I’m so sad hearing Strasky that stressed and angry. He was always sounded so cheerful and bright... everytime I hear his voice in the audio files is like a beam of sunlight shining through this dark ocean. Hearing him killing himself... is just... too much. Thank you for this video.
_“everytime I hear his voice in the audio files is like a beam of sunlight shining through this dark ocean”_ Wow man you are such a romantic. You should make this the lyrics of your song or poem.
FinalFinale Perhaps it was the ultimate form of denial. Being that he lived such a normal life in modern day Canada, and to then have that life juxtaposed by an incomprehensibly great horror of your own species' extinction and WAU in a time beyond your own intended lifespan is shocking to say the very least. This level of change was undoubtedly accompanied by a permanent feeling of being devoid of value and self meaning, so aside from being possibly incredibly ignorant I think there's a good chance he was just lost - perhaps the most a human mind could be.
@@aestus187 Honestly, seeing the protagonist make "rational and logical" conclusions when they are so damaged and we are not is great. Seeing the protagonist slowly decend further into madness is great.
@@aestus187 no? She proves that the killing yourself during the scam theory is false. Robin, simon, and catherine here are the same files uploaded onto the ark essentially, they were sourced from the scanning equipment, the ones on the ark were just from catherines modified scanner made to upload the files to the ark rather than to store them so the equipment can interpret user input. She does in the sense that she exists and therefor can't be put on the ark, however everyone here is digital and therefor they were created from the same source, robins ai here could have been sourced into the ark, the wau just took the files and used it on a mocking bird instead. And as some have already said in defense of the game, the coinflip example is valid in context. It's not an explanation, but an allusion, and a valid one. Going through simons memories live, it's possible that he would be the conscious that was actually on the ark reliving events, which we get to play as too. The body switches entire purpose was to show it was possible in their perception that they'd be the uploaded version. Everyone thinks they played up to the body switch. They didn't. That was a memory in the second body that we relive actively, that was never experienced by our characters real body, the other body we can kill was the one that actually experienced it. When that happened we were the one that won coinflip. The perception of memories is experienced live so we don't know if we're experiencing the memories of a previous body or not, so when we get to the end, it literally was a 50 50 if we were the first body or the second one, if the post midgame bodyswitch gameplay is actually happening then we're left behind, or if it is a simulated memory we think is real like the first third of the game we are the simon on the ark. It's not literally a coin flip because it is predetermined, but from our perspective it is absolutely valid because the one on the ark had the same exact memories and experiences up to that point, they have identical consciouses, which was explained overtly and sneakily when the game points out via sarang that the simulation and real person have the same perception of their lives at the exact instant the transfer is born, where it splits off. The scan thinks it's the real one, which is what we see with the mark simulations for the password. If we were to run through one of the characters life that knew how this worked before they got scanned, it would be a 50/50 if we were the real human or the ai that relived the memories in real time thinking it is the real human. This is why you get to play as both versions of simon at the end, both had the same exact perception of events, aka the game we played, up to the transfer ark Simon thought it was suit simon and suit simon thought it was inital Simon, but each time the new body thinks its the same as the last one since it has the same perception. Again, which is why the coinflip works, because we could have been playing as either simon at the end and we didn't actually know which. I swear to god I'm the only one that understood what the developers were doing, much to my misery.
@@masterzoroark6664 I am late to the show, but the coin flip was not Catherine's idea. Simon comes up with it himself when sitting in the crawler down the abyss.
it's creepy how at 11:44 you can hear the "unconscious" terry akers giggling while emma and brandon are busy contacting strasky. he pretended to be unconscious to be brought into theta labs without resistance.
Spoilers: if you listen close (or extract the audio and boost the levels) you can hear the bodies trapped in the biocoral or whatever in the basement of theta having pleasant dreams. For all the evils Akers did, he did deliver on his promise to the wau.
That conversation between Emma and Rirchard really hit me man, it was really sad to hear Richard trying to cheer her up during the last minutes of their lives :(
The saddest part is them lamenting the fact they never really got to know each other despite working together for years, and now they never will. Not even on the ARK, as Richard was never scanned.
They went through hell and back, just to die alone, clinging onto a dream of humanity surviving. They had to stave off proxies, watch their friends die to give them time that ended up meaning nothing, their sacrifices were in vain, but at least they didn’t have to live through the horror of apathy.
41:12 Strohmeier indeed never made it out of Theta. You can open up the maps in the level editor and click on all those bodies next to the proxies. One of them called Strohmeier.
I have a little headcanon for why Akers looks the way he does. You see, when Nadine was performing an autopsy on him, I think she bisected him from his head down to his abdomen in order to probe him, and in the process removed his nose and lips leaving a massive hole exposing his chest cavity. But before she could finish, Akers woke up in sheer amounts of agony and lashed out at her purely out of spite and kept her alive in a vegetative state. He would then try to find more structure gel in order to heal his wounds, only to bump into the rest of the Theta staff who would then attack him. They would have covered parts of his body in various flammable chemicals that would cause certain parts of his skin to bloat and darken, and he would manage to kill some of them and would take some of their body parts in order to heal his wounds. However, he would have done a sloppy job of it, since he put the parts in places that made no sense. This would explain why he has a forearm and a foot infused into his lower abdomen.
_"But before she could finish"_ Dude, Akers smashed the doctor's head against the table while the doctor was recording the voice diary, then connected the doctor to the WAU. The doctor was still in her office, still breathing but asleep and her body had become like a skinny Thing from Fantastic Four.
I'm watching this as I have finished SOMA last night. This is one of the saddest games I've ever played and I love hearing you talk about how sad it was. Such a good game. So horribly sad and beautiful.
Simon's descend through PATHOS II reminds me of Dante's descend through hell, with Catherine playing the part of Virgil. There's death and hopelessness everywhere, with "ghosts" of the fallen PATHOS employees here and there in the form of voice recordings, journal entries, mockingbirds and mutations.
Completely different stories Completely different themes Dante explores sins and their consequences. His own sins, his brothers in arms, his father, mother, etc. Simon explores other people's takes on what consciousness is. Mostly. Virgil actually helps and guides Dante. Catherine is a manipulative selfish bitch who uses Simon as a helpful tool to finish her work. Frictional's first major success game - The Dark Descent - is way closer to Dante's Inferno theme than Soma.
"My reflection in the black blood of our Warden whispers. I need to save them from this hell. I need to let them sleep. Lock them in their lucid dreams I've seen." -Terry Akers
Richard was originally supposed to make it into Omicron, there were audio files of him for Omicron, but I guess they discontinued that part of the story, the most probable idea as to what happened is he purposely or accidentally fell into the Abyss.
I wonder why they didnt implement a rule of "If you commit suicide(or die under suspect circumstances) you will be wiped form the database" or something. Then, atleast, they have to get creative.
You talk about all of Akers/proxies 'victims' as if they are dead but aren't they technically still alive, sustained by the WAU and living in the same lucid dream state that Simon enters when he himself is caught by Akers in the train station. All the bodies stuck in the mind-coral stuff are breathing and if you stand around them long enough you can hear parts of their 'dreams,' most of which sound rather pleasant (In fact, by looking at the names of the sound files you can match the dreams to members of the crew including Strohmeir and Alice Koster. Additionally, in the game files you can find some unused voice lines for akers where he talks about letting humanity sleep and preserving life, which is the WAUs ultimate goal.
Maverick yea but you are forgetting the fact that Akers himself is being mind controlled by that Coral stuff too he rip out his own eyes as proof he was loyal to the WAU when it was not the WAU it was the Coral stuff hypnotizing him to do so Pleasant isn't something I'd want if I were in this nightmare
@@leonardorossi998 yes but one is a world where u can atleast have some kind of freedom and friends who are really there. While the other is probably an on loop dream state illusion that never ends. I think ill choose the first choice if i could aswell.
@@greengarnish1711 Well ok, but dream consciousness is not the same as actual consciousness, so it might be more bearable for longer periods of time. For instance, while dreaming you won't remember how long you have been dreaming. Granted, this only applies if this is a temporary solution. Also the Ark will eventually degrade due to radiation damaging its circuits, which might mean being trapped in a nightmarish world for thousands of years.
Sometimes I wonder if Terry misunderstood the WAU because he was a complete dumbass. WAU: "I have come to save you." Terry "Who's there? My eyes hurt." WAU: "You don't need that vitreous flesh inside your skull to see salvation." Terry: "Okay, I will gladly remove them." *tears eyes out* WAU: *promptly puts Terry in dreamland to save him from himself* "Sleep, Terry. Everything's alright now." Terry wakes up. "Holy shit! This is amazing! I must share this experience with everyone!" WAU: "Terry, no!"
