Hey! Future Tiptoe here. Thanks for checking out these videos! If you'd like to keep up on RUclips Community info, I'll be posting extra bits of info here in the future: ruclips.net/user/TiptoeTheTankcommunity As of this post, this is a relatively young channel. I've only really been around since the end of 2020. I hope to be around for the foreseeable future; I'm excited to watch this little passion project grow. More info and content will come with time! Thank you for being here so early in the game. PEACE! -Tip
I killed everybody except the wau now my reasoning was because these people were effectively in data loops they were either unable to recognize what they were or we're just stuck in a loop of consistently thinking they're in one spot with the only 2 exceptions being the 2 humans I meet both of which I killed out of mercy do the fact the 1 at the trams is effectively stuck, her heart and lungs have clearly been damaged and let's just say there's not gonna be any donors available With the one in the abyss well I rather let our species die out if there's only 1 of us left then watched that 1 left suffer slowly. My reason for sparing the wau though Was because it clearly showed the ability to learn The reason I noticed this was because I found a human body but it wasn't an organic one it was 1 that had completely robotic internal organs that look like they were being developed. My other reason for this belief that it can learn is the fact that you don't deal with the same type of monster twice they're very 1st when you meet clearly has a Understanding of what it's doing as if you listen to audio files you can hear it say shut up while it kills someone behind a door Implying that there is a consciousness there but it has gone insane as Catherine States because it has no other way of perceiving the world as it is now. The next one is The corrupted helper unit that clearly knows what's going on around it but it's just looking for areas to get more structure jail structure gel which as it says it's a thirsty which could imply that its low on power due to its flashing lights. If you consider Catherine a monster as well she's clearly a more successful iteration due to the fact that she's aware of what she has and where she is but isn't driven insane because of it. The wound has clearly shown it has an ability to learn hence why I spirit since it knows what it's doing when it comes to humanity it's learning as it goes along doing a classic human move of trial-and-error till you get it right.
if you want to check out a much happier version of a story like this then i would highly recommend the bobiverse books by dennis e. taylor, "we are legion (we are bob)" is one of my favourite light sci-fi stories.
Poor Simon. I feel like he is repressing the truth, subconsciously forcing himself to misunderstand. It's something I think would happen to me. Coping by misunderstanding.
Right? It's easier to "misunderstand" and blame others for your situation rather than accept your fate. With everything going on, it might also be easier to be mad and upset, rather than fully acknowledge that you basically sent a copy of your brain to an Eden, while you, in your body, were left to exist in a crumbling ruin, likely the last soul aboard beneath the sea
@trevor3013 True. He was the first scan. A scan that was done on older technology too, so we have no idea how primitive his scan was by comparison to everyone else's.
@@RosesTeaAndASD not only that, he also was in a car crash and has brain damage so he's a prototype brain damaged legacy scan, so of course he's going to be a little misunderstanding
Let's also acknowledge that Catherine was a gaslighting asshole for a lot of it. Watching recaps of it it's clear she uses words like "transfer" before it is done to give Simon hope and to get him to do what she wants and after a scan she's like "you know how it works it's not magic" girl that's not what you said 10 mins ago.
SOMA managed to struck a perfect balance between telling a meaningful story with philosophical themes, questions about existence, AND evoking feelings like sense of dread, horror, isolation and loneliness in the player by making the game world as immersive as it is. The amount of lore and fantastic world building here deserves nothing but praise. It wasn't scary like Amnesia, yes, but I think that was exactly by design. A lot of people judged this game after Amnesia that the monster encounters are less scary, but for me in this case, the horror came from it's physical world and the environment itself (coupled with the story): it managed to invoke those aformentioned feelings in me that made me uneasy, but at the same time, it made me appreciate it even more. For example, there is a very detailed descending sequence in the game that straight up almost invoke thalassophobia in me, it was that perfectly executed :) In today's "made-for-youtube-jumpscare" horror game releases, this game was a breath of fresh air and a unique gem that focused on the world building and story before everything else.
yeah i agree. its a game that appeals to any intellect. a deep thinker will love the philosophical aspect. a simpleton will just get a kick out of the horror/chase scenes. if they happen to click onto some of the deeper themes then great but its not essential for a good time. i love a good existential crisis but i also love a good sphincter-clenching chase sequence haha. regardless, thats how you do a game right
the bigest mistake the company made when they learned that the earth was going to die was double down on their ai projects, instead of sending down something to help sustain them, like an algae farm, or something to that effect.
As an acute care nurse, the Sarah Lindwall encounter stroke a deep cord in me. The scene was incredibly just in its writing and almost brought me to tears.
What a great analysis of what it feels like to play a story, that thing that only videogames can do. With SOMA I loved that I played right into Simon's point of view, and when I reached the end I also felt like "off course, they have been saying that it's copies throughout the whole game, why on Earth did I actually believe I would get to go?" It felt like a twist that had been hiding in plain sight from the beggining (if hiding at all). And it worked not because it was unexpected but because it was the culmination of the theme-conflict that we've been exploring all along. What a (relatively) quiet little master piece. And your video totally does it honor.
On my second playthrough, I decided not to kill Carl, Simon 2, Sarah and the WAU because I knew Simon 3 would be left behind. I thought that maybe Simon 3 would try to go back to the other stations and help them, so they wouldn't be alone. They could try to heal Carl and Sarah, fix one of the stations (technology seems to still work, so they could use the helper robots to restore a station and make new technology), form a small community and maybe Simon 3 could restore Catherine and make more Simons.
Actually, I think there is no way out of the abyss for Simon 3. Can you remember our long walk from the climber? At the last part of this walk we turned on a little helper robot so he can guide us to Tau cuz there were no lights. So, basically you won't get back to climber because you won't find a right path to it in the darkness and you'll probably end up being killed by WAU monsters. So there is no good ending for Simon 2 if he was left alive :(
I always kill Simon 2 for mercy exactly because, to advance in certain areas, we made the way impassable for anyone supposedly coming later. We ourselves couldn't go back, as if it's an open world, if we wanted, because of those obstacles. He would be trapped, without a Catherine to guide him, the same dangers that already threatened us and the same information that was already insufficient to make us understand wtf is happening. He would be stuck alone and ignorant until his power pack dies off and maybe in total darkness because the energy station we restarted is already running and we don't know how much energy his power pack still has. Cat's cortex chip short-circuited, the tram and the climber are not available, and apparently Ypsilon doesn't have a hatch to go outside. Even if it had, there's no tool for him to use anyway.
The thing that SOMA left with me is, if you are alone and I mean *TRULY* alone, your worst enemy is yourself. With perhaps the exception of Catherine, the only person that can judge you or your actions (Or I guess Simon's actions), is yourself and depending on who you are that can be worse then any amount of condemnation from another person.
Well, if you are alone as you say, there is nobody else. There's only _you_ . Therefore, you are at the same time your own best friend and your own worst enemy. So uh yeah :|
This game has one of the best stories in gaming history. If not THE best. I literally cried at the end and was constantly in a strange conflict of emotions during the game. This game is an emotional horror game. Not a traditional scarry one.
Ain't it a kick in the teeth, too? For a huge part of the game, we knew tragedy was waiting for whoever wasn't the Ark copy. But watching the left-behind Simon have the realization that he didn't make it on the Ark was tough.
Wow that's an incredibly well-made video covering all the events in SOMA from the start to the end! Thought it had *waaay* more views than just 5000. Damn, good job, really!
I feel there is a fundamental difference between being alive and "living". What good is years of maddening loneliness left not knowing what went wrong, why was I chosen to be alone? Left as the sole "survivor", left alone forever in a cold deep unforgiving world. It is human nature to search for company, comfort in any form. A human isn't human without others in some form, and as sad as it is sometimes true death is the only truth there is.
*addition* I realized this has been proven even more given the past pandemic. People were forcibly separated and in lue of face to face interaction, people found new ways to connect with other humans. Video chat became the new norm if only for a short while given human history. People dove into virtual reality to try to garner that feeling of human to human interaction regardless of their digital forms. Humanity has always found a way to have human interaction but it only truly works if there is more than just one sole "person" left.
even if i play this game a hundred times i wouldnt be able to tell its story the way you did, i don't know how you managed to collect all this details and put it together, this is just so beautiful
I played SOMA a few years ago now and still can't get it out of my mind. Still teared up at Simon's final recording as he was dying. A complete triumph of a game, with some of the best and more detailed backstory and consistent world-building ever made, and consistently great performances by voice actors. Great video.
@@TiptoeTheTank No thank you! :D I'm currently driving cross country and have downed about 5 of your videos so far. I'll be done with all your content before the road trip ends. Keep up the amazing work!!
