 Hello everybody and welcome to a special Pre-recorded eFab. This will be when we pop out when when there's just so much going on that We can't possibly do a live one for whatever may reason hap happens in any case semi-recently slash ages ago bring a completed soma It's right. Look at that. Wow since with that happening We can all talk about it now the three of us as a game a story set of ideas blah blah blah So first of all Uh, why don't you gentle viewer enjoy the conversation that we're gonna have That happened a while ago, but it is now going to be in this video Of us talking about soma and then after that We'll uh, we'll come back and we'll do something else that you've probably figured out from the title of this video already But hey, look at them. There they are. They're gonna talk now. They didn't take it away off. They go. Hello Hey You finished it up And I was 10 I was in total about isn't it Yeah So what do you think? Oh, I'm gonna be thinking about this game for a while I'm gonna be thinking about this game for a while. I can tell that I don't even know where to begin It sounds like I'm packing my thoughts on this whole game Um Yeah, I mean so already upon completing it instantly this game is Way way way way high up Unlike my list of favorite stories in video games Well, at least I know why beard rags put it incredibly highly I uh, I don't I don't know that I could ask for the game to do any more reasonably in terms of exploring all of the concepts that are The all of the concepts that it's attempting to delve into related to consciousness being artificial intelligence continuity, you know continuity of consciousness robotics um What what what exactly like life is where we derive the value from the the notion of like whether Like how much the value of life is derived from the perception of it being real and moreover like what does that even matter? like The notion of it being real or the perception of it being real and what exactly does that even mean to the perceiver? um I Yeah, I feel like there was uh, yeah like no stone stone left unturned in terms of exploring these concepts Unlike the way and and and this is all on top of the fact that I think that like the central plot as presented here Where these characters going through it and the mystery that unravels as you traverse through all of these different parts of the base Gradually piecing together what's going on um Like all of that is presented in a really interesting way obviously from a gameplay perspective It's pretty straightforward pretty like you know minimalistic. I suppose you could say It's not like it's a particularly mechanically complex game But I certainly don't feel like uh the game as presented and all of the mechanics get in the way of the story It feels like it's totally like in sync and in service of the story Yeah, it's another one of those that answers hypothetical because if someone said which they have Somewhere shouldn't have been a game. It should have just been a movie. It's like no, it needs to be a game It's got to be a game the choices Is such a huge part of the experience It's part of the uh Sort of how the argument how it convinces you you get immersed in being simon exactly If he's being viewed by a camera the whole time as opposed to you being him Uh, it's much easier to disconnect him from humanity Yeah, I think so and I especially look at the way he looks right like exactly the first person perspective Even when you've got like the robot hands, you can't really see exactly what you are and particularly at the end You can't quite see exactly what you are even though that part by that stage. It's particularly horrific Um, it's particularly horrific what exactly he is and I don't think you get because having the obviously, you know as a setup essentially for what happened there at the end of the What was already something that you should have been able to essentially ascertain by that point is that There there doesn't seem to be such a thing as like a transfer like what We're doing the prestige the prestige Technically speaking there is a transfer, but sure, but transfer this obvious why they chose that word. It's very uh You can mean a couple things Exactly. It's it's all down to perspectives because so much of it boils down to And so much of like the ethical quandaries essentially boil down to will like what do you make of it? What do you think like what do you think what do you think the situation? What do you think you're being asked to do here? What do you what do you think you're being asked to decide on? um, and there's like so much to go through and I like when it comes to thinking about Oh, just like each of those choices because I'm sitting here. It's like Hmm, would I Would I would I destroy the wow would I do that? I don't I don't feel like I fully understand that choice, you know, I don't I don't even know what I'm choosing between Yeah, it's not a huge loss that you didn't make an informed choice. So to speak of the games You can still just think about it now, but I'm thinking about it now. I got to that point Uh I had a different point of view to you. I felt like I the whole game was showing me exactly what it means for the wow to proliferate like to to do what it intends to do and as far as I'm concerned, it's horrifying but What I find incredibly interesting and I believe is part of the point the game is making is that I want to stop the wow to stop all of the suffering Even though there's plenty of instances of Happiness there's plenty of instances of functionality There's plenty of creatures here that don't necessarily if they have the choice want to die You are one of them. You don't want to die in this game at any point really Um Simon is very much. He's got a huge amount of self-interest naturally because he's you know, a copy of a human being He's just like, yeah, I want to live. I want to I want to make things better for myself But the you know time could come where he would want to kill himself as well as circumstances if he was to be crippled and stuck in like a You know cocoon which you almost were and that's one of the most interesting parts of the game is that you meet up with your uh You essentially have your dream coming through and then you're knocked out of it And so the implication is that the wow that's what the wow presents to do And gives life. Yeah that it tries to get them in in You know a sense of everything being strong and great and there's a couple of quotes about The shambling sort of machine monster creatures. We don't know what they're seeing It's the thing that makes it really Difficult is that all we can see is from the outside in and we can try to figure out what they're experiencing Based on the things that they're saying and there's kind of like conflicting information because as I you know Some of the robots express that they were happy They didn't want you know that that they were happy with the situation even though the situation just seemed to be them in a static Near catatonic state, but the problem is that what we're perceiving from the outside Who's to say what it is from the inside and what exactly is there for you? But your subjective experience of reality If as far as you're concerned you're leading your life and everything is pretty normal And you have no idea that you're hooked up to basically this like gray goo thing That's constantly expanding and trying to keep things alive That in the real world is horrifying, but you're completely oblivious to what does that mean to you? I mean there's so many concepts running at once because you can picture like That creature well any of them that we're chasing you what they could be seeing is they're in a beautiful forest Just you know running after a rabbit. Yeah, exactly I think what mainly what really put that in my mind was the fact that simon initially thought he was a person In the facility he thought he was a person and then eventually he realized oh shit. I'm I'm not I'm a I'm a robot Um, and if that's something that he perceived that could absolutely be the same And we we saw it right with uh with our call like really early on Where he's talking about how he thought he was a human like yeah, see here's my arms and everything like that It's just to him everything seems not but Yeah, that's the thing It's like I I guess you would presume that the longer that the the wow goes on the more that it can sort of refine its process and Create essentially this situation It's that wonderful. There's so many amazing quotes in this game One of the ones I love is from Johan Ross where he says we cannot rely on a machine to know what it's like to be human That's the one that really makes me think no to define to To make sure the experience is the way it's supposed to be when it's like I'm listening to it my character right now who is a machine Exactly It's and what and what is the nature of all of the beings that have been amalgamated into this thing to agree to be a part of this To agree to be a part of the wow and to essentially lead lives that are entirely dependent on what the wow perceives like to be And who's to say that what the perception of the wow is doesn't change it to something that's horrifying later on So this is the this is the thing I Find the destroy the wow choice to be one of the most complex because I usually land on I'm going to end the suffering But the thing is if an all-powerful very well knowledgeable alien came to earth and had a choice to just blow us up And it was looking around Maybe like yeah, I've spotted some That are just in constant pain some that like just bought birth to die some that are just like Kept on machines until they die people who want to die But can't because the the systems don't allow it people are getting murdered and killed this war is happening constantly Yes, there are people who are happy, but that's usually in like Stark opposition to their circumstances like they they make it that way. It's not a neutral position happiness in this world It's mainly a planet of suffering And so it's worthwhile putting a stop to it Like I can see an alien deciding that or a greater being of power And then I start to wonder like way am I doing that with the wow? Am I just deciding like there's too much suffering here for me to let it happen? especially when it's Not something that is completely and utterly comprehensible Kind of it kind of can't be you can develop a pretty good idea of what exactly it is, but you can never really know You can only know once you're a part of it and even then and then even and then you can't do anything about it That's that's the big aspect of some of the super important is that um What inflicts like a huge heaviness on your decisions is that you have the power to make it now you might not in the future Exactly that's kind of the difficulty with a lot of those choices there is I could do something about it now um It's like I said a lot of the choices seem like you can cut off the possibility for bad But you cut off the possibility for good. It's just that the good is way less likely Than the bad at least it seems that way. Well, that's the problem. It seems that it seems bad It seems the good though Simon seems to be one of the most Self-aware creatures in the facility and he's terrified and trying to make things better It's like maybe the the vast majority of the other creatures in this facility are actually relatively happy. I don't know They don't look happy They don't look happy but at the same time some of them said that they were happy even when they looked very unhappy like the amy in particular That was the one where it's like she wanted to remain in that state even though it looked absolutely horrifying What do you think of Simon as the main character? um, I think he asks all of the questions that I want him to ask And around about the times that I want him to ask them So like I said one of the things this game got heavy criticism for was Simon not only talking too much But being just an annoying idiot. Okay. I don't think he's annoying and I don't think he's stupid He actually asks a lot of good questions Something that people don't take in is that the game says that he is so first of all He's a man with brain damage who got a scan That is considered one of their first initial legacy scans that are simplified meaning that they They're not as detailed. He doesn't uh Have as much creative thinking or learning uh as as regular like scans and stuff. He's a volatile human being and that um But he's still absolutely joe every man. Like he's the most normal person ever. Mm-hmm and uh hathrin Is is one of the most fascinating characters in this as far as I'm concerned I think she recognizes that pretty early on in the game that you are not exactly uh Ready to explore a lot of the realities of this situation and she strings you along for as long as she can Because when she's complete when she's saying don't think about it. She has thought about it a lot She's very very very very very aware But like everything in this game is deliberate So when all the characters seem to like take things well, um on kathrin's side It's the fact that she already understands all of this. She's at peace with most of it. She's already at the end point kathrin gets to live in the arc and you be like well, you're not you though and she's like no me Yeah, no, okay, you know like that's her p.o.v Um while simon like he's uh, he's got the perception filters happening because of the The creature that he is and he's got a simplistic brain scan meaning All of his like p.o.v. Is is stretched and smoothed out to try and just accept his circumstances So like every time he gets a new piece of information He gets riled up but then she just stops talking and he starts thinking and calms down and then just carries on um And it's just throughout the game and it creates this sense that she's like the villain when Honestly, she's just a little bit like uh, and i'm not doing this to be mean But uh, there's obviously theories from fans. It's like I think she's got autism to an extent She doesn't really do well with people. They make many references to that In a human form. She's very driven by goals. She doesn't really react situations a lot like normal people do Um and she's not good great with people But if you the latter quotes about her from people in the end of the game are all that of like sorry to her She was right and that she is a good person And uh, I'm inclined to believe that completely. It's just that Everybody makes mistakes and that she decided Early on that it's wise to not inform simon of a lot of what's happening because he might not complete the mission Which um, she might be right Uh, maybe he would have like if he if he was essentially presented with the notion of you've got like A coin toss plus another one really with the dive You know once once we're past the that they couldn't use the uh the dunbat machine once you pass that it's like right So you got like a 25% chance of you know of actually like making it to uh the end In terms of your but you know what I mean like the coin toss right of the prestige Um, you got a 25 chance of actually making it to the arc and in the meantime You have to go through this absolutely terrifying experience to get there Like you present that to him. That's a much harder sell. It's definitely like the carrot of hope is uh I'm curious what you'd have to say about this. So one of the big criticisms the game got uh, this is all of my videos as well is the It lies there was never a coin toss It's set the simon in the chair stays in the chair and one gets copied over to the new place It's the prestige It's the prestige People go as far as saying that the game doesn't even understand. It's not a coin toss. It thinks it's a coin toss No, it is a coin toss It is a coin toss. It's the prestige the fun reality of this. It's the fun thing people don't so people Breed it as looking at it from it's not even necessarily This is where it can get complicated the the simons pov is exactly the same whether he stays in the chair or goes to the arc He will he will have the he will have the same perception of events exactly He will perceive that everything in the arc will feel lucky You'll be like i'm the one who's And obviously we won the coin toss as she explained several times the The us that continues simon in toronto has that extra was like a week and then you die Meanwhile the the simon that you know is copied over at least the one that we're playing as who presumably is the first copy that was created He he it's a reason why they presented in the way that they present it Um, it feels very deliberative particularly that they present the first because each time that we've gone with it We followed You know a particular simon essentially the continuity of simon as far as we can perceive it But if he was important to show At the end the simon who didn't make it to sort of emphasize the nature of what's happening here Which is that essentially the way that it's the way that it's going to be perceived by Whatever the duplicate simon is if you want to say the duplicate is that they had all of the experiences leading up to them Getting in the chair and then they there's like a fork in the road And they continue in one path meanwhile The other one continues in the different path the perception of which one is or isn't the the real one is a distinction without a difference Yeah, you might be able to make the argument in terms of the toronto simon to the pathos 2 simon But from then on you can't say like i don't know what standing you'd have to say No, simon in the arc is not simon simon is left in pathos 2 and it's like No, that is no that is simon. He perceived he has all of the same memories He has all yeah, everything makes that person simon is simon the only difference is that instead of still being on You know on the bottom of the ocean. He's like. Oh, yeah, I got into the arc sweet So yeah, I don't I don't know that the idea that the game doesn't understand what it's about It's like no, you just don't get it. Sorry The thing about um You know the the the ease of people's interpretations for the toronto one versus the pathos 2 one Of course is the human flesh the body Right, which is is like, oh, that's an easy separation. What about simon one to simon two like What what are you gonna you're gonna say like his his his robot body in pathos 2 when he first got there Is now more sacred than the second robot body And is that second or first robot body any more valuable as a vehicle for his mind than the arc That's when they started talking about the whole notion of uh when he was talking about the afterlife right and the idea of like What does it mean if there was like an afterlife and then there are duplicates of you That you know each time they fork off at some different point But they're duplicates of you and they all coexist in one place Does that devalue them the game is trying to highlight with simon one two three four if you label them that way Is that the only distinction we can really come up with as the difference between them is their bodies And what does that mean and what does that mean when their perception is the game? Yeah, so so that means The the body has distinct from the soul of the mind or the psyche How much does it mean and how much do we define ourselves by it And it's complicated and the game presents it as being complicated It's a reason why simon says that he's not sure team I don't think so at all I think the game presents its material to you and then like what you pull from it and what you make of it Is kind of down to how you feel about all of these subjects Which I think is really awesome That it presents them in such a robust and and comprehensive way while at the same time Leaving a significant amount of it for you to think about and figure out Like the game didn't give me any of the stuff we were talking about when it came to What was going to happen with branded or if we were going to delete the legacy scans the game didn't provide me any of that That was all stuff that I was able to pull from the material and just pull from my own thoughts about you know existence They really limit the hand-holding in this game as well So much of where you're supposed to go and what you're supposed to do is rely on maps and signs in universe and you paying attention And like appropriate ones not you know just made up stuff Well, I mean it's the peak of what I would call an adult game. This is I said that um It's like I said there's a lot that you can gather just from like looking around at things um Just like paying some amount of attention to The I'm surprised by the amount of diversity that we got in terms of the locations considering that all of them are ultimately You know under Yeah desolate underwater bases, but we got like a real Where we ended up was quite different From uh from where we began It just kept like evolving and changing because at the beginning of the game I had no idea that this is where we were going to end up But it all it all like flows and that information just keeps coming to you at a pretty steady pace And there's a whole bunch that can just be gleamed from like reading All of the uh all of the logs and and everything scattered about and just paying attention to the environment There's a lot that uh, I feel like I it's it's obviously hard to tell because it was my first playthrough But I don't know how much of it I picked up versus how much I didn't and uh how much more or less comprehensive my uh My knowledge on the game could have ended up being Yeah, obviously if you ever decide to play it again, you'll be able to pick up a lot more There's a couple recordings you missed a couple of like other rooms or whatever, but Nothing that would you know change anything significantly for you in your experience of the game You got pretty much the whole thing the whole package. Mm-hmm Uh, I'm a little bit sad thinking about the fact that this game was not received as that well or sold didn't sell very well Well, now you can understand how furious I got basically I I thought this was incredible It's one of the best games I've ever played in my life And then I found out that not only did nobody really play it, but nobody really liked it who did play it And it's considered like a fuck up and frictional games got the message from everybody and they were like, okay Yeah, we fucked up. We'll make we'll make something more generic and scary next time and so then what you got amnesia Rebirth is that it which is one of the worst horror games I've ever played my entire life. Um, yeah They did the bunker, which is apparently much more true to form to the dark descent, which is a good game But soma is a hell of a lot like it's so much transcending its medium essentially I don't know what to do with the idea that the game isn't scary. I don't know what I'm meant to do with that I find it it's pretty terrifying. I find it very terrifying what was presented here Like even just the concept of people being connected to the wow and their experience and what it looks like from the outside But how they feel about it on the inside and then from the outside in I really can't know how they feel yet I've still got to try and make decisions about whether or not. I think I should leave them in this state or not Like, I don't know man. If that's not scary Okay, good for you. I guess a lot of people just wanted to get a series of rooms with a chase by monsters But you had that there were those moments too and they freaked me out Not enough for them not fast enough. I I'm I feel like I got as much as I needed of that Because we need the downtime We need the downtime to explore the things soba presents quite a big problem because I consider it a masterpiece And it's like not very well liked by much of anybody on it at least statistically compared to the people who don't like it Damn Okay, okay All right, whatever It was funny too because I went into it expecting the dark descent but sci-fi Okay, and you got something quite different doing spooks. Oh, yeah I did not expect this and I was just like Jesus Christ. They're like one of the best dev teams going And then they're just making art and then all they're doing is then this this to me Is like a huge step forward for gaming as well because of how they dealt with choices Uh, well, yeah, those choices do nothing mechanically like at all It's uh, it's an interesting thing that happens with conversations about choices because Something often gets pointed out with mass effect. A lot of people will point out that the vast majority of your choices are inconsequential as like a point of criticism um when really It having a game effect on gameplay or not. It's kind of like complicated how much that actually matters. Um I know we've talked about morality systems before and how generally I feel like the approach with the morality system Is to make the good choice harder that always seems like a like the the evil choice or The renegade choice is the more expeditious path and that like the good choice is the one that entails more hardship Um as like a concept, but then when it comes to The idea of like how consequential oh and of course telltale games get criticized for the choice is not mattering um, but the thing is is I mean, surely this game would be an example of how it's not really like it's I'm thinking about these choices Even though, you know, it's all in a video game where Even if you wanted to get around the idea of like that they weren't very consequential in the video game Even the if they were consequential in the video game the video game is not real It's not like it's not like real life, right? These are all choices that you're making in the context of a game But i'm i'm having a real big think about these I don't know that i'm ever gonna fully resolve what I think about the choice with with um Brandon or uh, I guess by extension the legacy scans. I'm really not sure about that robot Robin that I I decided to leave out there. I'm not sure about the wow. I'm not sure if I should have I'm not sure if it was I I don't I really really really truly feel like there are no easy answers for the choices in this game But each choice I feel like I can easily provide a pretty robust counter-argument to it I just keep doing that. I believe that the way they structure it is that like You ending up like the the shock of going from toronto to pathos too. It's like this is horrible This shouldn't have happened. Why is this happened? And by the way, um, I figure you would have had it in the back of your head But you can discover you're a robot who's been uploaded like in the first room. There's um If you read through all of the information it basically explains that uh Like it has dates and the users and then the wow is the one that built you and it built you for the Express purpose of turning the power back on it up so long. That's what I wanted you to do And you did um, obviously for other reasons though, you kind of did that intuitively. That's that's what everyone does You're just like, well, I'll power this place back up. I don't know. What's interesting is there's a TV show that was kind of made for soma. They're like super low budget Uh, sort of like a I don't know if it was like a youtube series or not, but it's called transmission Interesting as far as I know. It was officially licensed. Okay, and um, it tells the story sort of of a lot of the survivors The most interesting part to me though is the image in reed. I think her name is Uh, she's in the game as well. You can find you're you're using her body as simon one And uh, she's the one the last survivor in uh, Upsilon in the in the show and she manages to just shut down the power To stop the wow like that's her whole goal in that show and she does it And that's like the prequel series and then you wake up in her body that the wow is used to upload you to To turn it back on which is some Fucking poetic tragedy. I'd say I would say so absolutely um man I I really I really found it interesting, you know how you have this system essentially to gain access to all this information but then when you get to uh when you get to um Uh omicron It's just like a a sort of like a a black hole in terms of our Information Because all of the all the recordings you missed um in omicron would have given you the full context, but like you might have chicken and egged it you'd be like Oh, I I can't read their black boxes because their heads are gone Which means they wouldn't have the black boxes in the head when it's in reality It's the the wow use the black boxes to kill everybody in omicron who blew up all their heads Oh Because they were going to try and sabotage the wow with the uh the gel But obviously you can do it without much repercussion from the wow because you don't have a black box Right, I say There's a lot of like pieces of soma that are not readily obvious that you get when you re-go and you're like oh