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Reason posted:Isn't Imogen Reed the body in the suit? Yeah.
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Oct 1, 2015 20:50
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SOMA's true subtitle: SOMA - Ctrl+c 101: A Windows guide. 
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Oct 1, 2015 20:55
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Soma has sold 92,000 copies in it's first week, exceeding expectations. (Their goal was 100,000 in a month). It needs triple that to be profitable, but there's no sense of urgency to get there. They're pretty happy http://frictionalgames.blogspot.se/2015/10/soma-10-days-after-launch.html quote:I'm going to start with what I think most people are interested in: how much has the game sold? The current number now is at about 92,000 copies across all platforms (due to legal reasons we can't give a per-platform breakdown). This is quite good for 10 days (+ preorder time) of sales! The money that we've got from this will pretty much pay our company expenses for another 2 years. Sales are still going pretty strongly too, with a total of around 2,000 copies sold per day. This number is bound to drop over time, and it'll be interesting to see just how fast and where it stabilizes. While a lot of sales obviously come close to launch, a big part of our normal earnings comes from a slow daily trickle over the years of our existing titles. So our average daily sales a month or so from now on is actually more important than all of the units sold up to this point. That means the game must have cost around 10 million in development. theblackw0lf fucked around with this message at 23:51 on Oct 1, 2015 |
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Oct 1, 2015 23:46
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Those daily videos seem to be going where I think they're going, which is to confirm my theory of: Catherine did ittheblackw0lf posted:Soma has sold 92,000 copies in it's first week, exceeding expectations. (Their goal was 100,000 in a month). I remember the days when they were almost about to shut shop, but were pretty much saved by the screams of streamers and viral marketing (in the true sense that it was unplanned). But that was back when you could fit their entire dev team in a car and I think they've had some help with Soma.
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Oct 2, 2015 00:08
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Groovelord Neato posted:yeah the "coin toss" is her trying to calm him with some bullshit. the game obviously understands how it works (and it's the only piece of media i know that does) It is and it isn't. The machine is creating a complete duplicate of your consciousness, with all the associated memories; both copies are 'you', and will remember everything that happened up until the snapshot/copy was made. One of those copies is going to stay in the original body, one of them is going to be in the new body. They're both, fully, completely you, and that transfer happens a few times during the course of the game. The switching perspectives - from Original Simon, to Diver Simon, to Suit Simon, is because that's the branch of consciousness you're on. It's only at the end when you find out that you weren't on the very last of the branches. It's half-bullshit; from one perspective there's never any transfers, just creating entirely new consciousnesses based on existing ones, but you can make philosophical arguments about whether or not there's any real distinction between the copies before they start to diverge. Which was kind of the point, and was something the game explicitly did a few times. The people who killed themselves right after the transfer were basically trying to back-create Star Trek transporters; stop there from being more than one copy of the consciousness in existence at a time, similar to how it'd be if the copying/scanning process was lethal instead of just giving you a hangover. Or if it was just ctrl-x instead of ctrl-c.
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Oct 2, 2015 03:38
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I'll just leave that animated short here with regards to continuity of consciousness: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdxucpPq6Lc (No, seriously, go watch it)
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Oct 2, 2015 04:42
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Foglet posted:I'll just leave that animated short here with regards to continuity of consciousness: Wow, this is actually really good. Hah.
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Oct 2, 2015 04:52
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Note on playthrough 2: Never fistfucking the cervix-terminals makes for a much brighter game. I recommend it, the chromatic aberration from always being a little hurt isn't so bad once you get used to it.
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Oct 2, 2015 05:25
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Uh guys maybe you don't but I actually have a soul that is a sort of field attached to my body that exists on another physical plane of reality or dimension and brain scans cannot duplicate it because from this 'physical perspective' its impossible to interact with or even measure, futhermore
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Oct 2, 2015 06:10
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Jim Flatline posted:Uh guys maybe you don't but I actually have a soul that is a sort of field attached to my body that exists on another physical plane of reality or dimension and brain scans cannot duplicate it because from this 'physical perspective' its impossible to interact with or even measure, futhermore In this case you literally don't have anything to worry about, souls are widely known to be immortal, indestructible and eternal, therefore no harm can get inflicted to a soul, QED.