I appreciated the tension in the lines between Simon and Cath, when starting the descent after taking the new body, which dissolved when they shared personal memories with each other. In general, I really like how the story and the characters develop as the game progresses. My mind started to associate Cath and Simon with reason and emotions during their quarrels. On the one hand, it may feel wrong of Simon to care only about his own qualia and not about experience of his other equally valuable versions. Like Cath said, “we” were sent to ARK after all and we saved the humanity along the way. On the other hand, we were not doing ourselves a favor per se because “they’re not us” as Simon accurately puts it. Mental states can be copy-pasted but not your self-experience (in the game universe). So it may feel like we did something completely altruistic by achieving nothing for ourselves and everything for “others” who are totally unrelated to us now. In terms of horror, I dig the style when throughout the game the protagonist discovers consequences of already occurred horrible events as we dive deeper into the worst while expecting or hoping for the best.
I just finished this and I'm finding all the analyses of this great game. I personally felt pretty good about the ending. We got our copies on the Ark, and like Catherine said, I felt happy for them, and proud that we'd done something pretty great to save something of humanity. It's as much of a legacy as anything. Seeing Simon on the Ark was reassuring to me, giving me closure that it worked and wasn't all for nothing.
I would love a sequel to this game where on the Ark, something was causing glitches that manifest as some kind of monsters from their subconscious (like in the movie Sphere) -- and if you're not careful, you'll be hunted. While trying to keep a low, friendly profile, you notice strange messages in the Ark, but they're either in a language you don't understand, or the information is too scrambled to make sense of. Over time it becomes increasingly difficult to avoid detection, so you find yourself running for your "life". Ultimately, aliens have discovered the Ark, which had been floating through space for 50,000 years -- having lost power like after only 1,000 years. The process of powering the Ark back on, which no one on the Ark even realized had happened, scrambled all of the information, melding personalities together and causing their fears to manifest as threats to one another. Before the aliens can restabilize the information, you (and others) need to avoid the increasing danger of other people's manifest terrors. You survive, of course, and once you are extracted into a new physical body (thanks to the aliens) you find out how long you'd been floating through space. You tell the aliens about the planet you're from, what happened to it, and that you'd like to know what happened after all these years. That could make for an interesting 3rd installment...
The fact Katherine would have non chalantly experimented with Simon's scan as part of her ARC project and KNEW who he was but kept silent about it the whole time is terrifying.
I love this game, truly. I've beat it a handful of times since I got it in 2015. I had just started my existential crisis stage in life, and thankfully this game helped ease me all the way overboard, and for weeks later I wasn't sure if anything was real and almost convinced myself I was in a synthetic purgatory. This game's more than an ambitious and interesting horror game. It's an amazing introspection into the meaning of reality and existence and exactly what a solid horror experience should be. Edit: Autocorrect fail
I feel like SOMA is and was underappreciated. For me, I can truly say SOMA is a rare masterpiece and it deserved far more than it got. Would love to play more games in this universe but would lose impact. Glad we got this gut punch of a classic once. Worth anyone's time.
This is one of the most beautiful videos I listened to on RUclips. I was doing some calligraphy and put it on because I loved SOMA to the ends of the Earth and I had to stop several times because this video is just like SOMA: haunting and beautiful. Thank you.
If you leave the WAU alive, I would love to see how it could evolve itself. With help from the brainscans it has, it would be neat to explore it retaking the surface.
Insane production value, this popped up on autoplay and I expected it to come from a channel with 300k subscribers. I usually avoid small channels like the plague (sue me 🤷🏽♂️) but this was really captivating.
I was very religious for a couple of decades and understand very well the capacity and the "need" for ditching critical thinking for the sake of keeping the hope of living forever. Despite any evidence, or lack thereof. Despite what scientists may say. It's called cognitive dissonance. And even though this makes Simon look like a dummy by the end, most of humankind lives in this cognitive dissonant state of mind. To live in denial is the rule, not the exception.
Hi! Big fan of your stuff! You mentioned in one bit of this video that a woman from TAU managed to get ahold of a tether and make her way back to the surface. I sort of want to look more into that, so if you know more about it, I'd be hella grateful!
Hi there, and thanks for checking out the content! The old SOMA site by Frictional has some great extra stories/info! That particular story is here: somagame.com/item-4540.html
This was amazing! I could only watch the playthrough of someone else, I'm a mom who doesn't have a lot of time to game. But I honestly felt for the WOW, it constitutes as a living organism, sentient too. It literally mourned its creator and attempted to bring him back... reminds me of FMA in that sense.
It was told to preserve human life but wasn't given a set definition of "preserve" "human" or "life" and had a limited toolset. Given that, it was doing some pretty good work and seemed like it was improving at restoring people.
Someone on Frictional Games forums described Simon's apparent inability to understand the idea of the copying like this: "So far, the game has put you (the player) through two scans. Both times, it switched your perspective to the copy's. Based on this pattern, the game will switch your perspective again: immediately after the scan, you will control Simon on the ARK. (Some players have said that this would be a better ending, and that returning to Phi after the credits would have a greater emotional impact.) Expecting a perspective flip is only reasonable; after all, it happened both of the previous times. This is exactly how Simon feels. At this point in the game, his experience perfectly matches the player's: he remembers being scanned in Toronto, waking up at Upsilon, being scanned at Omicron, and descending to the abyss. It's only here, at the very end, that the game breaks its own rules. Instead of switching perspective, it shows you what the original Simon sees. It cheats you out of seeing the ARK (until the post-credits scene). And just as you feel cheated, so does Simon." It's also a possible perspective that maybe Simon does understand the process before firing the gun but as soon as it's gone, purposelessness sets in, with jealousy at the minds in the ARK. People have also suggested that he's so irrational and emotionally childish because by then he's the result of a scan of a scan (I don't think anything in-game mentions this as a potential issue) and also originally a 'flat' or 'legacy' scan, from before advances made it more completely capture the whole brain which I think is mentioned. These maybe aren't necessary to explaining his attitude but maybe were intended to be considered.
during the flashing images at 17:20 you can see some white text. This, is code, specifically written in LISP (or some variant of LISP, there are _many_ ). LISP was used in AI research _a lot_ :D
Doesn't matter if there's a chance. I'd want to see the end. That's my greatest fear with dying normally, that the world carries on without me, a single blip on humanities radar. But no, I'd want to watch the last lights flicker, to see us fade from history, the last keeper of all of humanity, derelict.
Q1: No, I wouldn't want to survive. Q2: Carl man, i don't like your sass die painfully bro. Q3: End her suffering Q4:: Leave him with the battery Q5: No i left her Q6: I left the wow on Last question: Yes
one note to make is that the player controls three entities. The gameplay up until the first, pivotal, scan in Munchi's lab, is the original Simon. Since we're talking about a _scan_ this existence continues on without us. The game continues from the point of view of a scan of Simon's existence (consciousness+memory). This, is a separate entity. It is not a continuation of Simon's _existence_ . Again, when a copy is created for the deep diving suit. At that point, it is the third instance of Simon we control. We do not know how many there have been, before the start of the game.
I have to say, I absolutely adored this video. I've been feeling sick for quite a while, and horror game analysis videos have been quite a solace to me. SOMA is one of my particular favorites and I just discovered your channel through this video. I'm in awe of the way you present things and how the morality of Simon's / our own actions are described. I apologize for the rambling, I'm just very happy about this video and I'm looking forward to whatever content you put out in the future!
17 mins in， continuity theory seems a great way to make sense of the suicidal depression some of them must felt in pathos 2. Question 1: i am still an utilitarian so if i can't really benefit the mankind at that point i am not doing anything
Soma is without a doubt the most brutal and impactful game I have ever played. A horror game where the monsters aren’t that scary, where the real horror is the existential questions and unease created by its world and story. That image of Simon 3 left alone on the bottom of the ocean will haunt me forever.
damnnn Im subscribed to this channel last month why did i not see this video sooner, this is dope af i loved SOMA because of its lore and philosophical subjects
Small note: The entire game is from Simon-3's perspective and memories. Once the Ark is launched, Simon-3 (implicitly) kills himself (shortly after Catherine-2 short-circuits and dies) and they both wake up as Simon-4 and Cat-3 in the Ark. You're experiencing the continuity Sarang was talking about (which is also why it was explained in such detail)--so it's not an out of the blue happy ending, I see it more as a way to avoid making the ending even more explicitly dark (ex. "and then Simon-3 kills himself") while still building on the lore established in the game. The dark spot of hope.
It's still pretty depressing that mankind is forced into a digital existance. The ARK is more of a "man-made afterlife" than a way to contine the human race. Humanity is cut off from the physical world, doomed to die slowly alongside the ARK. I'm also convinced that the "Carthridge Consipracy" was all about pushing humanity to the next level with the WAU. Think about it, the WAU constructs are not only capable of interacting with the physical world, but they're also resilient, likely enough to live on the surface again. The ARK is just a slow but painless death, the WAU could've been a solution.
@@LetsChat but it means its expressed in some way, even if only faintly. the game doesnt imply either. we dont know if simon will kill himself or not. neither outcome is implied in the ending.
