he actually just can't log and fully comprehend the information Catherine is telling him and that's why he's not understanding how it works
@@MxchiefMaykr
Might be too... But I didn't want the argument to sound like "He is safe because he's retarded" ya know?
Even tho with explanation it's a other fascet that allows Simon to survive his cognitihazardous situation
@@MxchiefMaykr he is a flat scan of a damaged brain - take your pick, but I think its the flat part that matter. The only truly self aware and 3D/round people we see in robots, mad or not, used updated tech via the WoW - stuff that has never existed before.
I feel like it’s also the fact the WAU is improving. It’s not just sticking people into regular robots, it’s trying to combine previous techniques with Simon. Who knows how many copies of Simon the WAU stuck into coffee machines or whatever until it eventually figured out a success, which ended up being Simon we play as.
@@bobograndman
So, this is pre-alpha stuff from Supersecret file- in early versions of Soma you supposed to find "old versions" of Simon, making ot more clear that WAU indeed brought him back multiple times before
I still watch every video about SOMA even now, I will endlessly love this game and will never forget what it taught me
It really made me think of something that I had never thought about, and showed it flawlessly
A 100/10 masterpiece
Yea, every time I see one of these videos pop up its an immediate watch. Really great stuff.
What did it teach you?
I think a point to remember in regards to Simon is we’re playing as a copy of a guy who is dying of major brain damage. Explains why he can’t seem to really grasp what’s going on. Also not like he’s alone in that regards, bunch of people in Pathos II killed themselves because they thought they could cheat death even though they understood what was going on a lot better
Lol, good point
Desperation breeds rash decisions
Oh yeah the brain damage
Hell, half of the people in the comments still believe there's a coin toss lol
@@szeltovivarsydroxan9944 Many ways to develop mental handicaps...
Lot of people disliked how dense he was about the whole situation during the ending but the way I saw it, he did understood the concept he was just not willing to accept that that is how it works cause it's grim and he would lose his mind. Which he kinda did once he could not pretend otherwise. Well and to me that felt pretty damn human. It's same as crew members killing themselves well and they had way more time to think about it. They did not have to accept this whole situation in span of a single day.
actually, the problem is players do not realize he cannot, because he is based on a flat scan, so they miss that detail even though it's spelled out and get whiny he is "dumb"
The next time someone complains about games dumbing down, remind them of SOMA proving such dumbing down is in fact necessary.
@@xBINARYGODx LOL the flat scan thing being the reason he is dumb is a complete speculation, its not the reason simon is "dumb", if you think he is then you are misunderstanding one of major themes this game presents, which is pretty sad, people are looking for an in-game explanation of something that happens to many humans, as I said flat scan is a cop out/ rationalization people desperately make to cover their ignorance.
Given that his only experience with it was going in to get scanned, like, 100 years ago and then waking up in a new body it's not unreasonable for him to think of it as a transfer. His only point of reference is one minute he was conscious, and now he's conscious in what he eventually realizes is a different body in a future-science world that this normal dude who lived in a crappy little apartment doesn't understand. It was frustrating the second time it happened but, yeah, having a mere 24 hours to process that 1) you actually died a century ago along with everyone you ever knew or loved 2) Earth is ruined and humanity is effectively extinct because of a chance cataclysmic event and 3) you're never actually going to make it out of there is kind of a lot. So I can't really blame him for trying so desperately to cling onto a little bit of hope while denying the reality of his impending doom, that is, to die alone at the bottom of the ocean while "someone else" gets to live forever.
It also doesn't help that during his second scan, when Simon comments about cameras "stealing your soul" Catherine says "they'd be right in this case" which might lead one to think of it as a transfer rather than a copy. Then after their argument over Simon 2, when Simon 3 asks her what she's going to do once she gets on the ARK Catherine says she'll watch the clouds after he specifies the "first human thing" she'll do. Evidently missing that he's still not quite grasping the idea that their current versions aren't going to be the ones doing anything on the ARK.
BTW, you killed a few people along the way, your arm got eaten (with another person's dead body inside so you're perceiving actual flesh and bone in there while simultaneously being reminded of the corpse you kinda desecrated,) and you discovered the original body of the person you were talking to the entire time was killed by her own team. That probably doesn't help either.
Denial is a much better explanation than dumb.
The last video I watched didn't go into his whole denial thing, I just couldn't understand how anyone could be so stupid. At first it was like
*Katherine:* "Once we make a copy of your brain, the copy will do the work."
*Simon:* "So it's like a brain transfer, right?"
Which only becomes more stupid around the midway point where he is objectively confronted with the reality of how it works. Now it's like
*Katherine:* "There is no coin toss. It is a copy. There is a 100% chance that you will be copied and not transferred."
*Simon:* "So it's a double-sided coin?"
*Katherine:* [pregnant pause] "In a way?"
*Simon:* "So I'm transferred, heads or tails? Cow-a-bunga!"
*Katherine:* [turns to audience] _"This man was allowed to vote."_
The ending of this game gave me such a massive existential feeling.
It was like, yes on one hand they're both saved through scans but on the other Simon is just left in the dark alone and with no one else to talk to.
That gave me such a horrifying feeling.
*on one hand*
Thats for sure
SOMA is honestly the only game ending to make me cry. No other game has managed to do that so idk if the means to anyone but I felt like sharing.
No, i agree, i was teary eyed by the end of it as well, but, not because it was sad really, just... overwhelmingly impactful, the whole aspect of it, the notion the planet is FUBAR, the people and creatures abandoned down in the deep, and how the rest of humanity is now within a simulation on a small satellite orbiting the ruined planet. When i first finished this game after its release, it felt like it had changed me.
Nowadays, i know that isn't really true, but what it did was make me see things in a way i never did before.
You should play Red Dead Redemption 2 mate, trust me
@@IbrahiemLegoFilms have already. Multiple times. 100% it once. And beat the game with just melee and throwing knives.
Have played things which moved me more tbh. But it did leave me with many more questions than answers and fear of the unknown consumes me
Definitely check out Outer Wilds. It starts as a cute exploration game, then transforms into a mystery solving game, and ends with similar existential dread as SOMA.
