The Ultimate SOMA Discussion Thread

[plutomaniac]

Never trust ModDB. The guys that made the pages ARE NOT Frictional. The same goes for AAMFP. They misled us too.

Exactly, ModDB is not to be trusted for these reasons. The game is coming hopefully early 2015. I suspect we'll see it in one year from now or so.

[Googolplex]

I whould like when not every monster has the function to kill the player.

[SeanieTheMan]

You would think that since SOMA is already in beta stage, that it would be released at least by the end of the year. The game is in beta stage and the game still needs another year of development?

[Sampyli]

SOMA is already in early alpha stage

Fixed.

[Kein]

Ym, not sure if you have seen this guys...

COMING: Q4 2014

Hate to break it for you man, but it will be very late 2015. And that is an optimistic assumption based on official words.

[Alardem]

So:

With the revelation that the game is set underwater, and that at least some of the antagonists will be mechanical parasites that control human bodies...

...what the hell are these mechanical parasites? Are they leftovers from a lost "alien" civilization? Is this "alien" civilization still alive, and continuing their experiments on humankind?

[PutraenusAlivius]

With the revelation that the game is set underwater, and that at least some of the antagonists will be mechanical parasites that control human bodies...

It's like the Terminator all over again. Except there is no John Connor and the robots are put in your skull rather than having machine bodies.

[Googolplex]

All we know is that SOMA is in alpha stage. A further year of development is plausible. AMFP early should be released in halloween 2012, but it comes out a year later. And the engine here was already done. For SOMA they developed a new engine, what could have taken 2 years before they started making the "game".

And I'm sure they will do a lot of changes, additions, fixes and improvements to release.

I hope they will do multilingual voice sync (german, french, italian, spanish). I'm sure they won't, but that'y my wish.

[Fortigurn]

So:

With the revelation that the game is set underwater, and that at least some of the antagonists will be mechanical parasites that control human bodies...

...what the hell are these mechanical parasites? Are they leftovers from a lost "alien" civilization? Is this "alien" civilization still alive, and continuing their experiments on humankind?

I don't think they are mechanical parasites controlling human bodies. I think they are digital copies of the person's own consciousness, which are added along with mechanical appendages, to the human's existing body. Meanwhile the human's brain is taken and placed elsewhere. And sometimes a digital copy of the human's consciousness is placed inside a mechanical device which then thinks its human.

I see a progression here.

1. First contact: the humans find and examine mysterious mechanical devices which appear to be inert junk.

2. Response: in reality the machines (or their masters, through the machines), are actually studying the humans in turn, and recording everything about them with the aim of eventually copying them.

3. Transformation: humans are later captured, their brains removed from their skulls and placed in machines which copy their consciousness. These copies of consciousness end up in a machines (as we saw in Mockingbird). Meanwhile, the human's left over body has a mechanical brain inserted (with a copy of the original human's consciousness), and in some cases has mechanical appendages added. Perhaps Disco Ball Head man is a beta version, and the bodies on the tables, with minimal modification, are the later versions.

[Alardem]

I do wonder if part of the game will take place in a virtual reality of sorts. The Mockingbird video implied that Golaski-Bot was perceiving something different from what Reed saw - hence him claiming to be standing up and moving while the robot shell remained inert. My own theory is that the introductory trailer (with the tentacles revealing the video's protagonist's brain to be removed from his body, and replaced with a mechanical substitute) is partly set in this separate reality.

Also, that trailer seems to hint that one of the environments will involve the alien ruins themselves. Or being inside the body of a giant mechanical alien. The blue aesthetic brings to mind the alien environments from Crysis...

I wonder if the alien antagonists are either drones left by a long-gone creator (that may have interfered with humans), or if they themselves are descendants of that ancient civilization. It could be that SOMA will develop themes similar to what was randomly revealed about the Tuurngait's influence on humanity in the last 2 minutes of Black Plague.