Both the idea of continuity and of a coin flip are incorrect, really. There's no transfer of a "soul" from one instance of the person to another, it's always a copy being made, an identical but discrete mind, which Simon possibly-deliberately repeatedly misunderstands. A new copy will remember the events before its creation but it's a new instance of the entity that experienced them, not the same one. The entire game until the credits is the experience-stream of Simon-3/powersuit Simon, from his memories of being flesh-and-blood Simon and then ductile suit Simon up til he discovers he's been Simon 3, not Ark-Simon, the whole time and the game ends. The post-credit scene is just an assurance that the Ark does work, to prevent the ending from being too grim, I guess. Catherine's chip-instance crashes due to intense emotion, which was a noted thing that could happen. TL,DR: Unless you believe in a soul, continuity was never even possible.
the story of soma is very interesting, and the overall question I was able to glean from its tale is thus. "What would you do when presented with the end and no real conceivable way out?." Would you fight and struggle to give yourself or at the very least someone else just a few more days in the sun, or will you succumb to the end, after all, there is no grand savior in the story who will bring humanity back from the brink your just prolonging the inevitable. even knowing what I do now about the story wouldn't change the choices I would make I would likely fight for that last stretch of time in paradise and as I said if not for me then for the other clone because I don't see a point in dying afraid and alone.
I only recently found your channel, and I adore it! Simon has experienced a tremendous brain injury before his scan. It's so tremendous that complications from it end his life. While they, his doctors, believe Simon has the capacity to make medical decisions for himself and consent to release ownership of his scans, I sincerely believe the brain trauma diminished his cognitive capacity to fully understand and comprehend many situations throughout Soma. I don't think Simon understands he's a copy of brainscans loaded into the bodies of others or onto the Ark. I don't think he has the capacity to understand that an equivalent copy remains in the upload source each time, since he had only experienced being the new copy. My own personal experiences with recognizing my possible cognitive impairments and a family member's experiences with developmental delays are certainly impacting my prospective though
I would have helped Amy. It just feels like the right thing to do, especially for someone who plans to destroy the WAU. And now after hearing your thoughts, it's easy to say leaving the WAU alive is the right answer. But I can't say I would have recognized that in the moment either. I would have recognized helping Amy as right, but I easily could have fallen into thinking that the WAU needed to die as I played the game. Leaving the WAU alive makes me wonder if someday human life in some form may live on Earth again. As for the Ark, the people unloaded to it, with perhaps the exception of Simon, all understand what it is. They have some concept of how long in Earth's measurements of time it will last. Depending on how Catherine designed it, she may be able to access the programming of the Ark from within. But without physical bodies, our physical concepts of time have no meaning. The only limitations of the Ark are its memory and power. In fact there's a light novel/anime/video game series that tackles this a bit, Sword Art Online. Specifically the third season Sword Art Online: Alicization. I'm only really familiar with the anime, and I recommend starting with season 1 to become appropriately invested in and knowledgeable of the main character and supporting cast. But season 3 can be a stand alone. Obviously the tone is VERY DIFFERENT than the overall tone of Soma. Thank you for the wonderful video!
A problem with Soma is that we don’t give the say-so to those we have to decide for. Being in a dangerous place, full of monstrous creatures and strange people, there was no luxury of sitting down and talking it out. We didn’t get to hear that other side of those topics. Not until the very end where we met the protector of the ARK.
Looking at all the pieces in this context, it really strikes me as borderline mythological or fantastical in its own grim manner. Like a Greek tragedy of the underworld. The souls of the living, and giving context on free will and what life and death really means. Its all very cool.
Fantastic video, really enjoyed this. Wonderful narration, writing, pacing, timeline, editing, everything. Great job! I forgot how fucking painful and bleak this game is. It really is one of the most moving and necessary games I could think to suggest to someone.
Thank you for the kind words! I honestly thought SOMA was just an 'underwater spooky horror' game before I played it. Dead Space and SOMA taught me to not have preconceived notions when going into a new story.
Even given the thesis, it truly is! It is a solid tossup between her and The Exploring Series ( an SCP and other pulp fiction content creator) as to which I will listen to over and over again for stress relief and lore.
If no one knows: SOMA is heavily based on the concept of Human Conscious Transfer Thought Theory also known in Cyber Punk setting as Mind Uploading, the principle of this idea is this: What is human? What defines you being human? Are you still YOU if there are multiple copies of you? and most importantly... What is consciousness? ALOT of varitions of these questions can be asked and that will result in differing answers for each question but at the core of the concept it is "Just WHAT exactly makes you... well YOU!?"
I would love a sequel of Soma. Where you’re Simon, and you get to explore the ARK. Maybe a tiny bit of the WAU made it on the ARK, and you and Catherine have to stop the WAU before it destroys the entire system.
In my first playthrough I decided to kill the WAU, but I regretted it. It's too late. There's nothing left to save from the WAU, everyone is either already dead, mutated, or enslaved by it, and killing it only eradicates the last trace of human and man-made life on the planet. The WAU resurrected Simon in a way in which he was fully lucid and self-aware, and with time, perhaps it could do the same to the rest of the brain scans on Pathos. There is potential for it to mutate positively, even if it's a slim chance. Regardless, there's nothing left for it to harm; so nothing is gained by killing it.
In terms of what makes us human I think this game highlights it with your choices. It's empathy. You tip toe for example second guessed each of your choices, think what could have happened, that's your empathy talking. A robot like the WAU has no empathy, it's given a job and its only purpose is to do that job consequences be damned. But if you were given the same job as the WAU you would think harder about what to do, weigh the pros and cons. That's what makes you human,
i went into this game almost completely blind, the only media i saw was one trailer. so i experienced everything as Simon did which i think made the game all the better. you also missed a character, she is in a robot body resting on the ocean floor. but anyway i also left alot of death in my wake. the only one i felt any hesitation about was sarah, i had simon ask her several times if she truly was ready to die, her being the only completely normal human left on the planet. the rest were in a sorry state like amy or just machines. also i swear i was able to keep carl alive because i remember the robot walking in and beating him to death, before i escaped. so i figured he was doomed regardless.
What saddens me most is Simon never got rest. His copies never got to pass when he already was accepting death but was hopeful and then when given a chance to finally be free and experience a heaven…he didn’t get it. Again his copy got to live on without him and shows how unfair the world truly is. He was also given aspirin which thins blood and worsened his condition faster on purpose too. It feels as if they wanted him to die so they could take him as a template. Consent or not, he signed away his soul technically and it’s sad.
I know there are way more sad games out there, but this game just gave me the feeling of everything being senseless and depressing. it hit a different part of me that I don't wanna ever wanna touch again.
Another thing I let 2nd Simon live cause there's 2 people in that body if the structure cell came in contact with the body after you kill 2nd Simon then the other person's put into a life of torment
Fantastic little video,this game makes you think,then question your decisions,just love that. I remember those lines from Star Trek,the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few,but what about the one,i.e. Us,were selfish sometimes,we can do great things,sacrifice ourselves for there's,but sometimes we're just selfish an don't do the right things.
This was an exeptional video. I have just played through SOMA and faced all the moral questions like you did - making this video even more touching. However, i left the WAU alive. because when akers gets you in the subway station, you have this odd dream-state where things seem quite... uplifting? better? only to realise later that it was induced by the WAU - mimicking Caths Arc. But if everyone in the WAUs grasp gets to live through fond memories or even a less depressing hallucination of better times - then the WAU does humanities remainder quite a service. Sure their real bodies look like deformed flesh-masses, but i dont think they know about that. and the WAU tries to make sure they dont realise it. perhaps with the structure gel all around pathos-II, all the live bodies are also connected - like all the people in the ark, able to interact with eachother. The only thing im still wondering tho is how imogene reeds head was replaced with the robotic visor that simon nr.2 started out with. who put that there? was that really the work of the WAU? a helper-robot ripping a corpses head off putting a visor and a battery in, along with some Structure Gel and a cortex chip? Shouldnt it just have reanimated her instead? Anyways, thank you for this well made video.
I think it didn't have a working scan of Imogen Reed. In the Transmissions series of shorts, her brain reacted badly to the scanning interface and she had a seizure the first time, then she refused to try getting scanned again by Catherine because she'd kinda gotten disillusioned with the idea of the Ark. The scan of her that the WAU got and put into the vivarium in the first short doesn't seem to have worked properly I guess. That, or the WAU remembered she'd been hostile to it and had shut the main power down at Upsilon, and decided to boot up someone else.
