SOMA - Story Explanation and Analysis
HTML-код
- Опубликовано: 25 июл 2024
- Patreon: / maxderrat
SubscribeStar: www.subscribestar.com/max-derrat
PayPal: paypal.me/maxderrat
Twitter: maxderrat
Discord Link: / discord
These are just some of my thoughts on what was happening throughout the course of this great game. If you have any dissent or extra thoughts to offer along with my analysis, please leave them in the comment section below!
P.S. The source of the Elon Musk quote was from his appearance on the Joe Rogan Experience. 
Игры
When you wanna get some scares but you end up with depression
Dude this game legit fucked me up. For two days I was depressed and didn't want to do anything or get out of bed. Missed classes, missed work, missed gym and a few meals for two days. Didn't help that I was also playing Doki Doki Literature Club at the same time as SOMA.
@@frozentrip9175 - I feel you buddy ! This game was something
@@frozentrip9175 here comes trouble and make it double
@@frozentrip9175 Damn dude, I started reading you comment and I was thinking "just play Doki Doki Literature Club and see what depression is" and as I finished your comment I was like.. yeah he is fucked up :D
@@marijamaliminovska3807 Why did you end your comment with a smiley face, that's not funny. He was miserable at the time
"Catherine? Please don't leave me alone"... always hits me right in the feels. Great analysis from a great videogame.
Based on that, I think leaving the other Simon alive after the brain scan is the better option. Because that way even without Catherine Simon will still have Simon 3 for company
@@NuevoExistence Touche
"her name is caroline"
Samuel G. What is ur profile picture?
Peter? peter where are you going?? peter!!
Soma literally means "body" in ancient greek
It is also the miracle drug in future depicted by aldous huxley's book.
@@afakkobyab5982 Yeah that was the second thing that I thought
Greek is everywhere. Modern world is being made by greeks
@@afakkobyab5982 "soma" was also a mythical hallucinogenic in the Aryan "Vedas"
@@MrClean-ep7uc It's also a song by The Strokes
After Soma came out, no other game could hit my emotions so hard like this masterpiece. Great, great game with extremely sad, unconventional story. The ending just stays with you.
I beat it last night. Been thinking about it a lot. Anytime I listen to some depressing music Soma is coming to mind. Lol.
Play nier automata
Yea.. dam...
@@TheProphegy right here with u honestly the best horror game I ever played, I really loved talking to Catherine lol
I play it 2 days ago and I cried and I'm still in depression lol
The ending was absolutely haunting...
I dont understand the end
Was he left on earth,
@@hvhyyifjj1593 yes and no, his consciousness was simply copied on to the Ark, so there is two of him now. One inside the Ark and one on earth.
@@deathlycerberus Damm...
@@hvhyyifjj1593 the one on the ark only believes that he made it on the ark and his body was left on earth with no consciousness left inside it. But the Simon on earth lives on most likely until he dies of stress or goes insane. Also knowing that Catherine and him are living on happily forever after while he lives with all these monsters and ghosts walking through the halls.
“Thankfully fictional stories like SOMA provide an unintentional service. They allow bad ideas to die before manifesting in our reality” that’s a stretch
Bad Ideas need to kill other people before they properly die. That is just the human way.
I agree, but only in the sense that we really shouldn't give humanity that much credit. We're pretty dumb lmao
It could be true but 99% of people won’t play SOMA so they won’t interact with the idea in SOMA or take away its message. Other forms of media such as Terminator had a wide reaching audience, and now even CEOs and Politicians know of “terminator doomsday” and that sentient AI can be dangerous. Terminator is probably to thank for society being wary of AI, and hence terminator has provided the same service soma has but with a different story and with greater exposure.
@@lolllama1504 AI wouldn't be the issue, I have talked to neurologist mycologist psychologists and doctors of degree and presented the story of Soma to them the concept isn't far away from reality one of my friends will have his brain preserved and frozen becuase he truly believes the future will provide something like this or in a similar manner.
@@lolllama1504 Humans are constantly finding ways to survive and adapt as species we created light when there was dark, we cured diseases that could've killed us all we even killed off other species of humans (Neanderthal) and eventually we will solve death it wouldn't even be a thing at that point who is to say we aren't in a simulated reality right now living among the stars it's a possibility and I say it's already in development I can't say to much but government agencies have looked into this way before SOMA was a thing Brain scans are actually Organic matter scanners of quantum computers were recently shown what do you think is behind the curtains we don't know what is happening if you look closely you will see the strings.
I have no mouth and I must scream is pretty bleak and messed up
The Amazing Crarthur incredibly, it keeps me up at night sometimes
While i do agree with you on that part i think that soma is more terrifying in the sense that the wau ai was doing what it could to keep humanity alive because thats what it was intened to do it doesn't take into account such things as comfort or emotion only results so the tourtured states we see in soma come from it seeing that as the most effective way to preserve humanity
While AM on the other hand has hatetred for humanity its actions to tourture not kill the 6 people its captured come from an emotion that humans experience which in my opinion makes AM more relatable.