Shit, that's why that happened. That's why that happened. Oh this then learning the character names and understanding their journeys have become clearer and clearer And yeah, um, everybody is hypersus of kathryn throughout the whole game And uh, I just think it's a it's an interesting thing they did where it's It's only because the fact that I think you that you're playing a game You know there's going to be twists, you know that like The way that she ends conversations all the time very awkward the fact she doesn't react to things as usual to everyone else But uh, she is just trying to get humanity off earth. She believes that is the most righteous thing she can do I mean, you know If uh, if the choice is in terms of like a prospect for humanity It's probably better in space than in the bottom of the ocean where there's only x amount of time for sure compared to Which is interesting because it feels like it's kind of you know ties into what a lot of the choices are Which is do you want to take a chance on this? Do you want to take a chance or do you want to? I don't mean it feels like that's the case with the wow in terms of that choice Do you want to take a chance that what the wow? That the wow should continue to exist as this new form of life that is providing an experience that maybe you don't understand But maybe it's not so bad Yeah, and and I don't believe there's any Hard answers in this game is just supposed to make you think about everything I don't think there's like a straightforward answer to these things either. Obviously they have And that that's what I see. That's why I like Simon and Catherine so much They they're both well all the characters. They all have very um specific points of view and understandings And it's supposed to you know be vehicles for arguments and stuff like the fact that the arc didn't get launched Why because Peterson thought That it's too risky and it's better that we live down here for however many years than risk having none at all And then Catherine died for that Trying to stop that What's up rags? Hello, so why don't why don't you tell everybody what you think of soma? Oh soma's good stuff, isn't it soma's real good. It's a really really I tier content super duper coolio Um Yeah, there's a there's so much to like about it. It's a shame not as many people know about it I think it I think it like Barely essentially paid for itself. It took a long time for it to pay itself off in terms of saving stuff So it's a shame that you know, they went from did you ever play rebirth? I haven't played any of uh frictionals game. I haven't played the amnesia games This is the only one next year. You should do the doc descent. That could be cool. The doc descent is cool That was like one of the only uh, let's play games ironically my top power game full-time before soma came out Okay, interesting Yeah, it's really good. I would highly recommend uh amnesia the dark descent I think you'll love it a great deal. Um, you can You can tell it's like a same a similar kind of game Uh, and at the same time a very different game But not the same for rebirth, right? That's kind of like uh, what happened Trash absolute trash how we went from this to rebirth is well, I guess we know right because so it's not a horror game Yeah, it's because yeah, it's because soma's not a horror game A bunch of dumb fucks didn't get it, you know as much as there's memes for that, right? If if this game doesn't launch off of its own reputation and company What can really help is a whole bunch of streamers playing it loving it and then having other people support it or play it themselves Unfortunately, the biggest influence in the form of a video review on youtube said it was kind of bad. Don't buy it And is that joseph anderson, right? It drove me absolutely insane how much he did not understand about this game at all Me having not watched that video for pretty obvious reasons because I saw someone ask if the floodgates open on soma spoilers I think the answer is probably yes at this point Now now if you like a watch you get e-fap or you watch episodes, you're not safe because And i'm gonna want to talk about it. So yeah Um, and I have not seen his video, which means i'm probably gonna watch it And as someone just mentioned the insane the wild thing is if you watch markiplier's playthrough He understands this game completely. Well, you showed me the uh, the the his uh Uh interacting with robin before he went into was it delta was at the station? Theta I think theta was yeah, I think it might have been theta Um, yeah, no, I mean based on that small snippet. It's like, yeah, I mean he clearly understood it Like he he immediately figured out what the moral like quandary was is presented to him Um Anderson famed author and uh game breakdown extraordinaire Uh, he reviewed it and by the way free he did the kind of the same thing as you but Obviously he took it forward into a review that uh, he didn't even know that you destroying the wow was a choice Like he describes the story as though simon destroys the wow is like a set thing So the thing is is that I think if I just slowed down a little bit I probably would have grasped the like I don't feel like the game screwed up there. I think I might have uh I don't know. You can just leave. Yeah, um Which makes a lot of sense that I could have just left. Yeah Yeah, the game wants you in almost every single sense to just have a look around first before you do anything And then you'll be right And there's something to be said about if you feel compelled to destroy the wow. Yeah, no, I know I know that's that's the thing. It's I don't I don't know that there's anything It's it's why I I found it interesting because I I've talked about it before but sometimes I Think it can be really interesting when like the player doesn't know that they're making a choice But they are and then they find out that they are afterward Because I mean, yeah, I don't know. I I uh, I think Maybe that speaks to a sort of gut instinct there, which is like, hmm. I don't think I like the wow There's just something tell me like oh, I'm not so sure about you um Well, I always like just cast description of it early on in the game where she says it doesn't think it doesn't want It doesn't she doesn't even know if it has a capacity to it's a cancer It's It's just doing what it does Yeah, like that it does what it which uh, because I mean as I understand it isn't the idea with a cancer cell that it essentially Something's gone wrong and it doesn't want it to essentially go through the natural process of a cell And then that starts to spread and multiply it to like the adjoining cells So maybe that's like actually a good describing the wow When you see I think it's the late part of theta you go through a series of areas with Loads of just this flashy piles with like you can sort of make out Faces like eyes and limbs and then the creatures that are Walking around as rag said to you before but if you could find some of the concept images and some of these creatures You know in isolation and get a good look at them It's like the designs are fucking terrifying and it's hard not for that to inform you entirely in terms of turning the wow off I say yeah, obviously the wow has no real concept of aesthetics Externally, so what it makes is not really how it how it looks as well regarded Yeah, so what i'm curious about now doesn't even mean for them to be alive now that the game is completed Uh, maybe both of you like, you know go along chronologically. What choices did you make? So If we would say choice one would be carl Yeah, let's say the problem With carl is that a lot of people don't recognize it very well the choice before it's too late. I say Christopher odd is one of the people I was watching he Turned on car turned off Carl switch first and Carl starts screaming and he says, please turn it back on Please stop. Please stop And he did that and then he eventually like thought for a while and he was like, oh, sorry I guess I don't have any choice, you know and then just did it anyway I said I think I can't remember if mark figured out he didn't have to do it And so didn't but obviously I don't think anybody has an issue with choosing to Spare spare carl the screaming in order to make the game harder, which I find really interesting Yeah, that's right. Yeah Yeah, that's that is interesting to think about you look back at it through the context of the game and for all The people who don't think that those are really people or anything But who wanted to spare this person or this thing the suffering right like that that in and of itself should At least get some you know gears turning in your mind In the end you're willing to in the end you're willing to kill it out of mercy But it's the exact reverse kind of mercy that you showed to it earlier Um, I think that that's choice if you're in if you've taken the game for what it is If you're super immersed and you want to prevent suffering that choice is pretty straightforward I think everyone makes the same choice, which is despair. Yes, which is why it's probably why it's like the first choice It's pretty Pretty rudimentary Starting off no suffering is better than suffering right all things being equal, you know And then uh choice two would be Amy right in the uh, do you unplug one or both? I think that's an excellent That one I wasn't sure I need to check because I've never known anybody including myself to try only unplugging one I can't remember if it lets you leave if you've only done so the thing is is that I thought about just unplugging one The impression that I got when I looked at the screen was that power being returned to the tram and that I could have just left Does it safety hadn't Yeah, which was what I was wondering about Because yeah at that point now it cost you something in order to Uh Well, it'll if you leave her alive, it'll cost you safety whatever that that refers to exactly If we're to take that for the actual choice that it was as opposed to like I said mechanically I'm not actually sure I need to test that one. I don't think there's a difference Whether or not you so uh a couple of people are saying that there's no change in the consequence I guess it would just be that you leave her alive in a state that definitely looks worse than when you got down there either It was an initial absolute Freak out for me seeing that she had like wow created structure gel lungs That were yeah, and that was really into it. That was like I was just like oh good god like And then and when she said it doesn't let anything die. I was like uh Yeah So yeah, I mean a lot of we can kind of you'll know all of my choices when I tell you like Any one of them necessarily is uh or one of the later ones and you'll know how the rest of them went so like You know for instance, I wiped all of random ones stuff. I wiped the legacy things I wiped um, I turned off The girl outside of theta. Um, I killed the wow I wanted all to stop. I thought it was horrifying Okay, uh rags. What about you? I honestly can't remember like a lot of my choices. Um, it might be because I played it a long time ago and I've watched Now two different peoples. I guess three with market players. I've watched I've played it and then I've watched three people's Playthroughs of it and I can't actually remember what a lot of my decisions were when I first played it um Some of them I do remember I I Oh I'm trying to remember if I killed the wower now, right? Yeah, I guess you can essentially um As far as Amy is Zorro. I can't remember because it would come down to what she says um I think if she wanted to stay alive, I would have left her alive if she wanted to die. I would have killed her I think she said she wanted I think she wanted to stay alive I think that's what she said like she I think she said why did you ask you to find people who can help her as well All right, and uh, so then that's probably what I did compared to someone like sarah who explicitly asked, uh for the So pull the plug Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I killed uh lindwell Sarah at the end um I Did you destroy the wow? I can't remember if I did I I honestly can't remember if I did because I've seen I don't know. Um This this is honestly a tough one for me I feel like there will be some value in you streaming sober rags at this point If you can't remember your choices, yeah Yeah, there might it might be um because I legitimately can't remember a lot of stuff. I did um Mel said he wants to replay it now as well Oh my god, it's a soma renaissance Soma I hope so. I hope this is a soma renaissance Um, if only we were world famous streamers, then we could breathe a new life into it again, you know I mean in terms of like a I guess a broad statement on this game. I find it pretty profound Um, I find it like a very captivating experience um, I think you can get a general list of Like they list all the mockingbirds carl harry j javid lisa robin vig dis and Others, uh, and I think they I think they list them in order. Um Yeah, I'm just reading through the wiki a bit here It's not a horror game. Come on Yeah, pretty crazy. I don't know what to do with that I don't know what I meant to say to that insane thing to say Let me see there was javid goya's mockingbird at delta simon finds a uh3 which harbors the brain scan of javid goya It is completely delusional not directly acknowledging simon jarrith's presence and believing that he is merely remote controlling the universal helper using the pilot system That'll be the choice between him and the little Oh, I was about to ask. Yeah, because I was just thinking about that one. What what you do Um, funnily enough, I actually can't remember that one That would be one where I just have to think about it now, which is the And I appreciate a lot of the arguments for this. It's a tough one. Um, the logic for a lot of people is That is a simplistic ai inside the little puppy droid. So You know, it's whatever. It's not as important as the human mind that is clearly in the other one Like in terms of just valuing sub Valuing consciousness, whatever, but then on the flip side, you could be like, well, that's a reason to destroy the other one Right that that you don't want a human mind stuck inside one of those things, you know, like a delusional so I mean, but then also there's an angle of uh, as you Pointed out the pragmatic use of the the robot That you know, it's like it actually has helped you open doors. Meanwhile, the other guy's just floating around Um, but then there's also the argument that I saw Where someone said, how do you actually know exactly a person's mind inside the puppy droid? Yeah, you don't because that's kind of the thing even though it was obviously presented as a dichotomy I kind of don't know and I don't think I could know that the drawing that helped me was more simplistic I don't even know if that's the case But yeah, so the thing that tip me over the edge was that that droid had helped me So it seemed real bullshit to kill it when it when it'd been helping me throughout this adventure I think I chose to kill the helper droid Um, and I think my reasoning was probably That I was more convinced that the other robot was uh Closer resembling a human consciousness And it was speaking and it didn't seem to be in any sort of pain or terror It seemed to be delusional. That's the thing. Yeah, even if it was delusional it seemed to be Okay That's what made it tricky is because at least on a surface level it did seem like The I guess you call the doggo Robot didn't seem like it was as cognizant as the uh as the the other guy But i'm not even sure that's the case because the helper robot Was like actually interacting with the world in a meaningful way Whereas that one was just sort of gone back and forth up and down left it Like it wasn't really it wasn't doing anything It was and another problem soma presents is like so you're judging it based on its current status So you don't actually know if it'll increase in any way or decrease in any way Which um, it's it turns out like emergent properties and you don't know what it feels Exactly intent the one from the the robot we end up going. Yeah, it's like is a is an experience less meaningful If it isn't representative of understanding its surroundings items no idea exactly it's I mean It's a nightmare the whole thing is and the idea that this is we need more horror like this And unfortunately people don't interpret it as horror I don't understand that though. I don't get it because something scary didn't jump in front of your face and spook you for the 37 I mean something did jump out and was scary though. That's in there. I don't get it That's in there as well, but you've also got all their stuff painful. It's like Outlast, you know, it's just so fucking popular And like I I go into it being like, okay. I'm ready for some scary scary fleams and It's just people grabbing me and screaming constantly. Yeah, I don't know that doesn't Whereas this one is confronting confronting fundamental aspects about existence Outlast is surprising It's not it's startling. That's what you'll look for. It's startling It's surprisingly on the time If I was to argue which one isn't scary It's like I might just go with the one that's considered scary by the vast majority like the 99% of people who played it They're just like man, do I start to feel like an alien? I yeah, it's like because what what do you take away from Outlast? Boy, that sure was spooky Definitely watch out for the spooky man who goes Trying to get you boy That sure was gross what that guy did when I when I saw it and and then he jumped out at me And he grabbed me and I was like, oh goodness my instincts work. That's good worse You know good to get a check on those every once in a while. So I'm gonna ask you walk away and you're done You'll take anything with you Meanwhile, it's like summer is asking you a mentalized experience. What is life? What is it like what detailed complicated and terrifying that it would work as like Braining for people who have to understand concepts that we're actually gonna have to deal with eventually I mean inevitably. Yeah like it's all Leading to the you know the road leading to these sorts of concepts relating to artificial intelligence You don't want to think about it start thinking about it I think it's worthwhile to think about because even even beyond the context of artificial intelligence I think there's plenty to consider here in terms of your perceived experience of life now Even even divorced from any technological considerations I think there's plenty to be thought about in terms of what exactly is it that you derive value from Is it your conscious experience? Is it based on whether that conscious experience is real or real to you? Is it based on the stimuli that you receive or again perceived stimuli? What does that mean when it's only going to be filtered through your sensory experience of it? Um, I mean, I can't see infrared, you know, like I can't see I can't see like gamma rays There's a lot that I can't perceive about existence right now as a human being There's only so much that I can see there's only so many ways that I can think there's only so much that I can do Yeah Debate that me and rags had with good old v and sargon like five years ago something ridiculously long ago. Yeah Uh sargon held to continuity being the defining factor for basically what is a person Okay, and um that if you were copied or transferred in even the most Like just distinctly accurate 100% way you would no longer be human because you've lost continuity How do you know that you haven't lost continuity? Like already not to reopen that debate? I'm just saying that that perspective I was about to say when you go to sleep, I don't know if you can find that debate still you might be able to Like we were playing left for dead Okay But uh, yeah, that you know, obviously Soma is the backbone of a lot of my pov of all of these subjects at this point It like it basically replaced blade runner. Okay, so this is interesting because to me I feel like it expands on things. I've already thought about but I guess not Built it and framed in exactly the same way I feel like this is a nice what I just said You said it was like your backbone Which almost made it replace play runner, which is kind of a It's kind of interesting because I don't even know I'm not sure what I would say in terms of like the idea that Soma replaces anything It feels to me like it is. Um, I describe it as another Another one that sits there right on the shelf if I got a bookshelf that's about fucking consciousness Like not official intelligence. I don't when you know when considering these topics I don't tend to open up a library in my head instead It's it'll be like one piece of media at a time I can obviously relate to lots of them but You know if you ask me to talk about soul mechanics and storytelling Buffy comes to mind immediately and it's like, okay What about um, you know vampires? It's like again, that's probably going to be Buffy But there's a couple of ones that might come to mind. It's like werewolves Underworld kind of comes to mind first, but there's a couple of them as well But it's just like yeah the question of what does it mean to be human? It's like oh, it's Soma instantly nothing else will be it for uh those questions that I ask Myself constantly Hmm. Okay interesting I think we have to see where what uh, I I mean, I'm gonna be thinking about this game for a while probably I'm probably gonna be thinking about it all day. I'm gonna be thinking about it tomorrow I'm probably gonna be thinking about it for ages Like I don't know I'm just uh Yeah, I'm just gonna be constantly thinking about it For at least an extra while Consider a change they could have made Which I don't know if it's I like what they did Not saying this would be better or worse, but just consider if they had done it this way at the very end Simon and Catherine Successfully launched the arc and then the scan happens you get the flash of white And then you immediately pick up as new Simon on the arc, right? And that's where the game The the natural process of the game takes you you go through go to the arc you take the little survey you meet Catherine You see it go off into space Then the credits roll and then after the credits it cuts to Simon back and pathos too If they had Yeah, there's I don't know which one is better or worse. I think both of them it kind of like one is Do you leave the the happy one? Do you start off with a happy one? And you think oh, yeah, we got transferred just like she said incredible. This is amazing And then it's like oh no, you know how this works I'm gonna go ahead and assume that the dev team talked about this for a while. I get the impression they did Something I wonder I think what would have informed it is that with the players pov You've quote-unquote won the coin toss every time and the end of the game is where they have you experience the loss first yeah And then I very hard contrast. I think what's interesting as well again is is how that Because for me that was definitely informing the decisions I was making for that survey again Having the stark reality of uh Because I think the main one I pointed out is that I uh, I do kind of mourn the prior ones Whereas I think before I said that I I don't know what I said I almost treated it as like a separate thing. It's like well That's a you know, that doesn't really have anything to do with me. Whereas now it's like damn man The simons that get you here, you know That's why I find a lot of people takes like idiotic on this game when people like simon was a fool and didn't understand About but but it's like simon is overjoyed because he believes like he made it through he won out he lucked out Which when you really consider everything he's technically correct at least in the form of a pov But the the player is more so like my current pfp If you know what I mean like while simon is like kathryn like we did it. This is the uh, whoo. You're just sitting there like jesus christ Like yeah, this is horrifying and that's why um, I always find that I think people struggle sometimes if they don't Align with the player character that like the games fucking up as opposed to simon is one of many characters in this game that has a point of view that you don't necessarily agree with That the player of course, they're aware of that soma's value is obviously in its themes It's like Basically, I mean there's a difficulty when it comes to games where you have the main character be an agent who Speaks and thinks things and will express those perspectives Is that there's always a possibility of a misalignment occurring that doesn't really occur with mario? like with mario mario could talk but You know, there's never really a misalignment between what you want to do and what mario wants to do compared to Like a person who's got a perspective on things that may well differ from yours yeah, um And you know a lot of people get annoyed with the fact that like wow I already knew the twist the game did not get me. I knew that I was going to stay on pathos too And it's just like I don't I don't think that's a twist It's not a twist Catherine says like explicitly many times and she's fucking annoyed at you at the end for not getting it But as you can tell she goes ham on you at the end because there's nothing to lose She gives you the real shit at the end so to speak. Hmm She's like you're a fucking idiot. You don't pay attention. You're not listening and And and the fact that she's so exhausted if you remember there's a really important part that I think informs everything about her attitude as she says Her experience isn't like going to sleep It's like being constantly awake and there's no limits. There's no Pausing there's nothing. It's just constant and it's exhausting Yeah, humans are not meant for that experience and that's what she's been having throughout the whole game Except the fact that randomly she'll just teleport to a new place and be told that like x amount of time has passed Yeah, like she doesn't experience In the same because obviously as a person is asleep when you go to sleep You don't really experience that but you do in a way, right? There is something going on there in terms of an experience where she's got nothing It's just like oh now i'm here now i'm here now i'm here And then you wake up and you wake up where you remember being before you went to sleep There's lots of aspects to that that are comforting Yeah, but for her just you just flicker to the next place and it is a couple times in the game where power goes out And she doesn't even get to like know that she's about to switch Yeah, exactly Yeah, it's interesting to think about isn't it This is even a few times where she stresses. Don't forget to take me with you. Yeah. Yeah Yeah, and I think you at one point uh Bring you like laugh at the notion you're like you're my door opener, of course. They would this is like Yeah, but from her POV She's just a tool on a table. Exactly. That's all right. Exactly She'll just like yeah, I consider a remarkable take her with you Yeah, essentially in terms of her calm like approach to Everything in the I think she operated in the best way possible to ensure those people got out there That was her only goal. Yeah But for all Simon, you know, I appreciate her POV as well. She came to terms a long time ago with the fact that uh, she is not Uh, you know, she's not gonna be on the arc, but that's okay because she is gonna be on the arc Yeah, exactly Like she says they're out there, you know, they're in the they're at the stars and then I think Simon's POV is Those fuckers living at large on the arc. Yeah, meanwhile, I'm here at the bottom of the ocean On this dead planet because then you go and play as Simon and he's just happy to be there He's not thinking at all about the grim reality of the other simons. Yep Simons plural Yeah Man, uh, one of the things that hits me so heavy about that game is when you find The recordings of Simon Jarrah after the yeah sort of medications It's so rough because it's just like this was supposed to work and it's like it's okay You're just listening to the original you die mm-hmm So far removed from everything that was happening here Uh, I have something that was interesting It was something that was sticking with me for a while was the uh, the pamphlet at the beginning of the game that said That uh, like essentially the duplicate would be getting bombarded with uh Like would be run through a bunch of simulations essentially to try and figure out the optimal thing That was making me wonder for the whole time of like, oh man That seems like uh, we gotta we got a sneak peek of what that looked like with Brandon um, well, so a lot of people I think even joseph anderson said that He thought the pathos 2 was that the entire game was the The experience being bombarded with you know Stimulator