The Ultimate SOMA Discussion Thread

[SeanieTheMan]

SOMA is now in Pre-Beta:

http://frictionalgames.blogspot.com/2014...-beta.html

The game's current state, pre-Beta, is a milestone in preparation for the proper Beta, basically the full game without the final polish, which will happen a few months into next year.

And here's a gorgeous new screenshot:

Spoiler below!

So much for the "early 2015" release date for SOMA...

[Chrysler]

In a preview of an upcoming interview with Thomas, he's asked about the game running at 1080p/60fps on the PS4

Another excerpt of the interview was posted, talking a bit about system requirements.

[Paddy™]

Another excerpt of the interview was posted, talking a bit about system requirements.

Nice one, cheers!

With the way they're presenting this interview, GamingBolt must be desperate for clicks. Very irritating.

[Googolplex]

Is the PS4's framerate locked? On the PC you have a dynamic framerate. Why they only have the choice between 60 and 30 FPS? Isn't it possible to realize 40 or 50 FPS? Or even a dynamic framerate?

Hopefully the PC version will not get out of focus by the console priority.

[Chrysler]

Is the PS4's framerate locked? On the PC you have a dynamic framerate. Why they only have the choice between 60 and 30 FPS? Isn't it possible to realize 40 or 50 FPS? Or even a dynamic framerate?

Running at a frame rate that is not a factor of the monitors frame rate (60 Hz) leads to frames being shown for variable durations, which is perceived as stutter and lag. But I'm not sure what the difference with PCs is that dynamic frame rates are the default there.

[Paddy™]

Another snippet from that interview:

Frictional Games On PS4’s GDDR5 Memory: No Latency Issues And Not A Bottleneck
Plus, new features of HPL Engine 3.0 detailed.
http://gamingbolt.com/frictional-games-o...bottleneck

[Chrysler]

One feature that I think people will notice especially is the streaming, which means there will be no loading screens between levels. Our goal is to get it as seamless as possible so the entire game feel like one big environment that you travel through.

Excellent, that's a big improvement over the jarring level transitions in their previous games and may become my favorite feature of HPL3 if it turns out to work like described.

[Paddy™]

One feature that I think people will notice especially is the streaming, which means there will be no loading screens between levels. Our goal is to get it as seamless as possible so the entire game feel like one big environment that you travel through.

Excellent, that's a big improvement over the jarring level transitions in their previous games and may become my favorite feature of HPL3 if it turns out to work like described.

Yeah, I really wasn't expecting this to be a feature of HPL3. Imagine how relentless Amnesia would have been without loading screens!

[Googolplex]

A really really big improvement.

[Paddy™]

There's a write-up about SOMA in the January 2015 edition of EDGE Magazine. It doesn't really shed any new light on the game, but it does have 4 new screenshots (one of which is a very small thumbnail, hardly worth mentioning really). I'm not sure if posting them here is allowed, given that EDGE is a paid magazine, but if a mod gives me permission I'll share them. Hopefully we'll get high quality versions directly from FG anyway.

Here's the one part of the interview with Thomas which might be of interest to those of us who've heard everything else 100 times before:

Spoiler below!

There are other staff trapped down here with you, too, and you’ll happen across ocean life, but also face something entirely unexpected: humour.

“It really comes naturally from the world we have created,” Grip explains when we ask him about an encounter with a robot that acts like an injured human, and is frustrated at your apparent lack of motivation to help. “Some of the things you encounter are so bizarre at first that it’s hard to not also find them a bit comical. We’ve tried to keep it at a reasonable level throughout the game – we don’t want the characters to crack jokes all of the time – and make it arise naturally from the creepy nature of the subjects. We found that if everybody was just super-serious, it removed some of the authenticity to it all.”

Ensuring that you never know whether to laugh or scream introduces a fitting wave of discomfort for a game that deals in themes of identity and body horror, but Frictional’s attempt to go beyond traditional videogame horror tropes has made explaining exactly what Soma is a bit of a headache for Grip.