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S1 Ep11: Soma
78 Plays7 years ago
Join Dave and Jake for a full spoiler episode where we talk about what is submerged in the mind of Soma! With bonus spoilers for The Prestige! How exciting!
Thoughts? Comments? Requests for new episodes? Feel free to email them in to SoapstonePodcast@gmail.com!
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Transcript
Introduction: Lucy's Dive and Soma's Themes
00:00:00
Speaker
Well now we're up to our quests. We have a letter here from a fan. This comes to us from a student in Paraguay named Lucy. Lucy writes, Dear Dave and Jake, Several years ago, I went scuba-dying off the Floridian coast. While I was on the beautiful ocean floor, I realized there was a whole other world down there. I felt removed from my existence, as if I was myself trapped in a human body. It made me contemplate my place in the world. It made me wonder what it really means to be human.
Hosts Introduce Soma
00:00:29
Speaker
That's why I'm requesting a review of the game Soma which related to my summer those years ago How's it going everybody welcome to yet another episode of soapstone I am joined by my co-host as always Dave. How's it going tonight Dave? Good That's great. No, it's good. Oh That's good. So tonight
00:00:55
Speaker
No, it's just good. Sorry for literally kneecapping this. Yeah, no, it just... It's gone. We'll keep it anyways, though. Damn it. Tonight, we're going to talk about a game that we both played as we do for all of the games that we cover. So one day I kind of just want to wing it. Yeah. Let's talk about a game we've never played, Dave.
00:01:22
Speaker
Let's not. Let's talk about Soma.
Game Overview and Setting
00:01:25
Speaker
Oh, like Shokugeki no Soma. Did they make a game of the anime or? No. I might have played the wrong game this week and I apologize. Oh, that's all right. But Soma is another game by frictional games. You might remember them from our amnesia episode. That's true. Yeah. They did both of those games. Did they make anything else? Or is it just those two?
00:01:50
Speaker
No, no, that was it. That was just those two. Okay. But yeah, in a similar vein to amnesia, you get to have another great storytelling over first-person exploratory. You got some puzzles, you got some frights and spooks. Yeah. Probably I'd say fewer, fewer spooks, but, uh,
00:02:13
Speaker
It's definitely another interesting storytelling game. Soma is mechanically a not completely linear but mostly linear sort of adventure exploration game with some horror mechanics kind of tied in there but most of its atmosphere.
00:02:37
Speaker
This sounds a lot like scuba amnesia, Jake. It's pretty similar to scuba amnesia. I guess it's similar because you may not have your memory. Yeah, the way Frictional likes to do their games, the two they made so far up until this point,
00:02:58
Speaker
You kind of start out knowing very little about your character and your place in the world and environment you're kind of thrown in with a little bit of dash of mystery. Like, okay, I kind of have to discover as I go along. Right.
Simon's Journey Begins
00:03:10
Speaker
So as you start out, you are this guy, Simon Jarrett. You know that you were recently in a car crash.
00:03:17
Speaker
and you're checking emails and you have like a doctor's appointment you're going to go to and you're going to do a brain scan. You have to drink some fluid to help for the trace. And you kind of mill around your apartment to start off. Yeah. And your doctor calls you and, you know, reminds you to drink the food, like you said, and then invites you over for your appointment. Right. And you head over to his office and there's no secretary there. The door is locked.
00:03:47
Speaker
It's completely empty. Yeah, it's basically the sketchiest thing. And you're like, all right, I'm walking out of this with my kidneys. But you can find a password, I believe something like a password and get through the door and finally actually meet the doctor who's just back there in his office.
00:04:07
Speaker
Oh, sorry, I didn't hear you come in. Yeah, okay. And he talks to you a bit, talks to you about the accident and you're undergoing this kind of experimental treatment and they're taking a scan of your brain in preparation for that in hopes that they can stop this like internal hemorrhaging, essentially, that's slowly going on in your brain.
00:04:29
Speaker
So your character Simon kind of remarks to the doctor, Hey, is this going to hurt? Cause it's a new procedure. He's a little bit apprehensive. And the doctor says, no, it's pretty much just going to be like, we're taking a picture of your brain. There's like a little photo photograph and then Simon retorts.
00:04:45
Speaker
The Indians used to believe that if they had a photograph taken of them, it would capture their soul. To which the doctor kind of laughs and says, well, let's hope they're not right. And then the scan starts. It goes dark for you. And then the next thing you know, you wake up in the same room, but everything has changed.
00:05:08
Speaker
Yeah. You're like in a similar chair, right? But like the, the room layout is like darker and it's, it's immediately noticeably is different, right? Yeah. The same door isn't there. It's like an industrial door made of steel. Everything's kind of, I don't want to use the term dank because of memes, but it's a very dank room. Everything seems kind of moist. Um, nothing's really clean. Yeah. Like I said, the whole thing is very dark and dingy. Yeah.
00:05:38
Speaker
And you see other equipment that wasn't in the room before as well. So something's clearly up, the game's afoot. And you depart the room and have to start piecing together exactly where you are and how to deal with your environment, right? You're in this very different environment. And it doesn't take you long to discover that you are
00:06:03
Speaker
on a facility at the bottom of the ocean underwater. So we've been there, obviously, in other games, but this is completely different. And kind of exploring the facility, it's
00:06:22
Speaker
Futuristic there's technology involved that although it doesn't seem like it's too far into the future It's things you've never encountered before for sure, right? It's clearly not happening in present day and you know based off the opening you don't know roughly you don't know exactly when All of this is going down you assume current day. Yeah But this seems beyond that somehow
00:06:47
Speaker
So then after a little bit, you're kind of exploring around, you find what seems to be a control room and there seems to be some controls you can interact with for turning some things on. Maybe give you some more clues about where you are.
Exploration and Ethical Choices
00:07:00
Speaker
Right. But you see this machine that is hooked up to the control panel and it seems to be drawing power. It doesn't really seem to be.
00:07:09
Speaker
giving off anything except for like a couple of noises. Yeah. So you unplug it so you can actually try to interact with the control panel. Diverse from power. And it makes this noise and it doesn't sound like a happy noise. It's kind of unsettling in a way. Yeah. But being the trooper that you are, you kind of move past that real quick. Right. You're like, that was weird.