figure out how to solve the problem of the brain in the physical world I thought that could be a possibility With like cancer and tumors is representative of the brain being overcome with it as well And I was like well, that's that's an idea, but um, no What I what I was running with is like that could have been a possibility Maybe what we're seeing here is one of the many scenarios. It was being run through maybe But I mean it operates totally fine It's taken as matter of fact, which is that this is entirely beyond what you were uh What what any of this was meant to be for The there's a lot of sci-fi tech in in in this particular sci-fi IP, right? And like one of them that's a given is that uh, munchie and his companion or whatever they they've created Something that can recreate human um You know consciousness in the form of a digital copy That's something you have to take for granted in order for this story to run Sure the scary part is They copy it and digitalify it in order to put it through everything Like you said you can give you a thousand pain killers and make you run a marathon at the same time just to see You know run everything which is the thing that gives you the healthiest outcome And then they convert that result back into a physical world aspect Which they said there was a particular diet particular medication and that uh, simon should improve But he didn't that's just a grim reality of it Just another thing is you know when they were doing that Was were those things that they were putting through those tests? Were they experiencing pain did they like had they accidentally? You know really fucked up here I mean maybe I feel like that brandon one makes a pretty stark kind of like oh geez Yeah, like is he real and it's so nuts man because you're thinking about destroying brandon Deleting him so that no evil can come to him and it's like yeah, what evil the evil that you just did to him the brain scan that was uploaded In the form of this flashy body and it's just like I don't know like you don't want to be deleted Do you at any point in the game? You don't want to be deleted. So why should you be able to delete any of these people? It's like well, what if they ask for it? Yeah, what if they're wrong? What if you're wrong? So, I mean what what does it even mean in terms of anybody? There's nobody who could really make that choice because you're deleting a potentiality. You're not deleting Like the data isn't the coffee So there's nobody that you can ask because even the copies themselves can't speak for any future copies, right? Yeah, no the second that you are separated or copied. It's like you no longer have the responsibility Which means that nobody has the responsibility Well, it just means that nobody does do they really But it does that make sense that the data must exist for perpetuity to potentially be used for whatever purpose Potentially horrifying by something like the wow or you you know Yeah, when the wow is simply trying to make life In whatever way it thinks it should Well, that's the thing we see all of its creatures. They're all of different levels of consciousness ability and uh sort of aggression levels Yep Because a lot of the people that we power down. There's no reason to think that a wow cable won't eventually attach and power them up Yeah That's yeah, you might notice that in the um, you might notice in sarah's room Uh, if you if you looked at the the presence of the wow and the gel There were tendrils that were making their way towards her. Yes Um, it's just the wow is given enough time pressing in they're getting there. Yeah, it's pressing in on her Because it's just when you look back on that room It's just like yeah, this is the last of humanity stuck here at the bottom of an ocean of the ocean With all of the pressure of the environment closing in with the wow closing in just sitting there on life support It's like, yeah, I mean, this is pretty this is pretty metaphorical. Um, I'd say pretty uh Yeah, she's adding what is essentially the egg for the future. Yeah, chapter of humanity Exactly, which you know itself was pretty close to getting consumed by the wow But now it's up there in space and maybe humanity's got a chance maybe in a totally different form Yeah, you know Slim chance aliens will find us and plug us into their tech and save us Mm-hmm Which you know Again, it's not going to be humanity. It's going to be something different. I think you have to accept it Something different, but the same at the same time makes you think this whole game makes you think Simon's appealed to it when she says she wants him to kill her. He's like that's that's it You're the last human you go out like this. Shouldn't you? You know just keep going just because of this this is it's so nuts Like even she has trouble with this like all of every decision that every human has ever made has led Now to this one person in this room. Yep And all of the history all of you know, whatever human potential remains is just sitting there in this machine Yeah, there's got to be an irony there that she's kept alive by a life support machine It's like a machine. We consider good. Meanwhile, the while we at that point consider cancerous and evil. Yeah That's a pretty neat game. Yeah, that's sober everybody. Um Um And uh as like I've mentioned it before soma is the greek word for body And soma is the name of the uh the drug right in brave new world Yeah, let me bring we're talking about it uh before you jumped in rags that like I feel it's very purposeful to have chosen that as the name being that The body is pretty much the big reason people would separate what is human and what is not Because the whole point in this game is that it's pretty much impossible to distinguish the humans from their mental capacity versus their digital versions or A lot of the other ones so it's like Well a human being that's in a that's brain dead I mean, it's not nearly as difficult to say that that's not a person anymore than it is to say an actual human consciousness That's in a robot is or isn't a human. That's a lot more especially when it acts like a human talks like a human, you know Seems yeah, that's way more difficult for us to distinguish which is kind of part of the point Well, and if you take away every part of you accept their mind and yeah, if you treat this hardware and software, which is a very You know Uh ill advised probably simplistic way to look at it Then even brain death could be considered like uh hardware death as opposed to What is going on with uh simon which is like human software on a Well at first you'd assume entirely um mechanical system, but then we find out halfway through the game that he's actually a combination of human flesh and the uh structure gel And I just helped some of his suits some of his suits. There's a corpse inside of them I mean there's a well, so that and that's the thing For any the girl who was trying to destroy the wow. She was getting into a power suit and then the wow exploded her head Yeah, like she was head going to be heading down to alpha to destroy it Yeah You know, you know, it is what I mean like is someone could argues like I was a bit convenient, isn't it that it's all Where they ready to go? It's like oh, there's a there's a reason that it was like that There's a reason you're being compelled to take the gel down there. Mm-hmm. Um Yeah, so That's uh games. All right. Yeah, that's soma. Um that's uh I'm gonna be thinking about it for a while Um It's fun to look into the um the station names and what they mean as well their equivalents. I did it for my video But I can't remember them all now Uh, well, yeah, I mean, I'll be I'll probably be doing that. I'll probably be watching some videos on uh, I haven't seen yours stuff That's so much so That's uh, there's a lot to think about a lot to look into read about a lot of it And in retrospect is kind of unfortunate, but I don't know it's kind of necessary a lot of it It's vitriol toward people who didn't like it But they do obviously they did a lot more than not like it. Yeah, um, yeah it's the point the point being that um Yeah, it's uh, it's something that I'm gonna keep thinking about and sort of developing my perspective on Which is uh, it's really good when I can get that kind of experience Um, the fact that I was stuck on some of those choices for a while, you know Um, I like I've said it so many times, but I guess it just bears repeating. I found this a very captivating game um It's gripping and uh thought provoking It's really well made I really really I don't know if enjoyed as the word that I would want to use to describe it I uh was very engaged by it Uh, what did you choose for um, whether or not you killed, uh Old simon, uh when you were swapping, uh, I decided to uh, I decided to uh, delete that uh, Yeah, I decided to erase uh old simon Okay, I yeah, did I hide you ranks? I did not kill him Okay, interesting To me, it just seemed like why he's in here. We know what's going on So, oh well, um, there's a couple reasons that I was uh, that I think about it is if I am a copy of If I copy my consciousness into another suit in order to go deeper, right? Am I going to have to do that again? If I have to do this again Knowing that I killed the last one that I did this to That would make me extremely hesitant To upload my consciousness once more into something else Knowing that the last time I did this My new version is going to kill the current me doing this thinking Secondly, um You can Um, I think there's this this element of I was just This is quote unquote lots of quotes here. I was just that person And I wouldn't have wanted to die Uh, if I want to kill myself later, I can do that But that is a line that you can't step back from whereas Eventually, uh, I think there was a time when he would wake up or repower up something like that Um, which means that I think as far as I know that right now like in the game There will be another simon that the an old simon that you played as previously will wake up from that Um, and he'll be at least in that station and He can do what he wants to do with his life and what's happening, right? I I don't think I don't think it Would be as right of me to rob my old version of that choice that they can make for themselves Um, and it would be duress either way. So Such as uh, such as the nature of the decision Um, but I think those two reasons in particular were like, yeah, I'm going to let him live And what he does is what he does at least I'll have a chance to do it for himself Why why did you decide what you decided Frank? My thinking was I don't even understand what it would mean to leave him in a position where like he has no equipment He can't like he can't do anything. He's stuck in this room presumably Just to wait until the wow comes in and in the meantime to consider exactly what has just happened Which is as far as he's concerned a massive betrayal totally not what he wanted um And then I was thinking about like the whole idea of um The sort of like a matter of perception in terms of like continuity of consciousness and stuff like that Um, I don't know it seemed like I I I definitely thought about all of those things of like Him essentially getting the choice But it just seemed to me like insanely cruel essentially leading to what would probably in all likelihood be the exact same outcome Anyway, or maybe even not because he might have been absorbed by the wow Like I don't even know if I don't even know if he has the means to like end his own life as a As a machine in that space like I'm not sure what that looks like or what that means So that was all kind of the stuff that was informing it. But again, it's Like all of the again, there was still definitely that whole looming thing of yeah But is this is this like simon two's choice to make for simon one? um It's again, it's just a matter of all of these choices. It's not it's not easy. It's like Two really difficult, you know propositions and then trying to figure out which one you think is I don't know the lesser of two evils But what exactly does that mean in this situation, you know, because it's kind of like depends on where your values It depends on what you think are like the higher values, I guess No, yeah test the hell out of him. Yeah I worry in that situation that uh I think I might if if he was awake and he knew about all of this I'm saying this if it's not me Is me, but you know if I said Just leave me um since like say for example, he was awake which kathryn could theoretically have woken him up early I don't know, but if he was um And he said Yeah, don't shut me down. Just go. I know I can't go with you because it's the abyss um And even if under these circumstances, he knew that the doors were all going to be locked as well So he just couldn't escape this room Even if then that he agreed to it, I'd still want to compel him. I'd be like We have our chance now to end you very peacefully As opposed to what may happen in the future Which is something much more horrifying and that you'd have to wait indefinitely for it which Boredom is considered one of the forms of torture as well Like I don't know. You just you got to really consider here This is your last opportunity and that knowing it is me means that I would be thinking about it as well as in like I can die quickly and easily here thanks to me turning me off or I can take a risk Where all likelihood points to immense suffering? I don't even see much of a likelihood at all for anything other than that Even with the the wow killed at the end of the game I don't know that he well, what's gonna happen to him. He's gonna eventually run out of power Regardless as far as I'm aware they all have a long time Stock at the bottom of the ocean So Yeah, I don't know. I just feel like if I turn him off now He doesn't even have to suffer knowing of the betrayal Well, it's kind of again I was thinking of the star trek thing right of getting beamed up Where it's like the if it kills the original and creates the copy It's kind of like the same situation has happened here essentially. He has no perception of what's happened But you know, yeah, such a somber, right? There's no easy choices. Exactly. It's so incredibly complex and Makes you think of all kinds of things Mm-hmm, which uh, I will continue to be doing over the coming days weeks and Months or you know, I yeah, this is uh, this is one that's going to stick with the memory I'll stick in the mind And yeah, I hope you guys found it interesting to uh, so watch. I mean you were watching them all I want you to think of it all Oh, it's as uh entertaining as I often find it good engaged with soma playthrough It's um watching people gradually realize everything and struggle with the choices. It's uh, It's what the best of let's plays are supposed to do. I don't need to see you going Every second Is he gonna is he gonna go ah when the thing jumps out at him? Oh, he did as if he had a 12 Well, the funny thing is you did freak out a couple times because tins out The game is pretty scary at times with these monsters and things Oh, and yeah, even even beyond all of that right we talked about it briefly But the art direction is amazing. The sound design is fantastic. I need to listen to the musics for this game Ironically what I would probably say are the two most atmospheric games I've played or games that take place in the bottom of the ocean as well as the other one subnautica. Yeah Uh Yeah Well, I've heard a lot of things about subnautica and how it can be like very terrifying and super atmospheric Oh, yeah, but buyer shock. Yeah, but ioshock is uh big big high tier top when everyone needs to play I'm happy to see prequel Uh tv shows from hbo go. Let's do it Maybe one day Well, bio shock is getting something. Oh, yeah, that's right. Yeah soma's just Nobody cares about soma, which is really unfortunate. But whatever. That's the will we're in. No, well, I care about little mini series Live action stuff they did on youtube is definitely worth watching. It's uh, it's really cool. Okay, interesting Well, you know, even if nobody else cares about soma, I care about soma, right? That was a that was a really riveting experience And thank you all for joining me on this adventure Um, it's been interesting and it's made me think and it's gonna keep making me think I know if you all found it worthwhile, um So, yeah, that'll uh, that'll round it up uh for this here playthrough. That's yeah, that's I mean, what more is there soma and uh, yeah Yep, that's soma. Wow. What a great conversation. How interesting. Yeah, that was good. I really enjoyed having that chat How are you rolling and the thing is that's right Not even over that's the conversation one of 10 000 that we'll have over time about soma referencing Yeah, it's gonna get talked about Yeah after all these years Beautiful now the other thing that we were gonna do because it feels it just feels about right is to Take a trip down memory lane to go back to a video that when it was released I haven't seen it. Well, yeah, I mean for me certainly for rag someone and for you not at all That's why it's an interesting dynamic. Hey, it's uh You know when soma first came out I Adored it. I thought it was incredible one of my favorite streaming experiences of all time and then I was like, wow, what does everyone think and I remember checking the steam reviews and being like, oh What's going on? I remember people saying like the gameplay sucked. I was just like gameplay But it's like the dark descent. I'm basically a carbon copy of the dark descent and you love that It's like it's mainly well the the freight walking simulator kept coming up and I was like, what the I mean Somewhat, but like that's the format that would be suitable for the and then it's like wait a minute How much do people even like sort of get what soma was trying to do versus it being a You know a sequel to the dark descent, which is totally not what it is At all you could tell by the name and the setting and the characters. Yeah, but not by the development company though I could appreciate looking at a game that is you know a different name and seemingly going for a different thing and going Well, you know spiritual successor Yeah, it happens As someone who hasn't played have news of the dark descent. How similar are these games? Maybe they set themselves up for failure there because they made the penumbra games and the dark descent really is a refined penumbra Um, uh, well sure, but I mean, I guess would people feel the same way about something like blood born or sequitur Maybe they do Maybe they do that's right. I mean in a way There's there's things that are in those games that I kind of wish would be put into the next dark souls. You know like it's Yeah, right there's further connections there that can please fans and stuff But yes soma was just It was a disappointment to a lot of people and I was like what how did this happen? And it's weird because I think you probably even say fringy that its reputation is very high But not many people have an opinion on it Of the people who do it's very high We have an opinion of soma love it, uh, but not as many people are as interested in it as like m nature of the dark descent Yeah um And so back then different set of people I was hanging out and uh with and and we were sometimes checking out videos And I remember there was a time we were like, what is this? it was popular Review of soma breakdown by one of the bigger gaming channels guy called joseph anderson I was like, oh my good. Gosh. Let's check this out. And uh I almost I mean anyone to see my series. You know how I felt about it. I was not happy Um, and I also find it really frustrating because I feel like it damaged soma significantly Um with the fledgling reputation it had the The way that frictional benefited in the past is through online content creators And so having the biggest intellectual breakdown of the game being like, uh Um, you know, you get plenty of people saying like, uh, I will avoid this one when you could have done the opposite now It is fair to not like soma and it's fair to distance yourself from it If you think it's of low quality depending on what your references may or may not be you got to be careful because you know having a casual chat about it or a stream or Um, even like a steam review is is one thing but like having the quintessentially looked at video review where you do a full breakdown The first thing because this is the thing I haven't seen this video in genuinely like six years. So this is going to be weird, but um One of the things to consider I would say is the I assume you guys would agree if you're going to review soma Should probably play it twice Uh, I think it's I think it's worthwhile to play something twice It doesn't it doesn't Joseph Anderson do that though. It's typically isn't isn't that something that he does play games multiple times Um, I don't necessarily know for sure. I can't remember. I feel like he's a thorough lad though You like 100% it's like zelda mario games, right when he reviews them, I guess Yeah, that's right. He got every single uh, he got every single moon in uh, odyssey, which would have taken a while But but I guess that yeah the point being That you at least twice for a movie for a television show For a game because watching something the first time around or playing at the first time around and absorbing everything As it comes Versus knowing all of that information and then sort of you know seeing how it all plays out with an awareness of where it's leading It's just it can provide new insight But then of course, I suppose the counter would be like well No, I can give a review of anything from any amount of experience. I have with it surely It's like I guess so But do you want to be more correct or less correct? That's kind of you stand to be more correct by playing something twice rather than just once It's almost like you are a video game reviewer and that's like what you are, right? It feels like playing it twice, especially if it's a heavily narrative and details focused game Probably important. There's probably some games you don't need to play through twice Sure, some of some are very simple by the time you've done it once You know, you've really gotten the breadth of everything But a lot of games are really complex and I got a lot of stuff going on not just in terms of the narrative But you know mechanics and builds and places to go and things to do So it's not like really it shouldn't be anything like different from what he normally does Well in any case, I guess the it's like the difference when you're running careers like this of widespread coverage of lots of things quickly Or more refined coverage of individual things that you want to deep dive into and as far as I was aware He was definitely the latter of those two um but We shall see I suppose with a critique of soma you guys ready to jump in To whatever may be contained with it. This is genuinely going to be nostalgic for me. It's going to be so weird Okay Exciting I guess I'm all set Fuck 43 minutes. Jeez But Yeah, this is a short video. It's called pathos too. Hey There we go Soma like many games can be split into two parts. There's gameplay and their story The vast majority of games can be segmented like this. What makes soma exceptional is which part it executes well I can't remember how many times I've said to myself. Well, the story is terrible But there's some good gameplay here. Soma is the opposite The story here is quite literally outstanding Elevated far from the usual stuff you see in video games, but the gameplay side is a total failure A total failure But here's the thing it's but surely he must he he has to have said this then about the dark descent I don't know. I don't know if we'll get And if he's consistently wrong it's something I I didn't want to because this video is long I don't want to but like you can divide most games into gameplay and story already. I'm like man I was gonna pause on that. Yeah. I was like Divided into gameplay and story Most games can be divided into gameplay and story a lot of games have like no context for what's happening A lot of games are just mechanics, you know, what is the context for tetris for instance? Um, what is the context for a lot of puzzle games? But I mean, you know even even putting that to one side you can divide something into gameplay and story It's like yeah, but I mean they kind of Like they blur together. It's kind of a blurry line in a lot of video games, you know The narrative and the story You know choices in gameplay for instance and how they affect story. I mean that's partially gameplay, right? Or uh potential is curious. It's like what it where does lighting come in? It's like story like Level design. I mean because god damn you can have conversations about level design And and in terms of the layout but also the kind of information that's being relayed to a player about this place What's happened in this place? um, yeah Yeah, like I I don't know. I wouldn't have led with that as an observation because I feel like I feel like you can Talk about that for hours. He wants to do the thing and being like, yeah So almost got a great story but shitty gameplay or failure such an interesting thing because that's the The last word I would describe it with because I'd be like, yeah, it might be thin or it might be Not exciting, but it's not a failure. It's a it's a complete success. It achieves everything it needs to and wants to That's a complicated one as well. What does it mean when it fails? Is it that it fails to be what it was trying to be? Or can a game succeed at what it's trying to be but what it's trying to be was misguided? Or tell me what it's missing. What did soma's gameplay need? Well, I guess you're gonna get there, right? I guess oh This opening statement, but it's a frustrating one because we already feel I imagine between the three of us is going to be very difficult to justify Yeah, but let's see For me, that's okay I can play some games for the story as long as that story is good And just because the gameplay is in my opinion a waste of time doesn't mean that soma fails to use interactivity in any meaningful way Isn't that an interesting thing to say? Even though I think it's a waste of time it uses its interactivity in like clever interesting novel ways Joseph for less than a minute in and you're contradicting. Yeah, I would say that's a major contradiction This is pretty fucking rough my dude for a professional video game reviewer. How do you get a minute in and you're already contradicting yourself? At this point you have to do as best faith possible and say that he's now divided up gameplay into the failure part and the Sometimes okay part and the failure part is when you're running away from monsters I would have said don't don't lead with the statement that you could divide most games. It's a gameplay and story then Just like skip past that entirely I mean we'll probably go over this the more time goes on but like We've said before the soma needs to be a first-person game and it needs to have you pressing buttons and looking at screens and shit And it may sound like tedious like why am I having like wouldn't it be better if I just saw all this happening? It's like no you need to be making these choices and you need to to Feel what it's like to be like Simon moving through this world with that pov You rarely have to acknowledge that you're a robot Instead you're just a guy trying to see this in his yeah, you need to contextualize this in the way that he would Very important that not only it's this pov But also these mechanics and it seems like he has a vague handle on that but then he also says it's a failure So it's Only moments that are made more poignant because it's being told in a video game That simply wouldn't have the same effect in a movie or a book. Okay I'm not saying we should go dig up Roger ebert so he can play soma, but this is one of the strongest stories I've seen in a game Soma is a science fiction horror game that is not nearly as scary as it may first appear If you're I See that's that's the opposite of the truth Yeah, that is the opposite it gets scarier the more you think about the more you understand what's happening the scarier it is Because when you arrive and it's like this sci-fi facility that's all dark and there's like wires sparking and stuff It's like oh, this is like your sort of casual horror You know, oh my god. Look at this. Oh, this is spooky. Yeah, and then when When you get the lights on and you're in relative safety and you talk to people You'd be like, oh, see it's not very scary now. It's like well no because now you're realizing the state of everyone here How they got here what they are and what what's gonna happen to you and all this stuff It's like oh god. No, your brain starts to get like Fucking overwhelmed with horrors, but it's so weird because he just said yeah Like it's not as scary as it at