The Coin Flip: A Different Perspective

[Abion47]

I certainly agree that it's wrong to call Simon's reaction unrealistic. However, I'd still consider it to be "stupid" - it's a completely understandable reaction and there's a pretty decent chance that I might make the same decision, but that doesn't make it an intelligent idea.

Beyond that, though, I'm not sure that Simon's reaction is purely because he interpreted getting left at Phi as having "lost the coin toss". Thinking about it, Simon had been repressing his reactions to a lot of revelations throughout the game. The revelation that he's in the future, that he's been sucked into an underwater hellscape, that the Earth is basically dead from a comet impact, that he's an AI, that many of the few things still alive at Pathos-II are actively trying to kill him, that his body is comprised of a combination of a corpse and futuristic technology, that nearly all the robots in his same situation have literally lost their minds, that he's basically committed suicide by proxy by either killing his "former self" or leaving it to die... the list really goes on and on. There might even have been a part of him that already understood what had happened at Omicron, and how the same thing had happened to him back in Toronto, but his mind was so close to falling over the edge, that he instead subconsciously embraced ignorance. Focusing on the ARK, and the salvation it promised, was the only thing that mattered, so everything else was shoved aside as nothing more than an inconvenient thought.

When it gets to the point at Phi that the ARK has launched with him left behind, suddenly the one thing that's been keeping him focused and driven is gone, and the floodgates had opened. Everything that he had convinced himself was temporary was now permanent, and the full realization of his situation was just starting to hit him. The shelter that was his ignorance had been stripped away, and all that he was left with was despair and rage. In that state, it's absolutely natural, human even, to find someone or something to blame, and Catherine was a convenient target - after all, it was she who filled him with false hope, who gave him a purpose only to have it ripped away just as victory was all but assured. Surely it was all her fault that he was in this situation since it definitely wasn't Simon's. He is just a man torn out of his own time, after all, who was thrust into a reality he didn't belong in. He did nothing to deserve this hell, and to be stuck in it forever, to be robbed of all hope, a fate worse than death -

And then just as suddenly, Catherine is gone as well, and to make it even worse, it's Simon's own fault. If it wasn't enough for Simon to have his circumstances be made painfully clear to him, he now has to face them alone. He had one friend in the entire world, and he all but killed her himself...

An underwhelming and stupid ending?

Nah.