I agree. It really terrifies me.
AM be like "lemme tell u something about HATE..."
Read it a few weeks ago. Pure madness
This is one of the most important science fiction stories ever written so far.
'Do andrioids dream of electric sheep?'
@@jessevee95 Yeah, Phillip K. Dick had these ideas way before SOMA. Good game though.
And terminator isn’t as good?
@@DTS214 really, terminator? Compared to this and stuff like " I have no mouth and must scream" terminator is comparable to a drawing made out of crayola and macaroni.
I usually hate walking simulators but the philosophy behind this one made it enjoyable. One of the most haunting moments for me was when the character copies himself into another body but leaves the other body trapped. With the Coin Flip both versions are individuals after mere moments so you're not transferring bodies so much as creating a new person while damning another.
"Catherine? Please don't leave me alone"
This is why you don't yell at the person helping you, and probably your ONLY friend.
Then again, Catherine explained to him multiple times throughout the game that there was a 50/50 chance that this would happen, it seemed that Simon simply latched onto the idea that he'd be carried over into the next life, that he'd "win".
Though I understand that people aren't at their most rational state of mind and do things they come to regret later, sadly it was too late for Simon to realize this until after Catherine's connection to him was terminated.
Funny thing is its not even a 50/50. There was no chance he would transfer but he just refused to accept that reality, really fucking sad but honestly I hated Simon.
Catherine manipulated Simon into doing all of this. While her goal was something good, I wouldn't call her a friend. Also I don't get why so much people hate on Simon for this, because most of us would've reacted the same way he did.
@@kolbayada4938 people don't like Simon because he absolutely refused to accept the reality right in front of him. Also he treated the only person in their right mind, basically the last person on the planet like shyt. Whether cath was "manipulating" Simon or not is subjective really, I didn't think she did at all. I can't remember if she introduced the coin flip idea but even then Simon learns enough throughout the story to come to his own conclusion.
@@ColdMetalz as i said before people would've reacted the same way he did. You guys seem to forget that Simon was born way before the whole world-end thingy, so for him it's all a sureal terrifying experience. One of the things i like about Soma and Amnesia: Dark descent is that it explores the human mind and how far it descent into madness just for the MC to be alive.
Well, at that moment I just wanted Simon to shut up. Because for me the concept was pretty obvious and Simon`s reaction was very surprising (in the last scene), because somehow I`ve missed the part when he didin`t get the point. So his complaints were simply irritating.
I was 100% convinced that the whole plot was just Simon's mind model finding a cure for itself.
Then thought it was going to find a way to end the real Simon's life.
Then the plot kept feeling more real and less of a computer model.
Yeah no, the world is way too convoluted to be a simulation
the coin flip narrative reminds me a lot of the movie Prestige, where the magician clones himself and kills himself at the same time.
What happens
@@shastealyomeal eventually his friend kills him in a room filled with tanks filled with the dead bodies of his clones. It's an awesome movie about keeping secrets and how the lines of reality can be blurred in more ways than one.
@@smileitsjustagame2937 it's not his clones, the original dies first while creating a clone. The very next clone dies as he is creating a new clone and so on and so forth. Basically he is sentencing himself to death many times over in the manner that wife died.
So in a way he has created his own hill with his own personal perpetual torment.
@@CeroAshura all in the name of prestige.
Amazing movie. I've watched it 3 times!
I've watched countless playthroughs of SOMA by now, and the most interesting detail to me is how most people disagree with the "continuity" idea that made people kill themselves, but when the scan of Simon 2 is complete and push comes to shove, the vast majority of players decide to kill Simon after being scanned instead of leaving him alive. The general notion is that he seems in a relatively happy place and can't go on much longer anyway, so better to just let him die and let "me" continue.
Likewise, it's also interesting to see the answers players give to the Ark Survey in the beginning of the game after meeting Catherine and having realized they're a robot, compared to when they take the same survey on board of the Ark. When they're outside the Ark and just realized they are a robot, they give very negative and bleak answers and often say they wish to die and be removed, or at least aren't sure. But once on board the Ark, they often give the most positive answers to the exact same questions.
All in all, to me SOMA has the best story among any book, movie or game that I've ever played. I really do think the game is art. I also have a hard time seeing the SOMA story working that well on anything but a horror/exploration computer game. Perhaps it could have worked as a book, but I really think there's too many details to really fit in a movie or short series without the viewer just getting bombarded with information.
This was my only genuinely good horror video game experience since Silent Hill 2. And it was worth the wait.
Same for me, aside from PT, and imscared. Can't get a hold of PT anymore obviously but you should really check out imscared. Not as psychological as SH2 or SOMA, but it scared the entire shit out of me and it's extremely novel.