first appears to be it's like oh That's bizarre the more you go on the scarier it gets. I don't know. Maybe his brain didn't engage with it I'm not sure Well, uh, it was it was like over five years ago, but we covered his uh What is it called something is implied subjectivity is implied, isn't it? Whereas the videos The point of his video is that every statement made in his videos is supposed to be subjective not Objective even though he like everyone else draws distinctive language to define when he's talking about something being there and confirmable versus something He felt because that's what everyone does And of course you will blend those At times everyone does I don't I complete to understand that's just sometimes you make mistakes We uh Ain't something is a thing for example. This game isn't scary. It's not a horror game. That is a you haven't even gotten there It's a game. Just don't even just it's a game. It is a game objectively It's not it's subjective statement that soma is a game It is a game because you're a human rags And I would never I would never cripple myself to such a degree by saying that everything I say is implied to be subjective Maybe i'm misremembering and he only meant like Certain statements or whatever, but yeah, I just I remember that being the thrust of it because You got in some level of pushback for a lot of his like More brash statements, but I mean he went into how You know like horror doesn't scare him at all anyway, which Is the kind of context you really need if you're gonna be I don't believe him I don't even know what to make of it because he brought up hillhouse funnily enough That's that's around the time he was making the video with that came out and how um I think tv shows and movies and stuff Aren't as scary on any future playthroughs or whatever We'll watch this because you know what's gonna happen to them. I I can't remember the specifics of it. It was very strange Area as it may first appear if you're easily startled and don't like that kind of experience And you still may want to avoid it But the story in this game is worth your time if you play games for that reason And that's the end of my spoiler warning The beginning of soma proves how important expectations and tone are when you experience anything Virtually anyone who plays this game will find out beforehand That that already is pretty bizarre because if you're coming off of the dark descent What gameplay are you expecting from frictional? Um because as I've said soma's gameplay is basically the dark descent's gameplay. Yeah So I don't I legitimately don't know how he could bought again Maybe he said in his dark descent review if he reviewed it that the gameplay is a total failure And if he is at least he's horrifically consistent, but uh Okay The beginning of soma proves how important Expectations and tone are when you experience anything Virtually anyone who plays this game will find out beforehand that it's meant to be scary a horror experience So after the game gets through its introduction and you wake up in the main character's apartment You were going to be immediately on edge. You might even ask what's wrong with this picture Why does the apartment seem so ominous even though it's um? Hey, I mean what is going on here? What exactly? I mean if we couch it behind the safe words of you might feel like and I I guess you could ask it might feel like the apartment's ominous Sure, I know it feels like he's ramping up to a critique here though in terms of like that This is an expectation that was set up Uh, but it's not the case. There's nothing scary You know, there's nothing overtly scary about this apartment Well, then I just have to highlight like so what about the person who plays this and is like Okay, I'm in an apartment. I wonder what I draw from this apartment Not everybody's expectations are like it's it's kind of hilarious, right? It's like everybody enters into things with expectations and that can cull your experience It's like sure but everybody's expectations are going to be different even if they hear the same thing Depending on the horror stories that they've consumed or just you know depending on their temperament And I just I'm not quite sure I always come back to like why can't we just take it for what it is Why do we have to start judging it based on it's like well? It is friction. Oh, this is a game after the doctor said no These are all of the biases I'm bringing into it Yeah, thinking of the people who play this knowing nothing about it. What about them? Is it good for them? Oh, well, we'll wait until he gets because you're right. You're like, why is he setting this harsh ground work? Is he gonna be doing it's a horror game It's a horror game that means this apartment is ominous Is ramping up to a criticism My guess would be that he's ramping up to a criticism that like these expectations that were built up That were the faults of summer for existing were lot not satisfied This may seem like a minor observation that if you know what genre a movie or a game is ahead of time that you will immediately start to anticipate certain things But it's important to know for later when we get to how the game starts trying to scare you But that's well after this introduction because there is nothing lurking in this apartment or the subway ride that follows it Or the eerily empty office that you arrive at Yeah, it's like the real world Yeah, man, I I've always assumed us that they do that on for the purpose of showing you simon has a very normal life normal apartment Yeah, it's uh travel Really emphasize the fish out of water aspects of the story going forward Hello Dr. Munshi Let's rewind for a minute though Summer is a game about a handful of things but at the center of it all is a man named simon He was recently in a car accident that resulted in one of his friends being killed and left him with a terminal brain injury This is told in a sort of awkward way at the beginning at first with the nightmare sequence And then with some forced dialogue after simon wakes up the first few minutes of the game were the weakest part of the story The voice acting is also less than what you're so this is forced dialogue and the voice acting is bad Is what he just said for the call that's about he's about to play But I would also say like awkward dream sequence. It's like how is a dream supposed to look? I My dreams are never awkward or strange. I did this room like like what a Surely you have to give a bit more meat on the bone for that criticism You can't just say like the dream wasn't the way I think dream should be Is that all we're getting for it? He just throws out. Yeah, no the dream sequence is all dream was awkward And then the exposition afterward is forced and the voice acting is bad. It's like Okay, let's see the voice acting then to I have a criticism I think that the base of that lamp is way too small and that thing probably tips over I think you're right small Simon you need to get yourself a better lamp. I know you accidentally knock it over all the time Don't use your brain injury as an excuse to me like oh, I can't take care You can operate a phone and pay your taxes so you can buy a lamp that doesn't fall over all the time And I'm pointing that out is so I can commend how much better it gets as the game progresses Brain scan, I remember Are you all right? Yeah. Yeah, just a bad dream. Are we still on for today? The events So as well he has variables that would Protect against a lot of what could be perceived as bad acting being that he just woke up and he was just shaken by a very horrible nightmare Um, so you can you'd have some allowance from sounding a bit strange, which is what I think munchie picks up on He's just like are you all right? And he's like, yeah, yeah, I'm fine So no I got got nothing for you there. That's a bit weird, but all right Here are about Simon going to visit a doctor in training that is developing an Experimental procedure that could resolve the damage left by the car crash It's a chronic bleeding problem in Simon's brain The doctor thinks he can use a scanning machine to identify the issue in Simon and then run him through a rapid series of stimuli Basically putting a simulated version of Simon's brain through a massive amount of different treatments until one works Which can then be used on the real Simon once the simulation confirms that it's effective You can see in this conversation that the game is still awkward here This exchange didn't feel natural, especially given the earlier phone call and that Simon should really know all of this already Ultimately, it doesn't really matter though Part of the reason why he may not is because the fact it's very slap-dash This is like a startup. They're trying technology that's untested. They don't actually know this is all going to work This is all experimental isn't Simon there like core legacy scan. He's like the first major one Yeah, he was the first one Yeah, that's why a lot of this is being introduced and understood as it goes because even munchie doesn't fully understand the work he's making We're gonna do a scan of your brain Then we build a computer model of it and bombard it with stimuli What I want to say about this part is more about me personally because it was really surreal at first This game starts out in Toronto. That's where I live the doctor here is a student at york, which is where I went to university I also have a problem with regular nightmares like Simon appears to suffer from and my mom died of a brain aneurysm And I've had several scans to make sure I didn't have the same problem So even though this was a coincidence I felt like the game was screwing with me on a second level in addition to the usual bracing for jump scares because I knew It was a horror game This isn't important for the review Of course, I just thought it was funny enough to mention because the game got to me a little more than I think it would have otherwise You know I have a serious condition, right? You heard about the car crash the x months to live deal Soma abruptly changes at this point and arguably this is where the game properly starts The brain scan commences and when it's over you're no longer in the doctor's office You're in some foreign industrial looking room. It's dark. You're alone You nor Simon have any clue about what's going on This first area gives you a lot of hints about where you've been apparently teleported to There's some technology that is clearly advanced despite its bulkiness The corridors are reinforced imposing and abandoned. I mean, I I guess I just listened into these accurate descriptions of it. Yeah, um You know just sort of mostly set up in a little anecdote Yeah, you know Parts of it are locked away. There are some robots one of which promptly goes crazy and runs away shortly after you leave it alone Your vision isn't functioning as it used to as you can see here And you're able to access memories from some places around the area like you're hallucinating some sort of ghostly echo of the people that were here before you It's working better than expected. They're having a really hard time getting the doors open If you're like me, you'll immediately guess that this is the stimuli that the doctor was talking about It's pretty obvious that this is the test he's running somehow It's resulted in this weird futuristic base that is a representation of simon's brain Blocked passages around you are blocked pathways that need to be opened in his head Something called structure gel that appears like black blood that the robots leave behind Represents the bleeding that keeps happening in his brain The corrupted vision and the broken memories you can access are glitches twisted versions of his own memories and the friend simon has Along with the simulation threatening to distort or crash if he becomes too stressed out The game will be about opening all of these pathways and then defeating whatever Personification that the simulation creates to serve as an adversary for the bleeding in his brain Likely linked to the friend that was killed in the car crash at the start since he's brimming with guilt about it And if you guessed all that you are completely wrong just like i was I don't feel bad about this and neither should you because i think it was deliberate I mean How how long how long are we to believe that he thought that was the case? I i'm because i'm i'm listening to him say all this and i'm i'm kind of like pausing and thinking Like in what way would Why would you just not take information as it's given to you without well, so it's kind of interesting Like i definitely had in the back of my mind during my playthrough Thinking about essentially what the treatment was but i think that what you're meant to make of that Especially with the Brandon section is like that's kind of what that treatment would have looked like um Potentially right for the for the scan of simon and all of the copies that would have been run through simulations But running with the the conclusion like that it wasn't what was being presented at face value, which is that you are You know like you're like a duplicate recreation of simon in the future in this place that all of these things are actually happening Am I did he believe that for like the whole game that that was actually the case? And it was only at the end that he realized that he got it completely like that that wasn't the case at all Maybe it's a matter of he was so sure of his interpretation. He blocked out all the other potentials But like they tell you what's happening throughout the game. They're i mean, it's actually Like you don't like meeting captain That's a story that's playing out there at face value that just follows You know what i mean So you're sort of suggesting like it just feels weird that he would have been able to maintain this pov Despite all the information that would have all the facts to the opposite At some point I figure that you would switch away from thinking so much about that to just taking the story at face value for what it is You know, it seems like it It seems like this interpretation loomed over his entire experience Which is kind of interesting because for me it was just the thing that was in the back of my mind of like Man, I remember like at the beginning when I was reading that um that like newspaper article that was talking about it Like that was really interesting Um, yeah, I don't know. I'm not sure I don't know what to make him this is an observation Well, I wonder if it would have made you go with a hunch or Sticking with it even despite all the contrary elements the story and the characters that present to you At the end that he doesn't like what could we rewind like 10 seconds? What what he said right after he relayed this? Adversary for the bleeding in his brain likely linked to the friend that was killed in the car crash at the start Since he's brimming with guilt about it Ashley And if you guessed all that you are completely wrong just like I was I don't feel bad about this and neither should you because I think it was deliberate There are two reasons why the narrative gives so much attention to simon's life in toronto at the beginning and this is one Oh, and also that flashback he has about uh, the girlfriend that that or it's not really a flashback But by the time you get there Like he should have been completely disillusioned about his yeah, you're well through faser at that point Before that yeah, like this is one of the you've had it explained to you at that point that you've yeah What you are and how you're there yeah Yeah, you know your goal of launching the arc, uh, you so you kind of got basically the grasp of the story Someone's gonna say you could was that I wonder if because of the fact that he was on that sort of mode That any piece of information he would either ignore unless it fit with what he was thinking and didn't Like sort of interpret it for what it was which is kind of ironic because like You know if you just if you've just done that you might have been able to take the game for what it was simpler and easier than running with like a metaphor or An allegory or like an in-universe Simulation that's supposed to represent things and he's got he's trying to like crack the ending to a game that doesn't even exist, you know Maybe um, it's just so weird normally if I play a game and I'm getting You know I I see the setting and I'm getting some little storytelling elements and world building elements from what I see And what's around me. Yeah in my head just naturally and subconsciously There's sort of like my brain tries to Think about why things are the way they are But it's just hunches and guesses when I actually get all the information about what's really going on here That I'm like, well, I was wrong about that or I was right about that I guess the thing is that him getting the information that is the actual plot of the game doesn't necessarily preclude one from continuing to believe Yeah, but I mean who knows how elaborate this you know this simulation could end up being And I guess all it's just like yeah I mean I guess but there's a story that's playing out here that at face value has all of these elements to it that I don't know. I find it strange, but it's it sounded like he was saying that well You know, I think it was deliberate like I think that this is a consequence of a deliberate choice They made of starting off the game in the modern day before he gets to Um pay those two Which is going to be interesting because to me I feel like there's a pretty clear and obvious reason why you start here It's that This is how you want like this establishes the fish out of water dynamic. Yeah. This is like a baseline Experience and what his original version certainly believes that you know, he is fully and totally Um without this section here. Yeah, I think the game would lose a lot of context without having the the real world I mean, this is why you know, it's particularly important in terms of the continuing duplication of simon Having this Be here. You need this. You're getting further and further away from the original. I mean, there's I mean There's a reason we spend 45 minutes in the shire before we kick things off It's a An eternal sort of baseline for how the world is and what we need to try and get back to and save and In the same way you saw with normal life Yeah, but what what does he think the reasons are let's see One of them along with opening with a nightmare It's misdirection and I think it's great. It also gives you a reason to accept why you're suddenly in a vastly different It's not misdirection. I would I would rather call it mystery than misdirection in terms of the opening But the thing is I talked about in my video. I remember is that if you just read everything that's on the screens in the first room You can crack everything that's happening to you Which is cool. It's really cool. The the mystery Is gradually revealed across the game very explicitly such as like, oh, I'm not a human I am a robot you will get that like an hour and a half into the game But obviously you could figure that instantly you could have been I think there's people who played this game Who were like he scanned my brain and now I'm here. Is this has my brain been uploaded to something You know, it was um, it was uh, uh, damn, uh, the first guy that call, right? Yeah, yeah Says like what are you talking about? I got I got my human hands here Like at that point that's something that should click because you've seen simons human hands Up to that point. Yeah, and the fact that this guy is acting like a human, you know at that point you'd be like But if um, I don't know if the if you told the developers like I like how you Misdirected me into thinking this was all a simulation. I feel like they'd be like well, you Uh, you could assume that you could assume a lot of things. I don't know that we I don't know that they would say like they were hoping you'd think it was a simulation as a misdirection Yeah, I don't I don't imagine that they were like man, you know mission accomplished when the majority of people believe that this is a simulation I don't know about yeah, I think they just they want you to feel dropped into a horror sci-fi scenario And the uh, you know gradually you get to understand it which removes some of the more So to speak terror aspects, but then introduces a whole lot of more existential horror aspects I mean, is it less scary if it's a simulation or a hallucination? In terms of the way that soma in terms of what soma has to say, you know, no, it wouldn't be any less simulation seems scarier to me Place because otherwise really how the hell did you get here after just being in a doctor's office? The information you're finding you don't know so you can withhold judgment Yeah, you don't you don't actually have to decide instantly But that just goes to show you how intricate the matrix really is you see Your finding says that the year is now 2104. There's seemingly no rational explanation for it The real answer in the sci-fi horror game. All right I mean, yeah, I don't I guess he's just saying that's the first it's weird But you get answers very pretty quickly. Like it's not well, you know super late in the game pretty pretty substantial error again It's becoming a pattern. It's unfortunate so if you are going to tell us that you're bringing a lot of Essentially baggage with you understanding that it's a science fiction horror themed game Um, especially if you know the greek of the name I don't know how you can say how did I get here? There's no rational explanation Like well, you've already admitted that you're bringing the baggage of it being a sci-fi Oh now I get what you mean by yeah Like there's going to be thousands of rational explanations and a sci-fi story because it could be all kinds of things. Yeah You should be you should your mind should be extra open It's like knowing that you live in a world that has a Like if you're playing a fantasy game and there's all kinds of different magic spells And wizards are everywhere and you're like there's no rational explanation for this It can't possibly be because like we we just established that magic is very prevalent in this world. What do you mean? There's no rational explanation It's magic It's a magic spell The entire plot of soma which is mostly about the events that happened here in the future The place you're in is an underwater base called pathos That's strange about the events that happened here in the future is an interesting I was actually gonna say wrong. It's just interesting. It's an interesting sentence. It's Did he want to say to us Here in the future like like this is where we are. We're in the future or the Events that took place. It sounded like he was saying events that took place before we got here, but also in the future Yeah, it's an interesting strange sentence, you know help pathos too and it Help pathos too and it's more of a research base or a factory than rapture was a city in bio shock It has several different sites that serve different functions and you'll go through most of this place throughout the game I don't know if you'd call that several at this point. I think we've we've we've gone past several I don't know what you call this. What would you call because you have sorry Woo um So you have you have a few that's like a couple, right? I see a couple is two a few is three. Okay. That's that's how I see several is like several Several is like four to ten I feel like I always felt like several is like three ish No, I feel like several is a reasonably big number. The lowest I'll go for several is four Yeah, I exactly I'd say a few because yeah couples two a few is like three or four and several is more than that Definitely. Yeah Okay, because I because when I hear several I've just always been like three four maybe Man, okay. That's for me several couldn't mean a lot. Uh, it could mean a lot. Um, a few several Well, the thing for me is that what's being described is like how many stations we visit and you described it as several Yeah, I feel like we went to several stations. Well the irony, I guess I would have said is that we go to all I think Upsilon a and b lambda delta theta on the ground tower and fire. We go to all those places, right? I think we do. Yeah I just didn't know if several was like a lot or what that really meant to a lot of people So before we get to that, let's put the story on hold for a moment for two reasons The first is that I think the video will flow better if we can loop back to the story after looking at gameplay And secondly because I want to show a massive problem that soma has before spoiling the story Here we go Just in case this problem ends up being strangely positive for a lot of you watching This might convince you to play it yourself before I go on to spoil it And that problem is soma isn't really a horror game. It's There it is. This image has lived in my head for a long time Joseph Anderson everybody soma isn't really a horror game. It isn't scary I I can't do anything with that statement. I can't do anything with it. It's just We've come across isn't a fantasy adventure story Yeah, it's it's not exciting or epic. It's it's to me. I was bored by Lord the Ring So it's no longer an adventure story. dodgeball isn't a comedy Yeah, because it wasn't funny to me. I mean soma is scary. Sorry for me at least that game is scary It is scary. Well, this is where we get into the whole fucking subjective not a subjective thing It's like of course everybody can be scared or not scared by things individually But then what is it for a thing to be defined as scary beyond a person's experience of that thing? And it's like, I don't know. I guess that if it follows the trapper we get into the genre And then wow, I hate genre discussions, but if you're gonna say soma isn't a horror game I feel like what do you how what what do you think it is? I guess he says just a science fiction game. Oh Um, so what are all the horror? I mean, it's pretty it's pretty obvious that soma's goal as a game is to scare you It's uh, I see we gotta be able to go further than that, right? Like it's it's got I I almost want to get like caveman mode with this. It's like it's got extreme gore It's got like creatures that yell and make horrible breathing sounds. It's got people who are asking to be killed People who are hooked up to like devices that the body horror obviously just the aesthetics of darkness and yeah We got loads of darkness loads of lights in the dark Like the central sort of themes existential dread not being able to fight back against the enemies It's like I'll go to the server room where a creature Can't see and has no arms is like hobbling around and they're making horrifying breathing sounds that if it hears you It'll scream and run at you. That's not scary. You see that's just sci-fi And then you learn about what your fate is what's gonna happen to you What's happened to the people around you like how is that? I don't know man like this checks like literally every box Everything that you make of that as a person who isn't a robot in the future But as a human being living today and everything that makes you think about about the sense of self and where that's derived from Like to be like yeah, but I wasn't scared by it. Therefore. It is not a horror game is like baffling Yeah, you should go the other direction the all normal people go which is this comedy didn't make me laugh This horror game didn't scare me this This gets particularly awkward because it was that subsequent video afterward Right where he said that like horror games don't scare him in general because you can respawn So like why did he say this there is no such thing as a horror game if he can't be scared by any of them, right? I don't know since when was horror only when your life is threatened That's a that's a weird it's yeah, that's that seems like an incredibly limited view on what constitutes horror Like when someone threatens to your fate is to be like tortured or you're you're you're like you're strung up You're incapacitated forever or they do something to your mind or something along those lines Or they do something to people you care about absolutely And it like looking at this still it makes me wonder how many people watch this review played soma And they were scared out of their fucking minds and they're like wait a second He said this wasn't a horror game He said this wasn't scary and here I am terrified of these creepy ass monsters chasing me around in the dark Understanding that that was once a human Not to mention all of the existential dread So and that's that's to move on from caveman mode the The creatures that chase you in that server room I forget the specific name of the the type of monster it is But it's an amalgamation of several body parts and if you get a good look at it Like one of it is just a human face that's stretched across a lot of it Just like can you imagine