The background questions posed by Soma are the ones we already face in our world, which is being hit not by an asteriod, bur by our own actions. The difference, we don't have an ark
heres something i love about this game. it appeals to any intellect. a deep thinker will love the philosophical and moral side and a simpleton will just get a kick out of the horror/chase scenes. or a youtuber or casual gamer can fire it up for a bit of fun on halloween. the deeper side to the game isnt essential but it makes for a better experience. i love a good existential crisis as much as the next galaxy-level god-mode genius (sarcasm) but i also love a good sphincter-clenching chase sequence haha. the world is full both kinds of players, so if your game or movie only appeals to one of those demo's, youre gonna alienate the other side completely. so this game did it right. dropped a like for the video. i'm only half way through but i'm enjoying it. nice one
This is the first game in a LOOOOOONG time that after I finished... I just sat... And thought. And for a long time I thought. This game changed the way I thought. And i love it
Something hit me at the conclusion of the game. In reality, there isn't really a point where the credits conveniently start running, and the player is allowed to just end on the shock that they're not 'in paradise.' There are actually two options available to him: one is self-termination, the other is accepting he's an immortal AI that can infinitely copy himself, and has fine motor control. That has a slightly higher degree of potential on a wrecked planet, than a still-biological human. This scenario kinda depends on the player having a different personality than the plot supplied. Instead of killing or leaving his previous body asleep, he should have asked his assistant to wake him up. Then he would have a teammate with the exact same motivations and experiences as him. Do it a couple of times, and you can divvy up roles and responsibilities. One group of 'you' can focus on getting 'wow' under control. Another group can focus on repairing the other robots. Since none of you are 'human' you dont need air, food, or warmth, just make sure the power stays on and regular maintenance checks are happening. If you get the 'wow' to cooperate, you suddenly have a wonder material that can take on any attributes you need. This isn't to say that the first couple of years will be anything short of a psychological endurance test, but the big advantage you have over the 'you' in paradise, is the paradise doesn't really have much going for it. Its a simulation floating in space. Back on earth though, given enough time and the right resource investments, and the air will clear, and you'll have what amounts to a new civilization, building up from the ruins of humanity. lol, even typing this, it feels like a parody of this game's oppressive nature, but its not like scenario needs any pieces not already supplied in-game.
I like your thinking, but all things considered its a plan doomed to fail, unfortunately. The reason Simon-3 (power suit simon) couldn't "team up" with simon-2 (diving suit simon) is because Simon-2 wan't equipped to survive in the abyss - his suit wasn't built for the extreme pressure and he'll be crushed. Simon-3 had to take the journey down the climber alone (with Cath too, I guess) but he was forced to either kill Simon-2 or abandon him, not take him along the rest of the journey. If Simon-3 chooses to leave Simon-2 alive, I suppose he could head back up the climber to omicron and re-unite with Simon-2, tell him the Ark was launched successfully and go from there. They could work together and create a whole society of duplicated Simons, but given the unstable nature of brain-scan mockingbirds, I doubt it would last long before hell breaks loose once again. Even if the WAU is dead, a human brain scan in a robotic body is a perfect recipe for insanity. It was sheer luck that Simon-2 woke up in a human (Imogen Reed) body, and maintained sanity as a result. Simon 3 was immune to the effects on the WAU because he was created with the poisoned gel, functioning independently of the WAU. Therefore Simon-3 was able to survive even after he kills the WAU. I can't say the same for Simon-2 though, since he was directly created by the WAU using WAU-ified gel. The monsters are able to damage and kill Simon, so even if he doesn't need water, air and food, he's not immortal. Not by a long shot. Plus he runs on battery power which will eventually run out. There's a lot of obstacles in the way of Simon re-building civilisation. I doubt he'd be able to pull through with it anyway, given he doesn't fully understand the brain scan concept in the first place.
@@deviateedits Pretty much all the problems you mentioned are solvable. The overarching challenge is managing the risk. I'm going to cheat a little, because Simon is weak af. Catherine (? - I forget her name) is afraid Simon is one epiphany away from losing it. Her backup plan is a somewhat... stronger... personality: Olivier Armstrong ( :P ), which she uploads to a robot, under the same conditions as Simon. Olivier is explained the whole situation up front. She's told of the challenges, state of humanity, etc. Taking all this in stride, Olivier gets down to business. She uploads her own personality to all robots she can, forming a posse. This posse then ninja's their way into securing the robot manufacturing facility and personality data stores. By this point, she essentially starts mass producing herself. Some of the personalities come out insane, and are promptly executed. The batteries fail for a few, and those components get replaced. They're not opposed to hand-to-hand combat, and destroy / isolate all monsters using group tactics. I forget, but I think there are two Catherines as well? They join forces with the one that's not down with Simon 3. Since Olivier is way more intelligent than Simon, she knows not to overload Catherine's circuits, and is able to keep her operational throughout reconstruction. Upon finding the poisoned WAU substance, they use one of the numerous labs to reproduce it, and proceed to kill off the uncooperative WAU if it isn't dead already. While the Olivier army was fighting on the frontlines, retaking the station, the Olivier techies were hard at work pouring over the university articles stored in the underwater database. Since they're all computers, memory isn't really an issue. They then set to work pulling an underwater Dr. Stone, restoring aquatic facilities, capturing rogue robots and repurposing them, etc. If one Olivier falls, another takes her place. By this point, they're mostly self-sufficient, and its mostly a matter of playing 'catch up' to where humanity was before.
@@elam3654 But they're still not human and never can be, they're just cursed to live a meaningless existence for eternity with the same group of robo-clones on a ravaged planet.
@@DjDolHaus86 Humans can repair engines These robots can repair engines Humans can write books These robots can write books Humans can comment on youtube These robots can comment on youtube Humans can f*** These robots, with the right mods, can f*** Humans can 'swipe right' These robots can 'swipe right' Most of the game can be summarized: "Bumbling idiot gets strung along until he triggers a manic episode in his girl friend, who then gives him the silent treatment." ...that's depressingly human. XD
@@elam3654 Robots (as portrayed in the game) can't procreate, they can only put limited copies of personalities in shells. The rest of your points are hardly expressions of humanity. The game can be summarized as prolonging the suffering or easing the passing.
i mean, you can see the end coming miles away. but when it then happened, it still hit me hard. i am wondering if it would have been better if after the launch of the ark, we instantly go to the ark simon. do that part etc. and only after that we go back to the earth simon? not sure if that would have hit even harder or not...
being left alone, all by yourself for prolonged periods of time is considered inhumane torture. once you're dead, you're dead- you can't feel sad or happy because you simply do not exist, it's neutral.
I don't get why people are saying the ending is horrible/scary/depressing/whatever If it were me, I'd just go and make as many copies of myself as possible Doesn't matter whether it's using a human corpse, or mockingbirds I'll make dozens of copies of myself, and together we'll all work together to not only survive but take control of Pathos II, and then eventually find a way back to the surface and explore the world above It sounds like the beginning of an awesome adventure Again, no idea why people think the ending was sad or terrifying
The thing I always wonder is are there people on Mars making a colony I mean if their was a comic coming to destroy earth would people get ready to go to mars to save humanity
To me, the reaction of the people in the undersea installations is kind of hard to fathom. Ya see: Their stations were self-sufficient. The life on land might be screwed, but it is established that life in the Oceans is booming. You only need 15 individuals to sustain a healthy gene pool - they had over 80. They could have easily survived the catastrophe, for generations.
Hey! Future Tiptoe here. Thanks for checking out these videos! If you'd like to keep up on RUclips Community info, I'll be posting extra bits of info here in the future: ruclips.net/user/TiptoeTheTankcommunity
As of this post, this is a relatively young channel. I've only really been around since the end of 2020. I hope to be around for the foreseeable future; I'm excited to watch this little passion project grow. More info and content will come with time! Thank you for being here so early in the game. PEACE!
-Tip
Copy and paste violates quantum mechanics
I killed everybody except the wau now my reasoning was because these people were effectively in data loops they were either unable to recognize what they were or we're just stuck in a loop of consistently thinking they're in one spot with the only 2 exceptions being the 2 humans I meet both of which I killed out of mercy do the fact the 1 at the trams is effectively stuck, her heart and lungs have clearly been damaged and let's just say there's not gonna be any donors available With the one in the abyss well I rather let our species die out if there's only 1 of us left then watched that 1 left suffer slowly. My reason for sparing the wau though Was because it clearly showed the ability to learn The reason I noticed this was because I found a human body but it wasn't an organic one it was 1 that had completely robotic internal organs that look like they were being developed. My other reason for this belief that it can learn is the fact that you don't deal with the same type of monster twice they're very 1st when you meet clearly has a Understanding of what it's doing as if you listen to audio files you can hear it say shut up while it kills someone behind a door Implying that there is a consciousness there but it has gone insane as Catherine States because it has no other way of perceiving the world as it is now. The next one is The corrupted helper unit that clearly knows what's going on around it but it's just looking for areas to get more structure jail structure gel which as it says it's a thirsty which could imply that its low on power due to its flashing lights. If you consider Catherine a monster as well she's clearly a more successful iteration due to the fact that she's aware of what she has and where she is but isn't driven insane because of it. The wound has clearly shown it has an ability to learn hence why I spirit since it knows what it's doing when it comes to humanity it's learning as it goes along doing a classic human move of trial-and-error till you get it right.
if you want to check out a much happier version of a story like this then i would highly recommend the bobiverse books by dennis e. taylor, "we are legion (we are bob)" is one of my favourite light sci-fi stories.
Poor Simon. I feel like he is repressing the truth, subconsciously forcing himself to misunderstand. It's something I think would happen to me. Coping by misunderstanding.
Right? It's easier to "misunderstand" and blame others for your situation rather than accept your fate. With everything going on, it might also be easier to be mad and upset, rather than fully acknowledge that you basically sent a copy of your brain to an Eden, while you, in your body, were left to exist in a crumbling ruin, likely the last soul aboard beneath the sea
Well his scan is a basic incomplete scan. It's possible he doesn't even know better
@trevor3013 True. He was the first scan.
