My Thoughts on SOMA
Under the sea, the seaweed is always greener and the fish are happy, but how do I feel after exploring this somewhat wet dystopia?
Sometime in December, I published a blog about my thoughts about ‘Amnesia: The Dark Descent’, a horror game developed by Frictional Games, that was released in September 2010. It was famous for 2 reasons:
- A whole genre of internet culture of people watching other people on YouTube was popularised, thanks to that Swedish guy by the name of PewDePie who did a Let’s Play of this game.
- This game is pants-shittingly scary.
I was somewhat late to the party as I only got my hands on the ‘Amnesia Collection’ on PS4 about the time it was released (September 2018). This is what I said, to sum up ‘The Dark Descent’ experience:
‘Amnesia: The Dark Descent’ and it’s little DLC ‘Amnesia: Justine’ are really horrible games that I enjoyed very much. Their chilling sound design/soundtrack and unique monstrosities made me want to bury my controller and never touch the game again. Being a stubborn mule, I could not leave these unfinished, as I wanted to find out the conclusion to their disturbing narratives. I will say that some people may not like the fact it is not the best looking game and has some occasional awkward controls (as mentioned earlier) that can detract from the overall experience, especially the latter. Where it excels is its ability as a laxative.
Whether you buy it on Steam as a single game or as part of the Amnesia: Collection, I highly recommend you play this game, for there is little that can compare to this game in terms of what I believe is horror at it’s finest. — Daniel Mayfair, 2018
I would then go and play the sequel to that game ‘Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs’, which was developed by The Chinese Room (published by Frictional Games), which was very different to ‘The Dark Descent’, despite looking very similar. In that blog, I summed up the game with the following;
Frictional Games (creators of ‘The Dark Descent’) created a superb game that had a strong emphasis on its horror and suspense, with a good story on the back burner. The Chinese Room (‘A Machine for Pigs’ makers) made a wonderful game that had a very interesting story with horror on its back burner. That’s my take on it anyway. I really do recommend that you play these two games, with this mindset, so you can enjoy each game on its own merits. — Daniel Mayfair, 2018
I bring up these two games as the next game that Frictional Games would make takes elements from both of the Amnesia games. Having just finished ‘SOMA’ on PS4, I wish to tell you what I think of ‘SOMA’, as it is certainly a very interesting horror experience. I have quite a bit I wish to cover in this blog and I am going to incorporate headers into this blog more than usual to break things up a bit, as my usual approach of combining gameplay and narrative into the same paragraph is not going to work this time around, as you’ll soon see.
This blog will contain many SPOILERS from this point onwards and it is advised to play the game first before reading this blog. There is also one case of NUDITY in the form of a tiny CGI penis, and if that bothers you, then you should read something else. Consider this your warning folks!
The Setup
What should be noted immediately about this game is that ‘SOMA’ is not some form of spiritual successor to the ‘Amnesia’ games. I hope that is true anyway, as I am basing that entirely off of the fact you play as a Candian and not a British person with a posh, well-spoken accent.
After a short introduction, the game begins in 2015 where you play as Simon Jarret, waking up in his apartment and I was immediately cautious, as it was far too safe an opening for a horror game. I was tearing that room apart with all it’s glorious wacky physics trying to find something that was wrong and there were no scares to be found. I will admit that this suspense I felt could only be felt by someone if they knew what sort of game ‘SOMA’ was before playing it and/or the sort of games its developers makes. There is nothing deliberately ominous about the apartment, the following subway journey as Simon talks to his friend on the phone, or eerily empty office that you eventually arrive at. Simon was recently in a car accident that resulted in the death of his friend Ashley and the infliction of severe, near-fatal brain damage to himself.
Due to his injuries, Simon agrees to partake in an experimental brain scan under the control of David Munshi, a graduate student at York University, who is working on ways of reversing and treating such cases by methods of digitally simulating a multitude of possible treatments. This is all mostly told through the aforementioned introduction and conversations Simon has with David Munshi that feels somewhat forced as Simon should already know this, but the game has to relay this information to the player somehow. It is also worth noting that is during these moments that the story and voice acting is at its weakest and both of these are improved tenfold as the game progresses.