Reminds me of the movie “The Prestige” That movie really scared me as a Kid. “Don’t forget your hat” “Well, which one is mine?” “They are all your hats, Mr. Angier” Gives me shivers to this day.
I scrolled the comments just to see if anyone else mentioned The Prestige
@@palexinchina Heck yeah! ✋ I was around 11 when I watched that movie in theaters. It changed something in my brain permanently. Not in a bad way, just a… persistent way. Tickling the back of your mind, a basilisk lays dormant.
Anyway. Before there was The Dark Knight, before there was Inception, there was The Prestige.
It’s a copy and paste not a cut and paste. Ties into legacy, memory, identity, belief. And I’m getting a bit tired and loopy.
Good luck, and stay safe out there!
Playing Soma then going and watching The Prestige, is a trip down a really dark well. You draw some utterly horrifying conclusions about what is going on with Angier and his headspace during the Transported Man act because of Soma. Because the machine copies him (like in Soma), the copy that survives thinks it's a teleportation machine that leaves a copy behind (and maybe it does, from a certain point of view). BUT, every single time, he will be surprised to be the one dropped into the tank, because he only remembers being the one that survived during ALL the previous performances. And it's even worse if he doesn't think the machine works this way. In that case, then he KNOWS that he will be the one in the tank under the stage. EVERY...SINGLE...TIME. And he is willing to do it for revenge. Now THAT is horror.
@@valen98 Well he knew what was gonna happen. He is telling it to Borden at the very end when he says you have no idea what is a real sacrifice. He most likely realised that when he first tried the machine and found out that it is a copy that is teleported away. He then decided to kill himself via drowning under the false assumption it is a peaceful death (because his engineer told him a lie to comfort him when his wife died that way).
I had my hopes for SOMA and they were met, shattered above & beyond once I saw the credits roll. It wasn't just a frightening experience, it was a thought-provoking one. That is a true achievement
TBH it is great, but I think it was frictional's weakest. Not counting A Machine for Pigs which was made by another team.
Penumbra remains the best. Especially the first part. At least for me. I actually prefer to have at least some chances at self defense.
No need to be doom guy, but I'm pretty sure a rusty pipe is something anyone could use to at least stay somewhat safe.
I chose no to the survey on the ARK for a totally different reason. I felt devastated for Simons 2 and 3, and for that very exact reason, I didn't want his efforts to be meaningless. I wanted, as Simon 4, to live out the life Simon 3 dreamed of, so that though it might be a bitter thought, Simon can at least know that he succeeded at a big goal that took a lot of effort and sacrifice, down to every drop of structure gel in his body. Because if I was Simon 3, though I would be bitter, I would be even more resentful if after all the crap I went through, Simon 4 chose death anyways
Simon's coin toss theory actually isn't completely about transferring, but it's more of a dreadful look at the reality of what has been done to him twice now. He's coming to terms with the idea of copying, and processing it in his own odd layman's way. His theory is that when the copy is made, it's a coin toss as to which "simon" actually gets the copy. It doesn't make a lot of terrible sense but in the scene it helps sink the stomach and set in the Dread of what you just did. It's also the games way of foreshadowing what will happen later as it's a way to reference a narrative perspective to the copying. Of course we follow the copy and thus their story and thoughts and choices and LIFE, but that can't always be the case...
yeah, i think gingy actually somewhat backed simon’s theory without realising it in this video. he says that he felt emotionally attached to simon 2 and 3 because that’s who he was controlling, and who he grew to sympathise with. he says that his simon is the one he left behind, not the one that got on the ark. in that way, simon did actually lose the coin toss. from our perspective, the simon we played as and grew a connection to, lost the coin toss. it’s not necessarily as simple as that but it puts it into perspective
The theory wasn't really stupid to me, in fact it's something I thought of before Simon even said it. It's not even really a theory, it just is how things work:
when you are Simon 1 being copied, you have a 50% chance of waking up as Simon 1 again, or a 50% chance of waking up as Simon 2. Yes, yes it's only a copy and whatnot and so on and blah blah blah, but in the end, due to how continuity works for the person scanned, you have no way of controlling or knowing who you will wake up as after the scan is over.
Will you be original Simon? Simon tested upon as a lab rat? Simon revived for his relatives' amusement? Simon brought back to the real world by the WAU? You can never know and never control which one you will wake up as, as the person sitting in that brain scan seat
@@Amodh1257 I agree, the coin toss theory made perfect sense to me. I think the only person who really doesn't understand it is Simon - he's still convinced that somehow there is a "real" Simon and a "fake" Simon, and that the "real" Simon didn't make it onto the ARK, when in reality they are both identical, and in fact they are both fake since the "real" Simon died 100 years ago.
@@Amodh1257 >you have a 50% chance of waking up as Simon 1 again, or a 50% chance of waking up as Simon 2
No, "you" will always be the original. Both the original and the copy will be "you", both will have the same memories (up to the point of copying), both will think they are the original, BUT only the original will have a continuous consciousness.
Let's assume the scanning does not interact with the original brain (i.e. you only observe the electrical activity of the brain, it's structure and so on, without changing anything. From the brain's perspective, you can't tell you're being scanned).
(We could argue that assumption, on the grounds of quantum mechanics, but neurons are not really subject of that quantum effect.)
When you then reconstruct a copy of that brain, there is no way for the original consciousness to transfer to the new brain (and the "new" consciousness to go to the old brain). The 'you' from before the copying will ALWAYS be the one left behind. (And the scariest part is: It won't even be able to prove it is the original)
It's kind of like a ball and cup game you know what cup the ball will be in but until it's lifted you can't really know it's fully predetermined and you know that but until you see it isn't set in stone
Simone. All alone. In the dark. At the bottom of the sea is truly haunting
I absolutely loved SOMA. I pirated it years ago and then bought it later on steam because the developers fully deserved my money. Themes of what it means to be you, to exist, what denotes consciousness etc are some of the most terrifying and interesting concepts. The Talos Principle was another good example of this genre despite being primarily puzzle driven.
should poff bought 3 extra copies for simon 1 2 and 3
@bradc4277 For indie games absolutely. Modern AAA titles can kiss my ass though.