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Oct 2, 2015 06:34
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Foglet posted:In this case you literally don't have anything to worry about, souls are widely known to be immortal, indestructible and eternal, therefore no harm can get inflicted to a soul, QED. Yet they may want to continue to interact with this dimension and destroying their body (the means by which they do this) is like pulling a paraplegic out of his high tech mouth operated wheelchair and smashing it to bits.
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Oct 2, 2015 06:54
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If you pull a paraplegic from his wheelchair and smash the chair to pieces and nobody sees or hears cause he is in a forest in a parallel plane of reality and his existence, degree of paraplegia and/or preference in transportation mode may or may not utterly depend on sophisticated and abstract belief systems (his and yours separately), is this sufficient base for an arrest warrant, Your Honor?
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Oct 2, 2015 07:41
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Foglet posted:If you pull a paraplegic from his wheelchair and smash the chair to pieces and nobody sees or hears cause he is in a forest in a parallel plane of reality and his existence, degree of paraplegia and/or preference in transportation mode may or may not utterly depend on sophisticated and abstract belief systems (his and yours separately), is this sufficient base for an arrest warrant, Your Honor? It doesn't work like that though, the souls frame of reference in regards to perspective is suddenly ripped from what we know as reality and deposited on to the plane on which it exists. It cannot go back as the body has been destroyed. Denying an intelligent beings ability to percieve and interact with reality is what we're talking about here.
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Oct 2, 2015 07:59
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Transmission #5: Adam Golasky Eats His Breakfast https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7fjQtmGumVs
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Oct 2, 2015 17:27
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I've been really impressed with the videos so far. I'd totally watch a full TV show about SOMA. Someone in the youtube comments brought up something interesting though. Apparently Golaski was the guy you find with the fizzled out blackbox. With all the structure gel he's been ingesting it doesn't seem to make sense that he didn't mutate into a horrific creature like some of the others. I'm hoping it's not a plothole and they give a reason for it in one of the later videos.
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Oct 2, 2015 20:40
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RPZip posted:It's half-bullshit; from one perspective there's never any transfers, just creating entirely new consciousnesses based on existing ones, but you can make philosophical arguments about whether or not there's any real distinction between the copies before they start to diverge. Which was kind of the point, and was something the game explicitly did a few times. The people who killed themselves right after the transfer were basically trying to back-create Star Trek transporters; stop there from being more than one copy of the consciousness in existence at a time, similar to how it'd be if the copying/scanning process was lethal instead of just giving you a hangover. Or if it was just ctrl-x instead of ctrl-c. there aren't any transfers from an omniscient perspective/reality, it's only from the perspective of the copy (and anyone who interacts with it afterwards and ignorant of how the process works) that a transfer took place. most fiction dealing with the idea doesn't actually even touch upon the fact that you don't really transfer yourself/upload yourself but just create a copy that isn't actually you. watching people stream this game is like watching valve play testers in real time.
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Oct 3, 2015 02:25
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKAMoFavtcU new soma vid. as the title states it is indeed  bare titties in one part.
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Oct 3, 2015 15:41
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That was a super creepy episode
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Oct 3, 2015 21:18
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Transmission #7: Things get worse. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fhmWWVqkdHE
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Oct 5, 2015 08:11
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I haven't watched all of those videos yet, but am I correct in thinking that Imogen Reed's mind got stuck in the Dunbat submarine? When you activate it, it wakes up and yells at you in a woman's voice, "THIS IS ALL YOUR FAULT, CATHERINE!"