It is from this point onwards that the game proper begins as Simon blacks out just as the brain scan commences, which is followed by an abrupt change in scenery. You’re no longer in the doctor’s office, but an industrial, foreign-looking room that’s all dark and foreign. You’re all alone and things begin to get a bit creepy. The tech around you looks rather futuristic, in the sense in how the 1980s thought the 2010s would look like, all bulky and heavy looking. The corridors are reinforced metal, with corridors and certain doorways locked away, creating the impression that something (else) isn’t right. Your vision becomes glitchy around some robots that are suspended from a ceiling, and you are able to access the most recent memory/conversation from devices and dead people, this games equivalent to the diary entries of the previous Amnesia games.
It is easy to presume here that this was the sort simulation that the doctor mentioned. Locked doorways/passages represent bits of Simon’s brain, and the all-purpose black gunk known as structure gell that the robots and walls bleed is a dark metaphor for the leakage in Simon’s brain. The distorted visions and glitchy memories one can access are memories of his friends, which is supported by the fact that if he is too close to these robots, he blacks out due to stress, which may be a concerning factor in the real world with his own brain tumour.
If you played the game or read the above and got the impression that was what the game was telling you, you’re wrong. It is a wonderful misdirection having the introduction focus on Simon before this. It acts as some safety net, as it is the only logical reason as to why you’re there, like it some bad dream and it will all go away soon. As previously stated, this is not the case, which leads to the big elephant in the room.
A Bit On Gameplay
What you find (if you can be bothered to look around and interact with the world) is that the year is 2104, and you are in an underwater research base PATHOS-II. There are several sites to PATHOS-II, all of which you get to explore during your 20 hours of exploration, which is certainly a tense experience, but not an experience I call scary and that is a huge problem for a horror game.
‘SOMA’ isn’t scary in the same way that ‘Amnesia: The Dark Descent’ and I am glad for that, as that is a proper paints-shitting cosmic horror for the ages, but it is very clear that this was not intentional. The game’s narrative and puzzles are broken up with the monster sections, where you’re both in a room and you have to sneak around said monster, distracting them with noises allowing you to escape for a few more moments. The game tries really hard to scare with the various audio cues, lighting (or lack of thereof in two examples) that just screams ‘THIS IS A SCARY BIT, YOU MUST BE SCARED! ARE YOU SCARED YET? BE SCARED!! WHY AREN’T YOU SCARED? BE SCARED ALREADY!!!’, assaulting the player.
A much better method of trying to scare the player is to actually try and scare them, and this is coming from super-wuss who screams and cries over ‘Shawn of The Dead’! The music of Mikko Tarmia, who composed the music ‘The Dark Descent’ creates creepy synth-fuelled soundscapes that add mostly to the game’s narrative more than the monsters which is both a good and bad thing in my book.
‘SOMA’ is very split in its gameplay with its engaging story taking most of my attention, the reason why I was still playing, and whenever the screen began to bug out because it was Monster Time, or the game just suddenly pause and stutter because it was trying to load with the next section. It is rather artificial, to say the least.
The malicious robots themselves don’t look scary. The first encounter with one looked cool to me, and it was only the screen-tearing, glitchy effect I mentioned earlier that told me that that Neon McNeon-Face (non-canon name of my creation, see the hide and seek picture above) was a threat. There was no real threat when it killed me, as I returned back to life for a second go, with him having moved onto a different part of the tiny area, giving me the chance to slip away. Now, I know permadeath is something not found in all that often in games, but coming back to life in ‘The Dark Descent’ had lore based reasons beyond the magic of checkpoints, and I’m going to presume many other horror games do too, as I have not played many.
Like ‘The Dark Descent’, the many of the monsters react to you by simply looking at them, which worked really well in ‘The Dark Descent’ but no here, as their placement were almost always inconvenient and so are their mechanics. They don’t gel very well with the story of Simon, despite having a very clear, but almost forced, reason for existing. It is contrivance upon contrivance simply to repeat something that worked well in the past. To add salt to the injury of the monsters, ‘The Flesher’ will only kill you if you look at it. ‘SOMA’ is more successful in its jumpscares than it’s monster design, which I don’t treat as real scares and should by law be changed to ‘jumpstartles’ or ‘jumpshocks’. They are cheap and require no real effort to pull off effectively.
