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I think my biggest problem with the way they handle the body swapping thing isn't Simon, but Sarang and his crew. Look, Simon is some schmuck from a bookstore having to make the best of a bad situation. These are quick, easy rationalizations for him to make to stay sane. Sarang is a loving biochemist, and the people he got on board his silly ideas also pool from some of the best and brightest. And your telling me they couldn't figure out how mind uploading works? I can figure it out, and I'm some schmuck barista that doesn't even have a college degree yet.
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Oct 8, 2015 02:37
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Just being stuck indoors for a week can drive relatively normal people insane. Being stuck at the bottom of the ocean for potential decades and knowing the surface is obliterated along with everyone up there you loved probably makes any chance at escape appealing.
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Oct 8, 2015 02:56
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My favorite thing about how uploading was handled is that it gives you the POV of multiples Simons, the lucky ones and the unlucky ones. I liked that Simon was always like "gently caress those other guys what about me?!" it sounds silly to say about a sci fi video game but it really made me think about existence and how I would feel in that situation. I thought it was sort of irresponsible of Catherine not to properly prep Simon for what was going to happen though. It was inferred how it worked before hand but stuff like the unplugging scene would have probably been a lot more palatable for Simon if she told him before hand "you will transfer into a new body, but the old you will still exist in an unconscious state. to continue to exist in your current state you will have to kill the old you. vs. not really telling him anything and him finding out the hard way was the worst way to go about it. Maybe she was just so ok with the concept that she didn't consider he would react like that, but I think a lot of the moral gray area in that part comes from the previous Simon not knowing he'd have to die or be stranded. The ending was all on Simon (and me, because it surprised me even though it shouldn't have)
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Oct 8, 2015 03:51
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NESguerilla posted:My favorite thing about how uploading was handled is that it gives you the POV of multiples Simons, the lucky ones and the unlucky ones. I liked that Simon was always like "gently caress those other guys what about me?!" it sounds silly to say about a sci fi video game but it really made me think about existence and how I would feel in that situation. She was worried he would bitch out. That's why she rigged the scan not to happen until he hit the launch button.
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Oct 8, 2015 03:58
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NESguerilla posted:"you will transfer into a new body, but the old you will still exist in an unconscious state. to continue to exist in your current state you will have to kill the old you. vs. not really telling him anything and him finding out the hard way was the worst way to go about it. [/spoiler] Uh. You don't have to kill the old Simon-bot to continue to be you... they're both you and both will continue to live their own perceptions of existence if you leave it alone. I'm fairly certain there's no 'lucky' or 'unlucky' Simon. They're all unique versions, and no consciousness just moves to the new body and continues on; I'm pretty sure the game just switched perspective to keep it going and to show that you couldn't possibly notice that you're not just a continuation of the exact same personality.
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Oct 8, 2015 04:29
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NESguerilla posted:I thought it was sort of irresponsible of Catherine not to properly prep Simon for what was going to happen though. Catherine is pretty much a sociopath who's obsessed with creating what amounts to a tombstone. The logs reveal that she was otherwise unconcerned with the suicides (aside from them impeding her plan for the ARK), she doesn't view the robots as living, thinking things, and she spends practically the entire game treating Simon like a disposable prop, yanking his chain around and flat-out lying to him repeatedly to see her plan through to completion. It's pretty raw commentary on humanity when the only thing that's still interested in life - real, material life - is a runaway AI crafting biomechanical horrors.
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Oct 8, 2015 04:47
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Vermain posted:Catherine is pretty much a sociopath who's obsessed with creating what amounts to a tombstone. The logs reveal that she was otherwise unconcerned with the suicides (aside from them impeding her plan for the ARK), she doesn't view the robots as living, thinking things, and she spends practically the entire game treating Simon like a disposable prop, yanking his chain around and flat-out lying to him repeatedly to see her plan through to completion. It's pretty raw commentary on humanity when the only thing that's still interested in life - real, material life - is a runaway AI crafting biomechanical horrors. Did you not hear the log where she's like almost crying because that guy killed himself in the brain scan chair?