First of all: This is an amazing story analysis of SOMA. Thank you. What I realised while watching these: I wasn't very closely paying attention to all the records in the game. I mean, I read them all and listened to the recordings, but I did not try to connect them like you did. And the reason for this I think, is that I really immersed myself being in a world like this. When you would REALLY be in that situation like you are in SOMA, you would find a lot of information pieces that are very random and are somewhat useless for the big whole picture. I did not make myself clear, that this is not the case. I am walking through a level, designed by people, who put information pieces all over the place. Every bit makes sense in their eyes, so every document etc. IS contributing to the whole picture. The player has not to filter the unnecessary from the useful, the designers and writers already did that. Quite philosophical. :)
Amazing episode!! The whole production really brings me right back into that world. It really fleshes out all the details and characters in a way that makes the whole game so much more poignant and impactful. Awesome job! Please don't make us wait as long for the next episode either. But if that's how long it takes to get something with this level of quality, I will wait as long as it takes. Thanks for this series and I look forward to the conclusion of Soma and whatever your next series will be on.
I remember when SOMA came out, I was angry that I couldn't get it to run, wrote a pretty scathing review about it, returned it, and forgot about it. A little over a year later I got a code for SOMA from Humble Monthy and decided to give it another shot, and fell in love instantly. Your videos have extended my experience past the game itself, and the time and effort you've put into them shows! Cheers!
This is a really good analysis and I'm enjoying it so far. There are little details you've shown that I never gave any thought to in my playthroughs, such as the coral photos in Delta. You've got the kind of voice I could listen to all day regardless of the subject.The game's audio files reveal that along with Alice Koster there's John Strohmeier, Javid Goya and Matthew Frost who are among the emaciated bodies being kept alive by the WAU in Theta's basement. You can hear them speak, revealing what's in their dream worlds.
Ahhhh.... "Continuity," a classic example of grief-driven insane-troll-logic. I mean seriously, did these guys not get it? The other scan isn't "you." It's a totally seperate person. Essentially, it's a digital "clone" of you. Killing yourself doesn't make a clone "you." "You" is the person you are now. If the process was a straight-up TRANSFER (Tron, Matrix...... etc) where the consiousness in your body "moved" to the computerized system, it'd be an arguably different matter, but it doesn't. It simply creates a digital copy. But that's just my two cents. Hang on, I just realized something: the DUNBAT infection happened five days before Akers "suddenly" decided to abandon Delta. Does that mean the DUNBAT infection was deliberate? A Plan A from the WAU? THen when that failed it used Akers as Plan B? I'm just thinking out loud here, though. I AM sure however that the two events are connected, they'd HAVE to be, considering how close they are together.
The thing is that it's not so straight-forward. If you've ever heard of the Ship of Theseus, you know that the concept of identity isn't a very solid one. If you replace all the components of a wooden ship called the "Theseus" over the course of many years of use (as you would do with machine as parts wear out), does that make the ship the same one which was built originally? Is it still the "Theseus"? What about if you gathered together all the discarded components and reassembled them. Which ship would be the "Theseus"? Would both be? Sarang mentions the same concept concerning the human body in his audio log. Humans typically live for many decades, but individual body cells typically only last a few months, with the oldest lasting a few years. If you are 30 years old, you share no physical component in common with your 20 year-old self; however, you would likely argue that you are the same person as before, just older. You probably wouldn't say that "I was a different person when i was 20" without being hyperbolic. This implies that the specific physical nature of a thing does not contribute to its "essence", and the same goes for humans. Even if you go back a week, your own body is not 100% identical to how it was then. If physical constancy was the only determinant of identity then "people" could not exist, because people necessarily change and grow. This being said, i do believe that the essence of something is contingent on it having some physical presence, otherwise there would be nothing to describe. As such, although i think that "souls" (for want of a better term) can be copied between different physical states, they cannot exist independently of them. A computer program cannot just exist hypothetically; it needs to be run on some kind of hardware. Even abstract concepts - like love or justice - are rooted in the physical systems which develop them. The game discusses the idea of "essence" and "continuation" in depth, stating that - when a copy of you is made - it's not like there is "one original and one copy", there are simply two versions, with both technically having equal claim to "being the original". It's not a copy/paste, but a divergence from a single root. The digital version of a human is no less the original than the organic version, since the precise nature of the original physical state is irrelevant to the "essence". Both would claim to be the "original", as Simon Jarrett does more than once during the course of Soma, despite multiple versions of him existing. However, this is why i don't buy into Sarang's concept of "Continuity", since - from the perspective of the digital version - there is *already* continuity. The organic version doesn't need to kill themselves, nor is the life of the digital version diminished by the existence of the biological version. There would simply be two versions of the same person, and i think that's okay; the two would just diverge and grow apart, like people always do when exposed to different stimuli. You could consider your "other self" to be a close sibling, if it makes it any easier. Suicide doesn't solve the problem of identity... it's just needlessly awful. As for your hypothesis that the WAU taking over the DUNBAT coincided almost perfectly with the "releasing" of Akers... i think it's a good one. The WAU wanted the remaining humans to be placed into the red coral for "safe-keeping", so it makes sense that it would cut off their means of escape before releasing the "nanny" monster.
Grymbaldknight nice essay, you brought up some damn good points. Personally, I believe that the continuity of an object/ship/human/etc (despite a change in physical body over time) is impossible from the very laws of nature, however it is in a technicality possible as it essentially passes down its own name to itself As growing up I’ve always been fascinated by evolution, how in itself is a never ending change, to become the very best at your situation and adapt to any changes. Therefor in nature continuity is never really present, everything changes; mountains are beaten down over the eons, species either go extinct or change into something so different it’s classified as a complete different species. So if change is the only consistent thing in life then how does anything sustain itself as the same thing it started its existence as. While in animals you could say that one thing we all share with our younger selves as well as our ancestors is our genes, functioning as our personal very prevalent history. This then does bring to mind that something like a car(no genes) were you replace every piece to the point that it physically is a different car. It still carries the title as the same car essentially through generations of a change in materials and parts. Although cars don’t have any form of dna, what they do have is a name that you can perceive as something that was simply passed down, as if each piece of the car was a new generation, making that car a different car in some essence but in the same way, the same car as its change of parts represents the cars “evolution” as it is simply what you can call an adaption of its former self, completely new, but not completely different. Now the issue though is I’ve basically just argued that one’s personal physical identity is based on how how we choose to perceive it, like an opinion of someone, consistent at times but can change abruptly. In Soma’s case, they basically copied a personality, to a witness the copy could be perceived as the same as the original as they have no differences. However the original would obviously view the copy as different because the original’s perspective from their own body hasn’t changed. In Soma the whole killing yourself to switch places to transfer your consciousness to a copy is (in my understanding) entirely religious, because like you pointed out, copying a file (for example) is very different from moving/transferring a file(aka your mind). To sum up my jumble of thoughts: -nothing in nature (our physical plane of existence) is constant, instead everything is always changing, that’s what evolution represents -soma’s sentient bots are just copies and there is no understanding of how to transfer someone’s consciousness (spirit/ghost/mind/ whichever you believe gives us thought) in the game’s universe, which reflects a real life dilemma as we nobody really knows how our consciousness came to be - Theseus’s boat keeps its name as despite its constant change, the boat will always be an adaptation of its former self, like carrying a family name. You could say it’s technically not the same boat but at the same time it’s never been just one boat, it’s repairs means it’s always changing
Ok one last point, the continuity of something is an entirely human made idea, continuity only exists in consciousness as we know it because everything else changes
When I first heard it I kinda did buy into sarang's theory in the sense that for a very short moment both versions are an exact copy of eachother and the only way for you to be able to reach continuity with your digital self inside the ark is to kill your physical version as soon as possible before the two versions grow apart from eachother. It made sense to me since we whitnessed at the start of the game how confusing it was for Simon to have this "gap" or lack of continuity in his life because this version of him didn't experience the events of Simon's life after the scan was taken. Later on in the game it becomes more clear that it's more complicated than that. It becomes clear that the two versions are never truly the same "person" and that you have no control whatsoever over which version you will turn out to be as was made clear by the ending of the game. The simon that ended up inside the ARk is not the same Simon left behind at psi and there is no way for the simon at psi to "become" the simon inside the ARK since they are just not the same. So killing yourself won't help to reach continuity since you can't reach continuity with something that isn't the same as you in the first place.
@@brent8407 "You have no control whatsoever over which version you become" You fundamentally failed to understand what's going on. There is no coin flip; there is only copying. Four completely separate Simons existed in this game and consciousness was never "transferred", because that's impossible. Only we, the player, were transferred, because it's a game and there's not really any other way to illustrate the point.
I respect your work. You spend time going through this torment over and over to get all possible information so we dont have to, and then you analyze it. Thank you.
I wonder what would of happened if Terry Akers never came to Theta. Maybe they would be alive, or at Omicron if the black boxes didn’t overload then maybe Raleigh Herber may have stopped the WAU once and for all.
