The Ultimate SOMA Discussion Thread

[Ashtoreth]

Why would anyone build a station underwater in the first place? What's the purpose?

Ever seen the movie The Abyss? That took place on an underwater oil drilling platform.

No, but how does this answer my question? The research station has nothing to do with oil. The purpose of PATHOS-2 has probably something to do with AI and consciousness. So what's the point building it underwater?

Some details from the upcoming film "Depth" (which will serve as a sort of prologue for SOMA) seem to indicate that one of the operations going on in PATHOS-II was related with underwater oil drilling. I posted about it in more detail here.
This fact may or may not be important to the storyline of SOMA. We'll see.

And "The Abyss" has indeed been cited by Thomas Grip as one of the influences for the setting of SOMA:

Abyss is a pretty good example of something we've had as an inspiration source, a little bit at least.

[Source] (skip to 22:04)