A scan that was done on older technology too, so we have no idea how primitive his scan was by comparison to everyone else's.
@@RosesTeaAndASD not only that, he also was in a car crash and has brain damage so he's a prototype brain damaged legacy scan, so of course he's going to be a little misunderstanding
Let's also acknowledge that Catherine was a gaslighting asshole for a lot of it.
Watching recaps of it it's clear she uses words like "transfer" before it is done to give Simon hope and to get him to do what she wants and after a scan she's like "you know how it works it's not magic" girl that's not what you said 10 mins ago.
To be fair, Amy said "It won't let me die" which sounds an awful lot like she *wants* to finally rest in peace.
SOMA is without doubt the most creative and best executed use of sci-fi in horror ever
SOMA managed to struck a perfect balance between telling a meaningful story with philosophical themes, questions about existence, AND evoking feelings like sense of dread, horror, isolation and loneliness in the player by making the game world as immersive as it is. The amount of lore and fantastic world building here deserves nothing but praise.
It wasn't scary like Amnesia, yes, but I think that was exactly by design. A lot of people judged this game after Amnesia that the monster encounters are less scary, but for me in this case, the horror came from it's physical world and the environment itself (coupled with the story): it managed to invoke those aformentioned feelings in me that made me uneasy, but at the same time, it made me appreciate it even more. For example, there is a very detailed descending sequence in the game that straight up almost invoke thalassophobia in me, it was that perfectly executed :)
In today's "made-for-youtube-jumpscare" horror game releases, this game was a breath of fresh air and a unique gem that focused on the world building and story before everything else.
yeah i agree. its a game that appeals to any intellect. a deep thinker will love the philosophical aspect. a simpleton will just get a kick out of the horror/chase scenes. if they happen to click onto some of the deeper themes then great but its not essential for a good time. i love a good existential crisis but i also love a good sphincter-clenching chase sequence haha. regardless, thats how you do a game right
Totally agree!
the bigest mistake the company made when they learned that the earth was going to die was double down on their ai projects, instead of sending down something to help sustain them, like an algae farm, or something to that effect.
50+ people can't revive a species
@@bombomostell that to the Bible tum dum tsk
As an acute care nurse, the Sarah Lindwall encounter stroke a deep cord in me. The scene was incredibly just in its writing and almost brought me to tears.
I take "It won't let me die, Nothing is allowed to die" as a lamentation. She wants to die, but can't.
What a great analysis of what it feels like to play a story, that thing that only videogames can do. With SOMA I loved that I played right into Simon's point of view, and when I reached the end I also felt like "off course, they have been saying that it's copies throughout the whole game, why on Earth did I actually believe I would get to go?" It felt like a twist that had been hiding in plain sight from the beggining (if hiding at all). And it worked not because it was unexpected but because it was the culmination of the theme-conflict that we've been exploring all along. What a (relatively) quiet little master piece. And your video totally does it honor.
On my second playthrough, I decided not to kill Carl, Simon 2, Sarah and the WAU because I knew Simon 3 would be left behind. I thought that maybe Simon 3 would try to go back to the other stations and help them, so they wouldn't be alone. They could try to heal Carl and Sarah, fix one of the stations (technology seems to still work, so they could use the helper robots to restore a station and make new technology), form a small community and maybe Simon 3 could restore Catherine and make more Simons.
This is a fast track to vault 108 "Simon" "Simon" "Hahaha Simon"
Actually, I think there is no way out of the abyss for Simon 3. Can you remember our long walk from the climber? At the last part of this walk we turned on a little helper robot so he can guide us to Tau cuz there were no lights. So, basically you won't get back to climber because you won't find a right path to it in the darkness and you'll probably end up being killed by WAU monsters. So there is no good ending for Simon 2 if he was left alive :(
Assuming any of the monsters doesn't kill him.
@@WarriorWOLF13 Siiiiimmmoooooooon!?
I always kill Simon 2 for mercy exactly because, to advance in certain areas, we made the way impassable for anyone supposedly coming later. We ourselves couldn't go back, as if it's an open world, if we wanted, because of those obstacles. He would be trapped, without a Catherine to guide him, the same dangers that already threatened us and the same information that was already insufficient to make us understand wtf is happening. He would be stuck alone and ignorant until his power pack dies off and maybe in total darkness because the energy station we restarted is already running and we don't know how much energy his power pack still has. Cat's cortex chip short-circuited, the tram and the climber are not available, and apparently Ypsilon doesn't have a hatch to go outside. Even if it had, there's no tool for him to use anyway.
The thing that SOMA left with me is, if you are alone and I mean *TRULY* alone, your worst enemy is yourself. With perhaps the exception of Catherine, the only person that can judge you or your actions (Or I guess Simon's actions), is yourself and depending on who you are that can be worse then any amount of condemnation from another person.
Well, if you are alone as you say, there is nobody else. There's only _you_ . Therefore, you are at the same time your own best friend and your own worst enemy. So uh yeah :|
This game has one of the best stories in gaming history. If not THE best. I literally cried at the end and was constantly in a strange conflict of emotions during the game. This game is an emotional horror game. Not a traditional scarry one.
The coin flip will forever be the biggest take away for me in this game. Such an amazing concept
Ain't it a kick in the teeth, too? For a huge part of the game, we knew tragedy was waiting for whoever wasn't the Ark copy. But watching the left-behind Simon have the realization that he didn't make it on the Ark was tough.
@@TiptoeTheTank its a copy lol .there are 2 Simons and game switched perspective to the one left behind . there is no REAL simon
@@gamesthatmatter9374 Who said it was a real Simon? What is real anyway?
@@gamesthatmatter9374 there was a real simon but he died. Its a what is a soul concept of philosophy that makes this game fun
@@arturoarturovich4773 Yeah this. You can't "win". The copy lives on after you copy it. You never swap to the copy.
Same kind of vibe as The Prestige.
Wow that's an incredibly well-made video covering all the events in SOMA from the start to the end! Thought it had *waaay* more views than just 5000. Damn, good job, really!
Soma doesn't scare you with monsters, it horrifies you with it's choices.
I feel there is a fundamental difference between being alive and "living". What good is years of maddening loneliness left not knowing what went wrong, why was I chosen to be alone? Left as the sole "survivor", left alone forever in a cold deep unforgiving world. It is human nature to search for company, comfort in any form. A human isn't human without others in some form, and as sad as it is sometimes true death is the only truth there is.
*addition* I realized this has been proven even more given the past pandemic. People were forcibly separated and in lue of face to face interaction, people found new ways to connect with other humans. Video chat became the new norm if only for a short while given human history. People dove into virtual reality to try to garner that feeling of human to human interaction regardless of their digital forms. Humanity has always found a way to have human interaction but it only truly works if there is more than just one sole "person" left.
even if i play this game a hundred times i wouldnt be able to tell its story the way you did, i don't know how you managed to collect all this details and put it together, this is just so beautiful
I played SOMA a few years ago now and still can't get it out of my mind. Still teared up at Simon's final recording as he was dying. A complete triumph of a game, with some of the best and more detailed backstory and consistent world-building ever made, and consistently great performances by voice actors. Great video.
Absolutely best video I've found on Soma I've found discussing the entire lore condensed.
SUBSCRIBED!!
Thank you very much! That's an immense compliment.
@@TiptoeTheTank No thank you! :D I'm currently driving cross country and have downed about 5 of your videos so far. I'll be done with all your content before the road trip ends. Keep up the amazing work!!
I appreciated the tension in the lines between Simon and Cath, when starting the descent after taking the new body, which dissolved when they shared personal memories with each other. In general, I really like how the story and the characters develop as the game progresses.
My mind started to associate Cath and Simon with reason and emotions during their quarrels. On the one hand, it may feel wrong of Simon to care only about his own qualia and not about experience of his other equally valuable versions. Like Cath said, “we” were sent to ARK after all and we saved the humanity along the way.
On the other hand, we were not doing ourselves a favor per se because “they’re not us” as Simon accurately puts it. Mental states can be copy-pasted but not your self-experience (in the game universe). So it may feel like we did something completely altruistic by achieving nothing for ourselves and everything for “others” who are totally unrelated to us now.
In terms of horror, I dig the style when throughout the game the protagonist discovers consequences of already occurred horrible events as we dive deeper into the worst while expecting or hoping for the best.
I just finished this and I'm finding all the analyses of this great game. I personally felt pretty good about the ending. We got our copies on the Ark, and like Catherine said, I felt happy for them, and proud that we'd done something pretty great to save something of humanity. It's as much of a legacy as anything. Seeing Simon on the Ark was reassuring to me, giving me closure that it worked and wasn't all for nothing.
I would love a sequel to this game where on the Ark, something was causing glitches that manifest as some kind of monsters from their subconscious (like in the movie Sphere) -- and if you're not careful, you'll be hunted. While trying to keep a low, friendly profile, you notice strange messages in the Ark, but they're either in a language you don't understand, or the information is too scrambled to make sense of. Over time it becomes increasingly difficult to avoid detection, so you find yourself running for your "life".