00:07:32
Speaker
And you turn part of the facility on with flipping some switches and you're actually able to get a call out that kind of transmission to other parts of the facility. Hey, where the fuck am I? What's going on? Yeah. Kind of the, the call into the wild, hoping to get some response back at this point. Cause this facility is seemingly deserted at this point. Either everybody's taken a nap or there's not that many people around.
00:07:59
Speaker
Oh yeah, nap time. I know about nap time. Yeah. And so does that robot. But, uh, call goes out and a voice answers you, right? Catherine calls back and, uh, you know, this first, uh, human contact that you have in some capacity and she's immediately like, who are you? How did you get here? How do I not know you? How do you just show up here? Right?
00:08:30
Speaker
And Simon, you know, explains where he's from, he's from Toronto, and tries to, you know, describe to her like, what he most recently remembers, and she's like, right, uh-huh, Toronto.
00:08:49
Speaker
Yeah, you're both kind of skeptical of each other because you don't know too much. She doesn't know how you got here. You definitely don't know how you got here. Yeah. But basically she says, it reaches out to you saying, Hey, uh, we should try and meet up. I'm over at this other facility. If you can make your way over here, there's actually like a better intercom so we can communicate. Right. Cause when you have is very patchy because everything's kind of busted to shit. The fact that it works at all is kind of a mini miracle. The AM signal.
00:09:20
Speaker
Fuck AM radio. I do a ham radio. Good luck, my friends. Good luck. Audio quality like our first podcast. But yeah, you know, you now have a goal, right? It's how do I establish contact with this person? I'm going to go talk to him more and get an idea of what's going on here. And you have to make your way forward.
00:09:45
Speaker
Now, there is an obstacle preventing you from going forward, which is you run across some more machinery. I think it's like a stairwell or a doorway that you need to open up that's depowered. So this is the second time you've encountered a puzzle where you need to route some power to complete the puzzle.
00:10:06
Speaker
on the actual like energy tracks basically that the power has to travel through. You see a robot, right? Similar to the one that we found in the control room.
00:10:20
Speaker
But this one starts talking to you, saying like, hey, have you seen anybody around? Could you help me out? I'm kind of stuck here. Yeah. And you're like, hey, are you talking to me? You got the classic Alice in Wonderland kind of. Yeah. You should be talking to me. Are you talking to me? And you're like, hey, what are you doing here? And it's like, oh, there's an accident and some stuff, and I'm stuck here. Could you please go get some help? Yeah. And you're like, hey, but you're a robot. Yeah.
00:10:48
Speaker
It's like, ah, funny joke. What are you talking about? It's like, no, seriously. I'm sitting right here. It's like, quit dicking around. Yeah. I'm like, get me some help, please. Yeah. So you're like, oh, OK. You kind of put a pin in that and you kind of go exploring around a little bit. You find the switch that routes the power, but the robot is on the tracks.
00:11:06
Speaker
So you go exploring around a little bit more to see if you can find somebody to help your new friend out and maybe like 30 feet away or on the corner you find this dead body and you pick up the name tag of the dead body to see who it was. Yeah. And it is the exact same name that the robot gave you moments ago. Yeah, like same job title, everything. To again quote Jake, the game is afoot. Yes. Some shit's going on.
00:11:35
Speaker
Yeah, so eventually you get what you need to to the tools that you need to go back and reroute the power but the trick here is the caveat is if you Reroute the power you essentially have two options here. The first is route it through the through this Conduit basically that the robots on which will electrocute him continually and
00:12:05
Speaker
If you do that, he yells out like, well, like what the F are you doing? Right? Like he actually gets you to leave the swears to me. Dave, please. What the fuck are you doing? But in a more, you know, agonized sense.
00:12:18
Speaker
Yeah. And this isn't just, you know, without any, any amount of stress or empathy is really, really like feels pain. Yeah. And, uh, the, the option there is if you do that, then the exit will open and you can leave leaving him in pain. Uh, the other option is you can, uh, send power through in such a way that it will kill him outright, which he also complains a bit about, but not continually.
00:12:49
Speaker
But it opens up an entrance into the room where this monster creature appears And this is where we come back to inspiration from amnesia Real quick before we talk about the monster. I just want to point out we've now reached two points where we have had to
00:13:10
Speaker
essentially take power away for something or essentially kill it in order to progress our own goals. Right. And like in this case, you could leave him alive, quote unquote, and a perpetual state of torment, but that's bad too. The mercy kill choice is what provokes this confrontation with the monster.
00:13:34
Speaker
And the monster is, it's very similar to some of the monsters in Amnesia, kind of like slow plodding, you can hear it. This one has a light on it so you can actually see it coming. If it gets too close to you, you get this like static effect.
00:13:55
Speaker
And it's actually not that fast. If it detects you, you can actually run away from it, which would be fine in some situations where you have a circular area, a larger place to explore. This game's not like that, though. It's corridors. So it knowing where you are and you running away from it doesn't mean that you're always going to make it.
00:14:15
Speaker
Yeah. Also, once it spots you, it picks up speed like a little choo-choo train. It just starts going and it starts making louder noises too. Like it is angry almost. It's trying to hunt you down. It's like distorted sounds and things coming from it. It's some sort of machine construct. It's tortured in some ways the way it sounds.
00:14:39
Speaker
If it manages to catch you at this point, then it will actually hit you, knock you out, and then you'll wake up somewhere else, like a little bit further back or in a different location. But it doesn't kill you.
00:14:55
Speaker
which is, you know, pretty interesting. This is different than the amnesia approach for sure. Yeah. But similar to amnesia, it's, you can essentially consider it a reset for that area. Right. You're like, oh, I goofed, I fucked up. It sets you back. Exactly. So mechanically, it's essentially the same, but there's in-universe justification for not, you know, restarting out. You have some health and you like, you'll lose some health when this happens, but
00:15:22
Speaker
It's odd in the way it interacts with you. But you can manage to escape it. You can sneak by, take some cover, and try to avoid it. I can't remember if there's a way. Could you create sound in any way to try to divert it? Throw something?
00:15:40
Speaker
Similar to amnesia, there are some interactable objects. You can just pick it up and kind of fling it underhand. And it'll be like, oh, what was that? And it'll kind of go to inspect the area and you kind of just do a mad dash past it. Yep. See ya. Try and get to the next cutscene door so it can't chase you through that. Yeah.
