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So... uhh what do the choices entail? - Printable Version

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So... uhh what do the choices entail? - Mastersarge - 09-26-2015

Not sure I got the gist as to the decisions you make throughout the game. Anyone clue me in here?

RE: So... uhh what do the choices entail? - Gon - 09-26-2015

This is what I think about "making decisions" in SOMA:
I think that FG didn't want to make different endings based on your choices because it would make people make decisions based on ending they want to have. You know, people would "do this and not that" just to get specific ending, not because it's their choice. FG wanted to make people think about their decisions, to make decisions based only on own feelings and to test yourself, not because "this is needed to get good ending" or anything. SOMA is very specific game and people are aware of it. It's not for everyone.

RE: So... uhh what do the choices entail? - Atwa - 09-26-2015

The choices are what you make of them. What do you think is the right thing to do? It doesn't have arbitrary win states that they lead into. Instead they are for you to think over.

RE: So... uhh what do the choices entail? - Fortigurn - 09-26-2015

After I made my first choice I wondered if it would actually have any impact on the gameplay. I couldn't see that it did, but maybe I was wrong. If choices have no real consequences, and only the appearance of consequences, that's a bit unrealistic.

RE: So... uhh what do the choices entail? - 1minus1is0 - 09-26-2015

They do have consequence. If you rob your senile grandma for drug money and she doesn't know, do you get a sermon or a pop up that tells you that you are a shitty person? Life doesn't work like that. There are no magic consequences trigger in real life. You do things, and there are consequences. You are never able to predict all those consequences, and many have lasting and very real effects but you don't know about them until later, if ever.

RE: So... uhh what do the choices entail? - Myrmidont - 09-26-2015

What I took was that some of the horror comes from your choices' impact on you, sitting at your computer, even if they don't have an impact on the game world.

Spoiler below!

I made most of my choices based around the morals of bodily autonomy, how one person shouldn't decide what to do with another person's body without their informed consent, but also that when it comes to survival, placing your own safety as being more important than others is (usually) acceptable.

The lady near the transit center with the 'exterior lungs' - I disconnected one plug, given that she didn't tell me it was ok to kill her. I don't know if that's why the train crashed or not, not having power for the safety systems.

I shocked the defective - but sentient - robot, given that the little one had helped me in the past and might be able to help me in the future, and putting it out of its behavior loop seemed merciful. The defective robot also seemed to refer to the smaller one like it was sentient, regardless of what the schematic said. (honestly, I didn't realise it was non-sentient, and it was a selfish choice)

I left my old body alive when I transferred to the new one because he might still be able to enjoy carrying on living, and once I had transferred out of that body, I lost the rights to decide what happened to it. Post-ending, I might end up regretting that, but it's now up to him (and me) if we want to keep on living or not.

I turned off the lady's life support, because she wanted me to. I stayed like she asked. To refuse her would be disrespecting her choice of what happens to her body.



RE: So... uhh what do the choices entail? - Kein - 09-26-2015

Speaking of choices:
http://i.imgur.com/v3UD2Qa.jpg

If you do not plug yourself into WAU's nodes through the game, does the final model of you has less structuregel things outside or none at all? Anyone actually tested it?

RE: So... uhh what do the choices entail? - schmaker - 09-26-2015

The thing is the decisions does not affect gameplay at all. That was wrongest decision in terms of gameplay. I was actually looking forward to replay the game with different decisions to see how the story would go. Thats not a case anymore - 2nd worst decision from Frictional Games. The first one is monster behavior Smile

RE: So... uhh what do the choices entail? - nop123 - 09-26-2015

aaaaa

RE: So... uhh what do the choices entail? - Gon - 09-26-2015

(09-26-2015, 06:23 PM)schmaker Wrote: The thing is the decisions does not affect gameplay at all. That was wrongest decision in terms of gameplay. I was actually looking forward to replay the game with different decisions to see how the story would go.
It was made like that to avoid choosing "A" over "B" just to get different ending or different way to finish the game and it's good that it was made that way. I remember in Metro games how it was ruining experience, people were trying to be "good" not because they wanted to, but because it was necessary to get more challenging good ending.

Also, most choices in Soma are made in a way that often there's really no good choices. You need to spend some time for reflection and choose what is the lesser evil in your eyes. Not because of different ending. Soma isn't just about gameplay, but about experience.

@secret1962
Yeah, I'm also angry at bad opinions and reviews, but you know, Soma is not a game for everyone unfortunately. Some people are saying that having no guns is bad because they want to just kill everything around. How tasteless. Some people are saying that having no jumpscares is bad. Some people are saying that Soma is bad because only gameplay is important and plot is just addition in their eyes.
Soma isn't just a game. FG focused more about creating interactive story and you have to put yourself in Simon's place to fully understand this game. Some people don't understand this and say that Soma is crappy "walking simulator". Tense moments and difficult moral choices. It's not the usual game. Not everyone will like this and FG is probably aware of this.
Most first person or third person games focus their gameplay on fighting. Personally I'm being fed up of this and in my eyes it's amazing how FG is able to show people that it's not necessary element. It's not easy to make a game like that(and probably easiest way to achieve it is to scary the player as much as possible). However Soma showed us that games like that can achieve something even bigger, superb and touching story.


Holy cow, what a wall of text.