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Oct 5, 2015 08:30
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I finally finished and love the game. I'm a sucker for good atmosphere, a bit of puzzles and story. So games like Dear Esther, Mind: Path to Thalamus and Talos Principle are about the only single player games I've played since Amnesia. I thought it interesting how similar the stories of this and Talos Principle are. Towards the last part I encountered something that I don't know was a glitch or an alternate ending of sorts. (slight spoilers if you don't want to see a monster attack). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B6VhBmrfZYY I think it would be the worst fate in the game, though! I wonder how long the power source for both that and Simon lasts...
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Oct 5, 2015 09:18
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AzureSkys posted:Towards the last part I encountered something that I don't know was a glitch or an alternate ending of sorts. (slight spoilers if you don't want to see a monster attack). Sometimes I would just love for a horror game to come to an end before you expect it with a scene like this. No great deed accomplished, no coherent story to complete, just a senseless and ignoble death at the bottom of the sea and roll credits.
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Oct 5, 2015 09:38
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AzureSkys posted:I finally finished and love the game. I'm a sucker for good atmosphere, a bit of puzzles and story. So games like Dear Esther, Mind: Path to Thalamus and Talos Principle are about the only single player games I've played since Amnesia. I thought it interesting how similar the stories of this and Talos Principle are. Happened to me too, but it finally let go after like a million rides on the carousel. I assume it's a bug.
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Oct 5, 2015 11:49
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ymgve posted:Happened to me too, but it finally let go after like a million rides on the carousel. I assume it's a bug. I had the same thing happen. Wound up reloading a save. I stuck to cover the next time.
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Oct 5, 2015 14:52
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dpSHpX9Gvfw Transmission 8. I mean, all of us knew going in with these vids that there wasn't a happy ending for anyone but seeing the WAU spring back to life on reserve power at the end, rendering what reed did entirely pointless was still pretty 
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Oct 5, 2015 16:38
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"It's the weight of the SEA!" Sound designer on point for these videos and the game, gotta say.
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Oct 5, 2015 17:47
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I finished the game, and drat. I enjoyed it. I think I can best sum up the game as Amnesia was 5/5 scariness, 3/5 plot, story, setting - whereas this was 3/5 scariness and 5/5 plot, story, etc. I have to say that I really like seeing the idea of cloning/memory backups done well in an immersive way. I remember liking the concept all of the way back to John Varley's (of Overdrawn at the Memory Bank fame!) stories that come from the late 70s/early 80s where humanity has learned to make backup images / snapshots of their memories, so if they die they can be cloned into a new body and have a backup restored. However, you obviously lose all memories between the backup and restore. That is really well done in this game, in an immersive way. You just jump into the future and then have to realize that you have died and the other you had this entire life that you have no memory of. I think the lovely "6th Day" movie ripped a lot of this off too, but that movie was terrible while this game is awesome. However I do wish they had been a little less chatty at times. The beginning of the game before you meet Catherine is excellent, as you don't know what the gently caress is going on. I feel like Amnesia had more of that before things were explained (once you get to the last third of the game and have that chained up husk dude to explain things to you). This game felt like they put the 'explainer' character in far too early, as I could have easily played another third or more of the game figuring things out just by seeing the looped videos about the comets and such. I also feel like the introduction of the WAU was very poorly done, as Catherine just casually mentions it and I thought she was saying "WOW!" a bit before I realized it was an acronym. I do have to say that the whole amensia concept of having a game start with the player not knowing what the gently caress is going on was very well done in this-- especially since if they redid the whole amensia thing people would have cried foul. This was a nice jump to the future instead. As others have said, I do feel like a lot of the monster encounters were a bit lame. The disco ball guy was awesome since it was not explained at all really, but by the time you get to the more normal zombie dudes they seem lame in comparison. This game needed more scripted encounters, like there were a lot of in Amnesia. Things that scare the gently caress out of you, but can't kill you-- or maybe could. I liked the wall of death you had to out run in both the ship and before you got the new suit-- it was like another puzzle instead of just hiding from a monster. Plus, some of the monsters you could learn to hide from, but in TAU that fucker was un-hideable. I feel like that was too much of a shift in monster AI in too late of the game, and probably frustrated a bunch when they realized they needed to just run