00:15:56
Speaker
That's a trick. Lock it on the other side. You're like, I have a new save point. I am invincible. But no, you do have to escape it. And once you've done that, then you can continue your progress to the comm station, like you said. Gotta call my girl Catherine. Gotta see what's up. Yeah.
00:16:21
Speaker
So you finally are able to get the comm set up. You get in touch with Catherine. She explains a little bit about the facility. She's kind of confused how you're still there. And you're not exactly sure where everybody is still, but she says, Hey, am I this other facility at Lambda? Um, if the tram is still running, you can get to me through that and then we can talk more in person. Right.
00:16:46
Speaker
And this is the point where you're like, OK, what do you mean the other facility lambda? And you managed to make it here to the tram, and you have to complete another rerouting power obstacle.
00:17:02
Speaker
But this time it's a little bit different because instead of a robot, you find a human body which has some mechanical augments to it and seems to be hooked up to this life form of a sense that's kind of infected a lot of the station.
00:17:19
Speaker
Yeah, and he talked to her like oh my god. Are you okay? What's going on? And she's like it won't let me die And you're like what won't let you die. Yeah, that's uncomfortable She seems in a very half alive state like if you've ever seen someone like
00:17:36
Speaker
a couple days before they die and they just look like pure shit because her body is given up entirely. Yeah. That's what it seems like. She's got like a pipe going through like side of like a part of her and then like her lungs. Yeah. Like her lungs don't work. She's got like biomechanical lungs outside of her body, like on the wall that are actually breathing for her and compressing up and down. You're just like, Oh, that's yeah. It's a degree of unsettling for sure.
00:18:02
Speaker
But you feel a little bit better about letting her be at peace, because she's obviously in a tortured state as well. And also you want to get on the train, so it's a win-win. And this is the first person you've encountered, but it's fine.
Meeting Catherine and Mission Unveiled
00:18:21
Speaker
You've got a goal to work towards here, and you know that people are at least around, even if they're
00:18:26
Speaker
and a bad state. It's somewhat reassuring in a way. It kind of helps you touch that home base, like people who are tired of these weird talking robots. Yeah. Strange. Hate robots. They're the worst. And there's actually, I remember there's two power couplings you have to remove.
00:18:42
Speaker
to actually provide power back to the tram. And the first one like shuts down some of the systems, kind of like keeping her low. She's like, and you're like, okay, well, let's just do this quick. Pull the second one and she slumps over and kind of finally dies. But now have access to the tram. So out you go across the ocean floor to the next. Station Lambda. Yeah. Station Lambda.
00:19:09
Speaker
And several of these stations will have opponents kind of like the monster you encountered earlier.
00:19:18
Speaker
And you'll, you'll run into more in the future, but for now you managed to finally make your way to Catherine after evading them a bit. And you know, you walk into the room and what do you see? Oh my God. It's another fucking robot. We assume that Catherine was a human based on her voice over the intercom, but similar to the other robot you had to wrap power through. They also had a human voice. You couldn't tell if you had your eyes closed.
00:19:48
Speaker
But it seems that she has actually been a robot for a very long time. And she serves as this exposition font, if you will, for information about what's going on. So you're down here on the bottom of the ocean. You're still not really sure exactly how you ended up here, but you were on pathos too, which is this
00:20:14
Speaker
deep sea research station and it's at multiple facilities kind of spread out across the bottom of the ocean and then some facilities you find a map eventually and it shows you that there's some facilities on the abyssal plane over this drop-off.
00:20:32
Speaker
that are even further down. And she tells you about this force kind of that you've encountered before, the WOW. WOW. WOW. As they say, which stands for Warden Unit. And its job was to protect
00:20:50
Speaker
the people here in the facility and so the Influence it exerted earlier was that that woman who was you know, mortally wounded and was going to die it suffused her with what's called structure gel which is kind of this it's like goop Yes, a lot of what you see dripping throughout the facility. Yeah
00:21:13
Speaker
That kind of just binds like biology and mechanics together in this like, you know system shock esque way It's a convenient magical glue. Yeah, it's nanites basically But and it kept her alive and because that is it's imperative so she she tells me at some point you
00:21:36
Speaker
It happens a bit later, but you're like, oh, we've done something to to piss it off. Right. And she's like, I don't you don't get that. Like it doesn't get angry. It just has rules. Right. It's just following its prime directive, if you will, to preserve human life in any way that it knows how. Exactly. Yeah.
00:21:58
Speaker
But she also gives you the key piece of information, which is that there is an escape. There is an escape, and that is to make it to the Ark, right? What is the Ark?
The Ark Project and Humanity's Hope
00:22:12
Speaker
So the Ark, traditionally there was, in the Bible, there was one... Jake, I got you. Yes. Now the Ark is a
00:22:23
Speaker
repository of scans of people's brains that can be launched using the system here at the facilities. The purpose of this whole setup is twofold. One research and the other is to function as like an underwater satellite launcher, essentially is what it is.
00:22:46
Speaker
Which does make any sense, but that's what it is. Well, I think we can probably clarify a little more. Catherine also explains to you that a comet hit the Earth and wiped out a significant portion of life. Oh, that is important. Which kind of spurred a big deal of this project.
00:23:05
Speaker
And the reason that she is a robot in a sense is because she had her consciousness scanned and that uploaded into this robot body. Right. She was one of the first people to use the technology, basically.
00:23:21
Speaker
This is the same technology that was used to scan you earlier. Does that mean I'm a robot? No, that can't be right. The entire surface of the Earth has just been scorched and just scoured by this comet. They don't believe anybody's alive up there.
00:23:43
Speaker
But the purpose of the arc is to take these scans and we can upload our consciousness and launch us into space. And this will be our grand escape.
00:24:00
Speaker
There's no way we'll survive forever here at the bottom of the ocean. Supplies are going to run out. Systems are going to fail. Facilities will crash and be drowned by the sea, right? So this was something for the human survivors to work towards.
