Discussion: Monster Behavior in SOMA (Mild Spoilers)

[Kein]

They should have went for one of the original ideas about monster never directly attacking you. Like that crying infected woman at Omicron. i dunno if it was a bug or anything, but I just walked past it and picked up the battery and she didn't even bother. Not until i threw chair at her

[GhylTarvoke]

You got lucky! I kept dying until I realized that

Spoiler below!

she's attracted by movement.

[Kaliyo]

I like that every monster in SOMA has different ai mechanic. But they are kinda disappointment to me compare to old Gatherers anyway. AtDD monsters were perfecly introduced, they could spawn, walk and discreetly despawn, and those danger ambients. SOMA's scare factor not lies in monsters though.

[AleNes]

You got lucky! I kept dying until I realized that

Spoiler below!

she's attracted by movement.

Can you tell how does it work?

[hollowleviathan]

that crying infected woman at Omicron.

She was super creepy because I couldn't make her react to me, honestly. Having to walk past her, when she did finally leap into action I got such a jump scare.

[SineDeus]

i thought the enemies were even scarier in the way that they never left you alone. Considering the diversity in rooms and space in some areas, if they had just randomly been walking around you would get past them extremely easily. The fact that they constantly were between you and your goal created such tension and made you realize you were gunna have be very very crafty to get past them (the blind monsters though were really easy). FG stated before this game released that the monsters were not at all the focus of the scares and more like very frightening obstacles to truly show you how wretched people became from the WAU, this is essentially a story game. The programming of the monsters also makes a lot of sense to me, it didn't seem at all un-immersive, when you move to a new place, the monsters generally hear/sense you going there, so their programming tells them to stay in that same area and look around, and eventually go silent/stay still in order to trick you into thinking it's safe and then ambushing. They had a very predatory stance

[Damascus Rose]

I found the monsters much scarier than amnesia for some reason. It could be that I can't remember my first playthrough that well, but I think it's because the amnesia monsters just despawn after a while. You could figure that out by the music queues very easily and then it loses effect. It worked for that game but because it's been copied so much it couldn't work again. In SOMA you are forced to figure out these creatures the wau has created and face them. It definitely wasn't perfect and got frustrating at times but I felt it was a much better system, most notably the jiang shi and mr. akers. the one at tau was cool and creepy but his behaviour sucked.

For the life of me I cannot understand why some people felt them to not be scary and say this game isn't as scary as amnesia. For me it was tons worse.

[doctorferdinand]

Spoiler below!

TBH I don't find the monsters scary at all. Their designs were cool and disturbing but that's just it, gameplay-wise they were actually weaker enemies than AMFP's(Not joking.) The behaviours of the enemies as just as predictable as Grunts and Brutes etc and you can usually figure out each monsters gimmicks pretty easily. "Don't look at this one" for Disco Grunts and "Don't make noise at this guy" for the flesh thing in the server rooms, so they basically split up 2 things you had to with the original enemies in TDD but somehow made it less interesting.

The first monster type you encounter was just a plain old grunt type enemy but just slower and simply not scary. I know FG wanted the monsters to be more unpredictable and more interesting than any gatherers/manpigs you encountered but I just simply preferred the raw terror of being chased of a guy with messed up body armour,hasn't washed in months and has an Uruk-Hai sword for an arm down a hallway. I admit I did find the Disco Grunt sequence in the wrecked ship tense atleast.

Idk, I gotta disagree. The fear for me came in not knowing at first how to react to each new monster, whereas in both Amnesia games, the same monsters were used throughout and it got really repetitive. To me, AMFP had the weakest ones for sure - I literally chased one through the area underneath the church and got right up to it and it did nothing. I had more sympathy for those things than anything else. I think the charm in SOMA's monsters was in their gimmicks tbh.

I think the reason the Upsilon proxy was slow and not super interesting was just to introduce people who haven't played other Frictional games to the whole process and to build some tension. I agree with you tho on the designs of TDD monsters being really scary, at least the Brute. That thing fucked with me. Other than that, monsters like the Theta proxies reminded me of Black Plague's Tuurngaits, which weren't super scary to me appearance-wise.

[WALP]

Spoiler below!

The first monster type you encounter was just a plain old grunt type enemy but just slower and simply not scary.

I think the footsteps was one of the things that made the construct scary, the way he is slow one moment and then suddenly accelerates making you think is he coming for me?

When you get it to know it gets fairly easy to deal with yeah, but when you dont the way it can change from slowpoke to rushing you like crazy is quite something.

The fact that I did not think I could look at him, might have upped the fear factor for me though.

[Noble81]

SPOILERS




So I just completed SOMA (amazing 10/10) and I wandered exactly were the enemy types/reactions.

Spoiler below!

The Big slow thing near the start was based on sight?
The humanoid one with the blue lights on its head was if you were looking at it?
The humanoid one with the growth all over its head was blind so sound?
The screaming woman was movement?
OMG what the hell was the one near the end where you open the door with eight locks on and it is standing right there!? That was terrifying but also it did not find a certain way to exploit it? In the end on my third attempt I just ran for it and never looked back! Was horrendous waiting for the next eight lock door to open whilst I could hear it coming back.

Did I miss any?