@bradc4277"supposed to purchase" what an entitled way of thinking. Must have grown up with money.
Soma is an absolute masterpiece. It sticks with you for weeks after you play it. I'm so grateful I was able to have such an incredible experience.
not only weeks, but years. i played this game when it came out, and i'm still thinking about it regularly.
SOMA is nothing short of pure brilliance. It's a transformative experience and made me feel a far more profound horror than any other game in the horror genre could, at least up the point in my life when I played it.
And this story wouldn’t be as impactful as a book or movie. You could maybe get a similar feel from things. But the interactivity is fundamental to the experience of the story.
It really is brilliant.
I knew Katherine wasn't real very early on (or at least I had my suspicion based on the game setting) but god damn, that actually makes it even worse in some ways...you're really hoping she's not what you think she is and then the world crashes on you once again
how is he any less real than the flesh copy that has already been copied millions of times since birth, copied by the body itself?
I mean, she's still real, even if she got stuffed in a box.
EXACTLY, i knew she wasn't real but I wanted her to be. Then the realization that nothing really was, changed the way I though about life and my purpose in it.
What does it matter? She is a truly thinking being, she has free will, and is self aware. She has personhood, and therefore a soul. She is a moral agent. All the most important aspects of human life and sentience went on in catherine, she had a soul and free will, and they are not doomed in that world, though it may be filled with vast suffering, so was life before we humans made it livable.
@@feartheghus Souls are straight up the worst thing humans have ever conceptualized.
23:18 Catharine didn't scan Carl or Amy, Some of the logs you find while playing let us know that the WAU was taking scans of people in the pilot seat without anyone's knowledge. Carl say he was in the middle of fixing the heat shields when he blacked out,. This means that the WAU took a scan of him while he was doing his normal job in the pilot seat. Poor Carl was in the middle of a normal day at work and then suddenly hes stuck in that robot, hurt, on the floor.
Finished this game fairly recently and haven't been able to stop singing its praises! For you to make this seemingly out of nowhere brings me immense pleasure.
That ending is really horrifying. Being trapped down there in the darkness, all alone
Sort of, but it's a hopeful ending. You know the WAU has actually started succeeding because hey, it made you.
@@colbyboucher6391 How is it hopeful? Most people kill the WAU. and for those who didn't, the WAU didn't really "make" anything. It took a scan that was already there and then used a body that was already there. As soon as all boddies have rotten away the WAU needs to start from scratch and actually CREATE life. And that will be almost impossible, since its resources will only get more and more limited in time.
@@colbyboucher6391 that’s only if you didn’t kill the WAU, and either way, simon has no way of leaving and probably no way to die either
Nah, you can actually have a pretty happy ending if you were Simon3.
The way to have that happy ending would be.
First off, don't kill Simon2 and don't kill the WOW, after lunching the arc (as Simon3) grab Cathrin's data pad (we can make her a body later) climb back up to Simon2 (you don't get tired because you are a biomechanical robot so it will just take a while).
Then wait for Simon2 to wake up (also plug Cathrin into something), explain to Simon2 that a version of you both is on the arc, it's not what you both wanted but what's done is done.
You say you're going to make a body for Cath since she is actually a pretty good person and we can see that now that we aren't throwing a hissy fit about excepting hard truths.
You 3 are now (as far as we are aware) immortal and can simply wait for the WOW to fix Earth, sure it won't be Earth as it was and it will take a long time to fix the surface but there will be life.
You also have a backup of all the other humans that ever had a brain scan, so not only is there a set of humans in space that should last a very long time, there is also the "neo humans" that are a kind of biomechanical race down on earth.
Oh and worst comes to worst, you are still deadly to the WOW so if it remakes the world and tries anything dodgy just go on down and punch that sucker, problem solved!
but that was their entire plan, not my fault their plan is stupid
In Simon's defense, the developers made this with the idea of someone who hasn't experienced any of these brand new concepts before. I had a hard time comprehending the brain scan and body switch, partly because I was too focused on dealing with the situation at hand and getting to what's next. And then the part with Herber's body happened.
This game keeps one particular thing to the wayside that is far too important no to mention and that's the human subconscious. Our brain fills in gaps to better help it understand the situation. The coin toss and human continuity were respectively rationales formed by confused minds to help come to terms with a situation that their brain can't properly understand. In reality, Simon isn't stupid, he isn't delusional, he's just terrified and confused, as we all would be, letting his psychology put the pieces together with parts that somewhat fit together.
That all on top of the slither of hope to live in paradise with what's left of humanity. I'd experience grief too. I'm sure as would everyone else.
Yeah tbh maybe I was just not thinking but I completely forgot about the brain scan mechanism and I was there being like wow are we going on the ark 😀
yep exactly what i was feeling as well i did understand it was copying but my mind buffered with the coin toss as well so that the situation is manageable
Yeah man, you said it perfectly. It's perfectly understandable for Simon 2/3 to think he's gonna be on the Ark considering his situation. It's bleak, miserable, lonely and filled with dangerous creatures. If anyone were in his shoes they would be feeling the same things he has and wanting to get the fuck out of there. Brain injury or not, legacy scan or not, he's acting just as anyone would in that situation: being human. Which is what the game is telling us. That ending scene with him breaking down couldn't have been more perfect. All that effort, all that hope to avoid a horrific and dreary fate to get scanned and launch a paradise into space with you inside it only for your hope to be squandered and told that someone other than you did make it into that paradise while you live on in this depressing and wretched place... alone.
It also doesn't help when (Simon) you have someone next to you leading you on believing your coping mechanisms so they can get on and finish this project just so they can feel accomplished. Catherine wasn't evil but certainly could've been upfront and trusting of the people around her so then at the least everyone could've been on the same page and confronted the issues together head on. No manipulations or lies.