00:24:17
Speaker
It's kind of the idealistic though Because the rest of the human race was just kind of on this facility that survived. Maybe we can continue the human existence Digitally right and kind of create this perfect world that people would live in in virtual reality and we'll beam it up to space or to be safe and not going to be destroyed and
00:24:42
Speaker
And this is you're out as Simon. You can have your consciousness transferred to the Ark and you'll live in this virtual reality. It'll be amazing and This is this is the only way you survive. Yeah, as much as you are enjoying hanging around a What's the word I want to use here abandoned
00:25:04
Speaker
abandoned underwater facility, sea lab. Yeah. A rapture without people and without as nearly as many cool windows. Yeah. I wouldn't get a tattoo of this game, but it's definitely underwater for sure. Question would be like, what would the tattoo even be? Hard to resolve.
00:25:23
Speaker
It makes me feel like a lot of black, almost like a sleeve and call it structure gel. Structure gel, yeah. That could work. Yeah, I could see that. But anyways, having gotten this goal, having all of this information from her, she's like, alright, take me with you. You're like, you're a gigantic robot. I cannot do that. Though I am also a robot, I don't think I can just...
00:25:45
Speaker
pick you up yeah and uh simons simon's kind of like all right i mean it's weird that i can transfer my consciousness here but
00:25:54
Speaker
I'll listen to you crazy robots. We'll figure this out. And what she suggests is that you go when you get a multi-tool, which is like this engineering tool they use for like opening doors, interacting with systems, things like that. Hook up to a nearby console and download her mind, essentially.
00:26:16
Speaker
And so that's what you do. And now you have this nice personal PDA, basically. Pocket secretary in the most literal sense. Clippy, what's that? Yes, I do want to use this strong language. Clippy's like, dial it back, man. He's your boss.
00:26:36
Speaker
Yeah, but that begins your journey through the through the rest of the complex as you make your way to where the arc is located further on. So you have two robots trying to save the human race. At this point, I again want to point out a lot of the themes of the game seem to be around
00:27:01
Speaker
humanity and what constitutes that. So the beginning of the game, you play as Simon, who is a person, but now you're Simon who's not in his original body, right? And you're encountering these other robots, which you later figure out are scans of people that got uploaded into mechanical bodies.
00:27:24
Speaker
And then you find people who are part mechanical So this point I want to push to you Jake.
Philosophical Questions of Consciousness
00:27:30
Speaker
Mm-hmm. What do you think constitutes being a person big question? I know we're not gonna Answer it in like a de facto way, right? So There's there's there have been essays Which I will not reference that I think she's gonna read the read one. Let me just shuffle some papers here and pick an essay out and
00:27:51
Speaker
But my stance is that as a human, as a living being, we have our experiences stored in our memory. We are a construct of everything that we've been through and that's where we develop our sense of self. If you could take that exact
00:28:11
Speaker
Exact copy of that basically the the sentience and all of that that knowledge and everything and just Transfer that to a different system if that wasn't biological is it any less real or human? Like what's the difference between machine and biology what makes people? You know real Just because they have mushy brains
00:28:35
Speaker
Yeah, this kind of ties into Westworld in a way where it's like, where do you draw the line of something actually has consciousness and should be treated as a person or something that has rights and has feelings and emotions and can feel pain and has desires. Yeah. I don't think that there is a such a fine line there, like you're saying.
00:29:02
Speaker
And I think it's fair to say that this game also takes it to the extreme. Like these are perfect scans. This isn't like an AI simulation where you're like, all right, we're going to emulate some behaviors and things. This is an entity that believes it's a human. Right. Yeah. Down to the fucking core. Like the guy you encountered earlier.
00:29:24
Speaker
He didn't know that he was actually a machine. Right. He's like, I'm looking at my hands, buddy. Yeah. He didn't have hands. Yeah. He was essentially a rectangular prism of steel with like a kind of analog camera head. Yeah. They're really boxy. Yeah. Kind of like a robot. A more modern claptrap. Yeah. Pretty much large. Not that cartoony, but yeah.
00:29:50
Speaker
And yeah, this game will continue to do that. It will make you face that dichotomy between humanity and something else.
00:29:59
Speaker
Yeah, they keep the lines blurred a lot throughout the game. But as you keep listening or playing through the game, keep that in mind and make your own decisions on where you think that line is. Yeah, that's really what the game is about. So now that we've come to the conclusion of the game. Enough of my attention. But having a Catherine now on your multi-tool, you can disembark and head to the next facility.
00:30:28
Speaker
which is Delta. Unfortunately on the way there there's a rupture in your transport and you end up out in the ocean and Simon takes this with you know some level of anxiety. I mean anytime you're in a major vehicle accident
00:30:49
Speaker
you kind of get a little PTSD. So if he initially had an accident at the beginning of the game, hence the brain hemorrhage. He's tying it back. And this time he's on the bottom of the ocean. And he's like, geez, I'm going to, wait, why am I not dead? Wait, I don't have to breathe.
00:31:07
Speaker
as it sinks in a little bit that he's in a robot body. Yeah. So he comes to the realization that his consciousness is in this diving suit, this robot body. And not too long after that, you finally discovered that it's not just you in a robot body, it's your consciousness inhabiting a person's body
00:31:35
Speaker
in a diving suit. The person was Imogen Reed, who was one of the scientists down here. Yeah, one of Catherine's colleagues. Yeah, and pathos too.
00:31:48
Speaker
Which is weird for me, like for, I mean, a lot of reasons, but the one that was a little bit strange that I didn't catch me was just like, Oh, wait, I'm in, I'm in like, you know, a woman's body as a man. Actually, it's Simon. I was like, is there like compatible? Okay, no, that's fine. I guess that doesn't really cause any problems. It's kind of funny. Cause this is when you realize that you kind of playing as a female protagonist. So ties back to Senua. Yeah, exactly. Yep. And we're back to Senua. I don't know where I was going with that.
00:32:18
Speaker
It's fun. Sometimes we have tangents. It's good. So you have to travel on foot. At the bottom of the ocean. At the bottom of the ocean to the next facility. But you have help, right? Yeah. There's a one or two helper robots are about. One is another scan of one of the technicians and he's kind of bumbling about trying to get things fixed. Yeah.
00:32:43
Speaker
And then there's this other helper robot, very akin to R2D2, who is just a robot, no human scan, no imprinting. And it has its cute beeps and boops and helps you open doors. And you're just like, I appreciate you. Yes. I will take you for the rest of the game, please.
