I already posted this, this morning into steam discussion, decided to copy-paste it here as well.
--spoilers and major wall of text ahead--
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I wouldn't call this a "game", I think Frictional outdone the whole "game" concept and created something what I'd call a masterpiece, a stunning masterpiece. So first off, thanks to everyone at Frictional games, and thanks to everyone who contributed in the making of SOMA.
The story truly hits the nail in the head..I had so many thoughts while playing..
After completion now, I will try writing some of those thoughts. Anyone welcomed to share their ideas, their different takes etc.
Also I think there are much more to discuss about soma besides performance or that sort of stuff and thats another reason for this thread.
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Throughout the game, It was very dramatic and chilling; to pretend being a snapshot, an image of consciousness inserted into a robot. I kept playing because I wanted to know how future is depicted in the game, how more pathetic can humanity become in the future. It was heart wrenching at times.
About foolishness.. the whole idea of ARK, simulated reality and humans willingly put their images in it and believe that they will exist is one thing, but people self-murder while believing that they will somehow continue existing the same was the most chilling moment I had in a game.
We get to know Catherine the best. She is basicly one of the latest members who experienced the human society at that time. Also she have a quite unique personality. She is a rebel inside. She "doesn't fit".
What we learn from her, human beings basicly degreded to machine qualities, programmed to ignore themselves. The only difference left between human and machine is biological vs mechanical. And WAU somehow overcomes this physical difference with "gel", and It does what It can to put the gel into use after comet hits the planet. It (WAU) basicly takes the idea of "humans putting consciousness into machines" (what gave birth to It in the first place) and reverses it.
One season world
As I played and explored the game, C.G. Jung quotes was flying inside my head.
The crew of pathos-II are pretty much last of humans on planet. They are like the most advanced and also the most pathetic sum of all the wrongdoings throughout human history. They are so lost. They are psychological wrecks. Even more than Simon consciousness.
You find out, you as a player, who wakes up inside a robot suit in the future, you and the crew are not that different. Simon's phisical situation (him being robot) already took place in the biological level in the last 100 years with conditioning. There were humans once, but they never really existed. Observing all this as Simon, the robotic consciousness snapshot, makes situation more and more dramatic and ironic. Most of the time, Simon consciousness is surprised at future humans. Or, at least to their snapshots.
We read some of the crew, rigging themselves to suicide, to self-destruct right after their brain scan completes.
We see what we have in the today's world at a more advanced state: probes to feel "safer", all kinds of complex machinery to make life "better", sucking the planet dry in more advanced ways to support "life".. A complete one season - backwards world where human being has to avoid any kind of stress while inventing all sorts of complex illusions necessary..and pills. Psychiatric drugs everywhere around the station to keep "normal" and "fine".
And, few members belong to the group, the "last of humanity" kills themselves, believing they will continue to live on their artificial images..
“Neurosis is always a substitute for legitimate suffering” - C.G. Jung
That pretty much sums the whole situation. I see comet hitting the planet and destroying whole life, is just a neurosis manifested on a cosmic level. And the AI taking over the station after the impact is the existential level of the same neurosis manifesting itself. Probably besides few people who have some sense of individuality (like that security personnel, Wan?), nobody has any idea about existence, or sense of it.
Humanity basicly lost themselves in the denying game and they have completely forgotten their power, which reduced and trapped them in machine consciousness, hell, this is even (ARK) called "the last big hope to save the mankind"...a project which belongs to Catherine, a dreamer at heart as we find out later on. She somehow does belong here and doesn't. She is an anomaly. She has a part of her never consumed by the collective.
Catherine makes both sad and terrifying statements; one about ark such as "there is always good weather there" or about her life "I never liked being a human in the world". And most of the other crew, besides who got mad, pretty much same, they were already lost all basic human sensations or never had them, even before the impact. After the impact, they can self-murder without hesitation or later in the game we find out murder others, like catherine was also got murdered by her colleague.
The avoidance from reality got so extreme in the future, people were already living in an artificial state called "collective" without any sense of "I" whatsoever, so they are imagining that they can "live inside a simulation or a chip and exist" that way. This is not about comet hitting and destroying most of the life on planet, this was the way of "life" as we find out but catastrophic situation just quickened things. Being "happy" all the time, is only goal as we hear from the consciousness snapshots by the very start of our journey, when we unplug one of them It whispers "I was happy there".
Artificial happiness, which brings the name of the game, soma, it was the famous cure-all / fix-all /be-happy all time drug for the creatures of the collective in the 1931 novel Brave New World.