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Oct 8, 2015 05:18
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lets hang out posted:She was worried he would bitch out. That's why she rigged the scan not to happen until he hit the launch button. Ok that makes sense. He probably would have actually. Faffel posted:Uh. I know you don't have to. Either way the one in the chair is the unlucky one. he either dies or is trapped on an underground facility alone until he dies. Diver Suit Simon still thinks he is going to escape on the ARK. Simon 2 is pretty much objectively in a shittier situation and not unplugging him is probably a much worse fate than killing him veni veni veni fucked around with this message at 05:30 on Oct 8, 2015 |
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Oct 8, 2015 05:28
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NESguerilla posted:Ok that makes sense. He probably would have actually. I mean, yeah, but the second-to-last Simon ends up in the same situation anyway. It's just the way you said it made it sound like you were saying what people were saying earlier, that it's a 50/50 chance you get 'continued' into the new consciousness instead of being an entirely new one.
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Oct 8, 2015 05:34
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Faffel posted:Did you not hear the log where she's like almost crying because that guy killed himself in the brain scan chair? She wasn't crying because she felt bad about the guy being dead. She was crying because she knew this would cause Strohmeier to shut down the project. Everybody who mentions Catherine inevitably talks about how cold and unlikeable she was. It even got mentioned in the Transmission videos.
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Oct 8, 2015 05:38
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NESguerilla posted:Ok that makes sense. He probably would have actually. To be fair if you destroy the WAU, Simon in Omicron has no more problems! Well, outside of the being alone forever thing. Meanwhile Diver Suit Simon is stuck in the loving hellish underocean with only one arm. Maybe they could hook up and be buddies. If you don't destroy the WAU, well, at least Diver Suit Simon still has both arms? Really though, if I was in Simon's shoes, I'd probably head right back to Theta after sending off the ARK, and just letting those Proxies capture me and goop me up. Getting to spend the rest of my eternity in a drug induced coma, where a AI does it's damnedest to make sure I'm at least kind of happy doesn't sound so bad as everything else going on down there. I assume it could simulate my life fairly well going forward, until my body eventually decomposed. But then I'd just die of old age in my dream, wouldn't I? That doesn't sound so bad.
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Oct 8, 2015 05:47
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Yeah, subjectively the best fate for Omicron Simon would have been to leave him there and not destroy the WAU. He would have likely remained asleep until a proxy got a hold of him and then he's just back at his apt in 2015. maybe not a totally convincing representation of it, but hey could be worse 
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Oct 8, 2015 05:52
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1stGear posted:She wasn't crying because she felt bad about the guy being dead. She was crying because she knew this would cause Strohmeier to shut down the project. Everybody who mentions Catherine inevitably talks about how cold and unlikeable she was. It even got mentioned in the Transmission videos. If her greatest crime is lying to Simon in order to save something of humanity, then i don't think that is too horrible.
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Oct 8, 2015 06:54
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NESguerilla posted:Yeah, subjectively the best fate for Omicron Simon would have been to leave him there and not destroy the WAU. He would have likely remained asleep until a proxy got a hold of him and then he's just back at his apt in 2015. maybe not a totally convincing representation of it, but hey could be worse Omicron Simon is hosed, he is stuck in a very small room with no way to open any of the doors, or recharge his batteries and none of the Omicron monsters seem like the type that would take the time to come and get him, if they even could.
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Oct 8, 2015 14:51
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Also note that by game design of gating people until you're done with a mission plot point, you can't loving do anything in Pathos-II without an Omni-tool. So both of them are major hosed and basically stuck in the rooms they are in. At least Simon-3 can wander out into the darkness through the open roof of the launch room and die whereas Simon-2 is basically stuck in that room. I am sure either of them can simply pull their helmets off and pull themselves apart though.
