Issue: I simply refuse to use the stun gun on any robot in Delta

[hollowleviathan]

But really this is a matter of faith, not in God but Frictional as a developer. I see their mastery and potential as a developer, otherwise why would I bother posting here. But I felt manipulated in Soma, not by the story or the situation, but by Frictional itself. I brings me absolutely out of the game when this happens. It is something devs should strive to avoid.

Throughout this entire situation, you have continually insisted that a no-win situation, a moment where the protagonist that you're protraying cannot achieve a goal without seriously compromising their morals, is unrealistic, and therefore breaks your immersion. I simply cannot believe that you're unaware of how commonplace such circumstances are.

Honestly it is more unbelievable that Simon was able to make it this far at all, that there were solutions to all of his obstacles, instead of some impassible, impossible wall, some dumb luck that made everything truly hopeless. Every problem makes the game more realistic, and such a problem that has only a compromising, morally-uncertain solution, is very plausible.

[Sirandar]

Throughout this entire situation, you have continually insisted that a no-win situation, a moment where the protagonist that you're portraying cannot achieve a goal without seriously compromising their morals, is unrealistic, and therefore breaks your immersion. I simply cannot believe that you're unaware of how commonplace such circumstances are.

Yes, but the does ubiquity of an event really directly relate to how moral a given choice it is? A common contemporary moral event is the decision whether to circumcise a male or female child or not. In some places it is considered sexual assault. In some places circumcision of male infants is completely acceptable, and refusing is stigmatized. In some places circumcision of female infants is completely acceptable, and refusing is stigmatized.

During World War 2, quite a few behaviors perhaps considered amoral, were as common as rain.

Assessing the morality of a decision with the number of people who would choose it is perhaps the slipperiest moral slope there is.

Is how common a given choice is really a major part of your moral decision making?

There is reasonable doubt considering the effect of the WAU, distributed AI and that Frictional placed a document explicitly stating that both have "advanced AI" that BOTH robots are sentient.

Have you ever killed a sentient being to get what you want? Do you know anyone who has?

But it seems to me the essence of your post is " The world is full of crappy choices to be made, so why fuss about this one in a game?"

Sadly honestly, refusing to kill/shut down either robot is one of the few crappy choices I can refuse without even worse consequences, and so I do .... Hence I escape through the 4th wall.

In the opposite extreme, Dreamfall Chapters tried to make decisions like which lunch you buy for your boyfriend, whether you check in on him, or whether you kiss a girl or not into monumental game shaking decisions, which also didn't work very well for the most part.

[Sirandar]

From the OP ... this horse/robot has been stunned to death so I have a completely different direction for this.

How information is delivered in gaming pretty much dictates a passive experience for players. This is because information is given as visual cues, audio recordings, limited dialogues with NPCs (because of voice acting), and in some cases well crafted combinations of the above. Note that previously I stated that Soma presented information in compelling ways.

To these limited choice of information, the player either chooses to physically act (usually violently) or has an even more limited choices in speaking. Here we come to the real limitation holding back gaming. To choose what to say or do, the choice must be placed in a list for you to choose from. Presenting information in this manner by definition gives you all the choices right before your eyes, and it becomes obvious what to do. There is no discovery, there is no thrill, just a multiple choice exam.

My Galaxy Android phone can transcribe my voice to text in very near real time. Granted my voice is sent to Google for transcription, but they are doing millions at a time so it couldn't be too CPU intense. It is sent to Google so google can control and benefit from it.

So it is quite feasible to have direct text voice entry transcribed to text, analyzed, keyworded and compiled into data that could determine a subset of dialog choices that are in tune with your response, which the player would then choose from. That would move the player from a passive to an active participant of a computer game.

Yes it could be done, my phone and googles server does most of it now in real time.

It is a matter of investing in gaming in a way other than graphical improvements.

The other area that needs serious consideration is fully destructible environments. These give the player the feeling of impact and consequence, and the players actions can be limited not in the stupid ways they are now, but because the whole town will burn down if they don't think about what they are doing.

How stupid was is it in Mass Effect that you were a ELITE specter agent, but you are forced to engage in each mission with a specially limited choice of ammo and heavy weapons (or spells in other games). It would be much more natural to let the player carry whatever they reasonably could carry, and then limit them by the consequences of their firepower, not by strategically feeding them ammo caches. But they had to feed you otherwise player would spam.

[Noisecode]

From the OP ... this horse/robot has been stunned to death so I have a completely different direction for this.

How information is delivered in gaming pretty much dictates a passive experience for players. This is because information is given as visual cues, audio recordings, limited dialogues with NPCs (because of voice acting), and in some cases well crafted combinations of the above. Note that previously I stated that Soma presented information in compelling ways.

To these limited choice of information, the player either chooses to physically act (usually violently) or has an even more limited choices in speaking. Here we come to the real limitation holding back gaming. To choose what to say or do, the choice must be placed in a list for you to choose from. Presenting information in this manner by definition gives you all the choices right before your eyes, and it becomes obvious what to do. There is no discovery, there is no thrill, just a multiple choice exam.

My Galaxy Android phone can transcribe my voice to text in very near real time. Granted my voice is sent to Google for transcription, but they are doing millions at a time so it couldn't be too CPU intense. It is sent to Google so google can control and benefit from it.

So it is quite feasible to have direct text voice entry transcribed to text, analyzed, keyworded and compiled into data that could determine a subset of dialog choices that are in tune with your response, which the player would then choose from. That would move the player from a passive to an active participant of a computer game.