Fun Fact: _Komorebi_ is a Japanese term that means, “the patterns of light formed by sun shining through the leaves of trees.” Not sure why that was in the game.
Henry Carmichael they are simulations... That as far as they are aware are real. They know they are robots but are all. That's left of the characters. And that particular consciousness would die thus said character being non existent anymore. Not misleading at all Really.
Molecules that comprise your body are like computer codings. Primarily the 3 billion sized DNA molecule, and the billions of neural snyapses in your brain, and they keep changing and being replaced by other molecules. When you reconstruct the same process, there is no difference. You are not the material substrate (carbon, or oxygen etc...), but the effect of the system's function.
Are real human beings not just 'simulations' or 'programs' in an organic body though? When you think about it.. If 'consciousness' is what makes you, you. It makes no difference whether it's the original or a brain scan.
Henry Carmichael By dead, they meant they would just kinda stop existing. It’s like when a device runs out of power, it’s not dead, but it doesn’t work anymore...
The way Catherine talks about Reed makes me think she's gay: "You think Reed likes me?" And "she was my... she was nice to me" Also in the Transmissions short film Reed has a picture of Catherine in her locker! :P
Possibly bi, considering she begins to display some of the same behaviors toward Simon. And no, it's not because he's in Reed's body. She's too scientific to be fooled by that.
Oh my goodness, I missed so much at Delta. I was so shook and wanted to get on the Zeppelin right away, and so had no idea about half of Akers' story. I recently finished this amazing game and have been obsessively reading up on it to prepare myself for a replay in future. Very glad I came across your video series; it's been extremely thorough and connects everything very neatly. Thank you for all the hard work you put in. I'll check out the rest of the vids and look forward to what you put out next. Subbed!
I'm playing through SOMA for the first time and did exactly this at Delta, too. I missed so many of the bodies out in the ocean. I was tired of getting lost in the ocean where the Curie was and hated dealing with the monster there that I just wanted to rush through Delta to avoid any conflicts that were awaiting me.
Boiiiii, this serie is amazing! It shows clearly your love for this game and I am soooo happy that someone like you dedicate his time to analyze the plot having a sort of religious care of its details
i didnt miss much but it's nice to see someone piece together the puzzle into a coherent timeline and provide context by cross references. thats what makes his videos so good
i love your videos so much! i hardly ever comment on videos, but i wanted to let you know ive enjoyed all of your soma analysis videos so far-- your style of narration, approach to exploring, and thoughts on the world of this game are all great. i keep coming back to these for reference. i think its a really nice touch that you invite others to disagree with you or add their thoughts! im really looking forward to seeing more from you if you choose to continue! especially if you end up making videos about the abyss, id love to hear your thoughts on site tau.
This is really good! I really love the story this game has and you make it easier for people to put it all together. Also I like your narrative structure, you can hear that you put some time into this. :D
I love SOMA and I love your analysis' on the game. I want more of SOMA's story but it's already so good where it's at and I don't want it to be ruined with a sequel/prequel
"Continuity " isn't unfounded. It's one of the basic ideas of identity and consciousness. That identity is an unbroken chain of memory or experiences. And it's a plausible one because it's the idea behind brain scans in the first place
Wait what? No. You die when you go to sleep and wake up a new person with the idea of continuity. You can't be the you yesterday, or even 2 minutes ago. The universe only exists in the right now. A digital you will be you the same way you yesterday is you. Not at all.
@@snakeballs8965 ok. Well, I don't see anyone crying and begging for their lives when they have to take a nap. If it is all the same, then copying your mind in a computer is no different then going to sleep and waking up somewhere else. Of course you can't go into the ark; you don't even survive in your own body because 5 seconds later there's somebody else in there. Seems to me the ark you had no more or less legitimacy than the flesh and blood one, so what's the problem? That there's a version of you that experiences death? Big wup. Everytime you wake up, a version of you died. If that's all the case, then it's all the same if your body has a copy of you or the ark does. Might as well turn the flesh and blood one off, and let digital you keep going.
Dude your videos are great, your style of narrating and your voice is perfect for this shit. Atmospheric as fuck. Can't believe you don't have more subscribers, but I guess you just started making videos. I'm sure your channel will grow if you keep making in depth lore analysis like this.
38:50, *Strasky* - Polish man - *"I'm the master of my own fate"* - Let his last words will be mine. *Digital record* of human and humanity knowing as "the ARK" floating in the space is great idea, but what IF someone wanted going back to the real body from inside of the ARKs digit, what he must do? Kill himself? No can do. It's *a record*, something like from the movie *Groundhog Day*. It's *unended Matrix life*. I will not wanted that life. That kind of life is illusion for me. I prefer changed bodies over and over again until *STOP* point.
Well that's the whole point of this ARK thing (or maybe even the whole game) and the quote at the beginning of the game by Phillip K. Dick: "Reality is that which when you stop believing in it, it doesn't go away" So yes they are "trapped" in the ARK forever, no way of getting out really... and when you think about it... aren't we living in the same way? if our consciousness is just data that you can copy and paste, like the ones inserted into the robots by WAU, then wouldn't that mean that we are in a sort of "simulation" that we cannot escape??? This game is deep...
Soma is a deeply disturbing but, above all, human story that reveals our deepest inner fears at the, and after the, end of human existence. And what makes me laugh about this is the fact that something very similar to what occurred in the game-world of Soma happened in 1904 when a meteor about half a mile wide landed in the millions of square miles of deep deep forest in Mongolia. The few photographs from that time show miles of huge trees all bent , flattened in one direction. It's likely the presence of the large trees cushioned its ripping a scar across the whole of Asia and into a sea! Because the image is in black and white it is impossible to tell whether the trees are all lying pointed north, south, etc. and without aircraft or any means of flight back then, there was no way to traverse such distances on land. We can only be thankful that it occurred without igniting the Earth's atmosphere or landed in the centre of Europe, Middle East or the Americas. If it had landed in the Pacific or Atlantic then I doubt WW1 or WW2 would have occurred at all, such would have been the losses of human beings on a biblical scale [however, WW1 THEN WW2 made up for the meteor's almost 'non-event' in history by causing the deaths of billions from 1914 to 1960 Mao, Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot, USA's interferences, etc etc etc etc]. It's quite a thought. The only reason I couldn't bring myself to play SOMA was the horror aspects. I'm just not a fan of horror games... and I believe SOMA's world could have enough of a story without the spooky weird looking monsters [their presence I could deal with but the inability to somehow 'disable' them or destroy them rather than simply running away made the game just a little too 'hopeless' for me - and, yes, I AM aware that the lead character is a 'copy' rather than a 'cut' of his mind from the year 2015 and god knows how many 'experiments' they performed upon his 'slice of id' from a time when he expected to die within a few months so the fact he awakens almost a century in the future SHOULD be enough of a 'shock horror' to deal with in itself. I just think the extreme horror aspects [WAU creatures & structure gel with supernatural abilities] were unnecessary. But, apart from that? A superbly crafted game in the truest sense of the term. Absolute genius!
I have never heard of this meteor before. Thank you for giving me something new to learn about! I felt the same way about SOMA before I finally broke down and started playing. I don't like survival horror because that's not the kind of 'scary' I need in my life. Real life horrors are enough for me. I was pleasantly surprised to find that SOMA has a 'no death' mode where none of the monsters can harm you and just walk around being creepy. They will try to interact with you but they can't harm you. I tried playing in this mode and noticed my stress levels ended up being much less knowing I didn't have to run and hide every time a monster walked by. In this mode, they ended up becoming more annoying than anything since I just wanted to get through certain areas without being bothered so I could get on with the story.
Hey man i absolutely love your work and these videos are extremely well done. In fact you do this type of video way better than other youtubers. My only complaint is that i really wish they came out more often. Anyway, seriously, i absolutely love your videos so far, keep up the good work.
I'm literally working on the next episode as we speak. My goal is to get it done by Friday. Truth is, my CPU is slow. I've got a 2009 MacBook, so you can imagine. But rest assured, the next one will be worth the wait.
I totally understand man. I for instance would love to do content creation but frankly im not able to with my school schedule. I appreciate these videos in particular becuase i can tell that they take a while to make. Hopefully one day when you get more subs youll be able to upgrade and kick some ass on the video out put. This channel is definitely going to explode when these videos start getting spread around. Not many people out put the quality of videos as you do. Thank you for the response, and i look forward to the next episodes.
If you watch the ”Transmission” series, theres a mockingbird in the first episode that i think they called ”Harry” or something like that. Harry atleast sounds very much like the guy in the DUNBAT.