Ultimately, aliens have discovered the Ark, which had been floating through space for 50,000 years -- having lost power like after only 1,000 years. The process of powering the Ark back on, which no one on the Ark even realized had happened, scrambled all of the information, melding personalities together and causing their fears to manifest as threats to one another. Before the aliens can restabilize the information, you (and others) need to avoid the increasing danger of other people's manifest terrors.
You survive, of course, and once you are extracted into a new physical body (thanks to the aliens) you find out how long you'd been floating through space. You tell the aliens about the planet you're from, what happened to it, and that you'd like to know what happened after all these years. That could make for an interesting 3rd installment...
Right ON! That sounds AWESOME!
Yo……that sounds awesome
The fact Katherine would have non chalantly experimented with Simon's scan as part of her ARC project and KNEW who he was but kept silent about it the whole time is terrifying.
OMG i am forever going to use this, "what would the consequences be if you took a dump under their windshield wipers?" FOREVER, best analogy EVER
Such a great analysis of my all-time favourite game and story. You've earned yourself a sub!
I love this game, truly. I've beat it a handful of times since I got it in 2015. I had just started my existential crisis stage in life, and thankfully this game helped ease me all the way overboard, and for weeks later I wasn't sure if anything was real and almost convinced myself I was in a synthetic purgatory. This game's more than an ambitious and interesting horror game. It's an amazing introspection into the meaning of reality and existence and exactly what a solid horror experience should be.
Edit: Autocorrect fail
After 2 years it's still the best analysis of Soma that I've seen
I don't really think there's good or bad ending here I think it's just people making choices that they think we're right at the time.
I LOVE Soma, I watched too many videos one it. And yours's. Your video is the one I keep returning to.
I feel like SOMA is and was underappreciated.
For me, I can truly say SOMA is a rare masterpiece and it deserved far more than it got.
Would love to play more games in this universe but would lose impact.
Glad we got this gut punch of a classic once. Worth anyone's time.
Wish you the best for your channel, loving those vids. It's nice to have something else than an overdramatic deep voice trying to be creepy.
This video is pure gold, buried in the desert of RUclips algorithm
The least I can do is to leave a like and subscribe!
This is one of the most beautiful videos I listened to on RUclips. I was doing some calligraphy and put it on because I loved SOMA to the ends of the Earth and I had to stop several times because this video is just like SOMA: haunting and beautiful. Thank you.
If you leave the WAU alive, I would love to see how it could evolve itself.
With help from the brainscans it has, it would be neat to explore it retaking the surface.
Never played myself, but this Lore always gets me reflecting on the concept of what is a soul
Insane production value, this popped up on autoplay and I expected it to come from a channel with 300k subscribers. I usually avoid small channels like the plague (sue me 🤷🏽♂️) but this was really captivating.
Thank you for giving it a chance! And for the kind words
May i ask why you avoid small channels? /genuine
This is wonderfully laid out. just makes me wonder what could've happened if this were made into a fully fledged film series
I think it would be great for a show honestly
I was very religious for a couple of decades and understand very well the capacity and the "need" for ditching critical thinking for the sake of keeping the hope of living forever. Despite any evidence, or lack thereof. Despite what scientists may say. It's called cognitive dissonance. And even though this makes Simon look like a dummy by the end, most of humankind lives in this cognitive dissonant state of mind.
To live in denial is the rule, not the exception.
Hi! Big fan of your stuff! You mentioned in one bit of this video that a woman from TAU managed to get ahold of a tether and make her way back to the surface. I sort of want to look more into that, so if you know more about it, I'd be hella grateful!
Hi there, and thanks for checking out the content! The old SOMA site by Frictional has some great extra stories/info!
That particular story is here: somagame.com/item-4540.html
@@TiptoeTheTank Thank you!!!
This was amazing! I could only watch the playthrough of someone else, I'm a mom who doesn't have a lot of time to game. But I honestly felt for the WOW, it constitutes as a living organism, sentient too. It literally mourned its creator and attempted to bring him back... reminds me of FMA in that sense.
It was told to preserve human life but wasn't given a set definition of "preserve" "human" or "life" and had a limited toolset. Given that, it was doing some pretty good work and seemed like it was improving at restoring people.
Someone on Frictional Games forums described Simon's apparent inability to understand the idea of the copying like this:
"So far, the game has put you (the player) through two scans. Both times, it switched your perspective to the copy's. Based on this pattern, the game will switch your perspective again: immediately after the scan, you will control Simon on the ARK. (Some players have said that this would be a better ending, and that returning to Phi after the credits would have a greater emotional impact.) Expecting a perspective flip is only reasonable; after all, it happened both of the previous times.
This is exactly how Simon feels. At this point in the game, his experience perfectly matches the player's: he remembers being scanned in Toronto, waking up at Upsilon, being scanned at Omicron, and descending to the abyss. It's only here, at the very end, that the game breaks its own rules. Instead of switching perspective, it shows you what the original Simon sees. It cheats you out of seeing the ARK (until the post-credits scene). And just as you feel cheated, so does Simon."
It's also a possible perspective that maybe Simon does understand the process before firing the gun but as soon as it's gone, purposelessness sets in, with jealousy at the minds in the ARK. People have also suggested that he's so irrational and emotionally childish because by then he's the result of a scan of a scan (I don't think anything in-game mentions this as a potential issue) and also originally a 'flat' or 'legacy' scan, from before advances made it more completely capture the whole brain which I think is mentioned. These maybe aren't necessary to explaining his attitude but maybe were intended to be considered.
Woman. Your channel is just a brilliant and massively underrated. Let the algorithms bless you
Congrats, incredible thorough analysis, you really went so deep into the details of it.
during the flashing images at 17:20 you can see some white text. This, is code, specifically written in LISP (or some variant of LISP, there are _many_ ). LISP was used in AI research _a lot_ :D
Doesn't matter if there's a chance. I'd want to see the end. That's my greatest fear with dying normally, that the world carries on without me, a single blip on humanities radar. But no, I'd want to watch the last lights flicker, to see us fade from history, the last keeper of all of humanity, derelict.
I love soma!!! I speed run it from time to time! Great work I’m enjoying these lore videos, keep it up!
Q1: No, I wouldn't want to survive.
Q2: Carl man, i don't like your sass die painfully bro.
Q3: End her suffering
Q4:: Leave him with the battery
Q5: No i left her
Q6: I left the wow on
Last question: Yes
fuck me, sarah gets me crying everytime.
one note to make is that the player controls three entities. The gameplay up until the first, pivotal, scan in Munchi's lab, is the original Simon. Since we're talking about a _scan_ this existence continues on without us. The game continues from the point of view of a scan of Simon's existence (consciousness+memory). This, is a separate entity. It is not a continuation of Simon's _existence_ . Again, when a copy is created for the deep diving suit. At that point, it is the third instance of Simon we control.
We do not know how many there have been, before the start of the game.
I have to say, I absolutely adored this video. I've been feeling sick for quite a while, and horror game analysis videos have been quite a solace to me.
SOMA is one of my particular favorites and I just discovered your channel through this video. I'm in awe of the way you present things and how the morality of Simon's / our own actions are described.
I apologize for the rambling, I'm just very happy about this video and I'm looking forward to whatever content you put out in the future!
17 mins in， continuity theory seems a great way to make sense of the suicidal depression some of them must felt in pathos 2. Question 1: i am still an utilitarian so if i can't really benefit the mankind at that point i am not doing anything
Soma is without a doubt the most brutal and impactful game I have ever played. A horror game where the monsters aren’t that scary, where the real horror is the existential questions and unease created by its world and story. That image of Simon 3 left alone on the bottom of the ocean will haunt me forever.
Honestly? It's less about curiosity for me and more a fear of death. I'd like to be one of them but only because I'm terrified of dying.
damnnn Im subscribed to this channel last month why did i not see this video sooner, this is dope af i loved SOMA because of its lore and philosophical subjects
Small note: The entire game is from Simon-3's perspective and memories. Once the Ark is launched, Simon-3 (implicitly) kills himself (shortly after Catherine-2 short-circuits and dies) and they both wake up as Simon-4 and Cat-3 in the Ark. You're experiencing the continuity Sarang was talking about (which is also why it was explained in such detail)--so it's not an out of the blue happy ending, I see it more as a way to avoid making the ending even more explicitly dark (ex. "and then Simon-3 kills himself") while still building on the lore established in the game. The dark spot of hope.
It's still pretty depressing that mankind is forced into a digital existance. The ARK is more of a "man-made afterlife" than a way to contine the human race. Humanity is cut off from the physical world, doomed to die slowly alongside the ARK.
I'm also convinced that the "Carthridge Consipracy" was all about pushing humanity to the next level with the WAU. Think about it, the WAU constructs are not only capable of interacting with the physical world, but they're also resilient, likely enough to live on the surface again.
The ARK is just a slow but painless death, the WAU could've been a solution.
"Simon-3 (implicitly) kills himself" how so? i didnt notice any implication that he kills himself.