SOMA story is absolutely the most incredible and heart breaking stories I've ever had the pleasure of playing through.
one thing I always liked about the coin toss idea is that, while it is factually incorrect, there is some truth to it.
before the process, it's guaranteed that you'll be the one to stay, sure, but it's in the moment where the process happens that it comes into play. you don't know that you're actually the one who was already destined for that to happen. those could just be fabricated memories. it's the moment before you open your eyes, when you can't rely on that previous experience, where from your perspective there's an equal possibility of being either outcome
If the coin toss is proven to create two, there's no reason to believe, on the other side, that you just transferred. You were aware of the copy and paste system so, you'd be aware of the other you still existing, just pissed off.
@@Dravianpn02 true, I think his logic in the game is flawed regardless, but I think the theory itself has some interesting elements to it that might have some truth to them, yknow?
That’s actually a good explanation that I haven’t heard before. The coin toss is finding out whether you are the new copy or the old original. There’s no way for you to know until you start perceiving your environment.
@@Dravianpn02 there's still a reason to believe. The memories of the copy are indistinguishable from the original, so up until the moment the copy is actually finished, you have a 50/50 chance of being either one of them. It doesn't matter if you know you didn't get transferred, and that there's still a copy of you that got fucked. You "won". You didn't know if you were the lucky copy or the unlucky one that was left behind.
@@justopena8842 no there's not. You'd be aware of the other version of you who's still there. So yeah the new you is fine, with the knowledge of another you suffering until they die.
One thing I don’t see enough people talking about is the appreciation of setting in this game. The use of location to further convey a sense of isolation is brilliant. The ocean is something everyone is familiar, most having been in it at some point, yet not at the depths depicted. It is both familiar and alien to us- which is exactly how Simon is feeling. It creates a sense of entrapment, again reflecting Simon’s uncomfortableness with no longer residing in a human body. It also serves to tell the audience that there is no hope for humanity this deep below the ocean. There is no chance of exploration- we aren’t in space and we cannot go to the surface. Playing underwater- far from the humanity that once was further alienates Simon’s familiarity, sense of humanity, and hope for any sentient connection.
I always thought that Safe Mode was more lore accurate, since the 'monsters' see Simon as a robot like themselves, rather than a person. I don't know if there's any evidence that the monsters attack other robots, but it's clear that they 'allow' other AIs to live, meaning that they can discern alive from dead. So normal mode is Alive, while safe mode is Dead.
One of the best games of last generation in my eyes. Truly underappreciated. The writing, acting, atmosphere, and story are simply unmatched. It's probably one of my favorite sci-fi stories, in any medium. But it truly shines in a first person game. Learning what is going on along with Simon is handled flawlessly, and the game often plays with expectations to great effect. The whole intro sequence up to the mirror reveal is amazing. The acting is consistently fantastic and really hits hard on multiple occasions. And it honestly just had some of the most memorable moments I've ever experienced in a game..
I can still vividly recall the first time I took that elevator down into the abyss. Standing at the top overlooking complete blackness was terrifying. Catherine telling the story of her childhood memories. Watching the depth tick deeper and deeper... Absolutely amazing sequence.
the choice to end the last humans life is more than 'just waiting for 2 minutes' that was the most real a human death could be i left that interaction shaken even though we just meet the there its so personal of an interaction that it hits hard i cant believe you just blew it off like that
that was, honestly such a beautifully written script. well done, really. it almost made me want to cry with how well you go into everything, and how it makes one feel. I think i'll be sitting with this one in my head for a while
I think Sarang and the others were not "wrong" about the continuity. I think they perfectly understood that killing themselves would not "move" them onto the ark and they were aware that it was a copy thing. They are supposed to be scientist so I think assuming basic intelligence from them is not to much to ask (although with how much of an idiot Simon is being its maybe understandable the other NPCS are assumed to be idiots as well). What Sarang meant with the continuity was not literal but philosophical. If you continue to stay alive after being copied you copies will diversify and the copy on the ark is no longer "you" but what actually is the difference between copy and paste and cut and paste? The answer is deletion of the original. Sarang understood that even in a best case scenario he was looking a a few more desolate years at the bottom of the ocean and so he decided to give his self that would be copied onto the ark the peace of mind that it truly was the real him because no other him exists anymore.
There are only two reasons why you would not go for the suicide thing that I can reasonably think of a) you dont care that your copies will represent different people after a while and have no issue with the fact that the you on the arc will be aware of the fact that it left another you behind that could now be different from "you" and since it was the "original you" you as the arkcopy might be "outdated" or b) You think the project is too risky and you might need to either be scanned later or need your body to make sure it suceeds.
Yeah, that's the view I took as well. They understood the process but concluded only one "you" should exist and decided to eliminate the old version that had no prospect of survival anyway.
You might be right about Sarang, but probably not Robin (and likely others as well). From what she says it sounds like she really thinks it's magic (possibly misunderstanding the original intent). And it doesn't make her an idiot. Like it was pointed out in the video, the people at Pathos-II (mostly engineers, not scientists, by the way) are desperate and they don't see any other options. And it's not like Robin (the original) necessarily believed she would survive her death -- according to her suicide note she was rather taking a leap of faith because "we're all dying anyway".
But coming back to Sarang, a counterpoint: he does talk about "actual survival", not "kind of, if you look at it from a particular perspective survival". If I wanted to argue he wasn't wrong, I'd rather go a different route, pointing out that consciousness is not continuous anyway, as we loose it every time we go to sleep or faint. For all we know we might be copied and deleted every day, because there's no way to tell from the perspective of the copy. And with that in mind, scanning and killing yourself is as continuous as it gets.
Also, I have another reason for not committing suicide -- you enjoy living at the bottom of the ocean. Catherine found enjoyment in her project. Sarah liked the people she was stuck with. Akers liked his chess and then moved on to other hobbies, like plucking his eyes out and such. Point being: bottom of the ocean is not so bad if you're having fun.
So... I'm a bit less of an idiot than Simon, but - Basically YOU are the battery for your brain scan?
