Soma (video game)

Gameplay

Soma is a survival horror video game played from a first-person perspective. The player will encounter a number of creatures, which will each embody an aspect of the game's themes. Soma primarily utilizes elements of psychological horror instead of conventional scares found in most video games within the genre. Throughout the game, the player will find a large array of clues, such as notes and audio tapes, which builds atmosphere and furthers the plot. Similar to most titles by Frictional Games, there is no combat, and instead the player progresses through puzzle-solving, exploration and the use of stealth.

Setting

Soma takes place in an underwater research facility known as PATHOS-II. While the station itself is now in a state of disrepair, the player quickly establishes that PATHOS-II was a group of stations scattered around the North Atlantic ocean originally functioning as a "space gun", or more precisely, a mass driver, an installation designed to send objects into space without the hassle of building expensive rockets. Unexpectedly, the crew of PATHOS-II became the last people to exist on Earth after a comet impact caused a major extinction event. There, the last humans survive on a day-to-day basis, attempting to fight the negative effects of their collective isolation. During this period, the machines in PATHOS-II begin to develop human characteristics and a consciousness.

Story

In 2015, protagonist Simon Jarrett is involved in a car crash in Toronto that leaves him with severe brain damage. Due to his injuries, Simon agrees to an experimental brain scan under the control of Dr. Munshi, who was working on ways of fixing the brain in people whom suffered such trauma to the brain. During the scan, Simon appears to black out, and regains consciousness in Site Upsilon of PATHOS-II, a seemingly-abandoned deep sea research facility in the Atlantic Ocean. Simon learns that he has awoken in the year 2104, and that one year prior, a massive comet impact devastated Earth's surface, leaving PATHOS-II as the last outpost of humanity. While exploring Upsilon, Simon remotely contacts someone named Catherine Chun, who instructs him to come to her location at Site Lambda. After exploring some more of the facility Simon finds a post with a communication rig, which he uses to contact Catherine again. However, the walls of that part of the facility begin to leak and break, until finally the glass gives under the pressure of the water. Simon blacks out for a few minutes and then wakes up in the water, then while looking at his arms his vision begins to crackle and show his arms are not his but the arms of someone in a dive suit.

Arriving at Site Lambda, Simon realizes that Catherine is not human, but a digital scan of a human mind downloaded to a storage unit. She reveals that Simon is a scan of the original 2015 Simon, which has been loaded into the modified body of a dead PATHOS-II employee. She tells Simon about the ARK, a computer that runs a simulated world containing scans of the station staff, which was created to ensure some version of humanity escapes the Earth. The ARK was never launched into space for reasons unknown to Catherine, as her scan was made before the attempt.

Simon and Catherine begin searching for methods to reach the ARK, which is located deep within the ocean at Site Tau. Throughout their journey, Simon is hampered by hostile robots and mutated crew members controlled by the WAU, the artificial intelligence computer of PATHOS-II which has wiped out or assimilated the station's personnel due to its prime directive to preserve the human race, without regard for the form in which humanity is preserved.

Simon eventually settles on constructing a new body that can withstand the deep sea pressure. He is transferred into the body, and awakens realizing that his consciousness wasn't actually moved, but rather copied. Catherine explains that copying is the only process available while she quickly puts the old body to sleep, leaving the player with the choice to spare or end the old body's life.

Having descended to Site Tau with his new body, Simon retrieves the ARK and sends it to Site Phi, where the space gun is located. Simon eventually reaches Site Phi and loads the ARK into the space gun. Simon also finds Catherine's black box implant, in which he hears Catherine arguing with other scientists about the risk of launching the ARK, leading to her having an accident, killing her. This was the reason the ARK wasn't launched in the first place. After telling this to Catherine, she begins to question why the other scientists "killed" her, even though it was accidental. Catherine promises to scan them into the ARK just before it launches. After the ARK launches, Simon and Catherine are still on PATHOS-II. Catherine explains again that she cannot transfer scans, only copy them. The player's Simon "lost the coin flip"; his and Catherine's copies are aboard the ARK while their current consciousness have been left behind on the station. After a heated argument with Catherine, the console she is connected to shuts down, as does the launch room, leaving Simon alone in the darkness.

In a post-credits scene, the version of Simon copied to the ARK, completely unaware of the other Simon left behind on PATHOS-II, wakes up in an idyllic landscape. Simon is reunited with Catherine in front of a futuristic island city. Meanwhile, it is shown that the ARK has successfully made it into space aboard a satellite as it leaves behind a devastated Earth. The last scene shows the ARK satellite flying slowly into the reaches of the galaxy until it is but a distant twinkle like the rest of the stars, giving a feeling of hope for the rest of humanity aboard the ARK.