The puzzles are better than what they were in ‘The Dark Descent’ and did require some thought behind them. Some were simple, some felt I was hacking into the foundations of a PC and there is one puzzle tied to the game’s real story that I think is one of the game’s best moments that I will waffle about later (see ‘Simulations’ below). It is not an experience for everyone, as there is very little ‘gamey’ stuff. If you like being pushed along a very linear path (like you are in ‘A Machine for Pigs’) then this will be great for you. There isn’t that much environmental storytelling (like ‘The Dark Descent), but ‘SOMA’ does have its moments. The main focus of the story is between Simon and a woman called Catherine that I will explore more about imminently.
The Setting & Themes
Back in the year 2104, PATHOS-II becomes weirder as you progress through the hallway and the ducts of the facility. There is a strange mix of machine and life that made me question a robot that went crazy as it detached itself leaving a pool of structure gel, the black liquid that acts as its blood. You make contact with Catherine in Site Upsilon who is in Site Lambda, which is another part of the facility, seemingly safe from whatever has happened. You restore power to the area you’re in and have your first goal, which is to find a better place to speak with her. It is this section where you first encounter Neon McNeon-Face. You lock it away, climb up some stairs and encounter a robot similar to Neon McNeon-Face in design. What is strange about this one however is that it doesn’t know it is a robot. What’s more, it thinks it is human called Carl who thinks it can’t get up because it is injured, not because it is embedded with the assembly line. It can’t be convinced otherwise. It is was unusual enough for me to try and figure out what was going on and it is also a bit creepy. Much of the story is far more terrifying than the implementation of the monsters in my opinion. It also makes the player think ‘how can he not see is a robot?’, almost mocking its lack of intelligence.
A revelation shortly afterwards reveals that you are in the same situation as the robot and it is not until much later into the game that you begin to understand how you are indeed a robot. During the original experiment in 2015, Munshi’s tech becomes the foundations for many advancements, such as AI that is very different from what you would expect in your standard sci-fi affair, as well as the ability to copy and paste of one's consciousness from one source to another.
Understanding this concept is very important in order to appreciate the game. It is not cut and paste, but copy and paste. Simon’s brain data has been collected during the early phases of the experiment and has been used many times over the almost 100 years since that original experiment. In the game, he is stored under a Legacy section that you can poke around in and delete if you so wish. It is a very subtle detail that becomes very terrifying if you stop and think about it during or after playing the game. If you don’t think about it here, you will do later on in the game.
‘SOMA’ isn’t just about these creepy robots and weird monsters, but explores the idea of what makes a consciousness, how one defines a soul and the problems it may cause if said soul is placed in the wrong sort of body. It is not about a weird AI (called WArden Unit, or WAU) gone nuts, but an AI that is constricting and consuming throughout the facility in an attempt to save mankind, for this isn’t just a grim future, it is a post-apocalyptic future where a large comet has wiped out the human race, minus these small hopefuls under the sea, which you discover through various bits of reading and listening to conversations.
The faulty AI and the humans are two of the biggest causes that results in PATHOS-II going a bit shit and I really like how all of these things are put together, as you become a walking, talking plot device, as you play as copies of Simon’s consciousness for the most part of the game.
This may not make a lot of sense to you at the moment, which is fine (almost 😉) as I have deliberately left out one piece of information until now. ‘SOMA’ is all about exploring the idea of what it means to be human and the unsettling implication that ‘human’ is not necessarily the right word that defines us. The game attempts to open the player up to the idea of consciousness being more important than a soul in a body in 3 ways:
- Carl on the assembly line
- Simon’s perception of himself correcting itself
- Catherine
Catherine sounds the sanest out everything in the game and you’ll want to meet her. ‘Finally, another human!’ you’ll cry ‘Someone who can actually help me and explain what the hell is going on!’
Then you meet her and she is a machine, just like everyone else you have encountered. Unlike the other robots, Catherine is very aware that she isn’t human and doesn’t seem to care that much either, accepting things for what they are. She is also the one who properly reveals to Simon that he is not the same Simon the player started out as. To quote Catherine;
‘You’re a walking, talking diving suit with some slapped on electronics for good measure.’ — Catherine Chun, 2104
There may be no human bodies around, but there are still people. The player treats Simon and Catherine as ‘proper’ humans before they are told otherwise, and that is where the horror of ‘SOMA’ excels.