If your body dies, so does it, no matter where it is, because you're plugged in providing the scan power?
You just... won't know it's offline because you have no updating experience of anything anymore?
@@Roadent1241 for the simons they had a power source, just like the other robots did, they drained simon 2's battery (if you picked that option) so he never woke up again, if there was anyone else, or if the wau got to him, then they/it might re-power the battery, letting him wake up again whenever that happened...
The reason that the scientists seemed like idiots is easily explained: Take anyone, dumb or smart, and put them in a stressful situation. Non of them will act like they usually would. And when we are talking about the absolute last chance for something of humanity to live on, I would say that counts as a stressful situation ^^ And just to add to it, there is a chance that "you" can live on.
In a way, I think Simon 3/4 came up with the Coin toss hypothesis as a way to cope and negate the reality, just like Simon's brain negate that he was a robot, until there wasnt another option.
I can only imagine Simon 3 (if Simon 2 is alive) would off each other, would either keep exploring the Abyss, until he dies by getting eaten, somehow manage to find the coast of any landmass and hope it isn't fireland, or who knows. The end of the day, he will loose his mind
"just like Simon's brain negate that he was a robot, until there wasnt another option." I disagree. This might just be me, but after watching the short videos of Soma(plus playing the game multiple times) I don't believe that it's a "natural" cause that makes them think that they are human, but something the WAU has done to them before activating them. To me it's too unrealistic that every single robot acts the same way. It doesn't matter if they have arms and legs, are swimming, broken down and can't movie. So to me, it is something the WAU has done to them to make them more "human", which is its goal after all.
Like for instance with the movie "Replicas" (spoiler warning for the movie) Every time they transfer a canciones the robot starts freaking out after a few seconds to the point of killing themselves. I can't remember the 100% exact explanation, but it's basically because their human instincts and functions are fucking up the robot. Like as a human you automaticly breath, but as a robot, you can't. So the people who got transferred in the movie were experiencing not being able to breath and therefore paniced to the point of killing themselves. In my mind, it's pretty much the same way Soma works, the WAU has just kinda made a filter of some sort so that everything you see is what would WOULD'VE seen.
@@LoveToSpootch but what about catherine? she seems to be completely aware
@@BeefMeisterSupreme If my "theory" is currect, then it wouldn't be unreasonable that she had already went through the "I'm a real human" part. Maybe one day she simply could've realised just how weird it is that she can only bearly raise her head above a table, despite being a normal sized person.
Besides, she has always seemed very chill and understanding about how the copying works, so maybe there was just no reason to try and fool her. No matter how many Cathrin's has excisted, the one we know is and will always be Cathrin 2, which she is expressed multiple times throughout the game that she is happy about. To quote the christian god "I am who I am".
" just like Simon's brain negate that he was a robot"
he doesn't have a brain though he is a robot
"The end of the day, he will loose his mind"
rarely in all of history has there been smaller losses
@@LoveToSpootch
"but something the WAU has done to them before activating them."
so what, all the insane and contrived decisions all the characters make is just due to the other AI of the game being terribly designed and filled with glitches?
"To me it's too unrealistic that every single robot acts the same way."
Sounds like YOUR coping mechanism to avoid the fact the writing is just terrible in this game
yes you're right in realizing there is no internal consistency and things wouldn't play at all like that in reality
no you're jumping the shark thinking there has to be some clever explanation by the writers to make all of that make sense, if they had realized how nonsensical everything was, they would put the reason that make all the nonsense seem sensible and realistic front and center, they wouldn't hide it so deep it's never stated inside or outside the game in interviews, if you're having to make up weird theories to bridge the holes left by the plot, theories that are neither in the game nor ever mentioned by the people behind the game, then more than likely they weren't even aware of the nonsense they were spewing and you're just completely delusional for thinking there has to be a way to make it make sense
I love this game.
It's philosophy really made me think about the choices you made, and how you never know the outcome of some.
The games atmosphere was amazing, and while the game alone didn't spook me but rather interest me, the story as mentioned did so much more about ethnical choices, what's considered human or not, is your life worth risking to give others a fighting chance.
And the few chances you get to see Simon in his robo form! And transferring to the deep diving suit! Simon's a mental champ knowing he's a walking corpse.
This was an absolute amazing and terrifying experience…I don’t call this a game I call it an experience because of the emotions, story, voice narration all was perfectly put together and provided hours of amazement and awesomeness !
It's insane to me that you do a SOMA video out of the blue. I've been coming back to this game after reading Aion by Carl Jung. Which is also interesting because it can also be found in the game as well. I'm glad that this game is not forgotten because it is one of the best ever in terms of storytelling and philosophical questioning.
I disagree with how you blame Simon's way of reacting as lacking intelligence. This is criticism and should not be taken personally.
As you stated earlier, the brain has various ways of coping with very, very abstract and downright surreal scenarios, such as the one Simon was in. His way of reacting made him happy to be in his position, in a world where positivity is scarce, having "won the coin toss". He also didn't want to accept the fact that he gets copiwd because of how incredibly bewildering it would be to a 21st century man living an ordinary life to suddenly see yourself cloned in an instant, "thinking they are you" (as he would put it), and having to come to terms with that.
He wanted to have hope, something for himself to cling on, something ultimately very human. His reaction on realization is just as natural, subconciously knowing his analogy was wrong and not realizing sooner and having it settle in would have been a lot better for himself, so he lashes out at Catherine, trying to vent his frustration in some way, trying to cope, but not thinking ahead. As I said, a very human response, made so incredibly more chilling once Catherine leaves forever when the Omnitool dies. His only companion, gone.
He is now alone.
Without hope, in a despicably hostile decaying world.
He would not go gentle into that good night.
he just dont want to see it or want to "get it"
Yesss, that last sentence. This is a man who survived a car crash and was surviving in a world without his SO. A will to survive comes with downsides, though, as it means his brain needs the light at the end of the tunnel in order to keep sane. His 'original' self still had a world and time that made sense to him, while he and his copies didn't.