00:33:03
Speaker
But it never goes that way, and it reaches a place where you need a control chip from one of the robots that's out there. So, faced with the moral choice, do you take the stun tool and incapacitate and destroy the robot out there with the help, the scan of these people that believe that they're human, or do you sacrifice your robot buddy who's actually been useful
00:33:33
Speaker
If you heard my first, yeah, I didn't kill the cute robot buddy. I could not bring myself to the cute beeps and boobs were disarming to say the least. Yeah. And in some ways it's easier to get rid of in this, this particular instance, uh, the human who's gruff and hasn't helped you at all. And it doesn't seem to serve any purpose rather than the cute robot that doesn't know any better.
00:33:57
Speaker
Yeah, I think there's a perceived destruction of pure innocence in the same way you wouldn't want to kick a puppy. Yeah. Or a companion cube. Oh my God. Separate game PTSD, but yeah.
00:34:14
Speaker
Normally, it's easier to remove, oh, I'll just kill a robot, it's in-game, whatever, it doesn't matter. But when faced with that choice, if you can choose between something that's been purely helpful and not human versus something which is perceived to be human and not helpful, I feel like a lot of people probably made a similar choice. I think so. I think the ability to build empathy with a character kind of informs your choice there.
00:34:44
Speaker
And if you do make a decision to kill the human version of the robot,
00:34:51
Speaker
If you approach the other cute little robot, it will run away, which is sad, but it realizes it's potentially in danger and it wants to preserve its own life. Right. Similar to how you have wanted to preserve your own life by avoiding these. Terrifying mechanical monstrosities we keep encountering throughout the game and you wanting to preserve the life or the existence of humanity by utilizing the art. Yeah.
00:35:19
Speaker
Yeah. Everything wraps back. It wraps back and it's here to make you sad.
00:35:25
Speaker
And kind of as you're continuing through this for essentially the rest of the game or for most of it, any time that Catherine is, you can like put her in a machine. You can like put the multi-tool down. She'll interact with the machine and inhabit it basically. There's a whole bunch of dialogue going on between you and her. And she has this really like calm, collected personality. She completely accepts that she's just a scan and is going to make it to the arc.
00:35:54
Speaker
Yeah, well, she was a scientist beforehand. Yeah. So, and she also knows about the technology. So she's like, Oh, this is my shit. I got you. She's very like calm, relaxed, pragmatic about things. And you just being a guy from Toronto. Yeah. Freak out about a lot of shit as you go. Classic Canadian. Classic Simon. Yeah.
00:36:18
Speaker
And she's got this kind of cold necessity to her. She's the one that tells you when you need to go off and you're just like, hey, depower that robot over there, break it apart for a control ship so we can use this Zeppelin, which is kind of like an underwater Zeppelin with some fans and a cargo great underneath that you can transport on.
00:36:45
Speaker
But that's how you, that's how you reach the next location, which is facility theta. Yes. And theta has, uh, some living quarters, uh, for people there's, um, Bunks rooms with personal effects. There's a lot of like logs throughout the game where you can read or hear about, uh, the, the personal experiences of the humans that were here and pay those too.
00:37:13
Speaker
So at this point, in the kind of flashback and going through the logs, you get to hear a lot more about people's opinions of this project and the scans.
Ethical Dilemmas and Personal Identity
00:37:25
Speaker
And you overhear Catherine's frustration on a call with another person, where essentially a person who had just been scanned had committed suicide, like several days afterwards, in the hopes that this will all be resolved soon. They already have a scan of my brain. What's the worst that's going to happen, right?
00:37:43
Speaker
So people were just offing themselves to just get this going. They kind of had this belief that if they killed themselves close enough to the time when they were scanned, that they would end up in the Ark, right? That their consciousness would be what ended up there. Yeah, if you already have my consciousness, I don't need this part anymore. Just beam me up Scotty, right? Yeah.
00:38:08
Speaker
but you actually get to interact with some of the other scans because you're trying to, yet again for another puzzle, get some access codes. None of them are written around this time, so you have to go ask one of the technicians who you have a scan of.
00:38:25
Speaker
So you essentially power them back on and they're awaking for the first time for, from however long ago. Right. Just like Catherine's reawakening and these machines time had that passed for this person and you're not asking them questions. Yeah. And they're kind of like, Hey, where am I? What the fuck's going on? Right. Cause this is right after they're scanned for them, right? They sat down in the machine and now they're here.
00:38:49
Speaker
And the room's different. Yeah. So you essentially have to pick some dialogue options and lie to them to kind of coerce the information out of them. You want them to feel calm and relaxed and pliable because in any state like that, I know I would panic. And you see these people panicking because the reality has been
00:39:09
Speaker
just pulled out from under them. Right. And in some ways the convincing in the dialogue isn't enough. You can't just be like, hey, I think that you should really, you know, tell me the codes, you know, we're all both on the same team. And this guy's case, you have to set up a situation with him there, with his girlfriend, where everything's really, really comfortable. Just basically you have to go to his quarters, get information about him, and then you can use that information in the simulation.
00:39:39
Speaker
you build you construct a lie essentially which is everything's fine you're here with your loved ones like you know we just need the coats you know it's don't worry about it everything's fine and you reduce his stress and if he stresses out too much in any of these simulations then the simulation shuts down and you reboot him from that clean slate
00:40:05
Speaker
and it's just crazy like this was this was one of the like okay we're we're awake and we're playing the game moments for me yeah because
00:40:17
Speaker
Everything you've done has been kind of ethically questionable up into this point here and there, but it's, it's all for the sake of progress, right? You have a good goal. You want to save humanity, right? But this is one of those times where you're really confronted with another person having emotions and feeling and pain. Yeah. And you're kind of forcing that upon them. Right. And you get to really live it firsthand.
00:40:43
Speaker
It's like if someone's experiencing all of this pain and sorrow or they're distraught, they're upset, as a human with empathy, you may feel the tendency, like the urge to alleviate that to help them. That's completely worthless here. Just reset it, do it again.
00:41:03
Speaker
And that like cold necessity is driven home because instead of just doing it once like you're plugging on unplugging power like earlier in the game, it's a constant coldness. It's an iteration of this. You're turning it into a process to manipulate this guy until you can get the information you need out of him.
00:41:24
Speaker
Yeah. And thankfully you have Catherine's cold, pragmatic self to kind of guide you along because Simon like us is much more empathetic and much more, we'd consider human in nature. Right. And he's, he has hesitations. He has remorse.