This looks so interesting. I'm completely enthralled by the story and the scenery is hauntingly beautiful. I'm getting strong vibes of games like Portal, Fallout and Silent Hill and tv series like Black Mirror and movies like Bladerunner. I have noticed a common theme of storylines like this is that humanity seems to always be able to reach a state of utopia at first that always reveals to be too good to be true or last for long before society enters into a dystopian state as it eats itself alive from the inside out. I think the lesson we are suppose to take away from this possible bleak future is that by flying too near the sun, (becoming overly advanced with technology, etc), will melt the glue and down we will come. Though one person's perfect utopian world will always be another's hellish dystopian.
I don't see what WAU is doing w/ the red coral is any different from the ARK outside of looking icky. I mean, it even preserves the body for the remote chance of it being resuscitated. In a perfect scenario, the people who are in the red coral can have their consciousness maintained until the world gets better and then put into bodies to move around. Essentially being "transferred" instead of "copied."
Masterzoroark 666 well they are trying to resist and shut down the wau which interferes with it goals, so it has to force and prevent them by any means necessary reach the big goal in mind
The problem is that all they would have is fanciful dreams in a dying facility that would eventually break down due to disrepair. They wouldn't be able to interact with one another, and they'd be dead anyways. What the WAU offers is kinder than starving or asphyxiation, but it pales compared to a solar powered flight among the stars, where the minds can interact amidst a paradise simulation. Either way, the end is inevitable for humanity, but a potential few centuries of freedom amidst the stars is better than a scant decades of mindless dreaming in a decrepit facility under the sea.
The WAU can only offer a lucid dream while you wait out the inevitable doom. On the ARK, at least you're interacting with actual people and can build real relationships.
@@thebighurt2495 @TheBigHurt But what's the difference from your perspective? What's the difference that you can recognize. If you interact with humans as you perceive them, what's the difference between the real thing and ones that are created from your understanding of humans?
Jesus Christ, this voice. It just sends shivers down my spine. That is an instant sub man. Not many have "those" voices. @Video: Interesting...I'ma watch the others, I'm kinda interestes in the whole story of SOMA.
+Gameological Dig Is there a specific deadline for the next part? And if so, please do take time as I don't want you to have rushed it. Better have a video of quality as the ones before, as a rushed and dreadful video. :D
I just binge watched your videos in the middle of the night - and i haven't even played SOMA once... Your almost soothing voice also makes it a pleasure to listen, plus you edited the videos nicely as well. It's a shame not more ppl have come across this so far...
Awesome series! I loved how you narrated and explained the story in a way that it is easy to understand like story-telling. I hope you get more subscribers! Great quality content, thank you for all the effort you have put in this.
This popped up as a "Suggested Video" while I was watching ChristopherOdd's playthrough of Soma, and I added it to my watch later playlist. I'm glad I did! The only real suggestion I have is that your voice-over audio should be louder- at least 1.5x the volume of the game audio.
it almost feels like journey into some crazy conspiracy. That's probably wht tyhe game is about and although it is not the kind of games i usually play, i can't count how many times i watched your videos! The tone you bring to it, and the deep and faithfull analysis (at least it feels so) are afair omen to a game i know consider to buy even if i know i may never play it! GG!
Don't know if this has been said before but there is a video somewhere where you mute all the sounds around the basement Theta Labs where lots of bodies are, you can actually hear through the voices that one of them is infact Strohmeier and a bunch of other survivors who didn't make it aswell. Thought you should know. Richard is the only one we don't know what might've happened with.
Subscribed and liked each clip and posted a link in my Soma Steam review to this video, to say thankyou for an amazing job on this. Top man Gameological Dig
Your videos kind of remind me of Savage Books and Alt Shift X, the way you talk and explain stuff that is. Thanks for the videos on SOMA btw, they are very insightful.
You honestly deserve to have a million subs. The amount of work and effort that you have put into these SOMA video is incredible. You just earned a new subscriber.
Late to the party on this as I discovered this series not too long ago, but I've watched it repeatedly as I find it as philosophically engaging as the game itself. I would love to hear someone's (your) analysis of the Transmissions movie and their connections to the game, as well as how they expand on the story's lore.
Poor Strasky made a bad choice... he chose to drown painfully rather than become hypoxic and die, which is apparently like getting high and supposed to be the least painful death possible. I guess he either didn't know or his better judgement was clouded.
Alprax on his desk. Alprazolam. That's Xanax. The man was on Zannies. Five years ago I was a different man when I first played this. Then a month ago, replayed it, and I really mellowed out with some Xans, really sunk into the lore and atmosphere, came across Delta, inspected the eyes, inspected the medicine box, saw the name Alprax, I thought that's a familiar name, could it... could it be...? I increased the texture detail, because my computer is weak, so I could see the blurred text on the box in greater detail. The texture blurred, and, in steps, increased its resolution, until it appeared. 'Alprazolam, 1 mg'. Stared at it for a minute. I think. Don't remember. It was a long time. Then I neatly put it back on his desk, but only after making sure every tablet was gone. Yeah, he ran out.
"Strasky likes you
Strasky likes everybody"
I know it's a horror game, but I cracked a smile
Strasky always reminds me of Raider from M.A.S.H. 4077
@@Neo-ff4uo kkkkkkkkkkno not mmmm no. Ononnknnk o koookkn nnnk nnn n Okin on k ok. Onion nnnk non ok onoonnn no no nkkkp PLO mmmmommm
Eventually Strasky went from being a jolly call center guy to a frustrated man named Stressky.
Terry Akers saying and lauging "I'll make sure they feel welcome!"... That is disturbing.
it's a very natural sinister laugh. Usually evil laughter is rather animated and deliberate, but that was too realistic.
"I'll share my structure gel with them"
@@masterzoroark6664 That sounded odly erotic. xD
Akers was the creature at theta right? The eyeless one
@@unga8588 Yes, the one in the Theta Lab
I’m so sad hearing Strasky that stressed and angry. He was always sounded so cheerful and bright... everytime I hear his voice in the audio files is like a beam of sunlight shining through this dark ocean. Hearing him killing himself... is just... too much.
Thank you for this video.
I think the final nail in the coffin for him was Hart's death. He clearly had feelings for her and he doesn't seem to be the same after that.
Rip Strasky. Can you imagine being stuck under the water knowing there’s no one who can help you and nowhere to go. Terrifying.
Pulled the words right out of my mouth
_“everytime I hear his voice in the audio files is like a beam of sunlight shining through this dark ocean”_
Wow man you are such a romantic. You should make this the lyrics of your song or poem.
Robin basically confirmed to Simon that his current self can't be physically transferred into the ARK. Simon just didn't get it in the end.
FinalFinale
Perhaps it was the ultimate form of denial.
Being that he lived such a normal life in modern day Canada, and to then have that life juxtaposed by an incomprehensibly great horror of your own species' extinction and WAU in a time beyond your own intended lifespan is shocking to say the very least.
This level of change was undoubtedly accompanied by a permanent feeling of being devoid of value and self meaning, so aside from being possibly incredibly ignorant I think there's a good chance he was just lost - perhaps the most a human mind could be.
@@aestus187 Honestly, seeing the protagonist make "rational and logical" conclusions when they are so damaged and we are not is great. Seeing the protagonist slowly decend further into madness is great.
He still lived on the Catherine's lie of the coin flip
@@aestus187 no? She proves that the killing yourself during the scam theory is false. Robin, simon, and catherine here are the same files uploaded onto the ark essentially, they were sourced from the scanning equipment, the ones on the ark were just from catherines modified scanner made to upload the files to the ark rather than to store them so the equipment can interpret user input.
She does in the sense that she exists and therefor can't be put on the ark, however everyone here is digital and therefor they were created from the same source, robins ai here could have been sourced into the ark, the wau just took the files and used it on a mocking bird instead.
And as some have already said in defense of the game, the coinflip example is valid in context. It's not an explanation, but an allusion, and a valid one. Going through simons memories live, it's possible that he would be the conscious that was actually on the ark reliving events, which we get to play as too. The body switches entire purpose was to show it was possible in their perception that they'd be the uploaded version. Everyone thinks they played up to the body switch. They didn't. That was a memory in the second body that we relive actively, that was never experienced by our characters real body, the other body we can kill was the one that actually experienced it. When that happened we were the one that won coinflip. The perception of memories is experienced live so we don't know if we're experiencing the memories of a previous body or not, so when we get to the end, it literally was a 50 50 if we were the first body or the second one, if the post midgame bodyswitch gameplay is actually happening then we're left behind, or if it is a simulated memory we think is real like the first third of the game we are the simon on the ark. It's not literally a coin flip because it is predetermined, but from our perspective it is absolutely valid because the one on the ark had the same exact memories and experiences up to that point, they have identical consciouses, which was explained overtly and sneakily when the game points out via sarang that the simulation and real person have the same perception of their lives at the exact instant the transfer is born, where it splits off. The scan thinks it's the real one, which is what we see with the mark simulations for the password. If we were to run through one of the characters life that knew how this worked before they got scanned, it would be a 50/50 if we were the real human or the ai that relived the memories in real time thinking it is the real human. This is why you get to play as both versions of simon at the end, both had the same exact perception of events, aka the game we played, up to the transfer ark Simon thought it was suit simon and suit simon thought it was inital Simon, but each time the new body thinks its the same as the last one since it has the same perception. Again, which is why the coinflip works, because we could have been playing as either simon at the end and we didn't actually know which. I swear to god I'm the only one that understood what the developers were doing, much to my misery.
