The Ultimate SOMA Discussion Thread

[Damascus Rose]

Interesting that the robot sees itself as a human woman. I wonder if you took a photo of the robot and showed it to it, would it still see the woman, or would it say "nice robot, but why are you showing me this?" Or if you sketched it with a pencil, maybe even in an exaggerated caricature form, would it see a caricatured woman or a Pixar-style robot?

If a photo of the robot would still register in the robot's mind as the human woman it thinks it is, what would happen if you took that photo of the robot, and photoshopped it slightly to add extra details while removing other details? At what point would the robot see the image as being just an image of a robot? Or would its human female form appear to change more and more with each tweak you made to the image of the robot? For instance, if you remove a button or a cog from the robot's "face", would the robot see it as the removal of the woman's nose or eyebrows etc.?

Can the robot recognise other robots? How does its delusion know when to see a robot as a robot and when to substitute it for a human form? Is it consistent? Will it see a robot as Jim on one day, then on another day will it see Jim as the garbage disposal machine that it actually is?

I haven't even played the game yet and I'm already losing my sanity trying to wrap my head around this haha.

I think the robot/human knows looking in a mirror means you're looking at yourself, and its perception of self is that of a human girl. So it thinks of itself as a girl and sees a girl in a mirror. As for everything else it sees, who knows.. maybe it sees you as a threat to it and that's why it wants to kill you? The robot of carl semken seemed to think the robots around him that were malfunctioning were human, because he says "what the hell happened to you" to them.

Another thought, maybe it doesn't see a girl in the mirror at all but it's an artistic way of showing what it wishes it saw. It has this identity of self as being a girl but all it sees is this nasty robot. That could be why it has its hand put up to the mirror connecting with this real image of what it now is, coming to an epiphany