00:41:44
Speaker
Catherine doesn't have that problem. She's perfectly willing to manipulate this guy. And she's pretty good at it. She'll keep him under stress until you can get all the information they need. And finally you do. And the information you need are the cipher codes for a deep sea submarine called the Dunbat of all things. It's a really dumb name. The Dunbat. Dunbat.
00:42:13
Speaker
Let's not zoom at evolution dumb bad You idiot and You finally get the cipher codes from you can go there activate it go to turn it on and
00:42:27
Speaker
It has the scan of a human in it. It has someone's mind in the systems. It's alive. Which is a very disconcerting experience for Mr. Dunbat. And it just goes crazy, breaks free of its moorings, and just dives into the ocean. And who knows what happens to that.
00:42:51
Speaker
Yeah, all of the transports you seem to have in this game seem to have very haphazard endings like crashing into things or derailing, etc, etc. Yeah, it's a pretty rough experience overall.
00:43:06
Speaker
But now it's time for plan B. We need a way to get to the deep sea where the arc is located in the abyss. And we should go down then. Yeah, probably down and to the surface we go. And now that the deep sea submarines out of the equation, deep sea diving suit.
00:43:25
Speaker
Conveniently enough, you find a diving suit nearby, have to assemble a couple of other pieces to get it ready. But Catherine tells you, similar to how you got your consciousness into this body, we can just, you know, put you in the other body. Simple as that. So after some apprehension, little bit of dialogue, you're like, all right, let's do it. Make the jump.
00:43:46
Speaker
You go back into that driver's seat, which is what you keep sitting in for transfers. And the process goes, and you kind of hear a voice, which sounds like your own voice. Then you wake up and you're in the suit. Everything went fine. You're like, what was that voice, Catherine? What was that voice?
00:44:08
Speaker
And you walk over into the other room and you see that same body that you were just in. Yeah. But unconscious. Yeah. It's like some breathing sounds coming from the actual, the body there. Yeah. And so you ask Catherine, what the fuck just happened?
00:44:24
Speaker
Yeah, there's it doesn't make sense for me to be here and to also be where I was. Yeah. And she says, like, Simon, I was like, I've told you this before. You're not paying attention. And he really wasn't. Apparently, I can't like just transfer your consciousness. It's a copy. She just outright says it basically. Yeah.
00:44:46
Speaker
Like, we have to get you in this new suit. We have to get you down there to the abyss. This is the only way we could do it. I can't move your consciousness. You're a cop. Like, this is a copy. Which bothers Simon a bit. And, you know, after internalizing some of his conflicts here with the realization that he's literally a copy and there's no, you know, pure consciousness transfer,
00:45:12
Speaker
The game gives you an option. You can leave your existing body there in this kind of unconscious state. It might wake up in the future. It might not. You don't know. Or you can power it off. You can kill it right there. In which case the old robotic head that's been fitted to the corpse there will power down and the eyes go out slowly. Which is all kind of really intense because
00:45:43
Speaker
If you consider it, you're just, if you consider yourself just as a copy or a clone of Simon, do you really have the same desires and goals? Right. Yes. I would say you do, but which one of you deserves to live? Yeah. It's kind of like if you had a clone, like do you kill yourself? Like what is the place if there's two of the identical same entity? Yeah. Right.
00:46:11
Speaker
If you just go ahead. I was gonna say out of mercy and not wanting to have what this point is, the original Simon compared to you, uh, suffer through just being trapped underwater in this facility until the end of time. I chose to kill off that version of Simon. Right.
00:46:34
Speaker
to also progress the story and be the one true Simon Highlander style. I was literally going to make the joke I was waiting for. I was just like Highlander rules. Here we go. Yeah. Yeah. Classic. I'm glad we can take that, that deep, you know, kind of, Oh man, this is such a like internal conflict. Highlander. I'm just behead him. Get that Scottish lightning going. Oh my gosh. Yes. Did you make the same decision?
00:46:59
Speaker
I did, yeah. I felt like it had more finality to it, and I had the same... I basically played through the game, like, mercy killing everything to a certain extent, which maybe makes me a bad person, but... I imagine you kind of, like, sneaking up and just doing, like, the Steven Seagull, like, head snap and just... No, it's fine. It's for the best. It's for humanity.
00:47:24
Speaker
But regardless of your choice, you now have the deep sea diving suit and you can head to the climber, which is this deep sea elevator, basically. Exactly. Just a platform and it's kind of a caged in area. So you close the cage, head on down and it gets dark.
00:47:41
Speaker
You could start real quick. But now we have more exposition with Catherine. It's true. Because you're going down for I believe like a couple of minutes and you can't really do much else besides chat. Yeah, this is the time to talk. And to start that conversation, you know, you're talking to her about
00:48:03
Speaker
Like, are we, is this all we are? Are we just copies? Like Simon is finally coming at this from a non, like, um, aggressive stance. He's not, you know, not purely emotional, not reactive.
00:48:16
Speaker
Yeah. This is him starting to internalize the fact that, you know, real Simon is long past dead. Like the Simon that he thought he was is now either trapped in the facility, left behind or dead. Yeah, right. And he's just, he's just a scan. He's just another imprint on a robot.
00:48:39
Speaker
But even though he didn't have organic origins, he's still the current version of Simon. So for all intents and purposes, he's Simon. He's the ultimate progenitor of Simon's will going forward, right? Main protagonist of Simon's quest. And to I bequeath in my will all of my possessions to myself.
00:49:08
Speaker
And you head down to the deep ocean floor, which is a really interesting place. I think this is graphically and kind of thematically one of the more interesting places for me in the game. The whole game, I just want to say, is really beautiful and well laid out.
00:49:24
Speaker
The abyss they did some extra attention of detail. There's a there's this underwater current mechanic where you have to make it to cover essentially and If you don't then you you'll be swept away by these just they're basically wind storms underwater traveling on that currents. Yeah currents and
00:49:48
Speaker
It's very dark. You have to illuminate some lights, activate a generator, follow them through. And if you stray from this path of light, it's kind of a series of beacons where when you reach one light, you'll see the next one somewhere off there in the currents. If you stray from those light sources, a giant squid that's actually been mutated or changed by structure gel will attack you.