Before being shoved into what I can only describe looks like some sort of Life Support machine (which is hilariously fitting), Catherine was leading the one project that gave PATHOS-II purpose. A simulated reality called ‘The ARK’ that would send scanned copies of the survivors into space, flying forever, powered by solar batteries, so the last remaining humans could live for a few more thousand years. It didn’t start out like this, but that was what it became and some of the workers/crew of PATHOS-II took to the idea for more than others. Some did not get the idea that it was copy and paste, not cut and paste, which resulted in some into believing that if they killed themselves just before the ‘transfer’ was complete, their true self would end up on The ARK. It is morbidly romantic that doesn’t make a lot of sense in isolation, but given the situation they made for themselves, the idea of what even is a consciousness, one can almost understand their thought processes.
The rest of the information you are told is in general drip-feedings through the next couple hours of the game, through environmental storytelling and recordings and not one info dump from Catherine. The collection of suicides causes The WAU to freak out, as it recognises both the scans and the human lives to be worth protecting, and it is thus implied the computer copies are worth more because they are easier to protect and maintain. That, and the human versions can destroy the mechanical ones. It spreads it’s structure gel across PATHOS-II to make sure everyone is safe, hence wiring some of the crew up to robots, which causes confusion in the likes of Carl and the deranged robots and monsters, which are the result of The WAU’s successes and failures, as some are more accustomed to the robot bodies than others, and why some go insane and have their perception altered to help them cope, like Simon.
Catherine knows you are a robot, but does not why or how until a few hours later when it is revealed you are a part machine part dead co-worker created by The WAU, which explains your ability to hear the last conversation made between coworkers and the visual tears, which is a malfunctioning camera, not human eyes.
More on Gameplay
It feels that the minds of ‘Frictional Games’ were of two halves when making this game. The first half wanted to craft a really thoughtful, slow-burning thriller with great dialogue, visuals, some exploration and many pieces of the story to collect along the way that answers almost every question that is presented to the player, similar to the ‘A Machine for Pigs’ experience. Then there is the other half that clearly wanted an intense experience with creepy monsters, but also with tram crashes, parts of PATHOS-II caving in on itself, many loud noises being thrown at you all the time, which reminds me of ‘The Dark Descent’ moments.
It is the quiet moments of ‘SOMA’ I enjoyed the most. The tension in silence, lost at the bottom of the ocean, trying to work out where I needed to go was far more successful in making me worry about my safety. One example of this is when you spend an hour or so preparing a new body for yourself, as your current body is not strong enough to withstand the pressures of the darkest parts of the ocean. Once you are at the bottom, you will feel so alone and vulnerable, praying that you are going the right way in this seemingly alien place. There are no jump scares or intense moments of dread, just you, and some creepy looking fishes.
You do this to try and find The ARK, which is in Site Tau, with all the human copies on in the base, upload yourself and Catherine onto The ARK and blast it up to space. As you try and locate it, you go through many sections of the game with all the different things I have talked about thus far, but there are a couple of things in the game I wish to point out that makes it’s narrative so engaging.
Narrative Point 1: Simulations
In Site Theta, you are about halfway through the game and have to get a passcode to access a submarine that would take you to the bottom of the ocean and the only people who know what it is are very much dead. Catherine, being the clever and suspicious person she is, made digital copies of everyone and it is here you find Simon’s legacy file. You collect the right pieces to solve the puzzle to create a simulation to ask for the passcode from one of the members of staff, a simulation of Brandon Wan. I spent many attempts to get the code out of him, creating different environments that I thought would help him relax into coughing up the code, each failed attempt being a complete restart of Brandon’s virtual life.
This is messed up on its own, as the solution involves snooping in his and his lover’s bedrooms to find out information about them both so Catherine can create a copy of said lover (called Alice) and simulate her voice to make him believe that he is in PATHOS-II still and not in a simulation. Each simulation is effectively a brand new consciousness, bringing Brandon to life and killing him off again just before he becomes too stressed, causing the simulation to crash. Chair to simulation to crash will be repeated many different times, depending on the player.