To grasp the truth means coming to grips with the fact that he has no chance of escaping.
One of the most terrifying endings in not only video game history, but all media. This game blew me away.
I wanted to play this game for years, and finally, a month ago, I could purchase a good enough PC to play the game, and all the wait was worth it. Soma is one of those games that leave you thinking even long after playing, a masterpiece in it's class.
I considered it cruel to let anyone I came across live. It was a horrible existence for all of them and I was the only one capable of granting them any kind of mercy. It's interesting watching other people play the game and choose differently. SOMA is such an amazing game for providing that experience.
I’d like to believe there are other underground shelters around the world that people are still living. Out of the billions of people I’m sure there are bunkers like Soma deep underground. Also these people had a few years to prep for the comet. Maybe some scientist pulled a Hail Mary by making a terraforming system that could revamp the world. It’s highly possible especially since it takes place in the 22nd century. Maybe someone created an ELYSIUM bunker like in HZD and have enough food to last for 100 years so people can live out their remaining years. Remember it’s only been 2 years since the extinction event. Other underground shelters could last for years if they stocked it right. So technically Sarah wouldn’t be the ONLY living person left. They make us think Sarah is the only person because no one is getting response from the outside world… but that’s just it. They are hoping to receive contact ABOVE ground where there is nothing left. But all the bunkers worldwide are BELOW ground where all the survivors would be.. They are just looking in the wrong place.. also the world is HUGE… There would be millions of spots worldwide the satellite wouldn’t be able to pick up. So to think Sarah is the only one left is unlikely.
dude they can put their minds into machines
we can make machines already today, probably 30 years ago that can work mining operations just fine in a post apocalyptic world, we can build automated factories, and the game takes place 90 years into the future, there is absolutely no way they wouldn't have the tech to do it, and we even see them have it
So not even the other possible bunkers, but literally the underwater station where the game takes place could have just scanned their brains, put themselves in robots, worked together with their originals, sent drones remotely controlled by AIs (or make a ton of AIs depending on how wasteful they wanna be), and then just slowly set up mining operations, set up more manufacturing, build more robots, and just continue making robots that build robots until all of earth has been reclaimed
instead they decide to live a fake life on a station for no reason (because it takes less effort? because it would be more pleasurable? Dude wtf just modify your mind to remove those subroutines), and then decide to kill themselves after making a copy even though there was absolutely no reason to do that
the entire game is just a contrived mess where all the characters behave like imbecile lunatics to drive forward the plot, that's really what annoys me, maybe some people will say their behavior is realistic/believable but I still like to think that hopefully humans would be less stupid than the characters in that game, hopefully that stance is not too delusional, but reading the other comment where no one seem to be shocked by the insanely stupid behavior of the characters, and no one seem to find the flaws in their decisionmaking, well that make me doubt on wether I judge humanity too kindly
@@anonymous-rb2sr Kinda agree with you, I'm not an expert in comet collision damage assessment but at worst I see no reason why people killed themselves instead of just waiting down there for a few years before coming back to the surface to search for some semi-habitable land. What do they have to lose right?
Knowing nothing about SOMA before this video I can experience the feeling intended thru your narration and discussion.
This is a piece of existential art.
Although he was very good at explaining the game, you should very much play it yourself, since the feeling you get from the video is at best 20% of what you would've gotten from playing the game. And if you don't have a lot of money, just add it to your steam list (assuming you're using steam), because every now and then it costs as little as a few euros. I'm pretty sure I bought it for 5 or 6 euros my self.
my favorite thing to think about thats similar to this that ive always thought about is the idea of teleporters, and how there is no real way to know that what comes out of the other end is you, or your copy just picking up where you left off and you just die the second you go through.
It's both, isn't it. It's like when you fall asleep and lose the consciousness. How do you know that when you wake up it's still you? We form identity from continuity, you still have all the memories and experiences of you even though there can be multiple you. You are all you, just on diverging timelines.
If the teleporter in question is more of a portal thing, where you physically stay intact while you walk through a portal, then you don't die. If it's anything else, your consciousness has died in the process and a new one has taken its place.
Catherine seemed so familiar with Simon and knew how to manipulate him... wonder how many copies of Simon had been used for testing by her. Like she knew his limits. Makes me wonder...
she wasn't manipulating him, there were other people transfered on the ARK. If you see the post-credits scene you will see that she was happy to see him.
@@Immolator772 Well, no, she was definitely manipulating the guy, it's just that her intentions in that manipulation weren't cruel. She initially TRIED to tell him the truth ("You're a walking talking diving suit with some electronics slapped on"), but backed off once she realized he wasn't able to accept that reality. Her priority was saving the ARK, but she put a reasonable amount of effort into keeping Simon sane; both to ensure the ARK got launched and also, IMO, because she pitied him and didn't want to upset him. However, either way, doing so required obfuscating the truth in his favor.
I agree that she was happy to see him, and I think the fact that she lied to him - including at the end, when she doesn't insist on telling him about Simon 3 but just greets him and allows him to think he won the coin toss - is the same type of cruel kindness we're given the choice to display to all of the WAU's forcibly-preserved creations; it's just that this time, we're on the other side, and the decision is in her hands. She chooses not to pull the plug, and lets us live a happy lie.
What a story
I was one of the people that played it when it came out,day one!I was a big fan of Amnesia dark descent and this had some of the developers or something.
At first i was dissapointed,but then i realised i was playing something truly amazing and BETTER!
One of the most atmospheric gaming experiences i ever had.And the ending was just perfect,i was only 15 back then but i just loved it,kinda got me into science fiction as well.
I'm 22 now,every now and then i think about SOMA.About what it meant,about the philosophical questions it proposes.I know it wasn't very popular,i just hope the developers know how much it meant to some of us.
Thank you for the video.
I am glad you talked about safe mode, I always wanted to be able to actually look at those wonderfully designed creatures the WAU cobbled together to see its attempts at life. It really helps to be able to experience them without endless aggression
I loved Soma when I played it first and subsequent playthroughs and been watching analysis of the plot every now and then. This video is one of the best analysis I've watched so far. Really well explained in a clear way and without confusing the spectator. Achieving that with such a complex plot like Soma's is no joke. Congrats, man, keep it up, love your analyses!