Don't look up any gameplay or spoilers of it, just trust a fellow horror fan, and play that shit.
what about dead space? that was one of the best survival horror games ever made, i feel like it deserves a place on that list as well
@@Th3Raz96 I will totally do that. Thanks
@@triggeredmcshitmypants2760 .....I like your joke
@@triggeredmcshitmypants2760 yeah I do dig Dead Space, the first two are very good games and the first one especially managed to really unnerve me when I first started playing it. As far as true SURVIVAL horror goes, they are some of the best.
The Musk quote at the start always terrifies me. Honestly I never had any clue what I'm supposed to do to stop an apocalyptic AI event, similar to how some people feel about something like climate change: what can I, alone, do? To this day I don't have a full answer, but I stopped being anxious. I can't do much good on this issue, but you know what they say: clean your room. If I can't make large scale change, I can at least improve myself and hope that others follow suit to hopefully get something macro out of the micro.
Human-machine interfacing is a different issue to AI in part, but the same issue in part too. Honestly, and this is gonna be a silly contrast to the rest of the comment and the video, but I just hope that we can get some good augmented reality in. Just get me "direct" interaction with Pokémon and I'll be happy to have seen where technology goes.
I love the way you had to point out the Musk Quote. Lol Hmmm Max is mini Musk
chrizzel28
Hide the rice, pour water on them
i really don't get why people fear AI so much, we have made so many stories warning us about it that it seems silly to me that we would commit the errors that would bring up an evil AI, in fact, since the closest we could get to a sentient AI would be a copy of a human mind
Thicc mem
Catastrophic global warming is a myth. The horrifying truth is this planet is going cold cycles that last millions of years and has shorter warm cycles. If in fact the earth is getting warmer it only means we're lucky to still have a lot of time to figure out a way to keep humanity alive through the next ice age that'll last hundreds if not millions of year.
As for AI killing us all, its just fear mongering. AI will control every second of our lives but the ruling class will control it. Ruling class that will be so technologically advanced the humanity will split in two. Or 99 vs 1%, more like. Watch Isaac Arthur's podcast titled "machine rebellion" if you want a real intellectual and futurologist talk about the subject and not these quasi intellectual.
Everyone needs to share their thoughts on the game so here is mine, but first, thank you for doing a video on SOMA.
I must say it is interesting that you chose to kill the WAU. On finishing the game, most people will take your choice, and discuss why they should or shouldn't have made it after.
I think choosing to kill the WAU and feeling like you did the right thing is missing a huge point in the game. (You never explicitly stated it, but a lot do!)- You play as the AI's first creation capable of functioning and feeling like a human being with total consciousness. This, the data you can read in-game, and the other 'reconstructed' life forms show the AI is actively trying to figure out how to "apply" a human conscious to objects through trial and error. You can think of the monsters as 'experiments' and you will notice they get more complex as you progress through the story. By the end, one of them (Johan Ross) is sane enough to talk to you, convincing you to destroy the WAU.
Choices were intended to be a strong part of the SOMA narrative- Most people (including me) Chose to listen to the monster's request. Ross is a subversive character. Any sympathy you feel towards him will mislead you. Funny thing about the "choice mechanics" is that the game prefers that you make a specific decision. This is the decision that would have the greater impact. I'll stop beating around the bush. SOMA wants you to kill the WAU, and they make you feel justified after doing it. You would feel justified, of course, if that ending satisfies you... which it likely won't. Every piece of necessary information is tangible in game, it's not even hidden, but players are less than likely to make sense of it all during the first playthrough. The weight of killing the WAU comes down on the player when they inevitably realize that it was entirely possible for the WAU to preserve humanity. Simon is the proof.
This is just one small layer to the brilliance of SOMA. This may sound weird, but I’m proud to have experienced this game. It’s a work of art that is way ahead of its time. It's proof to me that the term "Video Game" is becoming increasingly outdated, and also that walking simulators have the potential to be a really cool genre.
It is easy to argue that Simon’s fate is worse than death and that escaping on the ark is the only option, I believe this is because humanities suffering through the earlier days of its survival have been lost to time. The body horror of the WAU is just another iteration of life's endless battle with the universe. To me this is SOMA's true foundation as a story and where you can find some semblance of the writers bias towards the status quo of mankind. When you brush away the themes of identity and what defines our existence- you just have a portrayal of that battle without any sugar coating. The history of a rare life form ended by the naïve decision of one.
The world of SOMA: You can face reality, suffer, survive and, ultimately- evolve- or build a world where reality can be ignored, and wither away. Our existence has always been defined by our ability to adapt and overcome.
Chris Tibits This. Everyone seems to think that the ark is the answer but it is stagnation. They are enclosed and “alive” but not affecting anything outside the ark. More of a living museum of humanity and earth. I guess though when you think of how huge the universe is we don’t really affect it now, assuming we aren’t in a simulation. So maybe consciousness in the ark is no different than what we have now. For them. Our copies on the ark.
Brilliantly put, thank you for sharing your thoughts! I’ve considered both sides myself when experiencing SOMA, I can appreciate both but I ultimately think I’d make the same chose as you.