that thing is alive? It feels things Imagine it was self-conscious enough to know what it looked like and what it existence is just like I'd rather not think about that. It's like yeah, you'd rather not think about it Because it's fucking scary Gary this what what? Anyway, yeah, it's um, it's iconic you could say This screen is iconic Really a horror game It's not scary in the same ways that a lot of other spooky games are While I've ultimately decided that this is a good thing. It's abundantly clear to me that this isn't intentional Frictional how are you looking at it? How could you show this? And then be like no, it's not scary. It's not a horror game As he said rags The way that most are is like but the creepy monster trying to find you in the dark wanting to like do terrible things to you But that but that's that checks all the boxes Dark spooky monster danger can't fight back It's like you don't show this trying to make soma a scary tense experience and they failed Did they know this is the main reason why I said earlier that the gameplay in soma See what I mean like for me the whole You know They failed to make it scary. Does that not come across as a little more than subjective? How can you tell me that everything you're saying is subjective and then you choose the language they failed to make it scary Yeah, what does that mean? Do you mean to you specifically they failed to scare me is a very different statement What's just the statement soma isn't a horror game seems a hell of a lot broader than Sometimes I feel like it's like a pussy thing Like um, you don't want to say they failed to scare me because that's not interesting enough So you want to be like they failed to make it scary at all and then someone's like whoa, bro And then he's like, oh, it's fine. It's fine. I was being subjective. It's fine. It's fine. I was being subjective you're like, oh Oh, I thought you were saying something a lot more controversial and complicated But okay, because if ever we made the statement like this thing isn't scary I don't even know how I would go about justifying it even like tele-tubbies Really, well, no, there's probably some kid are those terrified of that Like wait, so you're saying it is scary. I'm like, no, no, I'm just saying the Saying tele-tubbies Fails to be scary is just a fucking broken statement. Anyway, I don't even know what to do with that But save for sober. It's a broken statement What justifications are you gonna come up with and then just go a little bit. I just meant me It's like, well, okay, then say that There's a waste of time because it's largely about the robotic monsters that you encounter throughout the pathos 2 facility And the game tries so hard to get you on edge with the tense suffocating music the loud noises and crashing sounds It tries to assault all of your senses. It's screaming at you like a nervous dog. Hey, be scared. You should be scared right now Are you scared? You scared? I don't know what to do with this. Um, yeah, I feel like this is just be like, I wasn't scared by this game I'm brave. It wants you to be scared I suppose he's correct in the same way that telling a joke is over compensation for wanting people to laugh I mean, yes, they are using all of the tools available in the medium to Evoke fear in you, but he's saying that like it's a bad thing that they're trying to use these tools Yeah, like if you saw my jump scares fine If you saw him out last fine, I can understand what he's saying But at this point if we remove All of these these things so like the use of lighting the use of like Chromatic aberration, I think is the actual thing you can turn off Obviously fucking with your robotic senses because these creatures emit like all kinds of electricity in relation to the structure gel and the Pieces they're made of then of course like the context of I can't believe we're shitting on the soundtrack now, too This is like the fact that it plays at all the fact that it gets more tense the closer they get to you This is this is bad now These are the tools the game is employing to evoke fear in you Yes, so really it should be a matter of talking about whether or not they used effectively or ineffectively rather than that Used it at all. Yeah Is there anything that is being said about this that can't be said about the dark descent Things that part of the problem is I don't know. I'm sure he's played it. I don't actually know again Part of the problem is it's hard for me to watch this without thinking But yeah, but you made a video where you said that the reason why video games like don't seem to be capable of scaring you at all Is because you can respawn I don't even know what to make of any observations about the nature of a game being more or less scary when they Fundamentally can't scare you because you can respawn to me It is so opposite like I find video games have the capacity to scare me a lot more than a film Or a television show because of the interactivity It's like it's almost like I have a I cannot put red dots on bad guys. I'm gonna review a lot of first-person shooters there's um I guess Oh, sorry. Yeah, there's a really simple way of the they talked about it in the dev diaries. I think uh frictional where it's just like the There's a part in um the dark descent and it'll be interesting to see you play the whole game maybe a future halloween there for any better There's like an elevator and it's like you need the key to operate it and you're like, huh? And everything's pretty well lit. It's like a nice hub will place you're at Then you go off to a different part and it's like almost pure darkness and it's like the key's in there and you're like It is now, huh? And then and the frictional talked about it as like the reason why this is so strong Just because in a film the character is like, oh jeez. Well, I gotta get in there and the audience member You know pulls up their blanket stares at the screen like oh gee. I hope they make it But in the game it's like no you have to push forward You have to make the decisions Yeah, you you can't passively you can't passively just watch it play out You have to be if you freeze you're like terrified. You sit in the corner and you sort of shiver and hope it goes away In a lot of times in both soma and dark descent that can save you Like it's they're doing their best to try and make it feel as though like they're breaking down the wall between you and the game And uh, you know, like it's just so funny for joseph to be like they're just tried too hard Okay, okay, whatever save this a fucking rebirth. Okay the fucking fear flashes Fear flashes. Yeah And when you're being told what your objectives are in a game, right? There is this element of yeah, that's stuff you have to do listen up It's not just gonna happen magically and passively by somebody else on the screen No, no you have to do these things I'm telling you to do and sometimes when you're being told that you have to go to the spooky You know dark place or whatever to get a beacon or a key or a latch or a component or whatever to progress When you hear that being told to you and there's that understanding of you have to be the one to do that It gives you a kind of sense of dread for what's to come. Uh, I mean, you know in terms of relating it to soma I think it's in theta when you're being pursued. Um You know, like the big sprawl. It's where you find real brandon where it's it's acres is chasing you in there. Yeah Um Where it pretty clearly says, okay, you need to get to this elevator You got to get through here But you know that what you need is like way on the other side And then you have to go there and get it and make your way back And it's it's just like knowing that these are all the tasks you need to do while evading acres is like damn All right, shit. That's a little bit scary There's a lot to do and i'm very vulnerable uh to this monster and there's like that anticipation Something really unique too with like at first it seems like an almost maze of corridors and doors and rooms And then you get a map and it's like you are here. You need to go here It's like so forward left down the hall and then to the left. I can do that I can do that I can do that Exactly amping yourself up to do it and then you know like and and then it's you know The this sort of emergent things that can happen right when you where he finds you just as you're about together It's like a run run run run run run run. Okay, like open the door open the door open the door And like having those sorts of feelings. We were watching uh you do that part live I think me and rags so we're in a call and you you you were just like pressing the buttons on the elevators It's like doesn't matter if I go that don't care if the right floor just go Any floor that isn't this floor? Let's That was pretty much my thinking. Yeah, just any floor please But it's not scary the point the point being is that I found this game pretty scary Um, even even in the good old just yeah, you know, like most basic. Oh scary monster I think I even found it scary just in that regard the construct. That's the first guy you have an encounter with Um, I found him like sort of mid in terms of how scared I was First time played it but the the guy in the server room I remember being absolutely terrified on my first time through the game Yeah, and it was I it was um, I got the the experience. I imagine friction will one of me too, right? I would get halfway through the room. I haven't seen him yet No idea what he looks like I just hear him breathing and then this like slapping of feet Just over the side of the wall. I was on clearly going from In front to the left to the back to the left like I know he's very close and he's moving around where I am And like, you know, it's it's the theater of the mind as they say I'm imagining so much of what's going on over the side of that wall And I want nothing more than for him to never find me and then it's like To get the key slash whatever you need you have to press a button to activate and it has to charge for Is it like 20 seconds or something before you can pick it up and it makes loads of sounds So it's like you can stand next to it, but he'll find you so You know, do whatever you want Oh my god Then yeah, usually you start to sprint out of the room But you might hear him activate screams and then his footsteps get faster and it's like The idea that all of this effort is like too much over the top I think I just I can't believe it sometimes because I think the scaling of You know scaring people in video games has gotten so crap in terms of how I I'm a huge fan of horror and I've said this over and over again. I have barely any Favorite horror it's it's it's there's a small selection because I chase that experience Like the proverbial dragon Knowing that I'll never get it Unfortunately, or at least we'll get it that often. Yeah It's just it's hard to get that level of terrified by a game A lot of the time even though I know that games have some of the best access to that emotional experience Yeah, if something jumps at me and for a second or two I'm terrified just because it's a natural reaction and then all I can think of afterwards is me rolling my eyes and going Good job, you know now you just annoyed me and frustrated me because it's just lazy and this is all you can do But at that point I don't walk away with positive experiences. I'm like, oh, you're just being cheap It's like, oh you sure it scared me. Yep You did what evolutionarily the thing instead of actually scaring you what the fuck does actually scaring you mean joseph How how is this over the top how Look at this This is this is pretty subdued. I'd say oh god. I had so much compliments for this I'd be like the atmosphere is almost perfect the little jitters in your in your visuals That's justified in universe making it slightly harder to make out what's going on this figure You can't quite tell what it is or what it does exactly and then the fact that like, you know, the music is like Like it's like a hum It's a hum. Yeah, the idea that this is over the top. You kidding me The enemy robots don't even yeah, the first time I say they don't even look scary. They don't even look I don't know what's how can you Because remember if a serial killer so we have ruled out no movie about a human serial killer can be Scary if it just looks like a person, right? I did he's wrong. You can't be afraid of people because they just look like people He's so incredibly fucking wrong. We'll have uh exhibit a b and c. Let me grab him. I was not prepared for this Yeah, this is You didn't think you'd have to go and look at all the creatures And all the fucked up amalgamations of flesh and metal that the wow creates Well, we don't even have to we probably should but we don't have to get into the fact that it's more than just what they look like It's what they are. Yeah, that's what they believe themselves to be Okay, that'll do It's a little bit low res but whatever. Uh, we'll start with Uh, do you remember this lady? I think we briefly were chased by I think you had a bit of trouble with her for any but then you completed this segment in a way that I hadn't even seen before I think If I remember oh, yeah, yeah, she's the one that was um standing like facing that was uh, that was in uh Before you go down into the depths. What was that? Uh, she was in that would make her in is it omicron? I think omicron. Yeah, that was what I was thinking. Yeah I was trying to distract her by making noises by throwing things Mm-hmm Yeah, you can the way you can defeat what they wanted I think from that sequence is that think of it as like you can only make So much sound before she'll activate but you can move Relatively slowly and you won't piss her off So they try and create a tense sequence, you know like mission impossible one with the Like you're trying to move very carefully get the battery and move away very the the reason that it gets very tense Is they drop a whole bunch of stuff on the floor and if you touch any of it It'll go clang clang and then she'll go And you're like, uh, yeah But yeah, I mean that's so very scary. No. No, of course and look at her. She's whatever Especially when you're like, oh, this was a human being this was a person look at the pay those two shit. She's got there Yep He's the staff there person with a life And we can go to I forget again the name of these ones. I used to know it well I just I don't know why it's so low res but obviously these are the guys This is what I was saying with a face and there's there's arms and a feet around the whole thing Then like the barnacle things and it's just It's just disgusting. It's a it's a pool of flesh that's been like vaguely and horrifically constructed back into something That's gradually becoming humanoid. Maybe Like it feels like the wow's attempt at patch working a human out of pieces And yeah, the sounds it makes makes it so much worse, but you just wonder how aware this creature is And then of course, terry acres who Creates a sequence that is oftentimes considered one of the scariest in the game as well I mean look at that That's a that's pretty bad. Especially when you Like again the context of Who he is what he did Um I mean It's not very scary though. Not very sorry. No Now, um, if I was to be as fair as possible, he's only referencing the construct Unfortunately, he already said this the monsters aren't scary. So kind of ruins his whole point But if if we were solely talking about the construct enemy and someone said you will that one's not very scary This is the guy Um, I would be like, yeah, but isn't this a good one to start with? This one sure looks like a machine. It just looks like a machine. It doesn't look human at all It doesn't look like it has any human parts and what we come to discover, of course Would be that this has been uploaded with a human brain scan more than likely, but it's it's like Uh corrupted slash out of control. It's disbalanced and it's just raging Who knows what it sees, you know But like to me it makes so much more sense that we meet this guy first and as the game goes on we meet I mean, isn't this like pretty fucking normal for a video game to start with like relatively tame And mundane monsters and then ramp it up the longer it goes Yeah, very often that's the case So I um, yeah, I just think that's woefully Unfair to the game, but oh well because a lot of this is like, yeah, okay Well fine. He didn't find those scary and it's like you can't I don't even It's going beyond I didn't find it scary. It's like a broader criticism of the game itself Yeah, imagine telling people like this game isn't scary. It tries too hard to be scary and all the monsters in it aren't scary. It's like, uh And then ending it with for me. He's like fucking jigsaw There's a big gap to me Ha ha ha Soba isn't a horror game. The enemy robots don't even look scary The first time I saw one I ran right up to it to get a better look because I thought it looked cool Not creepy. I don't what whose fault is that? Like what uh, do you think that do you think that you are the insane outlier? I don't even know. What if I said I walked up to weska because I thought he was cool in resident evil What does that even mean mr. X looks cool Nemesis looks cool. What am I supposed to do with this? Exactly Yeah, it also feels like frictional realize they weren't that visually intimidating And what was that screen tearing effect to make it so you can't always get a great look at the things Okay, we clearly have a great look at him when you do that And secondly, like that is the way he's supposed to look he represents one of the loader droids or whatever that've obviously been It with structure gel and other pieces of metal and he's got an uploaded thing. That's how it's supposed to look Whether or not you find him scary is like, I don't know why it hasn't been accepted yet That this is like turns out people are scared by different things They weren't that visually intimidating, but the um I'm gonna get a good shot here use that Of the aberration, but he's saying like the screen tear effect to make it so you can't really understand It's like even with the tear in full effect, which I think I paused on you can see him The idea that frictional trying to hide this is stupid They're not trying to hide it It's just like a way of communicating how close or distant an enemy is even when you can't see them Yeah, it's it's it's tools for gameplay as well as you know having some narrow relevance Yeah, they gave it a justification in universe two This is the kind of marrying that we want it reduces Or increases verisimilitude, I guess Uh, I'd say increases it. Yeah And also recall you couldn't really look at the monsters and amnesia the dark descent Yeah, they well rags. They did that because they were trying to hide their awful looking monsters All right back to make it so you can't always get a great look at the things and have to fill parts of it with your imagination And okay now show us the other ones joseph now show us all the other ones Let the audience see the other ones so that they know that you're not lying when you say that they're all like these You know, they're kind of cool looking instead Again trying to convince you to be scared instead of being actually scary Stop I'm afraid you bring it back awful memories joseph Let's rewind even further. There's something that was said near the beginning. Yeah. No, let's not rewind Let's use the other examples. All you've shown us is two constructs Which are the same construct from the early point in the game. You've completed it show us the other monsters Yeah, show us the scary ass one. What about the one that swims around and tries to snatch you after you encounter the wow What about the fucking the the the angler fish? You could even show yohan ross He's not he's not even an antagonist, but look at yohan like he's fucking gross looking like this what I mean about like Just showing the construct is just disingenuous It's like me saying there's no scary enemies in this game In resident evil 4 and it's just like one of the women ganado. So it's like oh look it's an old lady It's just an old lady See the enemies in this game are lame and they're not scary at all. Look at her They're like, oh, yeah, that would be that would be lying Well, and then someone's like, okay, we're actually a second one. You're like fine And it's her five minutes later in a different place. It's like that's the same thing. Why are you doing that? Expectations matter a lot Okay, so does the player's willingness to meet the game on its own terms Which I imagine is a really complicated issue when it comes to designing a game There will be people who go into horror games with the specific intent to not be scared Because they want to prove to themselves or the world that they aren't creeped out Interesting observation that is an interesting observation Joseph Anyway, moving on Yeah, I was like, well, let's not dwell on that game and it's silly scares don't work on them Or far more favorably They simply don't enjoy being scared and separate themselves so much that they don't engage with the game Or they claim they can't be scared by video games claim. They can't be Which is interesting right because that other video would essentially be an admission that Joseph Anderson Is incapable of meeting a game halfway because if you can die and respawn It's fucked. It's over. You know, like it can't achieve these effects Is that not an example of you not being able to meet a game halfway? Certainly not horror games Well, except if it has permadeath Or if it blows up even then I think You know, even he said like even permadeath ones are like Uh, I could have sworn it was something like it's more mechanically satisfying than like a horror experience At that point it's like can we can we go past death as like a thing that's capable of scaring somebody? Because let's be fucking frank The massive majority of times that you've been afraid in your life death had nothing to do with it What you think when someone just notices a cockroach right next to him and they jump and go, huh? You think they're afraid of dying It's it's just You know, it's it Let's let's expand our horizons here in terms of the nature of of like horror Beyond just death as a possibility which again Surely these arguments would apply to a film right? It's like we're sure but there's no real consequences because this is all made up Yeah, you could you can definitely make that argument The game is all code At that point you've just eliminated any capacity for art Basically at all to evoke any feeling in you because it's like yeah, but I mean this isn't real Well, yeah, and imagine we took it to the point of you showed me a photo of like the pyramids and I'm like It's not actually a pyramid Well, it's just I wasn't there, you know, this is just a bunch of ink on a on a piece of paper Yeah, I don't really I don't feel anything from this and it's like, okay Okay, I guess that's all art ruined for you forever Well, yeah, you and Joseph would be like that's unreasonable. I'd be like, yeah, that's unreasonable Okay, anyway and play it for the story or something instead The issue soma has is that you have to meet the game more than halfway in order to be scared by it You basically have to roll out the lion from the wizard of us because even if you are Visuals and find the robots genuinely scary See, this is what I mean It's like you'll make these are much broader statements than me personally This is like on average the average person who plays soma is gonna have to do that The lion they have to essentially make themselves get which is all I don't even know what that means Well, I was actually that was gonna be my thing of you have to meet the game more than halfway. It's like, what do you mean by that? What does that mean that you have to you have to pretend to be scared when you're not because it's it's just it's a visceral emotion You're scared or you're not scared Like it scared me when I played it And I can always speak to myself. I found the game pretty terrifying Um, both in terms of it makes me a fucking pussy. It makes me The lion Emphasized though, it's like it's not just the ooze spooky monster. It's what the fucking game is about. That's the thing that's really scary By it you basically have to roleplay as the lion from the wizard of us because even if you are Spewed by the visuals and find the robots genuinely scary Why don't you just say roleplay is the cowardly lion as if there's another cowardly lion to confuse him with But also why why do you keep saying the robots? Why doesn't he talk about the more organic Yeah, what a great question. We're on the screen. Why why are you why are you? Yeah, you oh man brandon's fucking uh story, of course Yeah, the There's so much you discover through just the environmental storytelling and so it's a fucking masterpiece on many levels And that's one of them the fact that this guy Stayed behind so that everyone could get out and then he killed himself to prevent Anyone from fucking him up or corrupting him when you know Like I think that's already horrifying in and of itself because you you see all that Then you know if the wow gets a hold of him the wow has the scans and they can use the flag Like it's just like jesus christ It'll yeah the wow will create another version of brandon That thinks it's the old brandon and in a way sort of is that's kind of a point of the game And it will just be shambling the halls are attached to the wall for imagine it was coherent enough to discover himself Yeah, imagine that Well, I don't even know if joseph is aware of any of this stuff, but it's not scary and it's not a horror game and Eventually you're going to get caught and this is the final nail in the underwater coffin that hammers home That you have no reason to be scared of these enemies eventually when you die Look how is that not Remember the section on how none of the monsters are scary. They're already cool looking How is this image alone if this wasn't like a promotional material thing I'd be like what the fuck is that? Immediately back to life and get to try again with no penalty. Yeah, so yes, there it is Ah, yes, because you respawn. Yeah, I've been over this. How is this different from a death screen? How like mechanically and literally I'm not asking this rhetorically Literally tell me how I guess he can't literally I guess he can later Um, how was this different from a death screen in any other game? Well, I think hang on. Well, let him play this in full because I've got so much to say on this This is the final nail in the underwater coffin that hammers home that you have no reason to be scared of these enemies Because when you die you come immediately back to life and get to try again with no penalty Even after a game over you just reload and try again with frequent checkpoints. Mm-hmm the game itself That's literally video games. So that's video. Yeah, so that this is that's right This isn't a critique of soma. That's just critique of video games. Yeah, you you just have a fundamental distaste or an inability to engage with the death mechanics of all video games I don't see why soma had to be crucified on that particular cross when every game You know what I mean? Like soma's now the this is games. He's describing video games. This is resident evil This is battlefield. This is every game where you die. You respawn and try again I would imagine that the argument he'd make is yeah, but I mean those games aren't trying to scare me So like that's just mechanics. I can engage with yeah, I feel invincible now because wherever I go even if I fall over Horror game. Well, yes That's the main critique of his why horror games don't scare me videos like dude This is just it's the reason why I get annoyed with the soma isn't a horror game It's like nothing can be in your world nothing can be Yeah, and you need to let people know that when you're reviewing this game because other people Most people the takeaway is like this horror game isn't scary. This one Exactly not oh the reviewer that I'm watching for this doesn't find any video game scary at all But me as somebody who almost certainly does It just makes the review less useful and then um, of course, so Mechanically in horror games and this is something frictional talked about now. This is when I had massive respect for long So I was fascinated by all the design choices. Um Talk about like how death is fucking annoying in video game for horror games as developers because whenever a player dies The tension is like the elastic band snapped and now you've got to try and reform it and start stretching it again Uh, you never want it to snap you want to keep pulling and pulling and pulling and then you know release And then pull a pull a pull release. That's what they want highs lows highs lows never Uh snap they don't want you to die But they understand that that's like an inevitability