It makes me happy to see videos giving this gem of a game the praise it deserves.
I still think about this game often before I sleep. Sometimes I wonder if the version of me who wakes is the same as the one who drifts away each night.
In a way, our existence is iterarive. Our present mental state dies each night, and a new version of ourself is born each morning.
Until we stop waking up at all, and we enter the night without end.
Addicted to your videos man simply because of how you deliver the endings of game break down before the actual outro… amongst many many other reasons
Fantastic video! SOMA is my favorite horror game of all time, and boy did you do the story justice with this video. There were even a couple of new tidbits I picked up on this time "experiencing" the story. For example, at the end of the game with Simon 3 and Catherine, I now think the reason Catherine "explodes" or shut down and break the monitor is because her scan got too stressed when dealing with Simon 3 not understanding the copying/scanning mechanism.
Not many games leave you feeling empty like that, you are so invested in the story and want to see where it goes and then it just
ends
and so you are left with that empty feeling that something was lost, just like simon 2 and 3
I remember playing this a year ago and as a lit major I looked at this and thought “yeah gaming is where storytelling will thrive from now on” and it gave me an existential crisis 😅
Soma, a masterpiece of that rips you apart breaks you puts you back together and reminds you you're only human
I feel Simon's "coin toss" justification is the same horror of realization I felt with the cookies in Black Mirror's Christmas episode. The cookies are scans of humans transferred into essentially a smart home device, but like the Simon copies that remember everything that happened up until the split from the copy, the cookies remember everything about their past life before being -trapped- put into the smart home device. They still believe they are person that made the choice to have the cookie made, not the actual cookie itself. The horror I felt from that episode and Soma, in the best way I can describe, is that if that happened to me, I don't know if my current self will continue in my prime body, or if it will be the one that gets placed in the cookie or robot body or whatever. Yeah, logically, I know that's not how it works. But emotionally, I'm scared that I'll lose the coin toss and be the one stuck making toast for eternity (seriously, watch the Black Mirror Christmas special if you haven't, specifically the segment with Jon Hamm and Oona Chaplin, it's my favorite thing from the series and the one that gets the most under my skin, as you can see).
This is legit the best version of this video on UA-cam. Good shit man. And thank you
PS
It's kinda implied that that cute robot with a flashlight that follows you and even cuts you out of the Curie escape shuttle is also self aware.
It runs away when you decide to cattle prod that other robot for his battery pack... I think it also was an option to cattle prod the cute robot btw
This is one of those stories that I don't think you could tell without a video vgame setting. I loved it, existential horror and all.
Yooooooooooooo. I was wondering what the Halloween surprise would be after you mentioned it in your ME2 video, but I didn't expect this. Soma is one of the craziest games I've ever played. Just a terrible feeling of dread and emptiness when I was done with it. I'm really glad you did a vid on it. Keep it up Gingy!
This is one of the few games that have stuck in my mind ever since playing it. You might have heard of it, but the NieR series also delves into these topics. If you haven't played already, I highly recommend them!
I love Catherine!! I love the comfort her voice brought along after getting through some of the darkest parts of the game. That climber ride is the best part of the game and for me, made it the best game I've ever experienced.
SOMA is the game you play once, cry for hours, feel empty inside, puzzle the story together and never touch it again.
One of my favourite games, so glad people talk about it. There's too little content on it!
I recently attempted to play Soma and I have to really recommend safe mode. The enemy isn't really a huge threat on normal and is really more of a hassle that interferes with my exploration of the world which is really the content you don't want to miss. Being chased down a hallway and missing three rooms is a lot worse than not being killed by a "monster"
I’m so glad you mentioned the survey at the end. The way it was recontextualized was absolutely brilliant.
I absolutely adore this game. It's mature, smart and conveys horror in a meaningful way. I wish more games were like this.
I haven't even touched the game but that finale of Simon screaming for Catherine to not leave him is just so raw and brutal, man I can't wait to play the game, specially knowing the accesibility settings thing at the start, for someone as anxious as me it sounds just fantastic
There seem to be many parallels between SOMA's brain scanning and Soulkiller from Cyberpunk 2077. Except, Soulkiller also made sure to solve a part of the existential problem - scanning a person's brain kills the instance of them hooked up to the device (u̶n̶l̶e̶s̶s̶ y̶o̶u̶'r̶e̶ t̶h̶e̶ e̶m̶p̶e̶r̶o̶r̶ o̶f̶ J̶a̶p̶a̶n̶). The name of the device also brings up another problem that I think wasn't mentioned here - what happens to the soul of a copied person? Does it somehow carry on? Or does it just die along the original person?
that also circles to altered carbon as well, the stacks they use also contains their mind but you always wonder if it actually holds their souls, then it actually makes a case about it when they create backups of their stacks
@@MrAlious in one of the ending the player, V, asks his doctor "why do I feel empty?"
Yet that begs the question, what is a soul? And what makes you sure to have one? In other words: where's the line between life and death?
It's simple. There's no such thing as a soul.
@@Stallionmilk Then how do we have ghosts? Lingering spirits that can be seen by the eye and camera and captured forever on such devices.
(And no dumb answers like "Duh phutuhshup". I know there's no animal or dinosaur ghosts but still it's a bit of a concept to make up.)
This is absolutely incredible. Brings back those amazing feelings of watching Soma for the first time. Thank you
An hour long video essay on one of my favorite horror games?? I am so excited
I want to know is there is a story behind you using 444. I know that sounds strange but it might help me.
Oh my god I was obsessed with soma lore recently, and went through almost every analysis video from ages ago. Thank you for covering this game!
37:30 i honestly always interpreted the coin flip as a coping method. It’s like deep in Simon’s mind it’s hit him that he won’t get on the Ark, but another Simon, another being will. So he comes up with the coin flip as a cope, hoping that he (as in Simon 3) will still be able to escape this nightmare.