Implicit literally means not plainly expressed. Looking for/detailing implicit tells is like answering a rhetorical question.
@@LetsChat but it means its expressed in some way, even if only faintly. the game doesnt imply either. we dont know if simon will kill himself or not. neither outcome is implied in the ending.
Both the idea of continuity and of a coin flip are incorrect, really. There's no transfer of a "soul" from one instance of the person to another, it's always a copy being made, an identical but discrete mind, which Simon possibly-deliberately repeatedly misunderstands. A new copy will remember the events before its creation but it's a new instance of the entity that experienced them, not the same one.
The entire game until the credits is the experience-stream of Simon-3/powersuit Simon, from his memories of being flesh-and-blood Simon and then ductile suit Simon up til he discovers he's been Simon 3, not Ark-Simon, the whole time and the game ends. The post-credit scene is just an assurance that the Ark does work, to prevent the ending from being too grim, I guess.
Catherine's chip-instance crashes due to intense emotion, which was a noted thing that could happen.
TL,DR: Unless you believe in a soul, continuity was never even possible.
the story of soma is very interesting, and the overall question I was able to glean from its tale is thus. "What would you do when presented with the end and no real conceivable way out?." Would you fight and struggle to give yourself or at the very least someone else just a few more days in the sun, or will you succumb to the end, after all, there is no grand savior in the story who will bring humanity back from the brink your just prolonging the inevitable. even knowing what I do now about the story wouldn't change the choices I would make I would likely fight for that last stretch of time in paradise and as I said if not for me then for the other clone because I don't see a point in dying afraid and alone.
I only recently found your channel, and I adore it!
Simon has experienced a tremendous brain injury before his scan. It's so tremendous that complications from it end his life. While they, his doctors, believe Simon has the capacity to make medical decisions for himself and consent to release ownership of his scans, I sincerely believe the brain trauma diminished his cognitive capacity to fully understand and comprehend many situations throughout Soma.
I don't think Simon understands he's a copy of brainscans loaded into the bodies of others or onto the Ark. I don't think he has the capacity to understand that an equivalent copy remains in the upload source each time, since he had only experienced being the new copy.
My own personal experiences with recognizing my possible cognitive impairments and a family member's experiences with developmental delays are certainly impacting my prospective though
I would have helped Amy. It just feels like the right thing to do, especially for someone who plans to destroy the WAU. And now after hearing your thoughts, it's easy to say leaving the WAU alive is the right answer. But I can't say I would have recognized that in the moment either. I would have recognized helping Amy as right, but I easily could have fallen into thinking that the WAU needed to die as I played the game. Leaving the WAU alive makes me wonder if someday human life in some form may live on Earth again.
As for the Ark, the people unloaded to it, with perhaps the exception of Simon, all understand what it is. They have some concept of how long in Earth's measurements of time it will last. Depending on how Catherine designed it, she may be able to access the programming of the Ark from within. But without physical bodies, our physical concepts of time have no meaning. The only limitations of the Ark are its memory and power.
In fact there's a light novel/anime/video game series that tackles this a bit, Sword Art Online. Specifically the third season Sword Art Online: Alicization. I'm only really familiar with the anime, and I recommend starting with season 1 to become appropriately invested in and knowledgeable of the main character and supporting cast. But season 3 can be a stand alone. Obviously the tone is VERY DIFFERENT than the overall tone of Soma.
Thank you for the wonderful video!
Such a great video... And really evoking of the feelings I did had (and still have) while playing (living?)
This game truly broke me....
A problem with Soma is that we don’t give the say-so to those we have to decide for. Being in a dangerous place, full of monstrous creatures and strange people, there was no luxury of sitting down and talking it out. We didn’t get to hear that other side of those topics. Not until the very end where we met the protector of the ARK.
Looking at all the pieces in this context, it really strikes me as borderline mythological or fantastical in its own grim manner.
Like a Greek tragedy of the underworld. The souls of the living, and giving context on free will and what life and death really means. Its all very cool.
Fantastic video, really enjoyed this. Wonderful narration, writing, pacing, timeline, editing, everything. Great job!
I forgot how fucking painful and bleak this game is. It really is one of the most moving and necessary games I could think to suggest to someone.
Thank you for the kind words!
I honestly thought SOMA was just an 'underwater spooky horror' game before I played it. Dead Space and SOMA taught me to not have preconceived notions when going into a new story.
honestly, Simon begging to not be left alone at the end still haunts me to this day.
Finest SOMA video I've seen. Very well done.
I love your voice. It's so relaxing.
Even given the thesis, it truly is! It is a solid tossup between her and The Exploring Series ( an SCP and other pulp fiction content creator) as to which I will listen to over and over again for stress relief and lore.
@@Aramakie98 I love her style. Somehow, I've managed to stay away from the whole SCP universe, but I may give The Exploring Series a try.
The scary part of this game, aside the deep sea monsters, is the moral questions that the brain won't shut up around bedtime.
Such an amazing game. I’ve played it many times over many years and I still think of its bigger themes often.
If no one knows: SOMA is heavily based on the concept of Human Conscious Transfer Thought Theory also known in Cyber Punk setting as Mind Uploading, the principle of this idea is this:
What is human? What defines you being human? Are you still YOU if there are multiple copies of you? and most importantly... What is consciousness? ALOT of varitions of these questions can be asked and that will result in differing answers for each question but at the core of the concept it is "Just WHAT exactly makes you... well YOU!?"
- what gives me the right to destroy the wau?
- it's a machine. it doesn't think. it's nothing. also because I can.
I would love a sequel of Soma. Where you’re Simon, and you get to explore the ARK. Maybe a tiny bit of the WAU made it on the ARK, and you and Catherine have to stop the WAU before it destroys the entire system.
These vids give me hope for 2021.
Thank you. Having/making these vids gives me hope for 2021. The people that have been showing up are pretty cool too. ☺️
In my first playthrough I decided to kill the WAU, but I regretted it. It's too late. There's nothing left to save from the WAU, everyone is either already dead, mutated, or enslaved by it, and killing it only eradicates the last trace of human and man-made life on the planet.
The WAU resurrected Simon in a way in which he was fully lucid and self-aware, and with time, perhaps it could do the same to the rest of the brain scans on Pathos. There is potential for it to mutate positively, even if it's a slim chance. Regardless, there's nothing left for it to harm; so nothing is gained by killing it.
In terms of what makes us human I think this game highlights it with your choices. It's empathy. You tip toe for example second guessed each of your choices, think what could have happened, that's your empathy talking. A robot like the WAU has no empathy, it's given a job and its only purpose is to do that job consequences be damned. But if you were given the same job as the WAU you would think harder about what to do, weigh the pros and cons. That's what makes you human,
i went into this game almost completely blind, the only media i saw was one trailer. so i experienced everything as Simon did which i think made the game all the better.
you also missed a character, she is in a robot body resting on the ocean floor.
but anyway i also left alot of death in my wake. the only one i felt any hesitation about was sarah, i had simon ask her several times if she truly was ready to die, her being the only completely normal human left on the planet. the rest were in a sorry state like amy or just machines.
also i swear i was able to keep carl alive because i remember the robot walking in and beating him to death, before i escaped. so i figured he was doomed regardless.
What saddens me most is Simon never got rest. His copies never got to pass when he already was accepting death but was hopeful and then when given a chance to finally be free and experience a heaven…he didn’t get it. Again his copy got to live on without him and shows how unfair the world truly is. He was also given aspirin which thins blood and worsened his condition faster on purpose too. It feels as if they wanted him to die so they could take him as a template. Consent or not, he signed away his soul technically and it’s sad.
enchanting voice. amazing vid. suscribed m'lady
I know there are way more sad games out there, but this game just gave me the feeling of everything being senseless and depressing. it hit a different part of me that I don't wanna ever wanna touch again.
Could you imagine if the ark was set to horror mode and no one could change it. Only to end up reliving everything month after month😳
The name "omicron" for a station hits do differently now-
Another thing I let 2nd Simon live cause there's 2 people in that body if the structure cell came in contact with the body after you kill 2nd Simon then the other person's put into a life of torment
I feel that the "coin flip" was the carrot before the horse. I just feel that there was no chance of Simon 3 transferring to the ark.
Fantastic little video,this game makes you think,then question your decisions,just love that.
I remember those lines from Star Trek,the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few,but what about the one,i.e. Us,were selfish sometimes,we can do great things,sacrifice ourselves for there's,but sometimes we're just selfish an don't do the right things.
This was an exeptional video. I have just played through SOMA and faced all the moral questions like you did - making this video even more touching. However, i left the WAU alive. because when akers gets you in the subway station, you have this odd dream-state where things seem quite... uplifting? better? only to realise later that it was induced by the WAU - mimicking Caths Arc. But if everyone in the WAUs grasp gets to live through fond memories or even a less depressing hallucination of better times - then the WAU does humanities remainder quite a service. Sure their real bodies look like deformed flesh-masses, but i dont think they know about that. and the WAU tries to make sure they dont realise it. perhaps with the structure gel all around pathos-II, all the live bodies are also connected - like all the people in the ark, able to interact with eachother.