Um, obviously in soma you get one chance and then you die The one chance is to desperately try and contextualize How you like, you know, the the creature hit you down Simon, uh, you know, whatever his electronics like stuttered and he's He's inactive on the floor and then the creature doesn't sense anything anymore. So it just walks off That's what it tries to make happen similar to the dark descent with daniel Exactly because the frictionals goal is to try and best keep you But you know like mario kart falling off the track and like in the newer versions They'll have a guy grab you almost straight away and get you back on the track It feels a lot better as a player because you the interruption isn't as bad as like a black screen and then slowly, you know dropping down and going again, it's like Whoa back on let's go keep the race going It's kind of like that with the stream of horror because looking at menus and looking at black screens and game overs Is is something that can hurt the immersion of horror the developers understand that the players understand that it's a whole thing Unfortunately, they are video games. You need to have a factor of losing You have to they has to be Some way sort of fail state in some degree something you're trying to have not happen And so yeah, they uh, but of course there's a version of soma where there are no monsters And so I guess that's the best way to Not have to worry about ever reaching a loss But again, there's so many reasons why that breaks a lot of what I believe is important about soma In any case what i'm trying to get at is it is infinitely frustrating to me that they have implemented this system with the specific goal of trying to address the problem that joseph anson has an issue with And he's just there whining about how they haven't solved it an unsolvable problem that they've not solved Exactly, but something that you wouldn't know of this is the only video that you'd seen and you hadn't seen as one on horror games I mean, I don't even think you need to see Oh, sorry, what I was thinking of is you wouldn't even need to see anymore Like context to understand what they're doing with how that you don't reach a game over in the first hit But the second hit but he hasn't seemed to accept that he's like lumped it in as the same thing Remember because he said like you get knocked over and get back up even if you hit a game over Like he hasn't even seen a difference. He doesn't understand why he was even put in It's like it's obviously to try and maintain that immersion to try and help you up even though you failed Yeah, that that don't want that don't want breaks at all of like oh, yeah, it's game over It is game over, you know and now you need to restart when you get hit and then you get hit again Frictional like okay. I'm sorry. You fucked up too much. That's a game Like we can't like we can't keep bailing you out I mean in a way joseph's right You do need to engage with a game to some degree on its level like all games For instance, you might want to try and like you want to avoid losing the game You want to like try and just like the base level of working with the experience Self-nudges you toward this realization because at first the gameplay in some ways basically hide and seek You don't have any weapons or tools or anything to use against the monsters I'm not saying the game and that's bad No tools use against the monsters, but you can distract them by throwing objects That's right. That's got to count for something You're not utterly helpless To fight them, but there's nothing else to do with them except hide at the beginning But you can the construct especially can be distracted and I feel like that's not getting mentioned and it should be And even if all you could do was hide and run away from them. I'm like, all right. Yeah, it's gameplay Bad is uh wrong. He's described cat and mouse dismissively even though that is a archetypal form of like Game Cat and mouse it's there's nothing inherently wrong with cat and mouse Later on the game adds a couple of mechanics It really pushed you to learning that the enemies are simple ai constructs in video game terms now not story ones No in story 2 Function very simply Oh, I thought he was gonna be like a point of price, but never mind. I know All right, never mind that you often manipulate or toy with in order to proceed Okay, like noise to lure the shambling thing to a spot so you can get past or lure it to a circular hallway So you can run around it and through the coming from stealth games to walking It shows you that you're actually faster than most of the robots So even if you are spotted chances are you can still get away No, this speed goes from like 0.5 of yours to 0.7 to 1 to 1.2 to 1.5 like they will be faster than you I get to the point that you can't just outrun them And also, I mean like if he wants to if he wants to say that these things are problems or whatever You certainly can but just you're just destroying the stealth genre like there's no good You're right because he basically just described what is but he did it in a way that sounded critical Yeah, I don't really understand what the actual problem is you just You just described really basic mechanics for these kinds of games Which again is fine if you want to do that you haven't actually Explained why they're bad or anything. You just you just said they were bad And these are kind of like standard sorts of things that people Seem to typically enjoy and they work really well. So I I don't really know what's going on here Um, but all right, I suppose Stairs into roaming inconveniences rather than scares because they're not a threat They're not interesting. They're getting in the way of the good. They're not interesting They're not you see the monsters. They're not interesting The monsters are getting in the way of the story you see There's so much here that I hate so it's like They're not they're not a threat like okay So that's just objectively not true Like they are a threat They are of course a threat in the sense that they will take your life from you and send you back in however much time But if your point is well, no Because I just come back anyway, so they're not even a threat It'd be like your logic is insane And no other game can pass like the something isn't a threat to me if I can respawn So permadeath game is the only ones that pass this test cool like actual permadeath Yeah, like you play the game you die You can't play the game anymore and then they're not interesting when you come across that girl in uh Omicron who you need to get the battery from behind her pretty sure she's just sitting down and crying or she's standing and crying Um, she's just covered in metal. She's got the like I said as we mentioned It's like a worker who's been infected by all of this. She's possibly the most Maybe You know human looking that that's that's got that amount of metal on it And the fact that you can still hear human noises is coming from it So it's like there's nothing interesting to you about that nothing at all Okay, what about this very much droid century looking machine having a human voice coming from it Is that not interesting to you at all? Okay What what am I supposed to do about this? What if I find it interesting what happens then joseph? Am I supposed to just be like well, I should have known better Yeah, I guess I was wrong. It isn't interesting at all actually. Thanks joseph Instead two examples of the blind monster about halfway through the game That is in a dark room with a lot of stuff on the floor the challenge here is to not trip over any of it So you don't make a noise. That's it really slow and boring if you make them. Okay. Okay at this point You're just being a dick. I mean, I don't know what to say like I that's it. All you have to do is Engage in this incredibly tense cat and mouse Scenario where it uses its ears to hear you And there's a bunch of traps on the floor that will bring it your way like I Like what what more does it need? I want you to fucking tell me what more this scenario needs for it to not suck in your mind There's a great sequence in the game if he presented an alternative What would he add on top to make it better? What is it lacking that it needs to have to where it meets your standards of being okay? It was about um, I don't know if it's like a half hour ago or whatever But I was talking about this this specific room and experience This is one of the most I was terrified in the game when I first ever streamed it And yeah, this was scary as fuck. Like I said, I I hadn't seen the creature I knew it was there. I could hear it moving around and I knew that any wrong move and it's gonna It's that shit where like you make a sound Move a thing drop a thing whatever and when you hear the consistent, you know Plet plet plet somewhere around and then you make a noise and it goes plet And stops you're like, oh shit Like It's fucking the scary but like no, he's just like the way he just did this was like Yeah, there's this game where you get one of several shapes and you have to put them down One by one and make a line That's it He's like, yeah Is that bad? Why did you just describe tetris? What's happening? It's like, yeah. Well, fuck you. I don't know What's the pack bad? You just sort of just go up down left right collecting little bowls That's it Like a lot of these concepts can work joe. So if you need to tell us more, why doesn't it work? Mistake you can usually run away and hide again to reset the monster Even if you don't you get to try again immediately if you're killed So again, it's just coming back to the he wants you to have permadeath in soma, I guess So this is you imagine that for checkpoints and other games to be very far away from the fight in which you Or is it a dramatic punishment if you have to retread Substantial portions of the game to get back and what's gonna happen then all the other reviewers would say this game is retarded It doesn't have checkpoints. Yeah, all of them would be like I died I have to replay things that I already completed that aren't challenging. That's just me exploring terrain I have to do all that again Yeah, that's right because if because if you die if you lose to this monster and he gets you And you have to go back 30 minutes Well, I bet it'll be a hell of a lot more tense when you're fighting the monster because you know that if you fucking gets you You gotta go through the same Imagine I was as spicy as the um the pillar of garbage guy and I made a video responding to this and called it joe's fantasy lied to you I mean so far I still wouldn't call it that it'll depend on what else he's got it here Because I've completely forgotten you stretch in the line in a few places the whole robot and doesn't scary the But yeah, it's it's pretty it's pretty fucking bad This is pretty bad or how about the flasher monster that goes berserk and kills you if you either get too close Or if you look at it eye contact sets it off. So you're supposed to look away or down at the floor It's like the opposite of scp 173 or the booze in super mario world There's a part where one of the things is roaming between rooms and blocking your path Oh, it was just a hard thing. He said okay. It was just he just said this isn't like these other things Moving on But is was that a criticism? Was that wrong? Just to help us understand it It looks like he's about to say that he hates it. Yeah, we'll roll him back I want to be able to stare at the thing that's trying to kill me like all right 173 or the booze in super mario world There's a part where one of the things is roaming between rooms and blocking your path I got so tired of waiting for its slow movement that I just went crab walking right in there with it Making sure to face away while I bumped into walls and things before making it to the other side Because the game had taught me that this thing just appearing means stop and look away And then do nothing until it passes not scary Um, i'm pretty sure catherine says to you explicitly more than twice Just don't look at it. That's the key with this one. I think so. I think so The idea that he's saying like I've pretty much broken the game because I can just move around while not looking at it It's like that's kind of intentional. That's what Catherine says tedious instead okay Yeah, but I've heard what you've called tedious in the server room you've called that tedious So I don't fucking care what your opinion is on what isn't isn't tedious. It's it's literally worthless. I need more This is nothing At the end here, you're also forced into an encounter with the thing that has the intended solution of running away Canonically proving that simon is faster than them canonically Not even necessarily. What do you even mean by that? Like they're all different anyway. This one. Yeah, you can run to the The like submissible or whatever. It seems like he's implying what was never a threat anyway because he could outrun it's like Well, sure, but being able to outrun it physically doesn't mean anything if you don't know where you're going What if you run into a room and it's a dead end doesn't matter how far she ran Yeah, and what if there's more than one unit? Yeah, exactly What does it mean? What a weird thing to say Like you're saying canonically simons faster So there was really no reason to be scared at all because you could always outrun it as though Simply being able to outrun the monster is the only parameter for success. I mean that's wild It means that it's it's basically impossible It could scare you because you can always run faster than it Never mind that you don't know where you're going and that you could run into a place that's a dead end And then get caught. It's like he's implying it's impossible for it to be a threat. What a stupid thing to do We have disqualified like the vast majority of enemies in video games that can't catch up to your character Good old leon. He can outrun all the zombies at fucking zombies. Yeah, I think there's all right zombies in general Yeah, I think everything except the cameos are are gonna be able to that they're slower than you I think I think you As a whole they're all slower than you most video game enemies are slower than you like that's typically not work Yeah, that's that's legitimately fucking bizarre that Like he's just discounted like 95 Why did he say it like that? Simon is canonically faster The ship is exploding at this point So there's plenty of in-universe justification for why this creature has trouble catching up with you at this point You know, I mean like what this feels like nitpicking, but it's not even valid This is being in horror games is not a problem unique to soma it's a topic I'd like to explore in a future video because I think oh there it is For some compelling experiences that couldn't be reproduced in other medium I don't want you to have any influence on the state of horror. Please Please do not I don't I hope that no dev in the right mind is ever fucking thanks to you To people like Joseph Anderson soma, which was a wonderful step in the right direction got completely back-stepped. It was like And then uh, you got amnesia rebirth, which is a shit tier video game that has no virtually no value whatsoever And I wouldn't recommend it to my worst one. I would go as far as saying I assume you guys probably agree with this, but that it's it's less remember than soma already Absolutely. No one remembers rebirth. No, and it's an enormous amount for that long like Certainly not compared to soma. So it's just like, yeah, that's the legacy of that one flushed down the toilet. No one cares. Um What a sad state of affairs meanwhile soma I feel over time like honestly with every year the past is just more and more people Being told to play it more, you know, it's just slowly crawling along being like appreciated That's nice, but it is a glaring flaw in soma that no from beginning to a glaring flaw beginning to end the fact you can respawn No, no Suck successful with its jump scares, which aren't that common nor are they that terrifying which is probably a good Also been like all this is just a narrative In borderlands 2 if you die, you just your body just gets reassembled in a little machine And it's like, oh you died, but you're we made a copy of you. Thanks for buying our copy machine thing And like so borderlands can't be tense. There's nothing exciting in borderlands. I guess there's no fear of failure because Narratively you just your body just gets rebuilt when you die. It's just so funny because if that was real life If we all when getting shot through the head Reassemble in something like do you think that just takes the fear and tension out of being shot in the head? It's it's what a why isn't the nature of stakes stemming only from death Like there's other stakes that you could have that don't involve death I don't know. Maybe I don't know. It's it's just fucking bizarre. It's like I'm it's like he's not even a human I don't know if this seems a little too low scale, but I think it's important to mention It's like what about discomfort not even like crazy levels But you know when you wake up from the the vision you're sort of having or the Dreamscape that you're in like when when you're in the wall of meat and you're pulling your arms out of it It's like that's fucking gross. It's like, yeah, but you know, you're not you're not dying. It's like, okay I still I'm uncomfortable Like I am it's like why it's a video game. Why you could just re-sport if you die like this doesn't address anything I'm thinking about but okay Here's our cheap and have a misleading name. They're more like jump startles since that's all they're good for And some of these are sudden loud noises things breaking apart abrupt crashes that sort of thing They're the most effective part about assault on your senses that I mentioned earlier For the other times you're it's just amazing to me because somo is one of the most reserved games in history for jump scares I think it shows a remarkable amount of restraint, especially I guess now. I haven't played amnesia rebirth, but best of all I've heard about fear flashes It's fucking Wasn't the idea with fear flashes that basically regardless of the context it would just occasionally just go It'll be like one one per watt, right? It's like 30 seconds. It just jumpscares you It'll be oh more than that So the longer that you're the more afraid your character is which is influenced by a number of things But the more afraid you are the more it flashes So if you're in the dark or if there's a spooky boy nearby or something like that Then you get the little fear flash which just pops up in front of your screen and it's oh, it's a spooky face Uh, my goodness. That was so startling and it can be obnoxiously intermittent Uh, it it's it's a it's the kind of thing the one that they introduced It sucks every player all over the world was like you want me like the No way Even outlast had the fucking dignity to hide that behind a bunch of big scary men grabbing you and yelling in your face Okay, at least there's an animation at least there's an implication in world of something happening They don't just tell you sorry. This is the jump scare mechanic. It will activate every 10 seconds. They're like, okay That's great your screen starts to fizzle in warning when you're in danger This warning that something was nearby became a trigger for me to be annoyed rather than frightened It was an announcement that one part of the game was over and that it was now monster time. Oh, I remember this It's deliciously ironic. So There's a couple layers to this and this this is what sprouted like my whole If sitch and adam have laws, I think my law was um The the video assayist will always use a visual that disproves their point and this is one of the most beautiful ones ever I was what I was thinking and there is no monster during this entire. Well, let me uh Let pop them all I'll give you a whole bunch of context. Okay, so this is called the patchwork man Uh, he was originally designed to be an enemy in soma monster. Yeah, that's right He had a section. It was all in the game files. You can find all this but they didn't have enough time So they dropped him here when you activate the power in this sector you come back here and he's gone That's supposed to be a bit of a like. Oh, shit. Where is he now? But you don't see it like legitimately fucking freaky because you don't know if you'll see him again And even if you don't what you don't um The fact that you like oh He got up and he left this thing whatever is around shambling corpse is around here He got up and it's alive And what is his experience when with all of the the living things that you've encountered so far in the game Have disparate perceptions of reality. What is his reality? So Going back if you just listen again in danger This warning that something was nearby became a trigger for me to be annoyed rather than frightened It was an announcement that one part of the game was over and that it was now monster time So that's true Joseph that would be annoying if if every time the aberrations came up that that was automatic like every time is a guaranteed monster encounter Because it's like well I guess it's monster time Even though I think I'd still try and defend a system like that somewhat Because I'd be like this still benefits to it, but um I mean combat music is basically what this is and pretty much all of their video games He uh, it's weird that he would use this visual because he would know from playing the game He never encountered an enemy that looked like this. He never fought this man. This is not This is not a thing So him using this to illustrate that whenever this stuff comes on screen It's time to fight or run with a visual where you don't have to fight or run you instead continue exploring Is just retarded on its own But then secondly it completely disproves his whole point his whole criticism of soma there He says the problem with the system is that it always told him when it was time to fight or run Even though that's not true at all It would have this happen and for any you would know this from playing it recently that comes up a lot That it does like When there's like often when there's like a big wow kind of like overgrowth in an area or just start flashing I would argue it comes up more Than it does for combat encounters Yeah, like I never I never gathered that it was a thing that was telling me combat time It was just this is an effect whenever I'm near something that's like really wow You know, I mean he's just he's just completely wrong for the other times your screen starts to fizzle in warning when you're in danger This warning remember it's all subjective. So it doesn't matter And that something was nearby so it doesn't matter that this is just like a fault like this is just wrong It's not only this I mean it's not only wrong It's interesting as to how exactly it's wrong in terms of what they were designing here And what they did for a lack of time that they had but then it's also super wrong As a visual to use for his video and he should know that he'd never fought anything here He never ran any way from anything here. Why is he saying this like what are you doing? Just relying on your um audience not knowing what the context is of the scene that you're presenting because you are You can go with this was what you were saying with Mola's lore, right? Where they were a video sss footage the contradicts their point And I mean you've been on eFap the amount of times this happens is absolutely fucking insane that they will have a visual That directly contradicts the thing they're saying it's like wow Why don't know um, but obviously this one is particularly strong because it's the complete opposite of what he said and he should know that Wait, I mean he didn't play the game. So yeah announcement that one part of the game was over allegedly now monster time Soma is split quite artificially like that You rotate between a clumped together experience of puzzles exploration and story and then over to monster hide and seek So yeah, I don't know what to do with this like when I was playing the game the first time The border between these sections was not clear as I was playing the game Yeah, I could speedrun soma at this point knowing where I have to be careful and knowing where I don't But obviously I've played it like 17 times now So the interesting comparison though is he just said there's a strict border between monster encounters and then exploration and You know sort out stations or whatever. It's like No, there is uh several encounters like the one that's on screen right now Where your exploration and monster encounter are happening at the same time You've got to get around here and find the battery Yep Really weird that he said this the construct Even the first part of the game remember with the with the robot In uh in good old up salon Um, depending on whether or not what you do with call right and which one that'd be the construct. Yeah creates Yeah, sorry. Sorry. I didn't write. Yeah, like that's that's another instance. You have to access the the panel unlock the doors while it's roaming in the room So Exactly he's just wrong again Yep How is this not just another way of saying when there's a spooky monster trying to kill me? Uh the vibe changes Well, so that's that's actually hitting on another thing if he was right Which is not is there a problem that we have the sections where you explore and the sections where you deal with monsters are like There's some level of a border between them That's a big conversation to be had it's kind of the thing where he's saying it annoyed me that this was a signal That I needed to change my approach Maybe that's a good thing That might be a good thing. It depends It's contextual how much a game ought to communicate to you about the mode of play that you're in now Like is it a problem when you're playing uncharted and you beat the area where all of the bad guys are? The when Nate just starts like walking and he's not running anymore that the game is can convey to you clearly Combat's over. Yeah, your music start You're safe. You can move around freely. Is that a bad thing? A lot a lot of people would say that's a good thing because Communication of the expectations that you should bring to this experience If I said like dead spaces atmosphere is destroyed every time I talk to any of the NPCs because I'm automatically safe That's just That's just you know, combat's over. Scary time over ruins the whole game. Yeah Is it a problem that resident evil has safe rooms that are safe when the music plays when you see that typewriter? You're safe. You are safe. A lot of people would point to that I know that this is the case especially with how uh Oddly calming but foreboding the music often is in the save rooms that there's a palpable sense of relief of I'm safe. I am safe Nothing can get me here. This is a place where I can relax You know, it's it's complicated Like I said, uh, if you lack and white Sort of thing if you want to go to the direction of something like they wanted to make it seamless and the borders are Utterly clear and they failed at doing that whatever like maybe maybe you can make that argument But again soma is it does them at the same time and one of the best examples is the one he's showing right now So I don't understand why you put this on screen as well Yep Most of the puzzles are okay. Some are too simple If you feel like you're actually messing with computer menus instead of playing a game And there's one puzzle which stands out to me as one of the best moments in soma Exploring is engaging as long as you like that sort of thing in games more walking and looking parts with things to find that you read That's what exploring fucking is But I want you to define exploring that isn't walking and looking at things Like you knocked out the two main parts of exploring walking and looking That's lewis and clark walked and looked until they got to the ocean and then they walked and looked the way back Like that's what they did and Like i'm not trying to devalue it. That's just what it is. That's what exploring is. It's walking around looking at things It's also uh, it felt dismissive when it's like it's one of the most valuable things about soma compared to a lot of games of Similar kind it nails the walk around and soak in the world because there's everything to take advantage of Yeah, it's a really good-looking environment very very immersive Loads of stories everywhere you can find out about Yeah, as long as he lets us know what it lacks that it needs then we should be okay So any moment when he wants to get around to that i'm all for it Listen to you or inspect for yourself. There's not an immense amount of environmental storytelling here. What? It's almost it's almost the best one. Like soma It's almost like my pick for environmental storytelling I don't know one