@@masterzoroark6664 I am late to the show, but the coin flip was not Catherine's idea. Simon comes up with it himself when sitting in the crawler down the abyss.
it's creepy how at 11:44 you can hear the "unconscious" terry akers giggling while emma and brandon are busy contacting strasky. he pretended to be unconscious to be brought into theta labs without resistance.
Spoilers: if you listen close (or extract the audio and boost the levels) you can hear the bodies trapped in the biocoral or whatever in the basement of theta having pleasant dreams. For all the evils Akers did, he did deliver on his promise to the wau.
That conversation between Emma and Rirchard really hit me man, it was really sad to hear Richard trying to cheer her up during the last minutes of their lives :(
The saddest part is them lamenting the fact they never really got to know each other despite working together for years, and now they never will. Not even on the ARK, as Richard was never scanned.
the crew outside Omicron slowly dying makes me wanna die
ikr its so sad
They went through hell and back, just to die alone, clinging onto a dream of humanity surviving. They had to stave off proxies, watch their friends die to give them time that ended up meaning nothing, their sacrifices were in vain, but at least they didn’t have to live through the horror of apathy.
COVID does tend to have that effect on people.
@@-._.-KRiS-._.- bahaha nice
@@Nimbus3690 Poor Omicron. It's never not going to be associated with a pandemic ever again.
41:12 Strohmeier indeed never made it out of Theta. You can open up the maps in the level editor and click on all those bodies next to the proxies. One of them called Strohmeier.
I love the last moments of emma and richard. It's so calm and tender in comparison to the chaos of all the others
I have a little headcanon for why Akers looks the way he does. You see, when Nadine was performing an autopsy on him, I think she bisected him from his head down to his abdomen in order to probe him, and in the process removed his nose and lips leaving a massive hole exposing his chest cavity. But before she could finish, Akers woke up in sheer amounts of agony and lashed out at her purely out of spite and kept her alive in a vegetative state. He would then try to find more structure gel in order to heal his wounds, only to bump into the rest of the Theta staff who would then attack him. They would have covered parts of his body in various flammable chemicals that would cause certain parts of his skin to bloat and darken, and he would manage to kill some of them and would take some of their body parts in order to heal his wounds. However, he would have done a sloppy job of it, since he put the parts in places that made no sense. This would explain why he has a forearm and a foot infused into his lower abdomen.
_"But before she could finish"_
Dude, Akers smashed the doctor's head against the table while the doctor was recording the voice diary, then connected the doctor to the WAU.
The doctor was still in her office, still breathing but asleep and her body had become like a skinny Thing from Fantastic Four.
This series is excellent. You clearly put a lot of time and effort into it, and it certainly pays off.
Please keep it coming!
I'm watching this as I have finished SOMA last night. This is one of the saddest games I've ever played and I love hearing you talk about how sad it was. Such a good game. So horribly sad and beautiful.
Emma and Richard's conversation was just...wow. Quite a gut bunch. Great series.
Simon's descend through PATHOS II reminds me of Dante's descend through hell, with Catherine playing the part of Virgil. There's death and hopelessness everywhere, with "ghosts" of the fallen PATHOS employees here and there in the form of voice recordings, journal entries, mockingbirds and mutations.
That’s such a good observation
I wonder if this was inspiration for the writers?
Completely different stories
Completely different themes
Dante explores sins and their consequences. His own sins, his brothers in arms, his father, mother, etc. Simon explores other people's takes on what consciousness is. Mostly.
Virgil actually helps and guides Dante. Catherine is a manipulative selfish bitch who uses Simon as a helpful tool to finish her work.
Frictional's first major success game - The Dark Descent - is way closer to Dante's Inferno theme than Soma.
@@indifferentone8991 Trying to save the last remnants of humanity in whatever form is possible doesn't sound very selfish.
"My reflection in the black blood of our Warden whispers. I need to save them from this hell. I need to let them sleep. Lock them in their lucid dreams I've seen."
-Terry Akers
My God, all of this stuff is so sad :
It's a shame that this channel never really picked up. Amazing content. Great narration and editing. You deserve at least 100k subs.
Richard was originally supposed to make it into Omicron, there were audio files of him for Omicron, but I guess they discontinued that part of the story, the most probable idea as to what happened is he purposely or accidentally fell into the Abyss.
I wonder why they didnt implement a rule of "If you commit suicide(or die under suspect circumstances) you will be wiped form the database"
or something.
Then, atleast, they have to get creative.
Not 100% sure but isn’t that a rule Christians use for heaven
@@Tony-ob7lh not just christians
@@knerf999 yeah your right basically every religion which still doesn't justify anything, it just shifts the blame.
Hmm?
You talk about all of Akers/proxies 'victims' as if they are dead but aren't they technically still alive, sustained by the WAU and living in the same lucid dream state that Simon enters when he himself is caught by Akers in the train station. All the bodies stuck in the mind-coral stuff are breathing and if you stand around them long enough you can hear parts of their 'dreams,' most of which sound rather pleasant (In fact, by looking at the names of the sound files you can match the dreams to members of the crew including Strohmeir and Alice Koster. Additionally, in the game files you can find some unused voice lines for akers where he talks about letting humanity sleep and preserving life, which is the WAUs ultimate goal.
Maverick wow, thanks for this comment. It all makes so much sense now. :-O
Maverick yea but you are forgetting the fact that Akers himself is being mind controlled by that Coral stuff too he rip out his own eyes as proof he was loyal to the WAU when it was not the WAU it was the Coral stuff hypnotizing him to do so Pleasant isn't something I'd want if I were in this nightmare
@@30795William Isn't locking people in a perpetual dream the exact point of the Ark though? Which was also originally a WAU creation?
@@leonardorossi998 yes but one is a world where u can atleast have some kind of freedom and friends who are really there. While the other is probably an on loop dream state illusion that never ends. I think ill choose the first choice if i could aswell.
@@greengarnish1711 Well ok, but dream consciousness is not the same as actual consciousness, so it might be more bearable for longer periods of time. For instance, while dreaming you won't remember how long you have been dreaming. Granted, this only applies if this is a temporary solution.
Also the Ark will eventually degrade due to radiation damaging its circuits, which might mean being trapped in a nightmarish world for thousands of years.
Sometimes I wonder if Terry misunderstood the WAU because he was a complete dumbass.
WAU: "I have come to save you."
Terry "Who's there? My eyes hurt."
WAU: "You don't need that vitreous flesh inside your skull to see salvation."
Terry: "Okay, I will gladly remove them." *tears eyes out*
WAU: *promptly puts Terry in dreamland to save him from himself* "Sleep, Terry. Everything's alright now."
Terry wakes up. "Holy shit! This is amazing! I must share this experience with everyone!"
WAU: "Terry, no!"
First of all: This is an amazing story analysis of SOMA. Thank you. What I realised while watching these: I wasn't very closely paying attention to all the records in the game. I mean, I read them all and listened to the recordings, but I did not try to connect them like you did. And the reason for this I think, is that I really immersed myself being in a world like this. When you would REALLY be in that situation like you are in SOMA, you would find a lot of information pieces that are very random and are somewhat useless for the big whole picture. I did not make myself clear, that this is not the case. I am walking through a level, designed by people, who put information pieces all over the place. Every bit makes sense in their eyes, so every document etc. IS contributing to the whole picture. The player has not to filter the unnecessary from the useful, the designers and writers already did that.
Quite philosophical. :)
Love this observation.
Amazing episode!! The whole production really brings me right back into that world. It really fleshes out all the details and characters in a way that makes the whole game so much more poignant and impactful. Awesome job! Please don't make us wait as long for the next episode either. But if that's how long it takes to get something with this level of quality, I will wait as long as it takes. Thanks for this series and I look forward to the conclusion of Soma and whatever your next series will be on.
There was a lot of feels in this, wow, totally blew me away.
Thank you.
No, thank you for watching. I'm glad there are people out there who love this game as much as I do.
Maybe Richard jumped into the abyss. Might've gotten the idea from what Emma said.
My thoughts exactly, it'd be a pretty quick way to go, if the Death animation for Simon is any indication.
@@thebighurt2495 Bloody terrifying idea to throw yourself into a pitch-black abyss
Yea I'd rather implode and pop instantly rather than drown. More mess but no one's left to see it and it's quicker
@@Zach-cn4lb is there mess if no one's there to see it tho?
