Official Poll Regarding SOMA's Monsters

[Omnitool]

Very scary, but also a bit annoying.

SOMA is brilliant, definately a 9.9/10 and GOTY 2015! It is great and innovative in every single way and a complete, extraordinary gaming experience.
The monsters design is awesome, they are genuinely scary in their appearance and the sounds they make, each one has a backstory and a distinctive appearance and behaviour. It's just the AI implementation that spoils them, the only problem is that at some point in the game they become annoying by not allowing you to properly explore an area abundant in lore items.
I am just trying to point out how the game can be made even better from an objective (gameplay / beta tester) point of view.

I've wrote my thoughts on that matter here: https://www.frictionalgames.com/forum/th...age-2.html

I also found the inability to trap / temporary incapacitate monsters super annoying at some given times. The proxy when fixing the elevator and the Tau monster were such examples.
The other monsters were super OK, you either had to avoid them while there were no important plot items (text / audio logs / computer terminals) around or they spawned after you got to properly investigate the area (the bulky ostrich like walking robot, the crazed helper robots in the ocean, the disco - ball, the proxy in the server room).

But the proxy in the elevator level and the Tau monster were actually more annoying then scary, they just kept getting in my way as I wanted to carefully investigate the beautifully crafted levels, to find each and every hidden plot item there was to find.
This itself would have not been such a nuisance if their AI would have reacted normally, but they were actually cheating! They could hear you from a distance of 2 kilometres away, they could see through walls and in complete darkness, and worst of all they would always seem to teleport within a 5 meter radius of the player, as if Simon had a GPS implant and they had the detector! It would have been a thousand times more immersive and scary if they actually hunted you all over the level (like in Penumbra Black Plague) instead of just teleporting behind you over and over. Is is like the enemy is playing the game with a trainer or cheat console, using noclip, wall, aim, 5x running speed, nightvision goggles, an eavesdropping station and a Simon radar! That is cheesy / hilarious, not scary.

The problem could be fixed easily with a patch that aplies just one the following solutions:
1. Fix the AI, make it act in a normal manner, not by cheating (the AI from Penumbra Black Plague could be ported if possible).
2. Allow the player to trap a monster into a room, by luring it inside (only in the areas where the monsters do not allow you to properly investigate the area). Simon could trap the proxy at the elevator repair level into the med room, and close the big pressurised door behind him at Tau to trap Yoshida into that part of the base.
3. Allow the player to keep the stun gun, but only find power cells for it two or three times in the entire game, in the areas where the monsters do not allow you to properly investigate the area for plot items. This could work in one of these two ways:
A. Zapping an enemy disables it for about 1 minute or less.
B. An enemy must be zapped three times in order to permanently disable it. However, the player must stalk it (the hunter becomes the hunted), then zap it, and it will become angry and chase the player, who must run and hide away from it, then come out of hiding and stalk it and zap it again two more times. The monster could also be a bit weakened after being zapped each time.
This would be very interesting and would only occur two times in the entire game (at the elevator level and at Tau).

Think of the adrenaline rush you would get when attempting to lock a monster in a room...what if it gets out before you lock it from the security terminal! Or when you disable it temporary...what if he comes back to life when you expect it least...alternating the moments of tension with relative safetiness is way more scary then just running and hiding around like Newt in the Aliens movie all the time.

The Developers or even the gaming comunnity could easily make a patch to fix this problem...no need to redesign the game or anything like that... Just tweak the AI or a few doors...
But if they don't, we still have a gaming masterpiece just the way it is! Its brilliant plot and beautiful envirnoments and superb settings make us ignore any flaws!

The whole hide-and-seek approach could be greatly enhaced by makeing it a more interactive experience.