Yes it could be done, my phone and googles server does most of it now in real time.

It is a matter of investing in gaming in a way other than graphical improvements.

The other area that needs serious consideration is fully destructible environments. These give the player the feeling of impact and consequence, and the players actions can be limited not in the stupid ways they are now, but because the whole town will burn down if they don't think about what they are doing.

How stupid was is it in Mass Effect that you were a ELITE specter agent, but you are forced to engage in each mission with a specially limited choice of ammo and heavy weapons (or spells in other games). It would be much more natural to let the player carry whatever they reasonably could carry, and then limit them by the consequences of their firepower, not by strategically feeding them ammo caches. But they had to feed you otherwise player would spam.

Is there any chance we can get a moderator to lock this thread so it can sink to the bottom of the forum (where it belongs) as not only does the original poster continue to rant and behave in a self entitled, unreasonable, delusional way, but is now starting to discuss things that are in no way related Soma such as other video games like Mass effect, gameplay features that are not a part of Soma, the OP's philosophy / stance on ethics , and cellular phones.

[Romulator]

I've been keeping track of this thread the past few days (some moderators have yet to finish the game). I've deleted a few posts in the past few hours which were rather scathing or directly attacking the opinions of the original poster - but since then, posts have been rather civil.

I'll leave the thread open for a bit longer to see if things move back within the scope of SOMA and the talks remain at a satisfactory behaviour, else I will close the thread.

[Fortigurn]

...not only does the original poster continue to rant and behave in a self entitled, unreasonable, delusional way, but is now starting to discuss things that are in no way related Soma such as other video games like Mass effect, gameplay features that are not a part of Soma, the OP's philosophy / stance on ethics , and cellular phones.

I'd like to see more about cellular phones. But more on topic, when I first realized that the game narrative presented me with some situations in which I had no choice but to undertake actions I found personally objectionable, I thought hard about it. I decided it was highly realistic, and greatly to be applauded. That's what happens in real life. I felt the same way about Spec Ops: The Line.

[Omnitool]

Spoiler below!

I played the game up to the robot stun choice like drinking fine wine, and it was. I refuse to stun either robot. I found the document outlining the AI level of both robots and both are ADVANCED AI. Add to that the effects of the WAU and the player at thins point has no way to know if it is a toaster or not. Frictional could edit that document to say that the little white robot is a toaster but even then there is the effects of WAU

Actually if you use the stun gun on a robot you won't kill it! You have to remove the chip from it. The robot's conciousness is stored on that very chip, remember? Yo do not destroy the chip, just the mechanical body.

The robot will not die! When you insert its tool chip into your omnitool, it will replace the "Helper Jane" omnitool AI on its previous chip. You get to take the robot's counciousness with you everywhere, helping you along open doors! It would have probably ended worse if you left it floating around where you find it, now you are it's caretaker, it's protector!

Because you remove the chip and do not even copy it, actually that robot is more close to the original then Simon is, it is its very counciousness! Later you could find a robot body with no chip and plug it in... Think about the context of the game, this is SOMA, that is what it is about, human counciousness that transcends the physical body (human or robotic)!

Think about it, did you kill Catherine when you removed the cortex chip on which she was stored from her robot body? No, she is alive and well, plugged into your omnitool, and you take her everywhere with you. You could take the cute robot's (K-8) chip and take it with you in your journey. You do not kill or harm anyone!

Now, knowing this, will you play further?

[76464th]

There is another way to play on without killing any one of the robots. It's similar to what Omnitool guy suggested doing with map editor, but somewhat easier and thus can be made into a patch (which I did). You need to edit the "02_03_delta.hps" file in the "SOMA\maps\chapter02\02_03_delta" folder. This file contains the scenario for the whole zeppelin level.

There's the function that creates another instance of Goya's (the big robot) chip, and it's invoked when you shoot Goya. I copied it and pasted into an appropriate place - the starting sequence for the level. Now when I entered the level, the chip was already in its place, I picked it up and flew away without hurting anyone

The hardest part is to find the chip. It actually lands at the point where Goya crashes. If you walk out the zeppelin platform, you walk past the corpse sitting to your left, now turn about 45 degrees left and there is a lit lamppost some 5-10 meters away. Then, next to this lamppost, are two other masts, sort of dark and out of service. And, finally, diagonally from the first lamppost, another 5-10 meters away, is the second working, lit lamppost. It's at the foot of the seconf lamppost that the chip is lying.

Here's the link to download my patched 02_03_delta.hps:
https://yadi.sk/d/0ofNjIr13Nmq2F
Just replace he original file with the patched one before you enter this level. I also commented out the following lines:
/*Dialog_AddSubject("8_FixCatherine_Start");
if (msKilledRobot == "Kate")
Dialog_AddSubject("8_FixCatherine_Kate");
else
Dialog_AddSubject("8_FixCatherine_DelusionalRobot"); */

where Simon whines about having killed the robot, because listening to them sort of makes you feel a killer after all.

Yeah, I know, I am two years late. I stumbled upon this discussion when I googled "How not to kill robot in Soma", so maybe this helps someone who has just discovered SOMA (like myself), or wants to replay it.

[cantremember]

The dilemma is a bit the same as the other ones you're presented with though.. do you torture Carl, or kill him entirely... Do you leave Amy in a horrible state or kill her entirely, etc.