00:50:14
Speaker
and like knock you out or whatever which forces you back on the path and it's just it's a it's a really intense area because it's kind of like uh this is a weird reference but like uh this is sandstorm in uh legend of zelda ocarina time it's basically a similar thing you're following from one point to another point and if you screw up then well we tried and uh
00:50:41
Speaker
So it sounds like you like this area? Yeah, it was really intense for me. One thing that made me really uncomfortable, and some people probably stop playing the game at this point, depending on how bad their phobia is, is there's a cave that you have to pass through to make it to the other side, which is...
00:50:57
Speaker
what that means. And it's full of these like pale spiders that are just like deep sea spiders just covering the floor and ceiling and everything. And they shy away from the light as all of the creatures do, obviously, because you're in the abyss. And it was really just going through that. I don't even think you I don't think you're at risk of anything there. It was just an uncomfortable place to be just a bit of a spider ambiance. Yeah.
00:51:26
Speaker
but eventually make it through there and end up on station tau station tau and on station tau you encounter somebody an actual somebody you encounter the last living human yeah she has stowed herself away here as she has been safeguarding the ark which you've been looking for the whole game to beam up into space
00:51:49
Speaker
and she's been holding on to it to protect it and she hasn't had really the will to do that herself to send the Ark up into space via pathos too.
00:52:02
Speaker
And after like talking with her for a bit, she's willing to give you the arc saying, like, please go do this. It's been, it's been overdue. But she's also hooked up to life support, like an actual iron lung type thing. She's not aged well. She obviously doesn't have a lot of supplies down there at the bottom of the ocean.
00:52:24
Speaker
She asked you to kill her. Yeah, cuz she's been living a very uncomfortable life She's been slowly dying She doesn't want to die here alone, right? No, you just slowly like over time. Yeah, that's not the way to go. No, and she's she's willing to just relinquish her existence but she asked you to do it for her and this is the first time that I
00:52:49
Speaker
you were kind of given the option to do I kill this person out of mercy at their behest or do I leave them here? And also do you end human existence, physical human flesh existence for all the rest of time? Or do you let her wait an extra year or so? Yeah, right. Yeah. It's a pretty serious decision. It's like,
00:53:16
Speaker
mechanically it's not a different choice than anything else you activate the option to turn off your life support or you don't but i mean the weight of everything else that the game has put you through you've you've read all these audio logs you know about all the people here on pathos too like all of the the nonsense they went with like went through the tragedies
00:53:37
Speaker
like what they did to survive and the fact that they continued to survive knowing that humanity's time was limited and this is the culmination of it this is this is it at the end and i'm i mean for me i had i had to you know grant her request to like this is it this is humanity but uh i'm curious what did what did you pick for your play through
00:54:03
Speaker
This is actually one of the times I think I left her. Yeah. I think I was from like an out of game context, curious to see what would happen right after talking about like mercy and everything. I was like, peace. Yeah. Um, see you old lady. And I think she starts yelling at you as you leave. Yeah. Cause I just, I took the arc and left.
00:54:27
Speaker
There's like a, an elevator or something to like bring the arc down and it's kind of like a big capsule. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, I don't know. I don't think I could do that. It's a, well, unless literally the exact same reasoning does this change anything in the game, right? Human curiosity will often make you make interesting decisions in games for the sake of what's going to happen. Yeah, it's true.
00:54:53
Speaker
But I do feel bad about that. Looking back. Yeah, I wouldn't worry too much about it. I don't think she'll hold it against you. She's dead. She's not real people. Well, she's well past dead by now. How old was your save file? There's no way.
00:55:09
Speaker
Yeah, now you have the arc and you can proceed, follow Catherine's directions, hook it up into this undersea launcher that's going to launch it through the final facility, which is... Omega. Omega, right, on the surface.
00:55:24
Speaker
Which is kind of the the final like acceleration point for this Delivery system that will launch the arc into space and it's gonna go in on they've prepared everything. They have the satellite ready. Everything is ready to be Launched they just needed to deliver the arc. Yeah, but circumstances and a lot of deaths and other things and human reluctance Kind of postponed that happening. Yeah
00:55:50
Speaker
Yeah, there was... there's plenty of things in the way. But you broke through all of that. You're there. You're there with the Ark. And Simon is prepared to make that final upload and get his consciousness into the Ark. This is his...
Conclusion: The Ark and Humanity's Future
00:56:07
Speaker
this is his out. This is his chance.
00:56:09
Speaker
You load the arc onto the launcher, you start the countdown. Catherine has told you that the launch sequence and also the upload of your consciousness onto the arc has been tied to the same switch. The 30 seconds are counting down, the facility is shaking as it would for any type of rocket launch.
00:56:30
Speaker
And as it's counting down, you see the progress bar of Catherine's consciousness being uploaded onto the arc and then yours. And it gets close, it gets down to the wire, you get a little bit nervous. And then in like the last two seconds, the upload completes and you're so relieved, so happy.
00:56:52
Speaker
Simon's ecstatic. Yeah. I've made it onto the arc. Hold up. Yeah. Um, so you see things launch off and Simon starts to freak out a bit. He's like, what the hell? Like I thought we were on the arc and Catherine says we are, but in the same way that you are a copy,
00:57:19
Speaker
The copy was uploaded to the arc and you are still here because somebody needed to be in the pilot seat. Somebody needed to do that.
00:57:31
Speaker
So she's there with you kind of there at the end. Yeah. But Simon's freaking out and she's trying to still be pragmatic and calm and say like, Hey, like we did a great thing, but like, this is the way it had to be. Yeah. And he gets frustrated and starts like punching things and breaks the screen. And then he can't hear her anymore.
00:57:57
Speaker
Yeah, everything powers down. He's in complete darkness. And he starts freaking out because he's now truly alone at the bottom of the ocean. The last possible conscious or living thing there. And that's where he. He ends his time. Yeah. Yeah, that's not the way I choose to go personally, but it is a heck of an ending to that.
00:58:25
Speaker
But it's not all bad. True. True. You wake up from this experience and you are the consciousness aboard the Ark. And it's a pretty nice place overall. It's green trees. Everything's lush. It looks amazing. It's designed to be this this paradise. Yeah. For the for the scans and.
00:58:52
Speaker
you head through, you can actually answer a questionnaire, which is kind of funny. Uh, the second point in the game that you actually could, it comes up a bit earlier and it's asking you how you perceive the world. Uh, it looks like how you perceive reality, um, just how your reaction to things are. And you can answer in whatever way you like. It's really for the player at this point.
