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The SOMA Theory, An Unfinished Script. - Printable Version

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The SOMA Theory, An Unfinished Script. - Macgyverthehero - 01-04-2015

Since the news on SOMA has been picking up slowly again on here, I thought about my theory on SOMA I used to be working on earlier last year, but I got bored with it and it was left on my hard drive to collect dust.

Now, I think it's about time I share what I had in mind on my theory of SOMA. In the spoiler below you'll find my unfinished script for a video I had in mind to make talking about my theory on SOMA, but as I said I eventually got bored with it and scrapped the project.

So, here it is:
Spoiler below!
The SOMA Theory
A script by Macgyverthehero

Hey guys, Macgyverthehero here and in this video I will be discussing my ideas and theories on an upcoming horror game which to be released on PC and Playstation 4 in 2015. This, is SOMA.

So, what is SOMA? For those of you who have not heard of it, SOMA is a sci-fi styled survival horror game set in an undersea research base, known as PATHOS-II, and at the base some form of a mechanical life form is taking over PATHOS-II and it's inhabitants. This game is being developed by the expert horror game developing company; Frictional Games, best known for the Penumbra trilogy and Amnesia: The Dark Descent.

Recently, this game has been causing a discussion among my buddies over at the Frictional Games Forum, people speculating and sharing they're ideas on what SOMA might be about, and what is contained in SOMA that explains the story behind what is happening at PATHOS-II. Even I was getting curious to what SOMA could be about.

There is many theories thought up by members of the Frictional Games forums on what is happening in SOMA. Some say that the machines we see in all the videos we've seen so far could be that the machines are trying to imitate us, and try to gain that sense of intelligence. This idea makes sense, judging from the Mockingbird and the Gameplay trailer that Frictional Games has provided us, even some of those gameplay videos including Mr. Disco Ball Head.

To start my research, I decided to look up the word SOMA itself. A lot of people believe this to be an acronym since all the letters are capitalized, but I think it's more obvious then that. So after going to google and looking straight up the word "Soma" I find links to a chocolate factory and a store that happens to sell lingerie. So then I try wikipedia instead and it immedietly takes me to a page about Soma where I quickly find out it has something to do with the religion of Hinduism.

I already looked up this page once before when the buzz about SOMA started, and stayed with an assumption that Soma is a ritual drink made from a special plant. But after going all TL;DR on the page and assuming it was not very related to what the game SOMA might be about, I looked up the Soma article on Wikipedia again and I found something that REALLY caught my eye.

In the article there is a section which talks about an ancient Hindu text known as the Vedas, and in this section you can read the statement that "drinking Soma produces Immortality."

By looking at this statement alone and reading through the rest of the article, I can see a kind of connection between this immortality drink, and the game SOMA. For starters, I'm sure you guys have heard of the idea where you can achieve immortality by transferring your consciousness into a machine or a computer. What if that idea is what is happening in SOMA? That Soma is some kind of an immortality agent which can duplicate a person's consciousness, and insert it into a computer for it to live forever.

The Mockingbird video Frictional Games released shows some evidence to this idea of mine. In the video, there is a machine that is slowly dismantling itself apart (the price of immortality?) and scientist named Reed interacts with it, finding out that it believes itself to be a man named Adam Golaski.

You guys think I should continue this script of mine? Opinions and feedback is always appreciated.

RE: The SOMA Theory, An Unfinished Script. - GrAVit - 01-04-2015

I don't know, I always thought of SOMA as some sort of acronym.
What would the point of writing it with capital letters be otherwise?

I think this is pretty essentially related to the storyline of SOMA: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain_in_a_vat

We saw brains connected to cables in a major gameplay trailer that Frictional released.
I think the game will deal with the concept of reality quite a bit.

RE: The SOMA Theory, An Unfinished Script. - Macgyverthehero - 01-06-2015

In terms of the concept of reality, I had a thought in mind for my theory that the videos Vivarium and Mockingbird that Frictional Games released has possible evidence of the "mindfuck" that SOMA suggests containing. The mindfuck of miss-identification, and miss-leading information.

I'm not too sure about the whole brain thing we've seen in the gameplay trailer, but I have a feeling it has something to do with how Mr. Disco Ball Head was created. In one of the newer trailers (Theta I think) there is a conversation between two people about how people are inexplicably committing suicide.

I had a theory for this that people might be exposed to whatever SOMA might be, then after SOMA copied their personalities into a machine or some computer the effected person would then commit suicide, therefore his personality living on forever inside a machine and adding another point to the whole "immortality in a computer" concept I think exists in SOMA.

The body on the table we saw in the gameplay trailer could be some form of re-purposing operation, re-purposed into what though? My guess is another Mr. Disco Ball Head who's task is to collect the bodies and subject them to re-purposing.

RE: The SOMA Theory, An Unfinished Script. - Macgyverthehero - 05-27-2015

Not to double post or anything, but Frictional Games put out a new video and it had a rather interesting scene at the end:
[video=youtube]https://youtu.be/pCXqRdurmkM?t=116[/video]
I thought this scene felt supportive in a way to my theory, because the machine at the end who knows itself as "Harry" might be in a similar situation as the machine who claims to be Adam Golaski in the Mockingbird video released a while ago. Mockingbird is probably the name given to these intelligent imposing machines, so we know what to call them now.

RE: The SOMA Theory, An Unfinished Script. - 213 - 05-31-2015

the mockingbird machine looks and interacts with the people present in front of him, so he cannot be trapped in some internal labyrinth. he is in fact seeing the world through a heavily filtered and deluded machine-mind.

so we have two types of machines. one where the mind is directly imposed upon a humanoid entity that is able to perceive and interact with the world. and one where the conscious copy is projected into a completely false reality divorced from the real world.

the mockingbird machine began to cannibalize the other machines because he believed the other machines were food. in his machine-mind's eye, he must have saw other machines, metals, etc as food items like chicken, candy bars, etc. when he began dismantling himself, his internal logic may have simply interpreted that action as something else entirely.