Development

Soma was in the making since 2010, beginning with the advancement of new technology for the game engine. Setting the game at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean was an idea decided on a "whim" by Frictional Games co-founders Thomas Grip and Jens Nilsson, which Grip said they had wanted to try for a long time. The storytelling was designed to rely on the player's actions rather than serve as a guide for the player to adhere to, so as to allow those who ignore exposition material, such as audio logs and notes, to follow the plot. Soma's underlying theme is consciousness, and was developed in order to explore the nature of free will and the self. The game's atmosphere was inspired by the work of Philip K. Dick, China Miéville and Greg Egan.

Achieving a realistic sound to fit the mood required audio director Samuel Justice to utilise what he called "the room size system". Instead of processing sounds to make an effect possible, recordings were made of environments that complemented such needs, like the reverb of a large hall. With this system, over 2,000 footstep sounds were captured.

Marketing

A teaser trailer featuring gameplay footage of Soma was released on 11 October 2013. The official website's info page displays a quote by author Philip K. Dick. Another trailer of the game was released on 3 April 2014.

Two live action shorts, "Vivarium" and "Mockingbird" were shot back-to-back at LeftJet Studios in Seattle, over the course of nine days. The films were produced by Imagos Films, an independent film company based in Seattle. Imagos Films also completed for Frictional Games a set of live action clips that were set to release in 2015 in monthly installments and would connect to the story of the upcoming game. Due to production problems the release date was delayed and on September 28, 2015, shortly after the release of the game, Frictional Games announced they had made available the first clip on their YouTube channel under the title "SOMA - Transmission #1", with seven more to follow in each coming day. The live action miniseries acts a prequel to the events of the game, albeit one which is inspired by its plot and characters rather than being strictly canonical to it.

In collaboration with Frictional Games, a feature film tentatively called "DEPTH" was filmed by Imagos Films under the code name "Project Apophis". The film's director is Don Thacker and clips from it were used for Soma's marketing campaign such as the "Transmissions" webseries. The film is expected to release in 2016.

Reception

Soma received positive reviews. Review aggregator website Metacritic gave the Microsoft Windows version 84/100 based on 67 reviews and the PlayStation 4 version 79/100 based on 27 reviews.

Richard Wakeling from GameSpot gave the game a 9 out of 10, and praised the "engaging and thought-provoking" story, the "impressive" writing and voice acting, and the atmosphere and sound design, which together, fills the game with "dread" and provides a "chilling", "edge of your seat" feeling. Wakeling disliked the sections in which the player walks on the ocean floor, however, and also felt that enemy encounters were "tedious". Philip Kollar of Polygon also gave the game a 9/10 and wrote: "I don't know if SOMA will scare people as much as Amnesia did, but it is without a doubt a stronger game, with better pacing, smarter writing and more powerful subject matter. This isn't a horror game about obfuscation; events aren't building to a huge, shocking twist. More than anything, it's about the process of dealing with the horror of reality." Caitlin Cooke from Destructoid awarded the game a 9/10 as well. She stated "SOMA gets everything right about the survival horror genre. It’s like someone created the perfect video game mixtape -- a little bit of abandoned underwater atmosphere from BioShock, detailed environments a la Gone Home, and (of course) the frenzied monster mechanics from Amnesia. Even if you dislike non-combat-oriented games, I dare you to give it a try."

Tim Turi from Game Informer awarded the game an 8.5 out of 10. He commended the sound for convincingly immersing the player in the game, as well as the "eerie" environments, the "simple", "reliable" controls, and the "intriguing" narrative. Turi had minor criticisms concerning character models, stealth, and the interaction with monsters. In his review for GamesRadar, Leon Hurley wrote: "A disturbingly different take on interesting sci-fi concepts let down by a slow start and disappointing monsters, but worth it overall." Hurley praised the "great" story, "likeable" characters, and the "interesting and unpredictable" locations. He also commended the game for its ability to pull the player through the story by providing rewarding situations. Hurley did feel "lost" at times, as there are no distinct directions, and felt that the monsters lacked any threat. IGN's Daniel Krupa scored the game an 8.1/10 and wrote: "SOMA is a sustained exploration of an original and thought-provoking idea. The concept of artificial intelligence has been explored by lots of science fiction, so it isn’t unique in that regard, but it makes particularly intelligent use of video game conventions to present those familiar ideas in new and surprising ways."

After ten days of release, Soma had sold 92,000 copies, exceeding the 20,000 copies made by the developer's previous game Amnesia: The Dark Descent in its first week. In March 2016, Frictional Games announced that the game had sold more than 250,000 copies and that the company was close to breaking even, which required them to sell 276,000 units. In a blog post commemorating one year of release, Frictional Games estimated that the sales figures had exceeded 450,000 copies. At the 2016 Golden Joystick Awards, Soma was nominated for three categories: Best Original Game, Best Story Telling and Best Visual Design.