00:59:19
Speaker
but you follow this path and ultimately end up at, I believe it's a beach, right? And you see a woman staring off to see and approach her and call out to Catherine. And that's officially where the game ends. Yeah. So simultaneously,
00:59:46
Speaker
A version of Simon died at the bottom of the ocean and a version of Simon got uploaded to the Ark to be with all of the other copies of humanity that they were able to save as scans.
01:00:00
Speaker
And this is the thing Simon didn't understand until the very, very end, despite some of the evidence that had been shown. And the game gives you a lot of hints that that's exactly how things work. Simon doesn't pick up on it though. He believes in the coin flip principle, which is whenever he's being transferred to a different body,
01:00:22
Speaker
he has a chance to be the success. That's what Catherine actually tells him, right? And he takes that chance because he's going to take the risk. But that's not the way it works. Yeah, it's similar to in the prestige. You have that coin flip. Sometimes I wake up on the other side and sometimes I'm the one who dies. Right. Spoilers for the prestige. Yeah, it's been out forever. I don't care.
01:00:52
Speaker
So really the theme of the game, the thing that's been iterated on over and over again that's kind of shown to you in all these different examples is like what is humanity? What is it to be alive?
01:01:03
Speaker
and these moments, like what actually constitutes a person. And they make Simon a very emotive character to emphasize this. He's your every man, basically. He's had some troubles. He might not at all times be all that bright, but he believes very strongly about whatever he's doing. And he has this strong sense of ethics and a care for other people. So it's uncomfortable when he has to hurt other people.
01:01:35
Speaker
It's, it's designed to put the player in situations where they're uncomfortable. So at the end of it, they're thinking, you know, about what this, what this future would be like, like, and what humanity has gone through and the end of humanity. And if that really just means the end of everything, or if like, even at the end, when there's the scans on the arc, is that hopeful? Like, is that a hopeful end or is it still, is that just like a VR prison?
01:02:04
Speaker
Exactly. Like, do the scans account for anything in the end since humanity's over? I think it counts as something. I think at some points you have to, especially with the advancement of technology in the game, you have to loosen your definition of
01:02:24
Speaker
a human is 80% this, 20% this. It can't just come down to biology. It comes down to like the sentience and character person. The embodiment of like as I'm just saying a lot of words right now and I hope that people can infer my meaning, but
01:02:49
Speaker
The game really does make you think and kind of draw these lines throughout. Is it this? Is it a robot? Does that cross the line? What if the robot talks? What if they're like 90% human and like 1% robot? What if it's you? Would you kill you? If it was a clone? What if they believe they're human?
01:03:13
Speaker
Like would the fact that they're a robot performing robot functions make them harder to empathize with or easier if they're very helpful, very cheerful. It's all about testing those lines until you arrive at the end. And it has, you know, this overarching story, which is, it's definitely interesting. You know, it's a, it's a,
01:03:36
Speaker
novel concepts. They take some tropes that are, you know, pretty common, like, you know, here's your evil, or at least antagonistic AI kind of above you, and here's the desolation of Earth, things like that. But they build them up in such a way that the question becomes about humanity instead of, you know, instead of focusing too much on the apocalypse itself. It's the personal apocalypse.
01:04:05
Speaker
Yeah, it's a lot of that is just set up as a setting for the storytelling. Right. Because it's really what you're doing and why you're doing it. The how doesn't really matter so much. It's just you as Simon making these choices and these actions.
01:04:25
Speaker
So a lot of the obstacles you come across in the game, the shared one from Amnesia being the monsters, right? Right. I don't think Amnesia as a whole had a great overarching message that they were trying to convey. And it was just kind of a mechanic that got added to the game.
01:04:42
Speaker
But here I think some of the monsters and a lot of the puzzles and trials you face, these obstacles, things crashing, your modes of transportation not being successful or convenient or things keep going wrong. You as the character Simon keep trying to push forward and cling to your own life as you perceive it. And for the hopeful persistence of humanity in some fashion.
01:05:09
Speaker
That's actually, I think that's a really good point. It's the instinct to survive that pushes Simon forward. And it's his human instinct, even though he's not human. And even when he kind of realizes that at the end, it's still pushing him forward, he can't escape that. And I mean, Catherine takes advantage of that, obviously. And I empathize a lot with Catherine, because she's kind of
01:05:33
Speaker
she sees this goal in her own way, like Simon's pushing forward for his own survival, Catherine's pushing forward because she was here when the ARC project was established. Like, she sees this as the final accomplishment of humanity, even if humanity doesn't exist. Just sending that ARC off into space is enough, even if she'll never be on it, and she realizes that.
01:06:00
Speaker
Well, at least that version of her won't be on it. Exactly. She personally, this instance of her personality will never be on it. And I think the two of them working together and like fighting off of each other, playing off each other and testing those boundaries like we were talking about is really like the core theme of Soma.
01:06:24
Speaker
Yeah. Another thing I really like about this game in comparison to amnesia is you have the inner character dialogue. You have somebody to like bounce things off of, and it's a very human conversation. Like it's anecdotal at times there's frustration. There's.
01:06:43
Speaker
companionship. There's something there. Yeah. Sarcasm even, right? Yeah. And it ties in really well to the emotions you'd expect to experience as Simon or the lack of emotions you expect to experience as Catherine. Right. And it fits really well together and builds a cohesive story on top of, I would say, entertaining gameplay and really nice graphics for it. They don't need to be that intensive for the medium of the story.
01:07:09
Speaker
Yeah, this is a story-based game. This is here to tell your story, make a feel, and at the end you'll have experienced something.
01:07:19
Speaker
I think that's where we're going to close off on today's episode. Thank you everybody for listening. Once again, it is myself, Dave and my buddy. I'm Jake. And we are the soapstone. If you have any questions, comments, concerns, or suggestions, please email us at soapstone podcast at gmail.com. And we'll be happy to hear from you.
01:07:41
Speaker
Keep looking forward to new episodes traditionally around Sundays. Yep. You'll, they'll be available Monday cause I'll edit it Sunday night at 2 AM. Check Monday morning at the latest for sure. Yep. But thank you and we'll see you in the next one. Yep. Take care. You know,
01:08:15
Speaker
Sounds like a real. Who am I? Who am I?