[SPOILERS] SOMA to Superficial?

[nonlin]

They don't really dive into what consciousness is? We just get fed these ideas and we gobble it up for the sake of the game but the game doesn't really dive into the topic of consciousness much at all does it? It dwells on some moral ground a bit but never really goes deeper than that which is really sad. The game has so much more potential for philosophical contemplation.

Don't get me wrong I enjoyed the game but it felt weak at times when the message could be so much louder if they took the time to nurture it a bit.

All those documents to give details to the situation but nothing really on the ARK, on the device that scans the mind, or how it is consciousness can be stored digitally?. What aspect of our electrical signals gets translated into 0's and 1's? And how is the Brain emulated digitally as well? They spoke about how it feels to not have the sensations of your limbs (Like floating in air says Catherine) but why is it we hear him breathing if there is no mouth to inhale? My understanding is that he is part human so he is in fact using the muscles I suppose then he just intakes through some other orifice? What about his voice? Where does that come from? Why does it sound like him if the vocal cords would be that of some other host body?

All these thoughts and host more that can't be answered just leave me wondering how much more ground could have been covered within the game. Really the game should be open to a sequel but with the way it ended I can't help but feel they might just wrap it up with this one which is a real shame.

[Fortigurn]

They don't really dive into what consciousness is?

They do.

We just get fed these ideas and we gobble it up for the sake of the game...

We don't.

...but the game doesn't really dive into the topic of consciousness much at all does it?

It does.

All those documents to give details to the situation but nothing really on the ARK, on the device that scans the mind, or how it is consciousness can be stored digitally?. What aspect of our electrical signals gets translated into 0's and 1's?

That's science, not philosophy. The philosophy stuff is dealt with in considerable detail in the incidental environmental documents and emergent plot.

[Omnitool]

All the scientific views on human counciousness and mind transfer are actually very accurate and very well documented...
Just to make an idea how close we are to that read the following articles:

Wikipedia article on mind uploading.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind_uploading

An article on the results of an experiment which consisted to linking a dead rat's brain with a computer. The brain reorganised itself to facilitate communication with the computer (the neuronal clusters were regrouping, adapting). The brain was able to control a simulation running on the computer, which consisted of learning to fly an airplane using 4 directional controls. After continuous trial and error, the rat brain managed to adapt, to actually learn to control the plane inside the simulation. Note that this research was going on in 2004.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/200...104658.htm
http://neural.bme.ufl.edu/page12/page1/page1.html
http://news.discovery.com/tech/robotics/...041022.htm
https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=deskto...w41gH6x_30

A simulated brain (like a scan in the game) is actually being constructed right now, expected to be ready by 2025. They already succesfully simulated simple neural networks like a rat's brain.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Brain_Project
http://bluebrain.epfl.ch

Dr. Munshi's research depicted in the beggining of the game, the theory to use a brain scan to similate different treatment plans without risks is already being researched.
http://www.nature.com/news/brain-scan-pr...on-1.13183
http://www.webmd.com/schizophrenia/news/...-treatment
http://psychcentral.com/news/2015/06/26/...86134.html

At a point in the game a scan is refered to as a "Nakajima neurograph". Googling the term came up with a book on brain imaging, and one of the quoted scientific publication on which the book is based was published by a researcher named Nakajima H.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19214684
https://books.google.ro/books?id=vkHVBQA...ph&f=false
The article and book is basically about research in using MRI brain scans to find better treatments for neurological diseases.

This actually proves that the Devs did their homework and went out of their way to create a plausible, credible story!

[grrrz]

I'm not sure but I think the communication with catherine is done through radio, he doesn't really speaks.

The game is still a game, and a pretty short one, not a thesis, so yeah not everything about the subject matter is told, but it still goes pretty far, and serves the story well (actually like the RPS review I felt sometimes the philosophical implications were a bit too much forced for a guy in a life and death situation like Simon, but they were still relevant).
also look for the "Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex" anime series if you want a more thorough approach on the subject (and also the movies, and also the new series)