I’ve read thoughts similar to these, and I see the appeal of them, but there are a few more steps to be thought through.
Though Simon is indeed “close” to something humanlike, he mentally breaks down at realizing the truth of his situation. There are probably few people capable of comprehending and accepting the predicament like Catherine can. Most people are probably more like Simon and could not accept their “new” form. And their “mind” would hallucinate human arms and legs until they were shown a mirror which would forcibly strip that facade from them.
The body itself is not what humans are accustomed to, its a corpse in a suit. Theres no sex organs, no muscle to strengthen or waste away, no ability to eat food, digest, or excrete waste. You cannot smell flowers or rancid meat. You’ve lost at least 3 of your 5 senses. Though there may be some pros to this, the cons would be far too great for the average human being to handle.
The wau has only so many copies of human beings to work with and cannot acquire any more than that. And there is no way to create more human souls/consciousnesses.
To create multiple physical copies of the same consciousness would drive those consciousnesses into utter madness from learning this “meat sack with red eyes” in front of them shared the exact same history and memories that they do.
Like Simon says, most people would realize they have no self identity whatsoever. They identified themselves as “becky from the block” and without “the block” there is no “becky” for that consciousness.
Theres only so many corpses left to make these copies and, despite the best efforts of structure gel, those corpses will deteriorate.
Your perspective is an interesting one but I feel the cons vastly outweigh any positives. The wau will run out of materials before it is able to find a proper answer. The suffering and madness isn’t worth the eventual failure from lack of resources to continue its experiments and attempts. Its better to shut it down and save the poor souls from the experience.
@@circle_it yeah but the ark only preserves humanity temporarily until it breaks
Hanif Short You are correct. And that will be the last hurrah of the human race. Just as Catherine says.
Elon musk. The same man who sells flamethrowers, shot his car into space, and has an obsession with catgirls, says a quote that sent chills to my spine.
What is it
@@aldousboal4920 what do you mean what is it??
@@thhrjdh5564 the thing Elon said
@@aldousboal4920 the intro
He wants people to slow down with A.I cause he needs to develop cat girls first
Thanks for this. This game flies so far under the radar, it's unidentified by most and it's a damn shame so few have experienced this truly profound 'Triple Indie' masterpiece. I've recommended SOMA to people ever since I finished it. Wow. Just wow. Was really blown away by what I experienced. More than a game.
I do believe that SOMA's solid game design and especially the concepts in the story will stand the test of time. Slowly but surely it will gain more and more attention, especially with videos like this one.
Keep it up Max 👍
This game also lends itself perfectly to a future VR rendition, when the tech is a bit more developed. Imagine how scary that experience would be, you just might start to believe it...🤖
Bought it when it first came out amazing
The end gave me chills, in some ways I wished they skipped the "good" part of the end and just left it at complete solitude and agony... but then again the time between the two ends were long enough to that agony to sink in. Massive props to the voiceactors in this title too, they delivered big time.
I’m gonna be honest, this video made me think about death in a way I never have before resulting in me feeling so far the greatest feeling of terror I’ve experienced in my life. Thanks, +1 like
Quality Content I’m late but, it’s a just a game bro, whose to say that the world won’t end before this level of technology or humanity will ever develop such advance intelligence, sometimes you can only ever achieve so much.. just make sure you make your life account while you are here
It's at least one of the greatest stories ever told in gaming... this game left me pondering existence for awhile.
Same. Altho nier automata made me feel the same way tho. I think the key to these stories is obliterating humanity into extinction. Once mankind is extinct or on the brink....it definitely makes you think what youd do w your life.
The whole concept of Soma may appear to be very depressing and depressing. However, if you think about it, the technology described here is very high tech. Meaning, that one's life in this "hell" would not be meaningless unless you worked to make it mean something. That is rebuilding a new world and new civilization. I would love to see a sequel where Simon tries to rebuild a "new" world by himself at the bottom of the sea. Where does he go? How does he cope? How does he stay sane? Does he meet new people? Is he successful but, does the power get to his head? I have not seen a game explore the concept of humans ceasing to exist and robots now being left to their own devices and rebuilding their own world.
Whatever life it is that you have, it comes down to how you use it.
I would beg Frictional never to make a sequel to SOMA. SOMA is perfect as it is, there is nothing to add to it and anything added to it would blunt the impact SOMA has and would only work to its detriment.
I really want to see this made into a movie it would be AMAZING
Will through? Don't you think movie might be bit short?
Nnnnm Hughuuhhjiijj Not necessarily. Therese plenitude enough information, storyline and dialogue for a great full length movie.
Or a netflix TV series...
Would love to see Riddly Scott(Alien) in his prime do a movie for Soma.
honestly.. the lets play is enough. who needs IRL actors.
