https://forum.psnprofiles.com/topic/45530-soma-story-breakdown-do-not-read-until-beating-the-game-spoilers/#comment-1242517

For purposes of this thread I wanted to emphasize the Carthage stuff presented in the game.

In the story of Soma Carthage accomplishes the following:
-Gets 3 employees secretly on the staff. Mark Sarang, Julia Dahl, and Johan Ross. Lasky is on the clip board next to where you update the security chip Brandon Wan had and is listed as Carthage Project Manager, but is not listed later when you see only the first three names on a computer.
-Mark Sarang comes up with the idea of continuation.
-Julia Dahl covers up an evacuation attempt of Tau.
-Carthage introduces the WAU AI unit.
-Johan Ross convinces Pathos 2 to remove all restrictions on the WAU.
-The Failsafe on the black boxes is CRTH4 (reference to Carthage) and the WAU monitors the black boxes.

Julia Dahl ends her audio logs with the phrase Delenda Est.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delenda_Est

["Delenda Est" is a short story written by Poul Anderson, part of his Time Patrol (1960) series. The title alludes to the Latin phrase Carthago delenda est ("Carthage must be destroyed") from the Third Punic War.

Renegade time travelers meddle in the outcome of the Second Punic War, bringing about the premature deaths of Publius Cornelius Scipio and Scipio Africanus at the Battle of Ticinus in 218 BC, and thus creating a new timeline in which Hannibal destroys Rome in 210 BC. This meant that western European civilization came to be based on a Celtic-Carthaginian cultural synthesis (rather than Greco-Roman, as in actual history).]

Given the similarities it is very obvious imo that the writers of Soma took some inspiration from this short story. It's unfortunate that they buried the references behind audio logs and emails that takes so much effort to piece together because it's easily my favorite piece of the story.

I've been listening to Let's Plays and found this interesting. As far as I can tell it's not in the ps4 version as this Let's Play was on pc. It also might have been patched out.

At 42:40 in this video they access Julia Dahl’s laptop.

https://youtu.be/EtA60aemvaA

In the 3rd recording before her head explodes is subtitled, but not voiced "No need for the company to be worried, if she does decide to go into the Abyss, she won't make it far. She's not... Arghhhh".

What caught me off guard is why is Dahl still talking about the company? This is after the comet. After Ross came up dead from the Abyss. After Herber tells her she's going into the Abyss to find site Alpha. Dahl should know the surface is destroyed.

The 3 reports in her computer are "undelivered". Carthage was on the surface and should be destroyed. It could lend some weight to the time travel theory. Ultimately it's just something the writers left open ended but it's fun to contemplate.

Now today I found out that Carthage Industries is something from Star Citizen. I'm curious if it's some kind of cross over or just pure coincidence?

https://robertsspaceindustries.com/orgs/CARTHAGE