The only thing im still wondering tho is how imogene reeds head was replaced with the robotic visor that simon nr.2 started out with. who put that there? was that really the work of the WAU? a helper-robot ripping a corpses head off putting a visor and a battery in, along with some Structure Gel and a cortex chip? Shouldnt it just have reanimated her instead?
Anyways, thank you for this well made video.
I think it didn't have a working scan of Imogen Reed. In the Transmissions series of shorts, her brain reacted badly to the scanning interface and she had a seizure the first time, then she refused to try getting scanned again by Catherine because she'd kinda gotten disillusioned with the idea of the Ark. The scan of her that the WAU got and put into the vivarium in the first short doesn't seem to have worked properly I guess. That, or the WAU remembered she'd been hostile to it and had shut the main power down at Upsilon, and decided to boot up someone else.
Wow. Even after two playthroughs of this game, I knew NONE of this. Thanks so much for enlightening us!
That last choice at the end, seeing her on lifesupport, starving , truly sad and signifying thatvour days on earth are numbered,
The background questions posed by Soma are the ones we already face in our world, which is being hit not by an asteriod, bur by our own actions. The difference, we don't have an ark
I like your observations and takes of the themes of SOMA, nice video, wish I would have found it sooner
heres something i love about this game. it appeals to any intellect. a deep thinker will love the philosophical and moral side and a simpleton will just get a kick out of the horror/chase scenes. or a youtuber or casual gamer can fire it up for a bit of fun on halloween. the deeper side to the game isnt essential but it makes for a better experience. i love a good existential crisis as much as the next galaxy-level god-mode genius (sarcasm) but i also love a good sphincter-clenching chase sequence haha. the world is full both kinds of players, so if your game or movie only appeals to one of those demo's, youre gonna alienate the other side completely. so this game did it right.
dropped a like for the video. i'm only half way through but i'm enjoying it. nice one
This is the first game in a LOOOOOONG time that after I finished...
I just sat... And thought.
And for a long time I thought. This game changed the way I thought. And i love it
The most scariest thing about soma is the cholices you run into
Soma is by far one of my top 5 favorite games, I've played though the game at least several dozen times.
That was an excellent explanation/analysis, great video 👍
The brain injury equivalent to taking a dump under someone’s windshield wipers rofl ❤️❤️❤️
Always love reading comments to see others view on this
Something hit me at the conclusion of the game. In reality, there isn't really a point where the credits conveniently start running, and the player is allowed to just end on the shock that they're not 'in paradise.' There are actually two options available to him: one is self-termination, the other is accepting he's an immortal AI that can infinitely copy himself, and has fine motor control. That has a slightly higher degree of potential on a wrecked planet, than a still-biological human.
This scenario kinda depends on the player having a different personality than the plot supplied. Instead of killing or leaving his previous body asleep, he should have asked his assistant to wake him up. Then he would have a teammate with the exact same motivations and experiences as him. Do it a couple of times, and you can divvy up roles and responsibilities. One group of 'you' can focus on getting 'wow' under control. Another group can focus on repairing the other robots. Since none of you are 'human' you dont need air, food, or warmth, just make sure the power stays on and regular maintenance checks are happening.
If you get the 'wow' to cooperate, you suddenly have a wonder material that can take on any attributes you need.
This isn't to say that the first couple of years will be anything short of a psychological endurance test, but the big advantage you have over the 'you' in paradise, is the paradise doesn't really have much going for it. Its a simulation floating in space.
Back on earth though, given enough time and the right resource investments, and the air will clear, and you'll have what amounts to a new civilization, building up from the ruins of humanity.
lol, even typing this, it feels like a parody of this game's oppressive nature, but its not like scenario needs any pieces not already supplied in-game.
I like your thinking, but all things considered its a plan doomed to fail, unfortunately.
The reason Simon-3 (power suit simon) couldn't "team up" with simon-2 (diving suit simon) is because Simon-2 wan't equipped to survive in the abyss - his suit wasn't built for the extreme pressure and he'll be crushed. Simon-3 had to take the journey down the climber alone (with Cath too, I guess) but he was forced to either kill Simon-2 or abandon him, not take him along the rest of the journey.
If Simon-3 chooses to leave Simon-2 alive, I suppose he could head back up the climber to omicron and re-unite with Simon-2, tell him the Ark was launched successfully and go from there. They could work together and create a whole society of duplicated Simons, but given the unstable nature of brain-scan mockingbirds, I doubt it would last long before hell breaks loose once again. Even if the WAU is dead, a human brain scan in a robotic body is a perfect recipe for insanity. It was sheer luck that Simon-2 woke up in a human (Imogen Reed) body, and maintained sanity as a result.
Simon 3 was immune to the effects on the WAU because he was created with the poisoned gel, functioning independently of the WAU. Therefore Simon-3 was able to survive even after he kills the WAU. I can't say the same for Simon-2 though, since he was directly created by the WAU using WAU-ified gel.
The monsters are able to damage and kill Simon, so even if he doesn't need water, air and food, he's not immortal. Not by a long shot. Plus he runs on battery power which will eventually run out.
There's a lot of obstacles in the way of Simon re-building civilisation. I doubt he'd be able to pull through with it anyway, given he doesn't fully understand the brain scan concept in the first place.
@@deviateedits Pretty much all the problems you mentioned are solvable.
The overarching challenge is managing the risk.
I'm going to cheat a little, because Simon is weak af.
Catherine (? - I forget her name) is afraid Simon is one epiphany away from losing it. Her backup plan is a somewhat... stronger... personality: Olivier Armstrong ( :P ), which she uploads to a robot, under the same conditions as Simon.
Olivier is explained the whole situation up front. She's told of the challenges, state of humanity, etc. Taking all this in stride, Olivier gets down to business.
She uploads her own personality to all robots she can, forming a posse. This posse then ninja's their way into securing the robot manufacturing facility and personality data stores.
By this point, she essentially starts mass producing herself.
Some of the personalities come out insane, and are promptly executed. The batteries fail for a few, and those components get replaced.
They're not opposed to hand-to-hand combat, and destroy / isolate all monsters using group tactics.
I forget, but I think there are two Catherines as well? They join forces with the one that's not down with Simon 3.
Since Olivier is way more intelligent than Simon, she knows not to overload Catherine's circuits, and is able to keep her operational throughout reconstruction.
Upon finding the poisoned WAU substance, they use one of the numerous labs to reproduce it, and proceed to kill off the uncooperative WAU if it isn't dead already.
While the Olivier army was fighting on the frontlines, retaking the station, the Olivier techies were hard at work pouring over the university articles stored in the underwater database. Since they're all computers, memory isn't really an issue.
They then set to work pulling an underwater Dr. Stone, restoring aquatic facilities, capturing rogue robots and repurposing them, etc.
If one Olivier falls, another takes her place.
By this point, they're mostly self-sufficient, and its mostly a matter of playing 'catch up' to where humanity was before.
@@elam3654 But they're still not human and never can be, they're just cursed to live a meaningless existence for eternity with the same group of robo-clones on a ravaged planet.
@@DjDolHaus86
Humans can repair engines
These robots can repair engines
Humans can write books
These robots can write books
Humans can comment on youtube
These robots can comment on youtube
Humans can f***
These robots, with the right mods, can f***
Humans can 'swipe right'
These robots can 'swipe right'
Most of the game can be summarized: "Bumbling idiot gets strung along until he triggers a manic episode in his girl friend, who then gives him the silent treatment." ...that's depressingly human. XD
@@elam3654 Robots (as portrayed in the game) can't procreate, they can only put limited copies of personalities in shells. The rest of your points are hardly expressions of humanity.
The game can be summarized as prolonging the suffering or easing the passing.
i mean, you can see the end coming miles away. but when it then happened, it still hit me hard.
i am wondering if it would have been better if after the launch of the ark, we instantly go to the ark simon. do that part etc. and only after that we go back to the earth simon? not sure if that would have hit even harder or not...
being left alone, all by yourself for prolonged periods of time is considered inhumane torture. once you're dead, you're dead- you can't feel sad or happy because you simply do not exist, it's neutral.
Soma has gotta be one of if not my favorite sci-fi horror game.
I don't get why people are saying the ending is horrible/scary/depressing/whatever
If it were me, I'd just go and make as many copies of myself as possible
Doesn't matter whether it's using a human corpse, or mockingbirds
I'll make dozens of copies of myself, and together we'll all work together to not only survive but take control of Pathos II, and then eventually find a way back to the surface and explore the world above
It sounds like the beginning of an awesome adventure
Again, no idea why people think the ending was sad or terrifying
The thing I always wonder is are there people on Mars making a colony I mean if their was a comic coming to destroy earth would people get ready to go to mars to save humanity
To me, the reaction of the people in the undersea installations is kind of hard to fathom.
Ya see: Their stations were self-sufficient.
The life on land might be screwed, but it is established that life in the Oceans is booming.
You only need 15 individuals to sustain a healthy gene pool - they had over 80.
They could have easily survived the catastrophe, for generations.