that is better and like Like may I'd have to sit down and there are there are others There may be others that I would pick over soma as well But like there there are a lot of bio shock is another good example of a game with plenty of environmental storytelling I just oh god, it hurts listen to this because soma's so fucking good at it. It's like what i'm sorry What why did you just say that what's happening? Let's uh, let's get it full Do you like that sort of thing in games more walking and looking parts with things to find that you can read listen to Or inspect for yourself There's not an immense amount of environmental storytelling here. Although occasionally the game does do a good job of it Especially occasionally it does a good job Oh my man, okay, some of the later sites where the corpse is left around It's the story told more directly with simon and another character you meet that succeeds more than anything else here So man like I feel like you can't I feel like it's so sad All those stories that you get to find out about This one's annoying the division of gameplay and story when a game that is strong with environmental storytelling that line is really blurry There's a huge amount to just be picked up from looking around reading logs reading notes and everything and just like paying attention to the landscape When what what's in again? We talk about e-fap's law the the visuals contradict what is being said by the video essayist Do you ever you ever wonder why how come everyone's heads are missing? That's weird everyone's heads are just gone What's up with that if only through environmental storytelling we could figure out the tale Well, I think that was his example of it being good, but everywhere else. It's not Good that's great. Like he said at times. It's pretty good. It's just like Okay, I mean Brandon's story You know Brandon's story a lot of that is to be gleamed from the environment Dude the um the sort of medical part of that area where it's uh this the The area for like the surgery or whatever and then it's just a big pool of blood and then a blood smear that goes all the way out the door And it's like what is that? It's like well that's acres Yeah, and then you can find the uh the the transcript or the recorder for his surgery It's like I don't I just don't buy this. I think it's so fucking wrong and you start to wonder like How much did you actually? You know absorb Do you think it's bad because you got it all and you were like, yeah, man It's not that impressive or did you miss a lot of it? I do wonder that now with us being confused about how we travel through time from present day Toronto to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean in 2104 You didn't things come weirder before you're given an answer Yeah, you didn't actually travel through time. No character that isn't a memory trapped in the panels around you There's this strange mix of mechanical and organic growth that might make you think about the first robot that went nuts And ripped itself free at the beginning leaving a trail of what we can call blood behind it that structure yell You discovered that this part of pathos 2 is used to generate power You make contact with someone named Catherine who is in another part of the facility and is seemingly safe and detached from whatever catastrophe occurred here What's happening? Hello, is there anyone there? You bring the power back online and guided by Catherine have your first solid goal to reach a communication center So you can better speak with her a few things happen here that are important first Just so you can understand the context of what I showed earlier This is where you meet your first robot enemy the shuffling thing with a spotlight Which is a reasonably clever way of letting the player know that you want to stay out of sight Or out of the light in this case I thought you said that you was thought it was so cool You ran right up to it and it killed you because It's so cool. The spotlight is a really good idea though. I'll let you know to avoid it Oh, no, the design is great because it lets you know to avoid it The design sucks because I think it's cool and I want to run up to him I don't know which brand and will we get in the next sentence? It's so exciting Which brand of all the edge of my seat Oh is Joseph Brandon and this guy is whoever this loser is Ace This was the robot that I ran right up to get a better look at and really feel sorry for this thing It seems so pathetic. Oh my god, but I thought they were interesting Joseph They weren't interesting and I thought but the spotlight lets you know to stay clear But the first thing you did was run up to it and I don't I don't there's too many contradictions I don't know what you're trying to tell me because your sentence is contradict Just tell me how you feel and be honest Help me joseph. You're my only hope for distanding you Static and incapable of doing anything really. It's like the e or crazy killer robot monsters You lock it away when you reach the next air So like he's saying that almost to be critical, but like that is what it is in universe It is that awkward looking creature that can barely walk properly and it gets angry and it sees you and rams you It's so interesting that all he does is describe all of the things about it that make sense in a good But that's like criticism. It's really cool how it looks And it's really cool that it's conveyed very clearly that you need to avoid it because of the flashlight But you know, it's pretty fucking lame, you know all things considered Well, yeah, you've almost undersold it right because he just he's identified so much of what friction we're trying to get him to identify It is a sympathetic creature to look at especially when you understand more of the context surrounding it It does look like it's awkward It's barely able to walk properly You are supposed to stay away from it, but at the same time be curious about what it is These are all things that frictional wanted you to think and these things by the way would definitely come under the umbrella of interesting It's not an apathetic gray blob that you don't understand and don't care about like what why Why are we pretending that it is? He's talked about it this much his evidence of how much he cared to talk about it, you know Wanders around hopeless for a while, I guess hopeless There's another robot here that's friendly. That was a weird thing that was a weird visual The strange thing about this one though is that it doesn't know it's a robot. That is strange I don't even say it's interesting It thinks it's a human that can't get up because it's injured and it can't be convinced otherwise No matter how many times I find it interesting that he keeps saying it it because whenever I talk about all of these guys I I refer to them with like pronouns like human pronouns. Yeah, you know, yeah This part is great for two reasons the first is that it's unusual enough to get you wondering about what's going on It's also a little creepy parts of the story in this game are much more horrific than any of the monsters in my opinion One of the biggest Scary That is the game that is a part of the game Be like game ain't scary, but some of the stuff in the game is scary More horrific even More horrific. Yeah. Oh, yeah, I mean Other reason this interaction is great is that it will likely make a lot of players think How could this guy not realize that he's a robot? How can he not tell because there's a revelation shortly after this that tells you what the exact same situation That was just possible This is insane Let's address that directly now. How the hell does the game explain how you go from this to this So in the hundred or so years that pass after simon's first brain scan this technology that the doctor and training is testing becomes the foundation for many advancements Among those are artificial intelligence Although far from what you typically see in science fiction and the ability to copy and paste the consciousness from one source to another And that distinction is really important. It's not cut and paste. It's copy and paste so I find this really interesting that he points this out because Even when you've explained this there's still a lot to unpack when you cut and paste Maybe there's that you're copying and deleting, you know, like how do you want to square it away? You know, uh Epistemologically, what's the what's the fucking word? No, it's it Yeah, yeah, like when you're trying to you know what I mean So it's interesting that he because I imagine that I I presume that we're going somewhere with this We'll see hope so Because simon scan was collected in the early experimental phase It's been used and iterated upon many times Which is one of the many subtle details that becomes terrifying when you think about it after finishing the game What do you mean? That doesn't get counted as part of the game, I guess Okay, that's weird That's a weird thing for a video game reviewer to do to like not Bundle it all to you know what I mean like make these weird segments of of what the game is when it's all part of the complete experience Stored and copied consciousness is still relevant because he was involved so soon in the project He's kept under a legacy section here A lot has happened in these hundred years and this is the beginning of what I think is one of soma's greatest strengths It's not just about one thing or one specific idea that's being popularized in science fiction It's not just an underwater research facility. It also deals with the idea of what makes a consciousness or even a soul I'm sorry that the script there hurt me. It's not just about being an underwater Station. It also deals with human consciousness. It's like wait wait It's it's such a weird it's weird way of framing it to me the fact that it was an underwater station It's just like that's where we are like that's not really that important compared to what's happening in the station Yeah, yeah, that's what it is Well and how that might cause problems if it's placed into the wrong sort of body It's not just about a central ai that goes functionally crazy. There's this infected plagued version of technology That's constricting and consuming everything throughout the facility like a cancer And on top of this this isn't just a grim dark future that simon wakes up in it's also a post apocalyptic one It's not grim dark. It's also a major A Comet has crashed into earth and wiped out all life on the surface You discover this in pieces reading on terminals mostly about how the efforts to deflect the comet failed That the underwater facility was protected from the impact, but now they're stranded and lost at the bottom of the atlantic The facility is more or less self-sufficient, but more or less isn't exactly uplifting when the rest of the species just got incinerated I really like this amalgamation of science fiction plot devices And that in a way you play as one a walking talking one is simon A copy of his consciousness is places in the body that you inhabit here Because the ai on pathos 2 the warden unit that they unfortunately call the wow has taken What's unfortunate about that Is he going the direction of that sounds like saying w o w I mean it does sound like saying w o w. I figured that that was intentional well, there's also like When you consider a lot of the naming conventions for other things like tau Like it's not seen as to w rather ta u is a known and understood sort of It's you understand what i'm saying like it doesn't come across as wow To a lot of people it sounds like the kind of yeah, no one even pronounces it like that And plus this is just something that humans do humans just do this they name things We know i mean it acronyms sound similar to things that we you know have heard about before Yeah, i'm fine with it being called the wow like I don't think of that problem with it Like I said, I figured it was called the wow specifically to invoke or in a certain sense Like wow, but not it not a good. Wow, you know like kind of a kind of a scary wow It upon itself to preserve all human life whatever form that might take in response to armageddon Like I said, this ai isn't really one that's seen in a lot of movies and games It doesn't speak or think really so ai might not strictly be the best word for it It can Do If you don't hear it speak it definitely thinks It definitely thinks it has an objective comes to the conclusion that the wow is a kind of consciousness It's just that it's a very foreign I think they said when the the comet landed the wow went offline for like a week or some some some selection of time and that they They concluded that what it was doing was basically Thinking it was re it was reassembling all of his protocols Yeah, like trying to figure out what it was supposed to do and then of course there's what it did at uh Was it theta or omicron? We're blew up all the heads You can't tell me that it wasn't that was a thought it had and it decided to act on it But it's still following directives that limit what it can do It's just sort of twisted its interpretation of them in response to the world ending You don't let me die Nothing is allowed to die This might not be all that comprehensible yet because i'm avoiding one part of the story until we reach the next area and meet Catherine despite all these different plot points and details about the setting at a focus level Soma is all about exploring the idea of what it means to be human and the unsettling implications that human might not be The most important word that defines us Soma brilliantly sets up the player to be open to the idea of consciousness being more important than a body in three ways The first is that confused robot that we saw earlier. The second is simon's perception of actually correcting itself and realizing that he's Not a vitamin body and the third is catherine. Isn't it fascinating though that he's called Catherine by her name He's easily willing to call Catherine Catherine simon simon, but he's not willing to call carl carl Which Yeah, that's just interesting, you know Especially when he talks about you know, the point that soma's making is it's really the consciousness that's relevant You know this robot for instance this it's Like it believes itself to be conscious and a person Perfectly normal sounding human woman that you want to meet another person that can help you and speak to you and work with You who will have answers and can explain what's going on and then you meet her and she's another broken robot stuck on the floor There you are afraid in everything No, not you too I was really hoping you were human This time it's different though. Catherine knows what she is and she doesn't seem to care all that much She understands what's happening and has accepted it and the lead up to this conversation Where it's properly revealed that simon isn't the same simon we started with is really great in my eyes Have you looked at yourself lately? You're a walking talking diving suit with some electronics left on for good measure You don't want to think about it. We'll start thinking about it The robot thought he was human you and simon both thought you were human You thought catherine was human and this eases you into concluding that maybe you weren't wrong The human body might not be there, but it's still a person. They're still alive still a consciousness You treated catherine like a person before you saw her just like you think i'm human Even though i'm only a voice coming through youtube right now But this is all very straightforward and Yes, this is this is some of the things that soma is indeed about and trying to do Is the body really that important? And that's the framework needed to understand the true horror lurking in soma Please stop, but it's not scary, but but you can't say these things. I can't keep saying that I have to say this is not a scary game like i just said True horror of soma but not horror game Catherine are we alive? The final piece here is the player's goal, which is also not so neatly intertwined with a lot of the other things We just spoke about Before she was stuffed into a robot Catherine was leading the only project that had given survivors on pathos to any sense of hope or purpose She didn't start it for that reason But it became the only thing keeping most of the last humans going and their bleak isolated life in the water that kept them safe from the fires on the surface This is another science fiction idea that's been used before Catherine was working on a simulated reality that could be populated by scanned versions of the surviving humans It could be a second world for them to inhabit and live on An arc that would be a backup plan if the people in pathos 2 were to die taking what was left of the human race with them This arc was to be launched into space with the intended purpose of flying on forever powered by solar batteries This was a romantic enough idea to get the survivors working toward completing the goal with some taking to it far more obsessively than others The tragedy here and what functions is the second important trigger for simon to be brought into soma's main plot is an important detail I mentioned earlier these brain scans are copy and paste not cut and paste There's a good comic by womp that represents this fairly well It's a common enough idea that's been explored in hypotheticals about being uploaded to a robot body I'm gonna look at the comic now All right, uh, yeah I'm ready to start my new life as a computer brain mind guy. Well, what we do is upload your brain structure to the servers That's what I just said now make with the immortality. All right, we're all done Wait, why am I still here? It's just the virtual world now. I'm afraid not. There's your duplicate mind experiencing virtual earth Which it'll do for the foreseeable future of humanity But doesn't that mean there are two of me? How does that and then there's a spooky lady That's gonna kill him or guy All right, okay, right. So yeah, I mean that's yeah, I mean that's more or less Yeah Well, it's a common enough idea that's being explored in hypotheticals about being uploaded to a robot body Or some virtual utopia even about teleporting or some people say that even if you go to sleep your consciousness breaks And it's a different person that wakes up The issue starts here Some people on pathos 2 clearly disturbed by the comet's impact Started thinking about the arc project as a way out. Some didn't understand the difference between cut and copy Others did but convinced themselves that if they were to die shortly after the transfer was made That they would functionally be transferred into the next world instead of being left behind when their new copy lives on This doesn't make a whole lot of sense But considering the situation these people were in and that the idea of what comprises a consciousness isn't fully accepted You can sort of understand where they're coming from No, it's not that you sort of it's No, I I think it follows like people people don't agree or people don't agree on these things You know, like the nature of consciousness or the continuity of consciousness or even the existence of the soul and things like that I got absolutely you get to read some people a lot about the people here and why they thought what they thought and the the you know plenty of the Like Catherine and others were trying to tell them how it works or at least try to warn them against the decisions They were making but some of them would be like, oh, yeah, no, it's insane. I'd never do that and then they do it Like a lot of and yeah, the only thing you need is that they they were in a Station that is slowly dying and the whole world has been destroyed And as far as they know and understand the only real hope they have is moving to the ark And the only thing that could even come close to doing that is to get scanned and then kill yourself Yeah, even though like, you know Actually coming to the conclusion that that would put you You as a continuation on there rather than the copy of you Again, it's it's complicated these sorts of subjects. People don't agree on these things So I'm not sure why he's saying it's like, uh, you know, it doesn't really make much sense But like I sort of get it's like no, I mean I understand it in terms of like a narrative As like a thing that happened in the narrative people people don't You know what I mean like people people disagree on these things Static at least Conrad killed himself after the scan Jesus, how Um laser tool, what should I do? So after Catherine scans a lot of people and a handful of them kill themselves because they think it'll make them get transferred into the ark This causes the wow to freak out. Its directives are to prevent what little human life is left and now they're killing themselves Now some of these details aren't explicitly General ideas The wow recognizes both traditional human life and the copy. Uh, I don't know. I feel like he might be wrong on that The wow was doing what he's talking about Uh Before they started killing themselves Um, the wow begins its project like instantly like once the it's back online after the apocalypse It starts scanning people without their permission or consent Yeah, and it's like why is it doing that? It's like it's collecting people to start putting them into the creatures It'll start constructing like it's just gonna start It's the whole process. See uh Ross has those images of the alpha core And it's like over the over days. It's getting huge and huge and huge just going out of control It's using all the structure gel to just take over Um, this has nothing to do with them killing themselves on Omicron at least no that that was all about the project coming to an end That yeah, it was so they would kill themselves on I don't I don't remember any logs about how when they started killing themselves The the wow started going crazy No, I don't remember that at all scans a lot of people and a handful of them kill themselves because they think it'll make them get Transferred into the arc this causes the wow to freak out Its directives are to prevent what little human life is left and now they're killing themselves Yeah, this wouldn't make sense Because the wow wouldn't want to just explode everyone's heads essentially it would Find an alternative way to preserve their lives um Probably but Well, um, the main the main reason it freaked out is because of the mass death of humanity on earth that was That's what changed his parameters the uh, the head exploding ones. That's all the black boxes. It killed them all because There was that one lady was working with um Or somewhat with Ross. I can't remember if she knew Uh issues directly with them, but she knew she had to get the infected Structure gel into the core that was her goal. She got into the power suit and the The wow freaked out and blew up everybody's black boxes to prevent that from happening And of course even without their heads the wow can then attach as it did with um image and read This the the eyes and the shit and then and what i'm trying to get at is that the wow created Simon with an almost headless woman So like it's it can still work with the bodies that are left behind is what i'm saying Now some of these details aren't explicitly clear But the general idea is that the wow recognizes both traditional human life and the copied versions on virtual space as worth protecting I think it's also implied that it eventually decides that the computerized versions of people are worth even more since they're easier to Protect and maintain the virtual copies can't hurt the original versions, but the physical humans sure can destroy the computer ones I think we're safe I was so worried something had gone wrong So using its influence throughout the facility and structure gel It spreads and ensures that the humans are safe by forcing them to live on in some instances Or by experimenting with different ways to give them better bodies by transferring copied humans into robots Which is why we have people confused about what they are and think they're human or are roaming monsters that have gone crazy These are the wow's successes and failures. Some are better fits to the robot bodies and I think you should say It's the wow's successes only as far as the wow is concerned. These are all life I exist There are no failures here for the wow exactly Others and acclimate better to the change even if it requires the consciousness feeling in the gaps and lying to itself So it can resolve those conflicts Which is why simon saw himself as a person at first just like the injured robot did near the beginning Some of these being Carl Can you call him Carl? These are also twisted by the wow at keeping traditional human bodies alive The structure gel the black blood we saw at the start is like an all-purpose substance that's used to repair or construct things It can mesh robotics with organic matter, which is how the more creative looking monster people came to exist It's important to know that all of this information is given to you I'm sorry. That's how the more creative looking monster people came to exist. What are you trying to imply with that sentiment? The uncreative ones are You know, I mean like that that's how the creative ones exist. Okay When a steady drip through the first two-thirds of the game It's not like you show up here and Catherine says let me tell you the story of my people and then starts blasting techno music She can That was that was a joke Oh No jokes are funny Firms that you're not the same simon But she doesn't know why or how you got into your current body until a few hours later When you learn that you're a mix of both machine and human a fusion of one of the dead people at pathos 2 and a wow experiment It's also why you can access those memories around the facility You're able to intuitively access the last audio file at each location Whether that's a terminal panel or the neural implant every worker had in case they got into trouble in the dangerous environment So far underwater it also explains why your vision tears because it's a malfunctioning camera not eyes What's unfortunate about this journey to each of the different sites at pathos 2 is that everything I just explained is the good stuff and I'll have a few examples to back that up in just the moment It's the interruptions that are bad and it's not just the monsters although they are the biggest problem for reasons I already went into So like the value of the monsters is to make you live and Experience what the wow has created as life which will play heavily into your decisions Yeah, this is why I consider it Something that should not be removed is why I do not like the whole hey you mod soma so that you get all the monsters out of the game I find that crazy And it damages the overall experience. You need to see acres doing all this you need to see the construct doing what he's doing You need to see these creatures living So that you understand what the wow considers living what the wow considers human and whether or not you draw the line for Whether or not these things that should be considered human But if you remove all that it's all gone. It's like yeah, well it annoys me like okay Ironically it feels like frictional was of two minds when they were developing this game There's the half that wanted to craft this really thoughtful slow burning thriller experience So you have some great dialogue exploration with some impressive visuals and pieces of stories to collect and understand With actual answers to almost every question And then you have the other half that wanted an intense experience not just with the monsters But with train car crashes and parts of the facility bursting open and so many loud noises after so much time spent in the quiet How are these not married? Yeah, like it's it's funny how he says yeah, it feels like frictional or two minds and i'm just just like No, not really This all feels very cohesive The train cart thing like going off the rails just like yeah, that's just significant structural damage to the whole facility You're lucky you've got as far as you did This one is we had to this is an emergency ship that kathryn couldn't launch unless the ship was in a state of emergency and she said How the hell isn't it in a state of emergency? It's at the bottom of the ocean It's like yeah, because the wow is uh, you go to go to the control power room And the wow is like set it up so that it's got it's like stabilize the ship You have to unstabilize it and then it explodes and that hits your ship and it knocks it over into um I forget which uh, which the area is but it's the one where you find Where akers has pulled his eyes out Um, you end up there and it's like what that that's not married now. How is that not married? Why are you saying why did he say you have a lot of sequences where it's quiet and then there's loud parts This is clearly a contradiction What Yeah, delta