The deeper horror is that there could thousands of different Simons that have experienced something similar, his brain scan being the foundation for other experiments. What you do with Brandon here is fairly tame, but what if you give this experiment to a not so pleasant person with not so pleasant intentions? What did scientists do with the many copies of Simon that may have existed over the years? Simon 123 may have been short-lived whilst the tech may have been experimental and being developed, whilst Simon 4501 may have had a much longer life, but filed with the latest wave or torture interrogation techniques. It would answer plenty of questions, but it would also cause many problems.
Narrative Point 2: Not Understanding Ctrl+C not Ctrl+X
As mentioned earlier, you have to build yourself a new body to survive new deep-sea pressures. Your consciousness has to be put in a new(er) body and Simon is naturally, a little concerned with the idea. He has been through a lot, that is undeniable and being plucked from one body to another is so alien to him and it is understandable how and why he is feeling what he is, but I cannot help but feel rather frustrated at him not grabbing some of the more simple concepts.
Catherine lies to him constantly to get him to go along with it, explaining it is a coin flip as to whether the old or new version of you is left behind. In reality, you are always left behind, but the new version lives. You go through with it, appearing in the new body with the Simon of not so old saying it didn’t work. Despite knowing this would happen, I was still very freaked out by this shift in control and felt very weird looking at the older Simon, the one I have spent most of the game playing.
A similar thing happens right at the end of the game that many people I have spoken to about the game have found less powerful, but I actually found it far more satisfying than the first instance of this.
You are about to transfer yourself into The ARK, which has to be done almost the same time it is being blasted off to space. Simon goes along with it. There’s a countdown, and of course, we see the copies of them go off into space, leaving the Simon we play as with Catherine in a monitor, stuck on PATHOS-II. The player experiences the other side of the transition this time, Simon bickers with Catherine who grows irate at Simon’s incompetence and crashes, probably due to an overload of stress. The screen goes black and the credits roll.
As an ending, I loved how abrupt it was and I think it was perfect as it was. “Is…is that it?” I smirked, not quite believing that was it before the credits begun. “Oh my god, that’s it!” I laughed. “That’s bloody brilliant!” I began to think about what I just played, and then there was a happy post-credit gameplay of (very) new and incredibly stupid/naive Simon wondering through The ARK to meet Catherine on a beach of this weird and futuristic-looking city, before showing The ARK successfully making it to space. I didn’t like this, as I am not a fan of happy-clappy endings for the sake of happy-clappy endings. Perhaps swapping the good and bad endings around would have been a better stylistic choice, or just leaving it at the bad ending, as you should know that the copies are ok, but I was very happy over the dread of a Simon stuck at the bottom of the ocean dead, or about to die. Not because I disliked him, it was just a satisfying ending.
Coda
‘SOMA’ is an interesting take on horror that isn’t scary in the way it wants to scare you. Its gameplay and the choices you can make are total garbage and don’t really contribute much to the game itself. Where it does succeed however is its truly captivating story that really asks some deep meaningful questions about mortality and what it means to be human. The voice acting is amazing for the most part, and the exchanges between Simon and Catherine made for some of the best relationships for any game I have played for quite a while.
If you are in the same boat as me and do not like the inclusion of the game’s monsters, you may wish to try the game’s Safe Mode, which was added sometime after the game’s release as an experimental update, as a response to fan feedback and the now debunked ‘Wuss Mode’ mod on Steam. The game is still tense with Safe Mode, and without worrying about the monsters killing you, one can enjoy the narrative more and have a good look at the creatures and try and work out what the hell they are. I still managed to have a good time with it on and reckon you will too. Do play it normally first, as that is how the devs intended you to play it, but don’t feel bad for playing it on Safe Mode either.
There is also a really interesting interview with Thomas Grip, founder of Frictional Games, that explains more about the safe mode and him realising that the monsters don’t actually contribute much to the games’ themes, which I think is rather humble of him to admit.
If I were to rate ‘SOMA’ out of 10, I would rate it Omnitool/10, as that is just as useful as a proper out of 10 score.
What do you think of this game? Where would you rank compared to the Amnesia games? Do you think its monsters are scary, or just annoying?
Let’s start a conversation, people!