@@tiagoviana263 yes
I remember when SOMA came out, I was angry that I couldn't get it to run, wrote a pretty scathing review about it, returned it, and forgot about it. A little over a year later I got a code for SOMA from Humble Monthy and decided to give it another shot, and fell in love instantly. Your videos have extended my experience past the game itself, and the time and effort you've put into them shows!
Cheers!
Why would you write a bad review just because you didn't have the hardware to properly run the game?
@@-._.-KRiS-._.- Being younger and dumber, I guess.
This is a really good analysis and I'm enjoying it so far. There are little details you've shown that I never gave any thought to in my playthroughs, such as the coral photos in Delta. You've got the kind of voice I could listen to all day regardless of the subject.The game's audio files reveal that along with Alice Koster there's John Strohmeier, Javid Goya and Matthew Frost who are among the emaciated bodies being kept alive by the WAU in Theta's basement. You can hear them speak, revealing what's in their dream worlds.
I was searching so long for videos like this. thanks a lot mate keep on going!
Im so glad I subbed to this channel. This looks like it took a lot of work. Very informative and very quality video.
It was. If the story wasn't so fascinating, I wouldn't have put the time in. Thanks for watching.
Can you imagine this made into a film, say by Ridley Scott
Ahhhh.... "Continuity," a classic example of grief-driven insane-troll-logic. I mean seriously, did these guys not get it? The other scan isn't "you." It's a totally seperate person. Essentially, it's a digital "clone" of you. Killing yourself doesn't make a clone "you." "You" is the person you are now. If the process was a straight-up TRANSFER (Tron, Matrix...... etc) where the consiousness in your body "moved" to the computerized system, it'd be an arguably different matter, but it doesn't. It simply creates a digital copy. But that's just my two cents.
Hang on, I just realized something: the DUNBAT infection happened five days before Akers "suddenly" decided to abandon Delta. Does that mean the DUNBAT infection was deliberate? A Plan A from the WAU? THen when that failed it used Akers as Plan B? I'm just thinking out loud here, though. I AM sure however that the two events are connected, they'd HAVE to be, considering how close they are together.
The thing is that it's not so straight-forward. If you've ever heard of the Ship of Theseus, you know that the concept of identity isn't a very solid one. If you replace all the components of a wooden ship called the "Theseus" over the course of many years of use (as you would do with machine as parts wear out), does that make the ship the same one which was built originally? Is it still the "Theseus"? What about if you gathered together all the discarded components and reassembled them. Which ship would be the "Theseus"? Would both be?
Sarang mentions the same concept concerning the human body in his audio log. Humans typically live for many decades, but individual body cells typically only last a few months, with the oldest lasting a few years. If you are 30 years old, you share no physical component in common with your 20 year-old self; however, you would likely argue that you are the same person as before, just older. You probably wouldn't say that "I was a different person when i was 20" without being hyperbolic.
This implies that the specific physical nature of a thing does not contribute to its "essence", and the same goes for humans. Even if you go back a week, your own body is not 100% identical to how it was then. If physical constancy was the only determinant of identity then "people" could not exist, because people necessarily change and grow.
This being said, i do believe that the essence of something is contingent on it having some physical presence, otherwise there would be nothing to describe. As such, although i think that "souls" (for want of a better term) can be copied between different physical states, they cannot exist independently of them. A computer program cannot just exist hypothetically; it needs to be run on some kind of hardware. Even abstract concepts - like love or justice - are rooted in the physical systems which develop them.
The game discusses the idea of "essence" and "continuation" in depth, stating that - when a copy of you is made - it's not like there is "one original and one copy", there are simply two versions, with both technically having equal claim to "being the original". It's not a copy/paste, but a divergence from a single root. The digital version of a human is no less the original than the organic version, since the precise nature of the original physical state is irrelevant to the "essence". Both would claim to be the "original", as Simon Jarrett does more than once during the course of Soma, despite multiple versions of him existing.
However, this is why i don't buy into Sarang's concept of "Continuity", since - from the perspective of the digital version - there is *already* continuity. The organic version doesn't need to kill themselves, nor is the life of the digital version diminished by the existence of the biological version. There would simply be two versions of the same person, and i think that's okay; the two would just diverge and grow apart, like people always do when exposed to different stimuli. You could consider your "other self" to be a close sibling, if it makes it any easier. Suicide doesn't solve the problem of identity... it's just needlessly awful.
As for your hypothesis that the WAU taking over the DUNBAT coincided almost perfectly with the "releasing" of Akers... i think it's a good one. The WAU wanted the remaining humans to be placed into the red coral for "safe-keeping", so it makes sense that it would cut off their means of escape before releasing the "nanny" monster.
Grymbaldknight nice essay, you brought up some damn good points. Personally, I believe that the continuity of an object/ship/human/etc (despite a change in physical body over time) is impossible from the very laws of nature, however it is in a technicality possible as it essentially passes down its own name to itself
As growing up I’ve always been fascinated by evolution, how in itself is a never ending change, to become the very best at your situation and adapt to any changes. Therefor in nature continuity is never really present, everything changes; mountains are beaten down over the eons, species either go extinct or change into something so different it’s classified as a complete different species. So if change is the only consistent thing in life then how does anything sustain itself as the same thing it started its existence as. While in animals you could say that one thing we all share with our younger selves as well as our ancestors is our genes, functioning as our personal very prevalent history. This then does bring to mind that something like a car(no genes) were you replace every piece to the point that it physically is a different car. It still carries the title as the same car essentially through generations of a change in materials and parts. Although cars don’t have any form of dna, what they do have is a name that you can perceive as something that was simply passed down, as if each piece of the car was a new generation, making that car a different car in some essence but in the same way, the same car as its change of parts represents the cars “evolution” as it is simply what you can call an adaption of its former self, completely new, but not completely different.
Now the issue though is I’ve basically just argued that one’s personal physical identity is based on how how we choose to perceive it, like an opinion of someone, consistent at times but can change abruptly.
In Soma’s case, they basically copied a personality, to a witness the copy could be perceived as the same as the original as they have no differences. However the original would obviously view the copy as different because the original’s perspective from their own body hasn’t changed. In Soma the whole killing yourself to switch places to transfer your consciousness to a copy is (in my understanding) entirely religious, because like you pointed out, copying a file (for example) is very different from moving/transferring a file(aka your mind).
To sum up my jumble of thoughts:
-nothing in nature (our physical plane of existence) is constant, instead everything is always changing, that’s what evolution represents
-soma’s sentient bots are just copies and there is no understanding of how to transfer someone’s consciousness (spirit/ghost/mind/ whichever you believe gives us thought) in the game’s universe, which reflects a real life dilemma as we nobody really knows how our consciousness came to be
- Theseus’s boat keeps its name as despite its constant change, the boat will always be an adaptation of its former self, like carrying a family name. You could say it’s technically not the same boat but at the same time it’s never been just one boat, it’s repairs means it’s always changing
Ok one last point, the continuity of something is an entirely human made idea, continuity only exists in consciousness as we know it because everything else changes
When I first heard it I kinda did buy into sarang's theory in the sense that for a very short moment both versions are an exact copy of eachother and the only way for you to be able to reach continuity with your digital self inside the ark is to kill your physical version as soon as possible before the two versions grow apart from eachother. It made sense to me since we whitnessed at the start of the game how confusing it was for Simon to have this "gap" or lack of continuity in his life because this version of him didn't experience the events of Simon's life after the scan was taken. Later on in the game it becomes more clear that it's more complicated than that. It becomes clear that the two versions are never truly the same "person" and that you have no control whatsoever over which version you will turn out to be as was made clear by the ending of the game. The simon that ended up inside the ARk is not the same Simon left behind at psi and there is no way for the simon at psi to "become" the simon inside the ARK since they are just not the same. So killing yourself won't help to reach continuity since you can't reach continuity with something that isn't the same as you in the first place.
@@brent8407 "You have no control whatsoever over which version you become" You fundamentally failed to understand what's going on. There is no coin flip; there is only copying. Four completely separate Simons existed in this game and consciousness was never "transferred", because that's impossible. Only we, the player, were transferred, because it's a game and there's not really any other way to illustrate the point.
I respect your work. You spend time going through this torment over and over to get all possible information so we dont have to, and then you analyze it. Thank you.
I wonder what would of happened if Terry Akers never came to Theta. Maybe they would be alive, or at Omicron if the black boxes didn’t overload then maybe Raleigh Herber may have stopped the WAU once and for all.
You are seriously so good at this man. You could get huge if you keep it up! Fantastic vid.
Fun Fact: _Komorebi_ is a Japanese term that means, “the patterns of light formed by sun shining through the leaves of trees.” Not sure why that was in the game.