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Oct 8, 2015 15:49
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Faffel posted:Uh. however, from the perspective of each new copy you are a continuation of the original it's just that in objective reality you are not.
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Oct 8, 2015 17:30
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I had the hardest time with that one choice.I really started to imagine Simon as my Avatar in Soma and not so much his own character. When it came down to choosing if I wanted to kill version 2.0 of myself or not. I knew the correct choice was to kill him but I couldn't do it. I rationalized it by imagining that maybe I'd be able to come back after the game ends and that anything is better than death. The truth though and I knew it, was that he was going to die stuck there. Without that omnitool everything is blocked off and the nearest indoor room has a monster living in it even if he did get that door open. The moment I got on the crawler and couldn't return, I knew I had made the wrong choice but oh well at that point.
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Oct 8, 2015 18:40
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jeeves posted:Also note that by game design of gating people until you're done with a mission plot point, you can't loving do anything in Pathos-II without an Omni-tool. So both of them are major hosed and basically stuck in the rooms they are in. Point on this: There's a jury-rigged Omnitool lying on a bench in the Omicron dive room, and, well... Catherine never gets plugged in to the same console twice, stays online as long as possible at each, and voluntarily disconnects every time that isn't in the climber - where she has zero control over systems and is just observing from inside the tool. She always shuts down the terminal when she leaves. Catherine has no sense of continuity and wouldn't care if she did. There's nothing saying that every time you pull her out of a console you're not leaving a version of her snapshotted at that point in time inside the machine just waiting for someone else to shuffle up and hit the power switch. No transfers in Pathos-II. Just copies.
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Oct 9, 2015 07:00
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Cephalocidal posted:Point on this: There's a jury-rigged Omnitool lying on a bench in the Omicron dive room, and, well... Catherine never gets plugged in to the same console twice, stays online as long as possible at each, and voluntarily disconnects every time that isn't in the climber - where she has zero control over systems and is just observing from inside the tool. She always shuts down the terminal when she leaves. When you first meet Catherine AI you take a physical memory card and move it to the omni-tool. After that she doesn't leave the tool, and thus no copying takes place. The tool just interfaces with the various terminals you come across "expanding" her body and retracting it when you uplugg the tool again. I doubt it leaves any trace behind. The way the tool works makes it seem like the terminals don't really have any memory capacity of it's own.
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Oct 9, 2015 08:46
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I feel like the game would have benefited from another 'POV-jump' to a third cloned consciousness, after the first Omnicron one, but before the end's 'everything worked out for my POV so gently caress you, got-mine all the other Simons!' POV jump to the ARK. The first one was kind of an emotional cop-out since old-Simon was unconscious and this the decision to kill him almost seemed like a mercy-killing since he would just never wake up and it played into the idea of 'Continuity' or such, as thought of by Sarang. The second one should have had the this-iteration's old-Simon fully conscious and aware, and having been tricked by Catherine's poor explanation (coin toss bullshit). The player (now in the newly third-conscious body) would have the decision to kill a fully conscious old-Simon, or leave them tied up or something-- while fully able to converse with old-Simon and have him swearing at you and yelling at Catherine for tricking him, etc. Of course, this would have lessened the ending I guess, since Simon fully never understood the whole concept of what was going on since he thought he was going to show up on the Ark. So I guess they worked this in anyhow, but it just made Simon seem kind of like an idiot in the end and Catherine a bitch for using a stupid explanation on him. Also, don't lie-- we all would have the opinion of 'gently caress you, got mine' about the POV jump if we are the ones benefiting from being in the new suit's POV/on the ARK. I think it is just human nature. jeeves fucked around with this message at 18:17 on Oct 9, 2015 |
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Oct 9, 2015 18:13
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i'm confused how you think the "why is he still talking" scene plays into the continuity cult when it showcases the opposite.