SOMA and Eraserhead gave me the same existential dread, despite the two being NOTHING alike.
Both times I went through like 2 days afterwards where I caught myself staring into space, questioning what it meant to be "alive"
Damn dude, this was so well done. That ending really got me.
Fantastic video.
Two games really haunted in my 40+ years of pc gaming.
Hellblade and SOMA. Great games.
Hey, thanks a lot for this video. I wouldn't lie saying that SOMA is the only game I keep thinking about years after playing. The only other story is the one told by Peter Watts in his Firefall book series asking closely related quastions the SOMA does about various aspects of the nature of mind and consciousness. Anyways, wonderful review - I really appreciate the work you did.
The other importnant effect of this game is that it actually makes you question your own existance - are you real or just a simulation? Waht if there is anothe you "playing" you playing SOMA? And so on...
Greatest game I ever played, and I liked your story analysis. Subbed.
Such an underrated masterpiece of the horror games.
this is my fav video i’ve seen on soma yet. nice work man this is your best one yet imo
I love how effective the ending is, even tho you can see it coming from a mile away.
I always come back to these kind of lore videos on this game, I can still remember how empty I felt after beating this game and how long it took me to recover from it.
It really is one of the best games to ever lay hands on my playstation.
This is so good.
Soma is the drug in Brave New World that people would take to “take a vacation” from their lives. The thematic integration of that from each step right up to the end when Simon 4 doesn’t realize he hasn’t won and he’s left a Simon behind keeps in that vein of the vacation. Truths are hard to confront no matter how many times we try, and that hope of trying again makes us, at times, human. That’s why it would be inhumane to kill new Simon. He’s still Simon. He still has a chance.
subscribed. I love SOMA so much and just recently came around playing it, finally. Your analysis is spot on, and even showed or explained some stuff i was missing in my playthrough!
I think Simon knows it, understands how it works but still like people in a crisis hes in shock and refuses to any logic, reminds me to a person who just lost someone close to them and denaying there gone.
Whoa. I'd heard of this game, but hadn't any clue as to its mega mind-fuck psychological elements. Absolutely outstanding video breakdown -- instant sub.
Just wow, the ending made me cry again… the voice acting is so good. This is by far the most depressing ending of all time.
Great video! Thanks! Soma is such an amazing game. I've never played it, but I've watched a number of different people stream it and I love seeing how they react to various plot elements and hear what they think about the story. It's very different for everyone who plays.
28:00 What I wondered is how the WAU must have felt when all those people starting killing themselves off. I wonder if that had effected its routines in some way and ended up starting the events to happen the way they did. Maybe that is what started the WAU's trial and error attempts at keeping humans alive, not matter in what form. Not sure about the timeline on that one tho.
The choice about killing the WAU is also interesting. You essentially choose between life created , which might seem alien to us, but in a sense is also just life and evolution from which something new can arise (although from out point of view it might seem artifical). Or if you kill the WAU, you essentially open the possibility for Earth to recover on its own and after millions of years it might be able to habitate new life (so the humans being similar to the dinosaurs).
I bought Soma a while ago when a bunch of Frictional games were on sale, and I didn't play it until I watched this video. Thank you for directing me to play it, because it 's really sticking with me, and I'm so glad I gave it a chance. The video was great as always!
The coin toss makes sense to me. From the pov of the copy, they were on that chair, then on the ark. They had “won” the coin toss. The Simon on the chair “lost” the coin toss.
Yes exactly! The new Simon still feels like he was the old one. Which in a certain sense is true. But every time a scan happens the Simon we were was left behind.
I just played SOMA in October and the more I think about the game the more I realize how incredible it is. One part standard horror game, one part hard sci-fi, one part existential dread. Great video essay.
Usually not a fan of first person "walk and hide" horror games (way too much nowadays), but I got me this game so a friend of mine (who watched a lets play) can play it... at the end only I played it and honestly kinda glad I did. Kinda understood pretty quickly that simon was a copy in robot and was kinda worried they gonna use it as the big end twist. Luckely the revealed it pretty soon and instead made a story to fully explore this concept and it was fantastic. Also this and alien isolation made me release that I can enjoy first personwalk and hide" horror games when the setting (In this case scifi) is right, so i also learned it can actually good to try out game genres you are usual not much interested in.
Great video. I already knew and loved this game, and I think you capture very well what's good about it. It's one of those games that will kind of always be here with you.
Something that really caught up to me was how you were referring to the Simons as numbers, even though they are actually the same person. I know this was intentional and had a organizational value, but it made me think what makes someone different than the other person, beyond the physical body, and the thing is that the answer is actually pretty simple, and we all know it. Different experiences. It's the same reason twins are not the same person, even if their DNA is identical. If the hypothesis of the game is truly correct, and it is possible to copy one's mind/memories until the moment the process happens ( and even though the game does not explain how learning would happen in the new body ), it could indicate that what we think as a soul - a unique innate unalienable element of the being - might not be connected neither to it's brain or physical body, and it could even serve as proof that the soul does not exist and probably nothing beyond that also . Very terrifying . Gladly we are not in that reality ( yet ).
Iirc the brain scans work by being essentially Artificial Intelligences simulating the personality of the scanned person. I suppose Machine Learning is how they learn without actual neurons.
I loved this game so much. It consumed my thoughts as I played it, and I consistently wanted to know more, to see more, to see what would happen. Thank you for this clear summary and analysis of one of the best games I think I've ever played.
I loved this game, but Simon's reaction at the end pointed to a lack of a character arc, and it spoiled the final moments. If I had written the ending, I would have switched to the Ark Simon immediately and only then cut back to Pathos Simon and be more contemplative and resolved rather than angry. He knew in his heart that he would just be copied, and the final moments between him and Catherin involve a brief philosophical conversation intermixed with Simon and Catherine contemplating the future as they fade away in the darkness.
All I can say is thank you for making these videos. They are the highlight of my month every time and I never would've known of these stories without you. Cheers ❤️