[SPOILERS] SOMA unsolved mysteries thread

[Romulator]

Couldn't you just look at the level through the Level Editor/Map Viewer?

Or via Spectator Mode in the Debug Menu?

[Bigbob]

I'm on ps4 and I'm not sure how that works. Can you zoom in and look at each map from all different angles?

I got under Lambda and found some stuff down there. Actually managed to use the healing pod by going up through the floor and back down under the building when I was done.

Edit: whoa

https://youtu.be/Duy2_qEqkTg

It is the beach and you can get to the ski cabin and empty scan room too.

This person got under the city in the ARK. I'd love to see that city up close even if just something small. He got up close to Catherine too.

https://youtu.be/qC2RmvOYzlE

[Mudbill]

On PC, the modding tools are shipped with the game in the folder, but yeah that would be tricky on PS4.

[Bigbob]

Noticed something really strange today. In Sarang's nightstand in the middle drawer is a clipboard stamped with "Haimatsu Board 55 approval". If you look at it up close it has check marks next to all the sites. Except Alpha is crossed out... And so is Omega?

It's check marked for something called "Event C" and the diagram seems to show a sudden drop in some kind of activity. Just looking for evidence that Carthage or Haimatsu is still in existence and this is strange. Turn off the lights to see it better.

Edit: Holy s***. The bottom says they agree to keep it in confidence but It's NOT signed by Mark Sarang.

I've also contemplated that Dahl didn't seem to think it a big deal that Tau couldn't food. Including fellow Carthage employee Ross. I wondered if maybe she turned on Carthage and gave the WAU technology to Haimatsu or something. Don't have any evidence though.

[Abion47]

Noticed something really strange today. In Sarang's nightstand in the middle drawer is a clipboard stamped with "Haimatsu Board 55 approval". If you look at it up close it has check marks next to all the sites. Except Alpha is crossed out... And so is Omega?

It's check marked for something called "Event C" and the diagram seems to show a sudden drop in some kind of activity. Just looking for evidence that Carthage or Haimatsu is still in existence and this is strange. Turn off the lights to see it better.

Edit: Holy s***. The bottom says they agree to keep it in confidence but It's NOT signed by Mark Sarang.

I've got no idea. The circled event says "Ext. Event C", and "ext." usually stands for "external" or "exterior". The obvious deduction is that it's referring to the comet hit... but then why would someone be reporting to Haimatsu about that? And for that matter, how would they have responded?

I've got no idea who that signature belongs to. It sort of looks like a "Dave". Or perhaps a "Davis" as in "Jessica Davis"? It could mean nothing that she signed it, but then it begs the question as to why Sarang has it. (Fun fact: Jessica Davis was the girl who got shot by the wall in the Transmission series.)

I've also contemplated that Dahl didn't seem to think it a big deal that Tau couldn't food. Including fellow Carthage employee Ross. I wondered if maybe she turned on Carthage and gave the WAU technology to Haimatsu or something. Don't have any evidence though.

Julia Dahl spread the rumor that the evacuation of TAU had failed to discourage further attempts so that Ross wouldn't get bothered anymore. She wanted him to be free of distriactions so that he could continue to work on the WAU:

First report:

On September 13th Vic Auclair ordered the staff at Tau to evacuate and move up to the plateau. Together with engineer Alan Waldeck I descended into the abyss to assist the evacuation. Following protocol we waited at the Climber platform for 140 minutes and made several attempts to contact Tau. I decided to move towards the site, thinking I might intercept them. That's when I noticed the guiding lights flickering and soon the whole path shut down - Omega Sector swallowed by darkness. I pushed on with my floodlight until I heard screaming over the short-range radio. It carried on, breaking in and out of range. As I hurried closer to investigate I came upon the lacerated body of Field Worker Espinosa - something big had almost cut her in two. I considered the importance of saving Tau and more specifically Ross, as I heard Espinosa's colleagues getting massacred over the radio. Seeing no way to possibly improve the situation, I hurried back to the Climber and left the people at Tau to their fate.

Second report:

With some luck Ross made it back to Tau and is able to continue his work at Alpha. To avoid further disturbances I have decided to report the evacuation as a complete failure, hoping it will stop Theta from attempting another one. Claudia Eames, the manager of Omicron, has already ordered the Climber to stay at the plateau for now. My report on the savage wildlife scared everyone enough to even stop Waldeck and Darby from maintaining the LUMAR probes. It's a good thing Golaski is off-site, because I have a feeling he would not have approved.

The restrictions came out slightly more severe than I had anticipated, but I'll take it. As long as Ross is left alone to work with the WAU.

---

Check this out, though



Paula Lansky, Carthage Project Manager.

Looks like there's a fourth member of Carthage that's been much less publicized. Although all I can really find of her was that she was studying the WAU's effect on the structure gel changes and she was one of the people studying Ross while he was in quarantine.

I also can't find any mention anywhere of that last name "Veiga".

[Bigbob]

You're kind of kicking my ass. I'm standing a foot from the TV to try and read this stuff and you can grab the pics easy on pc.

I was wondering if that signature is on anything else? Mark Sarang's signature is on his goodbye note so it's definitely not his.

I was saying it's kind of bad writing on Dahl unless there's something else going on. Not trying to troll but she's a walking contradiction. She buys Ross more time to study an AI that she says "isn't supposed to want anything" (in my mind implying she didn't know it was sentient, but that appears to be everyone possibly including Carthage). Yet it is so important that she's OK if people starve to death. Including fellow Carthage employee Ross.

She basically let 20% (?) of the remaining humans on earth starve death to protect an investment in a temperature system on behalf of a company that doesn't exist?

It would make sense if Carthage or Hiamatsu were still in existence but supposedly they were wiped out. Then we already discussed her randomly trying to report to someone. There are a lot of little hints that either Carthage and/or Hiamatsu are still in operation though.

[Abion47]

Well, just because the WAU isn't sentient doesn't mean it isn't worthy of study. It's still doing things that it shouldn't be doing, so it's worth Ross studying it to figure out what in its programming caused it to take all of its protocols to 11.

[Bigbob]

What's up with the Survival of the Fittest drawing? It's definitely Sarang and I think Pedersen. Is that Lindwall? Holding a syringe?

The formula is interesting because it's written again in Omicron in the room where you get the Cortex chip. The formula is written twice in Theta.

Here's a pic
https://twitter.com/BigBob002/status/867026670947110912

[Abion47]

I agree that the guy in the middle looks like Sarang, but I couldn't say who the other two are. The guy on the left has a wrench in his pocket and looks a bit Asian, so Brandon, maybe? And the syringe makes me think that the lady on the right is either a doctor or biology expert, so Nadine Masters, perhaps?

Interesting note about that formula, though. I was playing the game with my cousin who is working on her engineering master's, and according to her, that formula is a nonsensical mishmash of constants and math symbols. (She seemed to get visibly perturbed about it, too.)

[Bigbob]

I was thinking that maybe the formula is a puzzle of some sort. (Pe-Pomb) is I think written on the girl's head. Maybe they translate to mean something somehow, as opposed to math or science?

I noticed the moon video seems to say simulation in the top right and I was thinking about that Haimatsu clipboard. Is it possible the whole thing is some big simulation/experiment?

I noticed in the area under Theta w/ the 1st proxy is a ladder behind a locked gate. I glitched through the wall like the speedrunners are doing and from above the map it looks like there's an area down there.

I did manage to jump through the wall at the 1st body in that area and jump down to a weird shuttle track by itself. Oh and I got to that Wan Beach in the 1st section of Theta and took a bunch of screenshots.