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Oct 9, 2015 18:54
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Groovelord Neato posted:i'm confused how you think the "why is he still talking" scene plays into the continuity cult when it showcases the opposite. It is my own thoughts on it. From the POV of the 'successor' then it is somewhat of a mercy killing to get rid of the original so there is only one Simon. Since the other Simon was asleep it made the choice marginally easier. The view point Sarang had was from the opposite end, where they wanted to kill themselves and only have the ARK copy as the only one alive-- basically to get to the ARK ASAP, since they knew they would not be the ones to get there, but some form of themselves would, even if it was not themselves personally. I may have misspoke before, but that is as much as I believe it to be from the game. It is a very interesting idea that I have seen experimented upon in a few good works of sci-fi, namely Varley's early stuff. I really like that SOMA picked up on it and made it have a good player POV perspective of the whole thing.
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Oct 9, 2015 21:34
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i believe the continuity cult believed that by suiciding their consciousness would actually move into the ARK.
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Oct 9, 2015 22:33
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Groovelord Neato posted:i believe the continuity cult believed that by suiciding their consciousness would actually move into the ARK. Let's see how squarely your head is screwed on after a few months popping in and out of airlocks because the remotes are off-limits when you're already dealing with mild narcosis and whatever stress disorders you've collected in your permanent pineapple under the sea.
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Oct 15, 2015 17:15
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Well, our feeling that our "self" is a singular, continuous entity could very well be just an illusion anyway. Copying it over just breaks this illusion a little harder that usual.
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Oct 15, 2015 18:24
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Aside from the existential horror touched on in the game, which was excellent, I found some of the most terrifying moments are toward the end. They beautifully pulled off the atmosphere of being stuck at the bottom of a lightless abyss, even without the WAU-tampered sea life around it's very effective. In a couple sections, you can wander away from the lights of the station and just head out into the pitch black of the ocean, where it's eerily quiet aside from your breathing echoing in your diving suit, and there's a real sense of dread not knowing what's lurking out there. And probably my favorite encounter is toward the end of the game. At this point you've been trained to stick to the lights, and in one particular section, it was getting a little dark as I was making my way across the sea floor, so the moment I saw a nice, inviting light I sprinted towards it only to be greeted by this loving thing  Bravo, Frictional. RightClickSaveAs fucked around with this message at 16:15 on Oct 17, 2015 |
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Oct 17, 2015 16:10
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RightClickSaveAs posted:Aside from the existential horror touched on in the game, which was excellent, I found some of the most terrifying moments are toward the end. They beautifully pulled off the atmosphere of being stuck at the bottom of a lightless abyss, even without the WAU-tampered sea life around it's very effective. In a couple sections, you can wander away from the lights of the station and just head out into the pitch black of the ocean, where it's eerily quiet aside from your breathing echoing in your diving suit, and there's a real sense of dread not knowing what's lurking out there. I didn't fall for this because it warns you of it on a computer before hand so I didn't get to see its ugly mug, yikes its ugly.
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Oct 17, 2015 16:52
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Reason posted:I didn't fall for this because it warns you of it on a computer before hand so I didn't get to see its ugly mug, yikes its ugly. And what section is it that has all the rooms you can lock and unlock? I heard that a good way to get through that is to lock the monster in one of the rooms, which I was finally able to do after much trial and error, but I'm pretty sure the thing cheats anyway. I got it locked in the lab, but then when I tried to move on to another area, I must have triggered some event because it was right back on top of me.
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Oct 17, 2015 19:52
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Also gotta echo the earlier sentiments about how much attention to detail is packed into the game. Near the beginning of the game, when you go into the machine shop, if you close the door behind you after you go in the robot on the wall will smash through it to get out. If you leave it open, it's untouched. A completely unnecessary detail that's barely noticeable and I had to reload that section to make sure I was even catching that, but it shows the kind of effort that was put in.