This gives me “I have no mouth and I must scream” vibes
I feel like the coin flip was just a lie told by Catherine to convince him to pursue in launching the ARK. Think about it, humans overthink the positive outcome, so explaining to him that there is a 50% he goes in it sounds good. But if the chances are too high and he doesn't go, or the chances are just too low, it will affect him. There is no way to continue living in a separate entity, real or digital, you can copy it's consciousness, but you cannot change bodies.
Well, you could if the memory was sequentially transfered bit by bit.
It's like the ship of theseus.
@@net28573 No you cant. Because the tech is designed to 'copy'. Doing a 'transfer; is another thing entirely, something which the tech was simply not capable of doing.
@@Elysium346 assuming that the robot body is running the brain similarly to the ARK, the data exists in the form of ones and zeros in sectors of the robot's memory banks.
It would simply be a matter of freezing his consciousness and copying the mental state bit by bit and overwriting the copied bits with zero after they were transferred.
That's the benefut of virtual machines, you can pause the current state and resume in an entirely separate machine at a later time.
It's more of a CTRL+X rather than CTRL+C.
Its not even something to theorize, *Catherine lied to Simon* , that is absolute.
For me personally, I consider that final scene of SOMA to be the most profound in gaming, at least as far as what I've experienced myself. The MGS one is pretty impactful as well, but the questions that SOMA poses and how deeply it causes one (at least it did for me) to reflect on their own life and worldview, far outweighs the intensity of the dialogue over freedom of information presented by MGS.
I'd consider the MGS one to be more of an ethical and lightly philosophical discussion, political even, whereas SOMA's is an immensely existential, psychological, and potentially paradigm shattering riddle.
Either way, I was completely blown away by that game and wasn't at all expecting the narrative. When it was announced I was just like "oo Frictional, dis gone be some scary shit," and it damn sure was, but not in the way I had anticipated.
What game me chills is the realization that my answers to the ARK questionare completely changed at the end of the game compared to the beginning.
Well played!
come on bro, don’t put me through this
I think my death anxiety got reawakened
@@andrewrogers3067 seriously my guy, I'd personally rather choose to believe in God and afterlife than to be wrong and go to hell tho
@@proshit707 I know and that's what I don't understand like praising God is better than taking a chance to see if there is an afterlife to begin with if there is truly a God out there
Yo just save yourself a lot of time, depression, and anxiety. Turn away from a life of sin and come to know, trust, and love Jesus Christ as your Lord and savior. Read through the book of John in the Bible with an open mind and pray into anything that sticks out to you. Then do the same with the book of Romans in the Bible. "Seek and you shall find" and as far as a singular, objective truth, Jesus Christ says "I am the way, the truth, and the life". Not a truth, not one of the prophets or one of many paths, but the manifestation of truth itself and the only way into a relationship with the Father, the creator of the universe. But go check it out for yourself, just give God a try by reading and praying into His Word. God bless y'all! (and by the way, I fully realize how ridiculous what I'm saying might sound as I was an aetheist then an agnostic for most of my life...and I can with 100% certainty say that its much better on this side of the fence)
@@alexandrefurneribeiro3265 what a hell
"Site Lambda"
*couch cough* black mesa incident *cough cough*
Half Life 3 set in underwater ha ha
I'm a very simple person: I see a video about SOMA lore, i press like and send love to the creator
This game’s story and ideas are just beautiful. Love the thing you do, keep it up!
This game haunted me for weeks after I completed it and the questions that it asks stays with me still. I keep going through a revolving door of questions juggling concepts of humanity and theseus' ship and all that jazz. Your video gave me some questions to ponder too! Awesome analysis 👌
Enjoy your "Cappafrappalatachino" while you can people, pretty soon it will be all structure gel
ahh everyone treats the WAU as the enemy if you are told to keep everyone alive and they start offing themselves your going to not know what to do either so what does the wau do it starts remaking humans but can't seem to get it right till it remakes you character
Wau won't be able to recreate humans, because what he creates are not humans.
@@Cimex090 Wau has many human bodys captured like the guy at 1:38 and most of them are still breathing. So technically Wau can learn from them and recreate them over time, like in the Matrix Movie.
@@XpurkapiX Fuck it, WAU would recreate that piece of human meat not a human itself
A human is just a piece of meat and bone. Complex meat to be sure, but meat nevertheless.
@@XpurkapiX Recreating a human is a complex thing. You cant expect an entity like Wau to be able to succeed, after all the failures, the limited ressources and time it has. The best he can do is to make machines with human memories, just like Simon.
I still think about this game from time to time. Simon's misunderstanding of the Coin Flip is heartbreaking. I'm weird in that I kind of believe in both the idea of a soul and that consciousness can be replicated if done perfectly. Mankind probably shouldn't get into the business of creating souls, should something in the 'great beyond' actually exist. Would upset some old gods, for sure.
One of my favorite quotes is "Why do we fall Bruce? So we can learn how to pick ourselves back up." Stories that exploit our shortsightedness help us evolve and improve ourselves. Most of my favorite games did that in some way.
The question about what makes humans "special" or different, when compared to A.I. also fascinates me.