from the TAU dude. Thoughts on monster encounters: - initial wtf ostrich dude: pretty good and creepy, especially pre-Catherine explaining poo poo - Disco ball dude: awesome, especially since it plays well into the glitchiness of your senses in the game. Probably the most memorable monster in the game, especially the way it lunges forward quickly in the blink of an eye. - Theta zombie: kinda lame after disco ball, and also when you realize you can just stand still and it won't see you. - Omnicron crying: awesome, especially when she runs after you - Tau: gently caress that dude, as I stated above - Sea creatures in the dark that maul you: good, since it was a chance of pace of zombies and it was more puzzle-oriented of trying to stay in the light / follow the path. I think the game really had a problem with lacking the insanity feature that Amnesia had, as they really could play to the strengths of OH GOD DONT LOOK AT THE CREATURES due to that play style. I had a real problem with that in Machine for Pigs-- if you can hide and just stare at the creature going by it loses a lot of scariness. The glitchness of your view screen helped a bit in this game, but I think they should have used it more. Also, I feel like the whole Alpha/Ross thing was kind of tacked on, but I know they needed some sort of final boss culmination. It just wasn't really explained well I guess, and Alpha felt kind of like tacked on? I feel like this game needed a good huge 'umph' area, like the Choir was to Amnesia. jeeves fucked around with this message at 18:35 on Oct 5, 2015 |
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Oct 5, 2015 18:24
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Does anyone know if the game changes at all depending on what choices you make? Obviously there are not different endings, and I am guessing the choices are more up for the player to live with and think about than actually having different outcomes on the game. I decided to kill the WAU and obviously got my arm cut off, whereas I am guessing you don't if you didn't kill it. Does anything else change besides Catherine saying "what happened to your arm?" If that is so, then I kind of like that. It is almost a refreshing change from the normal "oh you got the goodie ending for not killing people or doing the better / nicer / goodie Jedi things" versus "you acted like a dick / bad guy" ending.
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Oct 5, 2015 23:18
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Far as I can tell: The game does not judge you for your actions. Simon sometimes discusses what he did with Catherine, but that's it. You are meant to judge for yourself, but there's no easy answers.
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Oct 5, 2015 23:23
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Speedball posted:Far as I can tell: The game does not judge you for your actions. Simon sometimes discusses what he did with Catherine, but that's it. You are meant to judge for yourself, but there's no easy answers. That's what I figured, and as I said above, I find it really refreshing. I really wish I could support this company more than I already am. I enjoy even reading their thoughts on their blog on the process of making games. It is like really refreshing in the current environment of video game industry. I hope their next thing is as well done as this was (and Amnesia before it). jeeves fucked around with this message at 23:38 on Oct 5, 2015 |
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Oct 5, 2015 23:35
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I kinda wish there was a commentary mode with nodes throughout the game.
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Oct 6, 2015 00:27
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Speedball posted:I kinda wish there was a commentary mode with nodes throughout the game. I think they added this afterwards as a patch to Amnesia. Hopefully they will do the same again.
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Oct 6, 2015 01:21
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Some incredibly ambitious and beautiful soul wrote down the entire timeline for SOMA https://www.frictionalgames.com/forum/thread-31104.html
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Oct 6, 2015 12:02
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Nice. This is pretty neat.
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Oct 6, 2015 17:34
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Beat this game yesterday. Absolutely loved it. I think it struck a pretty good balance between Penumbra/Amnesia1 and a more "walking simulator" style game like Machine for Pigs. I didn't miss inventory management at all, and I thought the monster segments and puzzles didn't overstay their welcome or get in the way. As part of my annual Spooky Games Month I streamed the whole playthrough and made a playlist on YT with the vods, if anyone is interested in watching. Parts 6-8 are still processing I think. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eydAlcVNS3M
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Oct 6, 2015 19:10
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Just finished watching the last transmission and the Imogen helmet scene made me realize something that had been tickling my brain a bit ever since they started, I've actually been to the location where they filmed a lot of it. If you ever find yourself in western Washington check out Satsop nuclear power plant, I'm not sure if they still do them but I managed to get a free tour out of them a couple years ago, very cool place. Make sure to call in advance if you're interested, though you can also just drive right up to it since it's a business park now but a lot of the cool stuff is gated off.