"If I don't hit Delta, we're dead!" Kinda misleading considering they died long ago and are essentially just computer codings.
Henry Carmichael they are simulations... That as far as they are aware are real. They know they are robots but are all. That's left of the characters. And that particular consciousness would die thus said character being non existent anymore. Not misleading at all Really.
Molecules that comprise your body are like computer codings. Primarily the 3 billion sized DNA molecule, and the billions of neural snyapses in your brain, and they keep changing and being replaced by other molecules. When you reconstruct the same process, there is no difference. You are not the material substrate (carbon, or oxygen etc...), but the effect of the system's function.
Are real human beings not just 'simulations' or 'programs' in an organic body though? When you think about it.. If 'consciousness' is what makes you, you. It makes no difference whether it's the original or a brain scan.
Henry Carmichael By dead, they meant they would just kinda stop existing. It’s like when a device runs out of power, it’s not dead, but it doesn’t work anymore...
now we have techno racism.. great
The way Catherine talks about Reed makes me think she's gay: "You think Reed likes me?" And "she was my... she was nice to me"
Also in the Transmissions short film Reed has a picture of Catherine in her locker! :P
Simon's new body is build based on Reed's body though. In a way Catherine was actually with her friend, through our journey.
Possibly bi, considering she begins to display some of the same behaviors toward Simon. And no, it's not because he's in Reed's body. She's too scientific to be fooled by that.
how can a woman be gay?
@@retro5700 ....ever heard of lesbians?
@@Metalheadyup I asked the guy who wrote the comment
keep goiiing, I've been waiting for a video series like this for a while, and you do it so perfectly.
Oh my goodness, I missed so much at Delta. I was so shook and wanted to get on the Zeppelin right away, and so had no idea about half of Akers' story. I recently finished this amazing game and have been obsessively reading up on it to prepare myself for a replay in future. Very glad I came across your video series; it's been extremely thorough and connects everything very neatly. Thank you for all the hard work you put in. I'll check out the rest of the vids and look forward to what you put out next. Subbed!
I'm playing through SOMA for the first time and did exactly this at Delta, too. I missed so many of the bodies out in the ocean. I was tired of getting lost in the ocean where the Curie was and hated dealing with the monster there that I just wanted to rush through Delta to avoid any conflicts that were awaiting me.
when akers lost consciousness, that’s when his sanity snapped
So ur saying he was still sane when he attacked the rescue crew and injected them with structure gel?
I really felt bad for Robin. Those drawings of hers were really sad.
Boiiiii, this serie is amazing! It shows clearly your love for this game and I am soooo happy that someone like you dedicate his time to analyze the plot having a sort of religious care of its details
It’s crazy how much stuff I missed picking up on even after checking every nook, reading everything, listening to everything… your content is great!
i didnt miss much but it's nice to see someone piece together the puzzle into a coherent timeline and provide context by cross references. thats what makes his videos so good
This is pure gold. You connect all the pieces that makes this game even better. Keep it up, I can't wait for your next video.
i love your videos so much! i hardly ever comment on videos, but i wanted to let you know ive enjoyed all of your soma analysis videos so far-- your style of narration, approach to exploring, and thoughts on the world of this game are all great. i keep coming back to these for reference. i think its a really nice touch that you invite others to disagree with you or add their thoughts!
im really looking forward to seeing more from you if you choose to continue! especially if you end up making videos about the abyss, id love to hear your thoughts on site tau.
Only just discovered this channel - superb content; this is by far the best breakdown of SOMA I've seen.
This series is exceptional in its quality and research. Please continue this, and branch out into other games as well! You've got my support.
This is really good! I really love the story this game has and you make it easier for people to put it all together. Also I like your narrative structure, you can hear that you put some time into this. :D
Soma and Bioshock lore, what a good channel ! Good work !
I love SOMA and I love your analysis' on the game. I want more of SOMA's story but it's already so good where it's at and I don't want it to be ruined with a sequel/prequel
this was done so well. thank you!!
Just started playing this myself! Amazing game! It's easily going to be my best series yet!!
"Continuity " isn't unfounded. It's one of the basic ideas of identity and consciousness. That identity is an unbroken chain of memory or experiences. And it's a plausible one because it's the idea behind brain scans in the first place
Wait what? No. You die when you go to sleep and wake up a new person with the idea of continuity. You can't be the you yesterday, or even 2 minutes ago. The universe only exists in the right now. A digital you will be you the same way you yesterday is you. Not at all.
@@snakeballs8965 ok. Well, I don't see anyone crying and begging for their lives when they have to take a nap. If it is all the same, then copying your mind in a computer is no different then going to sleep and waking up somewhere else. Of course you can't go into the ark; you don't even survive in your own body because 5 seconds later there's somebody else in there. Seems to me the ark you had no more or less legitimacy than the flesh and blood one, so what's the problem? That there's a version of you that experiences death? Big wup. Everytime you wake up, a version of you died. If that's all the case, then it's all the same if your body has a copy of you or the ark does. Might as well turn the flesh and blood one off, and let digital you keep going.
How can I be certain all of reality isn't just an illusion created by me and all of you are just in my head?
@@SamuelBlack84 you can't.
@@jonathonbialas5110 No wonder my whole life has been an existential crisis
Can't wait for more! Keep up the amazing work!!!
Dude your videos are great, your style of narrating and your voice is perfect for this shit. Atmospheric as fuck. Can't believe you don't have more subscribers, but I guess you just started making videos. I'm sure your channel will grow if you keep making in depth lore analysis like this.
Just finished the game, this videos are gold.
I'm really looking forward to your next video! You've got some great stuff so far, and I've loved watching every minute :)
38:50, *Strasky* - Polish man - *"I'm the master of my own fate"* - Let his last words will be mine.
*Digital record* of human and humanity knowing as "the ARK" floating in the space is great idea, but what IF someone wanted going back to the real body from inside of the ARKs digit, what he must do? Kill himself? No can do. It's *a record*, something like from the movie *Groundhog Day*. It's *unended Matrix life*. I will not wanted that life. That kind of life is illusion for me. I prefer changed bodies over and over again until *STOP* point.
Well that's the whole point of this ARK thing (or maybe even the whole game) and the quote at the beginning of the game by Phillip K. Dick: "Reality is that which when you stop believing in it, it doesn't go away"
So yes they are "trapped" in the ARK forever, no way of getting out really... and when you think about it... aren't we living in the same way? if our consciousness is just data that you can copy and paste, like the ones inserted into the robots by WAU, then wouldn't that mean that we are in a sort of "simulation" that we cannot escape???
This game is deep...
@@Gentamoru What if our real world is all just a simulation and all of us only exist in the form of binary code?
Strasky became Stressky at the end.
I sincerely hope more of this is on the way. It is so professional, so well written.
Soma is a deeply disturbing but, above all, human story that reveals our deepest inner fears at the, and after the, end of human existence.
And what makes me laugh about this is the fact that something very similar to what occurred in the game-world of Soma happened in 1904 when a meteor about half a mile wide landed in the millions of square miles of deep deep forest in Mongolia. The few photographs from that time show miles of huge trees all bent , flattened in one direction. It's likely the presence of the large trees cushioned its ripping a scar across the whole of Asia and into a sea!
Because the image is in black and white it is impossible to tell whether the trees are all lying pointed north, south, etc. and without aircraft or any means of flight back then, there was no way to traverse such distances on land. We can only be thankful that it occurred without igniting the Earth's atmosphere or landed in the centre of Europe, Middle East or the Americas. If it had landed in the Pacific or Atlantic then I doubt WW1 or WW2 would have occurred at all, such would have been the losses of human beings on a biblical scale [however, WW1 THEN WW2 made up for the meteor's almost 'non-event' in history by causing the deaths of billions from 1914 to 1960 Mao, Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot, USA's interferences, etc etc etc etc].
It's quite a thought.
The only reason I couldn't bring myself to play SOMA was the horror aspects. I'm just not a fan of horror games... and I believe SOMA's world could have enough of a story without the spooky weird looking monsters [their presence I could deal with but the inability to somehow 'disable' them or destroy them rather than simply running away made the game just a little too 'hopeless' for me - and, yes, I AM aware that the lead character is a 'copy' rather than a 'cut' of his mind from the year 2015 and god knows how many 'experiments' they performed upon his 'slice of id' from a time when he expected to die within a few months so the fact he awakens almost a century in the future SHOULD be enough of a 'shock horror' to deal with in itself.
I just think the extreme horror aspects [WAU creatures & structure gel with supernatural abilities] were unnecessary. But, apart from that? A superbly crafted game in the truest sense of the term.
Absolute genius!
I have never heard of this meteor before. Thank you for giving me something new to learn about!