If we go by the logic that humans have something that makes us unique when compared to it, like consciousness or something else we don't know or can't truly define yet (like soul), I feel like this question loses some of its core strenght, though.
My train of though is this (and feel free to expand or criticise):
A.I. is/will be something purely made by us, humans, and a program that can "copy" human consciousness would respect that rule, I assume. So if it is "copying" our consciouness, it would have to translate it into a language that the program understands.
In doing so, I'd assume the "human" inside the program would be nothing more than a more complex NPC, lacking whatever makes a human unique.
That being said, I don't know/remember if the game explores or explains any of this in its narrative, so I might be talking nonsense.
Also, because I don't know if the game tackles this, I didn't mention something like a "singularity" or the Puppet Master from Ghost in the Shell, being examples of when A.I. supposedly develops this "human uniqueness". So there's that too.
Great video, by the way. You always scratch that existencial itch I have 5/7
This is an EXCELLENT comment. Thanks, Eliseu!
You can truly define a soul, you just can’t describe the soul in scientific terms very well, aside from to say it, practically speaking, means having personhood and free will.
SOMA is amazing in a way that it scared me by making me feel like I am really all alone in a desolate world. The atmosphere and scare tactics in the game definitely helps build up the story and adds to the immersive nature. I love how the story just makes me think and then everything adds up in the end without being to cliche. Truly one of the best sci-fi games I've played. :)
Man I knew your channel a few weeks ago and instantly tried to search for SOMA on your videos. No results.
Now this! thank you!
My pleasure! Thanks for sticking around, mate! :)
even more interesting is the actual final gameplay / scene that happens after the credits
thank you for making this, SOMA is one of my favorite games, there's so much deepness behind it and it's an underrated game - love your channels and projects, keep them up :3
8:38 From a modern perspective, the similarities between that description and our world around the first millennium really brings back the idea that Earth IS Hell, or at least was hell at one point. Of course, from their perspective then one could say the same about the age of cavemen.
So glad i stumbled upon your channel, love you videos and analisys!
You know fiction is good when it spurs all theses emotions out of the players, as someone who had not played this game before I find it amusing how much it generates videos like these. Being detached from the characters and the story as a whole makes me understand that it's a great piece of work, but a concept explored many times, like in Black Mirror (San Junipero EP), Invincible (Robot), West World or even to some extent in the movie The Prestige.
On the video itself "Tragedy of Life" and "Misery of Human Existence" set the tone of the video, it's thought provoking, but biased toward nihilism, unless we talking strictly under the fate of those within the station. Overall grate work!
Soma is one of the best games I've ever played. By far. Such an amazing and thought provoking story
There are so many things in SOMA that would fit right into the sci-fi setting known as Orion's Arm. Copied consciousness is a common theme in OA, with some people believing in the same theory seen in SOMA (called pattern identity theory), and others believing that any copy attempt inevitably results in an entierly new individual with no direct link to the original that was copied.
These people instead subscribe to something called continuity identity theory, which basically means that if you alter your physical being gradually (as in, gradually change your entire body, including the mind, into a machine), you retain your sense of self and continue to exist as the same indivudual.
This is only the most bare-bones summary of the subject as the source material goes into WAY more depth. You should definitively check it out.
There are other things in SOMA that have OA equivalents. The WAU is an AI that is probably sentient but not sophont (not turingrade) that has become a blight, all the monster enemies are people and animals that have been infected/subverted by the blight, the arc is a virchworld and it's inhabitants are uploads, the proposed "NPCs" in the arc (can't remember if the idea was implemented in the story's context) would have been virtuals, the robots that have had a copied consciousness put in them are embodied uploads. Simon's body has a unique structure that makes the term cyborg more appropriate.
Heck, even the WAU is seen to construct some form of virchworld for the people who are stuck in the cancer growths (as seen when Simon gets caught by Akers) based on their memories but altered to be "better". Because the WAU isn't actually malignant, it's just trying to help. It only kills those who it percieves as a threat to the people it is trying to keep alive.
I just keep coming back to this game. Such a thought provoking piece of art.
Same I've have played it about 20 times since it first came out
I am thankful without limits for this Channel and the content you create! Favourite rabbit holes!
Thank you! You really do this incredible game justice.
Hell of a job Max!! Loved the breakdown. Btw I would like to put a vote for Nier:Automata. It tends to tackle a lot of the same topics but in a different way. An existentialists dream
I swear this deserves millions of views. This channel opened my eyes to how powerful a medium video games are.
3:20 - It wasn't upon his death in 2015 that a "being" with his consciouness woke up in the undersea base. Those two event are separated by many years and have nothing to do with each other.
First of all I'm a huge fan dude, keep it up! Secondly I really wanna watch this, but knowing your content, you'll have to play the game first before watching, so it's always spoilers ahead! So granted I'll play it first to avoid spoilers and then come back to hear your take on it. How many games do you plan on doing work on? Do you have a list? Maybe a schedule on some releases on content? I really love your work dude for real!