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Oct 7, 2015 13:57
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jeeves posted:I have to say that I really like seeing the idea of cloning/memory backups done well in an immersive way. I remember liking the concept all of the way back to John Varley's (of Overdrawn at the Memory Bank fame!) stories that come from the late 70s/early 80s where humanity has learned to make backup images / snapshots of their memories, so if they die they can be cloned into a new body and have a backup restored. However, you obviously lose all memories between the backup and restore. That is really well done in this game, in an immersive way. You just jump into the future and then have to realize that you have died and the other you had this entire life that you have no memory of. I think the lovely "6th Day" movie ripped a lot of this off too, but that movie was terrible while this game is awesome. what i really love about SOMA is it's the only piece of media about mind uploading that i know of that actually talks about the aspect that there is no continuity. most sci-fi media acts as if the clone with your memories implanted is still "you" as in a contiguous you, when you died forever. it's been something i;ve been thinking about ever since i saw chappie since that movie acted that the main character is still the same guy when he gets uploaded into the robot (when he is from the perspective of himself and the other characters) when the original character is actually gone and it bugged me that it was yet another story that didn't explain/mention there's no continuity. like in the 6th Day is acts as if it's the same person when it's just a copy with the same memories and that person is gone.
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Oct 7, 2015 14:04
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Groovelord Neato posted:what i really love about SOMA is it's the only piece of media about mind uploading that i know of that actually talks about the aspect that there is no continuity. most sci-fi media acts as if the clone with your memories implanted is still "you" as in a contiguous you, when you died forever. it's been something i;ve been thinking about ever since i saw chappie since that movie acted that the main character is still the same guy when he gets uploaded into the robot (when he is from the perspective of himself and the other characters) when the original character is actually gone and it bugged me that it was yet another story that didn't explain/mention there's no continuity. I think the film The Prestige touched on this some what well, however it didn't expressly point it out like Soma does. Varley definitely made it a key plot point in at least his earlier work, like The Ophiuchi Hotline. I also like that in that novel the point of view shifts into the future a few times, as the main character gets her memory backup done, but doesn't realize she is like the third or forth iteration of the clone like years into the future, and those never got their memories backed up. However in that book it also expressly points out the 'gently caress you got mine' aspect of this, as the clone that gets to go off into the future/live on really must feel ambivalent about the others that died. It kind of boils down to a base instinct of sux2bu I think, since it is explicitly a separate person that can have a whole separate life, just with the same memories. Sort of like twins who are somehow born halfway into someone's life and thus inherit all of the memories of before. And being exactly the same person means that you most likely instantly get jealous of the other due to humanity's base selfish-ness to want to stay alive. Sort of like when Calvin of Calvin & Hobbes clones himself to do his chores but his clone is an exact copy so he doesn't want to do chores either-- only with life and death. It is why I am always amused with idiots can't correctly grasp the idea of cloning as a real life thing with our current technology, and not as a funny amusement in the above Calvin & Hobbes story. A good example is rich idiots who have their pets cloned and then think that the clone will be exactly the same as the original with the exact same memories-- and they even rename it the same or some insanity. That would involve actual memory transplants which is what Soma does well, as if you can correctly put your memories into ANYTHING you don't even need a body. Whereas real life cloning is basically just making twins that can have wildly separate lives depending on how they play out / their upbringing and life experiences. jeeves fucked around with this message at 16:18 on Oct 7, 2015 |
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Oct 7, 2015 16:10
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Are the transmission videos worth watching? I was saving them up until they were all released and I just realized it's like a full length movie when you put them all together.
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Oct 8, 2015 02:30
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NESguerilla posted:Are the transmission videos worth watching? I was saving them up until they were all released and I just realized it's like a full length movie when you put them all together. They're good.
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Oct 8, 2015 02:34
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