I felt the same way about SOMA before I finally broke down and started playing. I don't like survival horror because that's not the kind of 'scary' I need in my life. Real life horrors are enough for me. I was pleasantly surprised to find that SOMA has a 'no death' mode where none of the monsters can harm you and just walk around being creepy. They will try to interact with you but they can't harm you. I tried playing in this mode and noticed my stress levels ended up being much less knowing I didn't have to run and hide every time a monster walked by. In this mode, they ended up becoming more annoying than anything since I just wanted to get through certain areas without being bothered so I could get on with the story.
I knew I had watched a good video when the 42 minutes felt like 10 had passed by. This is a fantastic analysis of the story and its lore components.
Hey man i absolutely love your work and these videos are extremely well done. In fact you do this type of video way better than other youtubers. My only complaint is that i really wish they came out more often. Anyway, seriously, i absolutely love your videos so far, keep up the good work.
I'm literally working on the next episode as we speak. My goal is to get it done by Friday. Truth is, my CPU is slow. I've got a 2009 MacBook, so you can imagine. But rest assured, the next one will be worth the wait.
I totally understand man. I for instance would love to do content creation but frankly im not able to with my school schedule. I appreciate these videos in particular becuase i can tell that they take a while to make. Hopefully one day when you get more subs youll be able to upgrade and kick some ass on the video out put. This channel is definitely going to explode when these videos start getting spread around. Not many people out put the quality of videos as you do. Thank you for the response, and i look forward to the next episodes.
+Donovan King appreciate the kind words. Here's hoping them to be a good omen :-)
A nice philosophical ending line you gave there...
I love these videos. They're almost like documentaries, haha.
I'm just really concerned about who was in the Dunbat and it's bothering me
Brandon Wan
If you watch the ”Transmission” series, theres a mockingbird in the first episode that i think they called ”Harry” or something like that. Harry atleast sounds very much like the guy in the DUNBAT.
@@SuperMrminecraftdude
Maybe, but the voice of the Dubat sounded more female
Maybe its Guy Konrad
This looks so interesting. I'm completely enthralled by the story and the scenery is hauntingly beautiful. I'm getting strong vibes of games like Portal, Fallout and Silent Hill and tv series like Black Mirror and movies like Bladerunner. I have noticed a common theme of storylines like this is that humanity seems to always be able to reach a state of utopia at first that always reveals to be too good to be true or last for long before society enters into a dystopian state as it eats itself alive from the inside out. I think the lesson we are suppose to take away from this possible bleak future is that by flying too near the sun, (becoming overly advanced with technology, etc), will melt the glue and down we will come.
Though one person's perfect utopian world will always be another's hellish dystopian.
Hi. I would like to say that I really enjoyed your SOMA in-depth analysis and am looking forward to your next chapter.
I'm glad. I'm literally working on the Omicron episode today. More soon.
Your channel is so underrated, very deep and thorough research. Good job!!!
I LOVE these Soma Lore videos! This guy REALLY deserves far more subs than just 10k
I don't see what WAU is doing w/ the red coral is any different from the ARK outside of looking icky.
I mean, it even preserves the body for the remote chance of it being resuscitated. In a perfect scenario, the people who are in the red coral can have their consciousness maintained until the world gets better and then put into bodies to move around. Essentially being "transferred" instead of "copied."
Yeah. But wau could have chose someone more gentle than Akers
Masterzoroark 666 well they are trying to resist and shut down the wau which interferes with it goals, so it has to force and prevent them by any means necessary reach the big goal in mind
The problem is that all they would have is fanciful dreams in a dying facility that would eventually break down due to disrepair.
They wouldn't be able to interact with one another, and they'd be dead anyways. What the WAU offers is kinder than starving or asphyxiation, but it pales compared to a solar powered flight among the stars, where the minds can interact amidst a paradise simulation.
Either way, the end is inevitable for humanity, but a potential few centuries of freedom amidst the stars is better than a scant decades of mindless dreaming in a decrepit facility under the sea.
The WAU can only offer a lucid dream while you wait out the inevitable doom.
On the ARK, at least you're interacting with actual people and can build real relationships.
@@thebighurt2495 @TheBigHurt But what's the difference from your perspective? What's the difference that you can recognize. If you interact with humans as you perceive them, what's the difference between the real thing and ones that are created from your understanding of humans?
You've done such a nice work, friend!) Keep it up, please.
Awesome work, I understand the story so much better now.
I hope you keep this up. This is some great content here.
Thanks, you Stark murdering monster. Lol.
Jesus Christ, this voice. It just sends shivers down my spine. That is an instant sub man. Not many have "those" voices.
@Video: Interesting...I'ma watch the others, I'm kinda interestes in the whole story of SOMA.
Thanks. The story is incredibly dense. More to come soon.
+Gameological Dig Is there a specific deadline for the next part? And if so, please do take time as I don't want you to have rushed it. Better have a video of quality as the ones before, as a rushed and dreadful video. :D
I just binge watched your videos in the middle of the night - and i haven't even played SOMA once...
Your almost soothing voice also makes it a pleasure to listen, plus you edited the videos nicely as well.
It's a shame not more ppl have come across this so far...
Awesome series! I loved how you narrated and explained the story in a way that it is easy to understand like story-telling. I hope you get more subscribers! Great quality content, thank you for all the effort you have put in this.
This video was AMAZING! I'm a huge fan of this game and you pointed out so much I missed keep up the great work!
This popped up as a "Suggested Video" while I was watching ChristopherOdd's playthrough of Soma, and I added it to my watch later playlist. I'm glad I did! The only real suggestion I have is that your voice-over audio should be louder- at least 1.5x the volume of the game audio.
it almost feels like journey into some crazy conspiracy. That's probably wht tyhe game is about and although it is not the kind of games i usually play, i can't count how many times i watched your videos! The tone you bring to it, and the deep and faithfull analysis (at least it feels so) are afair omen to a game i know consider to buy even if i know i may never play it! GG!
1:41 _50000 employees used to live here, now it's a ghost town._
Don't know if this has been said before but there is a video somewhere where you mute all the sounds around the basement Theta Labs where lots of bodies are, you can actually hear through the voices that one of them is infact Strohmeier and a bunch of other survivors who didn't make it aswell. Thought you should know.
Richard is the only one we don't know what might've happened with.
Subscribed and liked each clip and posted a link in my Soma Steam review to this video, to say thankyou for an amazing job on this. Top man Gameological Dig
Your videos kind of remind me of Savage Books and Alt Shift X, the way you talk and explain stuff that is. Thanks for the videos on SOMA btw, they are very insightful.
awwwwwww yeeeeeees another video
Lol, yup! Glad you liked it.
BRUH
BRUH
You honestly deserve to have a million subs. The amount of work and effort that you have put into these SOMA video is incredible. You just earned a new subscriber.
So little views for so quality content....Im dissapointed in people who played Soma and didnt watch this mans great series
Late to the party on this as I discovered this series not too long ago, but I've watched it repeatedly as I find it as philosophically engaging as the game itself.
I would love to hear someone's (your) analysis of the Transmissions movie and their connections to the game, as well as how they expand on the story's lore.
You have the voice of a younger steve blum!!! Awesome work and detail of information. Keep it up
Great breakdown! It really puts more life and complexity into the story.
This is sooo gooood!!! Hope to se more content sooon!
13:46
Having Reed like you was a quite compliment. Reed... Did not play well with others usually.
600 views on your vids? What the hell?! They could supplement an anniversary edition of the game!
Blown away! this is just amazing, please keep making videos!
I was waiting for this guy to say Simon's next stop is at the twilight zone.
I maintain that Catherine is one of the best portraits of a woman with Asperger's in all of science fiction.
Poor Strasky made a bad choice... he chose to drown painfully rather than become hypoxic and die, which is apparently like getting high and supposed to be the least painful death possible. I guess he either didn't know or his better judgement was clouded.
I think Akers wanted to be "unconscious" so that the people who picked him up didnt notice he didnt have eyeballs.
Doctor Masters’s notes on her computer said that he clawed his eyes out. They knew.
Alprax on his desk. Alprazolam. That's Xanax. The man was on Zannies. Five years ago I was a different man when I first played this. Then a month ago, replayed it, and I really mellowed out with some Xans, really sunk into the lore and atmosphere, came across Delta, inspected the eyes, inspected the medicine box, saw the name Alprax, I thought that's a familiar name, could it... could it be...? I increased the texture detail, because my computer is weak, so I could see the blurred text on the box in greater detail. The texture blurred, and, in steps, increased its resolution, until it appeared. 'Alprazolam, 1 mg'.
Stared at it for a minute. I think. Don't remember. It was a long time. Then I neatly put it back on his desk, but only after making sure every tablet was gone.
Yeah, he ran out.
My mans was keeping sane with the xannies lmao
12:20 "The theory holds water"
Heyo. It's me again. I can't sleep again. Watching this again.