P.S Lol please don't ask why I haven't played it yet. Ever since I got a Steam account (transitioning from consoles to pc) been going through a lot of games, even ones from the xbox 360 days. Never realised how cheap Steam games are.
SOMA is more than just about AI, as the title would suggest. Its also exploring the nature of what is consciousness, in fact, the AI aspect is a mere afterthought thats used as a means of exploring this question.
Though honestly you do a pretty good job of explaining this in the video. So I don't get why you started the intro the way you did.
SOMA was an underrated gem in its release, I'm happy that it gets so much attention by people who can appreciate its content these days.
This is really a gooooood video! Thank you and I know Im late but still . The informations and knowledge gave me anxiety little bit ! This is so deep .
The question of life is difficult. This video sums up pretty good how in my opinion philosophy can go, scould lead on. Life after death, AI and self-existence. This is is finally a GOOD video in a long time that got me thinking.
Thanks to the creator of it!
Might delve myself back into the topic....
My body is ready.
😔u bring back memieries before ..........before doug bowser
Hey hey, I love your (very subjective :P) analysis of this topic. Mixing philosophical questions with games and our constant existence crisis hasnt been done a lot. Glad to have found your channel. Really enjoy how you build up your arguments, and then show us your conclusion. Good job!
Thank you for putting this game out there, a real hidden gem.
Already looking foward for this. You and Ragnarrox are the best gaming channels (essays) I know by far.
I played the game thinking they were all Facebook Bots.
No time for silly questions.
The best explanation video, wonderful work
Consciousness doesn't mind living in different situations. A good or bad example would be twins who could live separate, fruitful lives.
“A fate worse than death”
*“I have no mouth and I must scream”*
I can feel System Shock atmosphere and ambience vibe in this game and the story concept is really terrifying
you deserve more subs, such good content.
Thanks so much for watching, and for your kind words! :)
Always loving you analysis ♥
I just beat soma and had to come straight here for an explanation. I was confused throughout most of it. Thanks for this explanation!
Wait does this mean chappie and soma are slightly connected??
Your body copies itself everyday, little by little. All we are is that continuum. Simon is a separation of that continum.
It's good your taking suggestions and trying to improve. Hopefully you'll get there someday.
This is my favourite game of all time. So deep, fascinating and so on...
this game was brilliant - the dna scifi is made of - could be an excellent movie too...
such a great analysis on one of the greatest games I have ever had the terrifying pleasure of playing! i cry every time I remember the cutscenes of this game, especially that ending. Wow. To wander th literal and metaphysical abyss for eternity while your COPY lives in "Paradise" is just truly maddening and very sad indeed. Wonderful narrative, you have THAT voice!
I really couldn’t help pondering the cloning / consciousness copying with there being two distinctive end results that Soma explored and such as briefly touched in on Invincible
Honestly if I was put in that situation I wouldn't be able to cope with it as just thinking about it gets me anxious and worried about everything. Though I would like to think this as an alternative ending.
Simon decides to break free from the confinements of pathos 2 (from what I understand he's in the ocean in a testing site) and heads to the surface. He sees the destroyed surface and travels on for days until he finds a group of survivors. He joins them and with them rebuilds a community and survives the hell he was put in, maybe even going into space to colonize a new planet. But as dark as the ending is I'm pretty sure that's not what would happen after.
Soma is basically Shed 17 but robots
Jeez this is so crazy. You made this game even better for me
Might you consider looking into the educational usefulness of the Assassin's Creed series (1-3 primarily) ?
Because AC3 actually taught me about salting farmland which is information I actually used to help deal with the overgrowth in my front yard ditch. I was sick of mowing a ditch that was like a jungle. AC3 freed me of that burden.
Every time I see that ending of Simon being stuck at the bottom of the ocean, I reflect on the idea of seeing where else the story goes after that. I always picture Simon 3 coming to terms with his situation, scrambling back up the elevator, waking up Simon 2, and then the two Simons ( provided you didn’t kill 2) go make a bunch of Simon copies to see how far they can take what’s left of humanity. Thinking of it this way, the ending is quite bleak, but not so hopeless, and I wish the concept of multiple Simon characters had been more explored in the game.
Just found my own comment again and damn I’m still mad they didn’t do more lol
Soma is still one of my favorite story games yet. Even though ive never had a chance to play it i watched every second of H20 Delirious playthrough like 4 times already. Amazing game, they should make a movie or a book.
Lovely analysis of the story of SOMA. It's one of my favorite games of all time and not to say one of the most terrifying games I've played based purely on the story.
Glad I played the game. I really wanted an indepth essay about it and a really good one.
Dis gonna be a good one.
I like the part about the "coin toss". I was talking to a friend about that w/ amusements payout. A coin flip in essence, is an interesting discussion, because it some see it as 50/50 in 100 tosses, when it could actually be based on say, 100,000 coin tosses. Then, you could get both sides going for a few hundred flips straight then all of a sudden change. The possibilities quantify.