Human being avoiding the true nature of individual reality for all costs. Denying himself or herself, sacrificing the self for acceptance, believing in an artificially induced happiness and chasing only the good of all ie for the group. For the mankind in this case. Creating sub-realities to chase only a dull,white washed happiness..
And we see how Catherine can easily understand the idea of copying-cloning a consciousness yet Simon having hard time to deal with it. There is no "I" in the future, only the collective. Sense of "I", individual is non existant. It is history. But Simon, time traveled from the past, even sees a robot as an individual. He can't understand this. Catherine knows, everyone is a clone of everyone already in a biological suits called human body. So she has no problem understanding the idea of having lots different of machine snapshots of her consciousness.
In the future, editing everything into 'summer' or being 'happy' all time is not just a fantasy or drug induced hallucination. It is doable with technology so madness continues... and humans comes to an end in the race called running from nature of consciousness and finally getting wiped completely by the cosmos itself.
In some way, I like to think planet gets rid of millions of clones by the comet. Universe can not hold any longer what has dumped on it and just throws back all of it at once. WAU, simulates this, WAU reverses the process that once humans put consciousness into machines, he starts putting consciousness into humans, same as the universe.
Post-human world
I got lots of philosophical statements to make but, I got to mention the current 'WAU' or "comet" or "catastrophe". Which is building up on this planet, which is ongoing for decades to those who know and how story of the "game" is an actuality to those who don't know.
“Does God Exist? Well I would say, not yet.” -Ray Kurzweil
Well, he is serious. This is not your friendly neighborhood mad maniac talking, this guy,Ray Kurzweil, In and out from almost every important trans-humanist project. Worked in Google's futuristics department, been to DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency), IARPA (Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity), helped creating the "Singularity university", leading trans-humanist and so on.
He basicly claims one day, whole galaxy will be infested with nanobots, and this is inevitable, human era is over, some time around 2030's every human will become "trans-human". Hybrids. Every living being from mosquito or to non living rock, will become merged with a single consciousness. A machine all knowing consciousness will control everything, obviously what he calls "god" on that quote.
And here is your neighborhood brain-mapping program. Launched by the obama few years ago:
https://www.whitehouse.gov/share/brain-initiative
I'm not even going to mention all the suffering of millions of people this very second by the artificially created wars, synthetic terror, artificially induced hunger by corporations to grab people's land, poison in food, toxic psychiatry drugs, suicide rates or self murder, or humans killing other human beings. These are all signs of big margin of planet's population already lost their ability to "feel" human. Or "feel" anything.
We are experiencing this very extinction today. It's just not manifested in some catastrophic way yet, if you rule out the wars..
The "WAU" mindset, mimicing, collectivist - ant hill mindset was working for decades now on this planet to erase the sense of individual on all areas of life.
Here is another one of them, a maniac extraordinaire, pioneer (!) of brain implants on human beings, greatly supported - funded by the world governments, was a professor at Yale for years, made the most shocking experiments and statements such as this, says:
"Man does not have the right to develop his own mind. This kind of liberal orientation has great appeal. We must electrically control the brain. Some day armies and generals will be controlled by electric stimulation of the brain." - Dr. Jose Delgado
Sense of "I", sense of a unique "self", like catherine depicts when elevator descending down to abyss. Feeling of connected to all yet feeling so unique at the same time, feeling her hair dances with the wind and all.. depicted very eloquently and how she never felt that way again even after climbing the stairs to roof so many times as a kid..
“Your hand opens and closes, opens and closes. If it were always a fist or always stretched open, you would be paralysed. Your deepest presence is in every small contracting and expanding, the two as beautifully balanced and coordinated as birds' wings.” -Mevlana Rumi
..repetition is bound to become a boredom, an artificiality. Everyone holds the power of creativity buried deep inside, they just somehow forget it, gets lost in the process at sometime, somewhere. It isn't lost forever, only forgotten, waiting to be found in everyone. people grow up and just forget. But It's still there, waiting. Joy of freedom is creativity and that can never come from any group, any crowd or a machine..you need space, and only the individual can achieve the power of creating space.
The Power of creative imagination. That's what is missing. And no, no need for ports, brain scans, nanobots, battery packs, arks, machines. None of that. Unlimited imagination is what is infinite. True power, it is in the reach of everyone, waiting to be tapped at this very second.
I read this quote the other day, sums up everything I want to say about the game:
"Any great work of art... revives and readapts time and space, and the measure of its success is the extent to which it makes you an inhabitant of that world — the extent to which it invites you in and lets you breathe its strange, special air." -Leonard Bernstein
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