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Oct 17, 2015 20:23
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RightClickSaveAs posted:Also gotta echo the earlier sentiments about how much attention to detail is packed into the game. Near the beginning of the game, when you go into the machine shop, if you close the door behind you after you go in the robot on the wall will smash through it to get out. If you leave it open, it's untouched. A completely unnecessary detail that's barely noticeable and I had to reload that section to make sure I was even catching that, but it shows the kind of effort that was put in. Hahahaa, yeah. There's a ton of tiny details like that everywhere in the game. I love it. One thing I noticed regarding Carl: If you electrocute Carl to get to the Dome, Simon mentions hurting a robot, if you kill the power to Carl to get to the dome and check on him, Simon mentions it to Catherine but she says, "Well...uh...robots don't feel pain!" If you kill the power to Carl but never go near him, Simon skips mentioning Carl at all.
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Oct 17, 2015 20:24
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I didn't even realize there were multiple things that could happen to Carl, wow. Pretty sure I just shut the power off the first time, not realizing you could go about it different ways.
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Oct 17, 2015 20:56
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Uh, am I just stuck now? I'm on the ocean floor walking towards Tau. I got to a couple of small buildings, and in one I had to flip a switch. The other one had a screen in front of it. Unknowingly, I sent the robot that was in that building out to Tau. I tried to call it back, and it almost did until it turned around and left again. Now the recall button is grayed out, and nothing else on the screen seems to do anything. I believe I was supposed to stick close to the robot since it has lights on it, but now it's gone. Trying to go forward myself just leads me to getting teleported back to the buildings. I don't know what to do now.
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Oct 18, 2015 01:43
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Not sure if there's a way out of that situation but the game stores a few saves back so you might be able to reload
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Oct 18, 2015 05:10
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I saw someone do that on a stream. They just wandered that direction until they saw some lights, but I didn't see beyond that. You can venture into the abyss to find out!
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Oct 18, 2015 05:54
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Yeah I wound up just having to wander outwards more until I eventually found the right path to a cave.
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Oct 18, 2015 15:52
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Did anyone else get super lost in that cave? It took me like 10 minutes to get from a to b
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Oct 18, 2015 21:20
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I got really lost in several places throughout, which is probably why it took me so long to get through the game. It didn't help that I tried to explore every corner of each area as well. I'm on my second playthrough and I'm actually liking it even more, now that I know what's going on. I had a hard time following anything the first time around, a large part my fault due to playing it over a few weeks' time. I don't think I could have pieced a lot of the story together myself though, and going back to it given all that I've read about it really gives me an appreciation for how the exposition is handled. Just finished the Curie section, and on another attention to detail note, I just realized there are two ways that part can go down: -If Simon finds the escape vessel and tries to start it up before going any further, this happens (this is probably how most people played the game actually, it makes the most sense): https://youtu.be/IKtbmcVZSNI -Then he has to go sabotage the reactor and make it back to the escape pod: https://youtu.be/2KGDts0gyV8 But if you just skip past the escape vessel, like I did the first time I played because I didn't want to miss any chance for exploration, and wander around the ship until you get lost/bored and are unable to do anything except start pulling out these random wires you find in the engine room, this will happen when you finally make it to the escape pod: https://youtu.be/V9pP47_IiwI The two outcomes really paint Simon in a different light, although I think the last one suits him the best!
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Oct 19, 2015 02:56
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When you talk to Sarah Lindwall does Simon make any mention of the fact that if you spare the woman hooked up to WAU life support on the way to Theta there are actually two humans still alive? Speaking of which I like the fact that There are two humans alive. One on WAU life support and the other on conventional life support
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Oct 19, 2015 21:41
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If you consider being on WAU life support as being human, there are a lot of them still alive in various parts.
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Oct 19, 2015 23:09
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Travic posted:Speaking of which I like the fact that There are two humans alive. One on WAU life support and the other on conventional life support that other woman is more unlife.
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Oct 19, 2015 23:50
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