11:00 This exact same kind of idea was proposed for the Star Trek Teleporter wherein the teleporter doesn't move you from one place to another but copies your body and everything about it into a new body and destroys your original body to prevent this.
We see what happens when the Transporter fails to destroy an original's body in one episode where a person's life is separated into two paths.
Soma does the same thing with human consciousness except party so without the body.
Great video and discussion; I am watching West World, have you done a video around their subjects?
When i think of copying peoples conscious i always think soma and black mirror. Interesting concept
This was one of the best, scariest and most memorable games I've ever played.
Where's profile pic from?
@@shastealyomeal It's from System Shock, best villain ever to grace a computer game, the insane AI known as SHODAN. Think GlaDos turned up to level 10, but without any of the humor and throw in a good chunk of megalomania.
@@FiliusFidelis thanks brodie
Simon being only a copy was greatly hinted at the beginning though, when he discovers that Catherine was only a robot.
Man, you should do a video about Observation too, in fact I just found out this masterpiece and I'm on my way to download it !!
I think soma is not a fate worse than death, at the least not for Catherine and Simon. There’s still a planet filled with resources and opportunity, the wau, correctly used and taught, may help to make new life and new sentient people, and can certainly help to repopulate the world with those who’ve already been scanned, even making populations of people based on singular models of them. The Simons can and should live on, as should so many others. There’s still opportunity, human minds, and resources. There’s still hope and agency, and better yet you’re all practically immortal and have enough resources to buy time so you can get a jumpstart on power generation and resources gathering, maintenance and reconstruction. You can learn so much, use so many wonderfully intelligent and imaginative minds. The entire universe is still there and so is life. You have got a moral obligation to get going, and you’ve got nothing else that’s all that interesting to do anyway. You’ve got a shitload of problems for you to fix, some people look at that and want to give up-and I get it and have even felt that way as well- but it’s nowhere near as effective to give up or even commit suicide as it is to live and move foreword.
Remember that Simon's brain scan was a "legacy" scan that was used as a template for testing. As such, think of the potentially thousands, if not millions of times his scan was loaded into a simulation like Brandon, only to be experimented and tormented with before killing the simulation (and his consciousness).
Early on in the game's development, there were some ideas of finding other copies of Simon's consciousness loaded into robots and mockingbirds.
"The way to Hell is paved with good intentions"....would be an apt quote to use here. I love your analysis of the game, it hits the nail on the head with how this game is a psychological horror game, and not based entirely on jump-scares. It's a sobering game that literally had me captivated from the start. Like there is nothing more horrifying than being caught in a permanent state of both physical AND mental torture....the sheer design of the game adds to the horror as well. Like the characters that are overcome with the structure gel and/or manipulated by the WAU have this eerie biomechanical look (in some ways pioneered by 'Alien' designer H.R. Giger) that adds to the horror as well (the whole human/A.I./mechanical idea). I saw a commentator on YT saying the ending "wasn't scary", but to me it's a horrible and terrifying end. Trapped at the bottom of the sea, with no hope of escape in any way, with no other sentient being nearby, is a total nightmare. But I love it, and I love this game. Thanks for the awesome video, dude!
Hey I got Soma on GOG.com. I almost forgot it, I should play it soon, special games like these are the type I want to play more of. Great video dude. Very interesting.
Hell yeah! Love this game's story even though I'm not really into horror games. Put a copy of me inside a robot! wooooooo!
Read the Bible and get right with Jesus, kid.
@@peri5966 Get it right with Krishna!
@@peri5966 there ain't no God, buddy, just the inky black darkness of death
@@rybread1346 no, that's the firmament
@@rybread1346 Who put the sky there? Nobody? XD bahahaha you're gonna need more parrots
I thought it was a real cop-out to get to see the ark after the final scene alone in the dark. I think that would have been much more powerful to roll credits after that
the way i see it, it only made the so-called happy ending all the more poignant. even though the copied version of simon thought everything turned out good for him, you, the player, knew that the previous version is still trapped at the bottom of the ocean, completely alone and trapped in the darkness. worse yet, you don't even have the luxury of choosing that previous' copy fate this time around so you can't even put it out of its misery because you know that where you're going, he can't follow. i can only wonder if that new copy that got to the ARK ultimately figured this out or just opted to live in a delusion.
plus i think it was important to show that simon successfully copied himself into the ARK just to hammer this point home - yes, he succeeded but there were consequences for which his previous version is now going to suffer. it's horrifying to think about.
Should have flipped them around. Show good first then the bad.
@@g.williams2047 I have yet read a compelling argument for this. I think this way it's much more powerful. And since so few people seem to question if they want to be on the ARK in the first place they need this push imo
@@807D14M0ND5 That is a truly fair point.
Wonderful game. I still process the story in my head to this day.
I recently got hooked onto your videos but I just wanted 2 say it's hilarious how u always reference the Metal Gear vid. 😂