Which is a real shame because it was those quiet moments that I enjoyed the most and they succeeded far more with their own kind of Tension So there's some slight this is kind of exciting intense moments But you bitched about the server room. Well, i'm confused. It's almost like he's implying there isn't That there's not much value to be gained from the uh intense actiony moments But if anything they get in the way But why I don't think you've given us a reason why you just said that they are Lost at the bottom of the ocean Wondering what might be coming next as you drift from one site to another on a platform And another even better version of this when you take the long elevator ride down to a much deeper part of the ocean An event that carries weight because you have to spend time preparing a new body to withstand the pressure when you got much further down And once you reach here, you have the best part of all for an intense experience When you feel like you're so vulnerable in this alien place Exposed as you wander through it hoping you're going the right way And it doesn't resort to any of the jump scares or shoving stuff in your face to achieve that The reason you're going through all of these areas is the goal that simon and kathryn set for themselves To find the ark full of virtual copies of all the humans on the base Upload themselves onto it and then launch it into space This is far more humble than a save the world ending and more in line with making some last ditch Hoke an effort to do something instead of sitting around sulking. They have no other options really Or maybe they do we'll get back to this This was never about certainty It's about hope So as you try to find the ark you go through a series of sections in the game story Exploration hide and seek intense scripted sequence And these keep rolling along until the end of the game with the story having some cool moments The exploration being more enjoyable than in most games the hide and seek parts being always a chore And the scripted sections occasionally being a chore, but mostly not really Okay, there are two things that I want to focus on in soma that I think illustrate how the game uses Interactivity to give the player a unique experience or something close to it Something that I think couldn't really be replicated in a book or film I'm glad you've acknowledged that it feels at odds with other things you said though, but okay Or at least it wouldn't have the same impact All together The first is the game's most compelling puzzle Which like many in the game is presented as more of a problem instead of a screen announcing its puzzle time This is a little over halfway into the game You need a passcode to unlock the way forward and the only people who know what it is are dead Except that kathryn made a copy of almost everyone this part of the facility has her workshop Which is coincidentally where you learn how it is that a copy of your consciousness was available to be put Into a body by the wow when it started trying that wouldn't be a coincidence then Yeah, it's not a coincidence. It's there's a reason to follow those Kath what is this? Why do you have a file of me? You are one of dr. Munchie's templates a legacy scan You collect the necessary components and identify the right person who would know the passcode To create a simulation so you can ask the person for the information Once you grasp the idea, it's pretty straightforward, especially if you've been paying attention as you play the game Which I started the simulation the first time without much thought And it wasn't until it began to run and the guy inside the I find this funny because you understand What's happening here is that it worked perfectly on him the sequence He went in the way frictional one you two which is to not really think about it But gradually start to really think about the horrors of what you're doing Exactly and it got him which like all the sequences are about that all the monsters are about that all the fucking environmental Storytelling is about that. That's what the game is. It's supposed to terrify you with those thoughts Yep, but he somehow managed to say like that was a really good part of a puzzle You're like, okay uh, right The computer was confused and borderline scared that I realized what I had done Or rather, I realized that the solution to this puzzle wasn't that simple And so began many attempts guided by Catherine to create an artificial environment in order to convince this guy that he's safe That he isn't in a simulation after all and that he's relaxed enough to give over the passcode This is twisted enough on its own since it involves tracking down different backgrounds to use to make him more E's and then rating his private quarters for information So Catherine can fake the presence of his girlfriend within the simulation so that he trusts her With a fabricated voice to go along with an equally fake model I think we've got this Simon. I can synthesize Alice's voice from the intercom and use it to impersonate her for the simulation But the real horror of this part snuck up on me slowly with layers that I didn't really grasp until I thought about it hours later The game laid down the foundation for you to accept that each consciousness is a person in its own right If you don't accept this then you can't really resolve anything about you the player character and your actions They hold no meaning no weight and I don't know why you'd even continue playing the game if that was the case If you got to this point then I'd say it's fair that you're buying into this idea The minds and the robots you find might be confused, but they're no less real than yours Just like Catherine is real too the only difference between her and the other robots is that she's sane So each time that you run this simulation You are effectively bringing this person to life a new version each time and then snuffing their existence out permanently when you're done For him this transition from being scanned in the chair to being interrogated Is just as smooth and sudden as your transition from the chair in toronto to the room in pathos 2 And it's so beautifully twisted when you think about it because you can try the simulation as It's funny to me. He spent so much time explaining how meaningful this is Which means he won't be spending that time on the lindwall exchange the one with the girl outside of theta The obviously the choice with you and presumably you and simon two Simon three, I guess I should say yep choices that needed the decision elements Who knows what? But we still got time. Yeah, we've got some time left But I don't know I just it's just interesting. He spent so much time on this Appreciating what it means for the writing, but like there's loads in the game that has this to it As many times as you like until you get it right Hell, I thought giving him a tropical beach background would make him more relaxed to make him think that he was in the arc So he'd be open to speaking and each time I was trying something like that I was both resurrecting a dead person and then killing them again seconds later before doing it again And again chair to scan the simulation every time And the amount of times I did it was determined by how quick or clever I was in identifying what pieces I should use So he would be cooperative each player will do this a different amount of times Each player will bring this guy back to life and kill him a different amount of times The deeper horror here is the realization that there must be thousands or even tens of thousands of different Simons that have experienced this same thing, which is something I didn't think about until I was finished with the game Yep, one of the legacies Yeah, not only that but also even the intention of the project itself the there's a simon who ran, you know And had painkillers or whatever they suggested as alternatives Potentially millions of them in the computer and they were all no less real and they all got deleted once they were done with Like yeah, it's uh, it's haunting the foundation for so many experiments You can find old audio logs with the original simon agreeing to let the doctor and training use the scans for this reason Something with consequences that he didn't understand when he went along with it It's been about a hundred years imagine how many times there's been a simon that's being booted up in poke that How many simulations like the one you just ran for the passcode? How many other simons had a far different transition from the scanning chair to something far more short-lived? Or maybe even far longer and more horrific Something that might be even close to torture while the technology was being tweaked Even the original intention to flood simulated simons with stimuli to find a treatment becomes terrifying All because the wannabe doctor here didn't realize his So what about the doctor? Talk about bad voice acting too, uh That was supposed to be like an exclamation. I think Like he probably wrote that in the script. Listen to how he says terrifying Being tweaked even the original intention to flood simulated simons with stimuli to find a treatment becomes terrifying Oh, yeah, yeah Like a little scratchiness there. Yeah, joe. We could we could do another take You can do three more even All because the wannabe doctor here didn't realize his scan was functionally another consciousness This is something I think about more than I care to admit in part because I write science fiction Why would you also because it's being brought up in the news a little bit like that Some people way smarter than you and me have proposed that the chances are fairly high that we're I guarantee you he would not say this today That's funny Yeah, 2016 elan that's his reputation was top notch at that point We have proposed that the chances are fairly high that we're in a simulation right now Ultimately, it doesn't matter because the simulation is so good that it functions identically to reality as we know it But well think about it the other way Think of the sorts of things we could discover or mysteries We could solve if we could run a literal one to one recreation of our history If some technology that would look like magic to us so far in the future could process such a simulation I've always thought of this as being something time travelers would do send back probes that could catalog and record our entire history To have the primary source to end all primary sources about what happened throughout the entire lifespan of the human race A simulation could do that. It could also do a lot of other things. Remember when this was like a review of soma Yeah, like this feels like we've kind of gone off the rails a little bit Like I'm not sure what I have to say about like the structure of his critique in any case like it's been a bit jumbled I'm still waiting for him to explain how the gameplay is a total failure No I guess I'm just Because it's crazy to think that he thought then like that 10 15 minute section. It's like, ah, yes nailed it I mean, it's basically just definitive. You know that the the gameplay is pretty fucking bad Anyway, moving on After you achieve the first one as a baseline And if the way people have tinkered around with the guys and dwarf fortress is any indication to go on It's a deeply disturbing thought it calls into question all sorts of things that should be impossible Just like we were just screwing with this guy here to get something as boring as a passcode Imagine the more creative Possibilities that could exist here Maybe this is too far out there though, especially for this video. Let's just get back to soma Yeah, that'd be great The other way the game builds on this idea is with two parts But they're linked in my mind. So I'm going to count them as just one Okay, so he is gonna talk about the game you have to build the stronger body I mentioned earlier to withstand the higher pressure deeper in the ocean Your consciousness has to be transferred into that new body Which while I'm sure you see where this is going Simon is not the smartest person in the world even though there's only like five people left Some say that he's been through a lot and being plucked from one life into another one so alien that to him It may as well not count as being on earth at all is enough to understand why he has trouble grasping concepts that the player probably won't There's even one of the best lines in the game that hints at this It's a really thoughtful take on another more human perspective on consciousness and what's happening to him I never realized how much the idea of myself depended on where I am How do you mean? I miss Toronto Not because my friends and family are there but Because I know where I fit in In Toronto I know who I am The other explanation is that this copy of the consciousness isn't as well integrated into the robotic body As it could have been so it has limited intelligence compared to how well Catherine functions personally I just think guy's a little bit slow So so that's not an alternative or theorized explanation. There's something Catherine says explicitly his scan is simple Compared to the later scans Meaning like he does understand the world in a more simpler way than uh the other scans do He's not as capable of I presume I a level like creative thinking it doesn't make him a fucking moron, but it it makes it so that he's uh You know see a little bit more salt to the earth. Maybe you could say a little bit more straightforward. He's just your average man He's not a scientist Either way, this doesn't bother me much because you're not limited by what he thinks or says the handful of decisions You make are still in your control It's worth bringing up though because Simon doesn't ever grasp the copy and paste part To the point that Catherine has to lie to him to make him proceed She explains the transfer as a coin flip that there's a 50-50 chance that you'll end up in the new body or left behind in the old one In reality, you're always left behind the copy and transfer Time and so this is complicated Yeah Sorry, it's it's the prestige guys Uh the quickest way to explain this is just the When Simon sits down in that chair and is pointed at by someone and says you're gonna stay here We're gonna do the copy and you will stay here. You are fucked. You're staying here Other Simon. He's off. He's gonna be great. You are staying here and then the procedure happens And then that Simon opens his eyes and he's on the arc And he's like what yeah, wait what and it's like, yeah, you are always gonna end up here and it's like But and it's like yes to that Simon. He's just Victoriously won a thing that he shouldn't have been allowed to win Because he feels exactly the same as the Simon that stayed behind Because he's got all the copied memories and that's what the whole game is about up to that point Or at least the whole thing is they have the exact same thing that makes them who they are Definitely like we don't separate them as Lessor or more human or less or more Simon Because that's what the game's about like I said So how does that Simon feel the one that's on the arc? It's like well, I just fucking won Because I am me I am I'm not left behind I get to Jump from Toronto to Pethos 2 to Simon 3 to the arc Um and as far as he would be concerned he wins the coin flip as would Catherine on the arc Even though ultimately speaking the physical body is left behind that copy of Simon is still there Um, but I feel like they illustrated this with Simon's reactions both When he's left behind and with the one you see on the arc Who's like fucking overjoyed. He's not even thinking about the idea that Um That the true Simon was left behind that's kind of Simon's POV throughout the whole game is that the true Simon is the one that you are Or the true person is the one that you are which is part of what so much point is I mean especially at that first person perspective You know following choosing to follow which Simon is some I mean the game following you because you play as multiple people during the game Something that's often kind of forgotten Um because of the way that it's sort of presented in the way that we engage with I guess being ourselves in reality Um, you don't play as one character in soma you play as One Simon one two three Oh, yeah You play as human Simon and then the three Yeah, that's right. Yeah, that's right. Um There's something I feel he did geniously with this as well It's little pieces in the dialogue when you when you first wakes up in this sequence And you hear the Simon in the background saying I don't think it worked When Simon gets up Simon three in this case He says why was it still talking? Why was he still talking? And it's such a cool like You know so much separation And then like a brief realization that that that was I was him a second ago What the fuck like and it makes him so angry And Catherine recognizes it of course and just the the thing that I love about it Is that Catherine was obviously trying to shut him down before he could speak But she didn't get it in time for him not to say something Written into the new body. This is just her way of placating him No, it's again so To emphasize in the prestige when Hugh Jackman copies himself And then he sees the clone for the first time and then he grabs the gun and the clone says no no wait I'm there and then gets shot The point there is that both of them believe themselves to be the continuation They believe themselves to be the real person and there is no distinction between them They both they they're both as real as each other And so like when you know, oh well, how many depends how much I want to talk about the prestige at this point I mean maybe help the the science if you think about uh frame brought this up kind of early on But how does this work exactly? It's like well It'll analyze you into like individual pieces and then send you over to another place and reform you into a thing Thus the copy and it's like Well, how do you know it's not especially in the case of the prestige? Uh disassembling Hugh Jackman sending him to another place, but then leaving behind a copy behind Exactly. Um, and in which case are they both copies of that point? And at the end of the day both this is what the experience is going to be in terms of you know, the whole the whole actual magic apparatus There is going to be Hugh Jackman Who then the procedure happened He falls through the trap door and then he gets drowned and then there's the Hugh Jackman who Gets up on there and then gets teleported elsewhere and is like yeah, look, that's me They both perceive themselves to be real and a continuation Of the person who existed before the copy and they yes The they are opposite sides of a branch that occurs at that point Exactly and the idea that there's a more or less real one They both believe themselves to be as real as each other and there is no difference between them When he talks about the courage of getting into the machine every time Is because he legitimately wants to be the one that lives That's why when he drops into the water and uh christian bail sees him. He's fucking terrified Exactly because he now knows like i'm the one in the box Exactly, but who knows whether or not that's the continuation of the original or the copy Who actually knows and it doesn't even matter what is the case because he believes himself to be a continuation Yeah, it's so much more complicated and this is this is katharine's philosophy is that basically 100% as far as she's concerned You know katharine lives on katharine is also in pathos too Um, the that's the job completed. Yeah Because the katharine who lives on will experience going there Uploading and then being on the arc that will be her perception of her life Meanwhile, there is another katharine whose perception is uploading and then they're still there But they but It is a coin toss even though there's one that's going to get left behind because from their perspective It's a coin toss from that perspective one of them ends up being left behind and one of them perceives themselves as continuing And being uploaded onto the arc And uh, yeah, you get the sense if you were katharine or simon you're like I'm the one who has all those memories and stayed as opposed to all those memories and went I mean you feel like the special one because you are you you feel like the real one But the other one feels like the real one too It feels like it was very deliberate in terms of the way that it's presented, right? You've got human simon which is simon one and then you you don't follow his life You go to you know simon two and then to copy again And you're not the simon that gets left behind your simon three and you experience that continuation And then finally you see what the perspective is when you're the one who gets left behind That feels very deliberate in terms of emphasizing The nature of how each of the simons perceive themselves. I don't perceive themselves as being Something different than the continuation of their consciousness It's a coin toss is the point It might be just the the verbiage or something because a lot of people Would would lock on to the whole like but that that simon is still there and would always have been there It's like don't don't like don't try not to get too caught up in that more So think about the povs Think about the nature of consciousness as it's presented Come a new simon you go through the same process you did in the chair in toronto only this go around there's no time lapse It's immediate If you run a diagnosis, oh man Especially with that musical cue or it's just like Because the game knows exactly what just happened. That was exactly how you feel What was that? It's so interesting too because like this is nothing new the whole game has said all of this up But now that it's actually happening it makes you think about it. You don't want to think about it But now you have to yeah experiencing it as different than conceptualizing it So when you start moving around you hear the old simon sitting in the chair wondering why he wasn't transferred You can even go and look at him look at you the version that you just were and are now a new copy of a copy of a copy I think that having just been in control of the old version and then being pushed into a new one With your control shifting and being taken away from the other simon is a really strong moment for a game This could and has been done in movies and books. Hell, even I've done something like it More than once actually now don't care. It's an interstellar marine. I just get off with a bad I think about it, but I think so much is added to the scene by having the player control at all It's a much more powerful shift because it's your actual perspective that moves Instead of seeing a clone of a character with the same actor on a screen or something like it And that the old version carries on without you and you have to think about What you just were and who just took control of that person away from you now that you're not with them anymore The end of the game. Oh, okay. I I thought he was setting us up to talk about that scenario. I didn't realize that was it Oh, that's it. I guess. All right. Yeah It has a similar moment that is in my opinion a bit less powerful You arrive at the space gun, which is one of the main functions of pathos 2 and load the ark to fire it Catherine lies to simon again that they'll be transferred into the ark just before it fires This countdown Copies This time our perspective doesn't change we experience the other side of the transfer for this one We're the ones left behind The game ends with simons screaming in the dark just like the other simon we abandoned earlier must go through when he wakes up later um depending on the choice you made Depending on the choice you made which you didn't say was That's so fucking bizarre. They wouldn't highlight that's like a choice. Well, he does know that that's a choice, right? No, he doesn't know that's a choice Are you kidding me? No, and this is another thing that's like You can as as free illustrated you can easily miss it But if it if you're if you're doing a full breakdown of the potential of the game and you didn't know That you can end life on earth essentially or not That's like a thing at least in the form of the wow and you you know, it's like oh, I feel like you should probably actually because there's because You know the way that someone perceives choices or their existence or lack there are in a game That's like a really interesting conversation to have about you know what you It's it's a conversation. I think it's brought up with mass effect, right? Because most of the choices you make don't like change anything But that a choice or you know the tell-tale games the choice can be interesting in That it reflects a perspective that you have or a philosophy that you have rather than it being something that has a dramatic effect on your game experience um And then of course the question of do you convey that this is a choice to somebody or do you make it less Clear that there's like spec ops align has a lot of things where they don't clearly signal This is choice a and this is choice b they'll put you in a situation where there is a choice available to you But it's not quite clear what that choice exactly is um Like for instance, there's the one in spec ops align where At this point walker has hallucinated to two people strung up Uh, and you have to choose which one should be killed because they both made a choice that resulted in people dying um That's presented to you as the choice But you also have the choice to not do that and to just fight the enemies around you You don't have to make a choice on which one you want to kill And so like it doesn't present that clear and that can be interesting right in terms of Does the player recognize? What is the decision that they make with the information that they have or do they Think about whether or not there are other choices Available to them that are worth pursuing and then sometimes a game will actually let you do that And I feel like soma generally, you know signals. There is a choice here, but sometimes it's not as clear what the choice is um, and that's fine, and I mean, you know, this is all building up to I I uh, I um Didn't quite fully realize that I could have uh left Uh The wow like that wasn't I uh, I didn't quite grasp that at the time which um, I'd say it's more so just That should have been obvious But the point being it's a difference between, you know, when it's in your playthrough that you don't realize versus when you make the video When you make the video you should probably check. Oh, I think so. Yeah I mean it goes from being like, oh, it's just an experience thing that you had you didn't even realize and now you do That's that's kind of neat, but when it's in your video, it's like your video is permanently shit because of that or at least It's an important aspect That's like because Not realizing that there's a choice means that you don't get to talk about what the choice means the choice for do you Do you let simon wake up? Realizing that he didn't get transferred that he's going to be left behind and probably can't even get out of the room Or do you delete him so that you know from his perspective, he doesn't even perceive This is having occurred. There's so much to unpack there and it's the same with the wow, right? There's a lot to think about in terms of okay. What is the wow? What do I perceive the wow as being? How do the people who are connected to the wow or the product of the wow? How do they perceive themselves as existing? Should the wow continue be allowed to continue to exist? Uh are the people who are attached to it perpetually going to suffer? Um, or is it something that's evolving? It's like a new form of life that you know eventually is going to work its way towards life continuing to exist on earth Um, do I even have the right to make this kind of choice? These are all of the conversations that you can have if you don't if you make a review of sermon You don't realize that that's something that is a choice You've just missed out on a huge one. How weird is it? He had that very long sequence talking about the brand and one stuff And it's like how did you not do that for the end of the game for the choice with the wow for the choice with the bodies with with simon 3 2 look I And it's like what did he know if you Individually made a choice and then you because I mean, you know speaking from my experience I like I destroyed the wow and then sort of realized like oh, I could have like I didn't have to do I you know, I could have walked away and it's like Dan There's a lot to think about there about the fact that that was the decision that I made When I was presented with that choice Potentially not even realizing it was with choice and that's something that you can talk about in terms of your discussions about soma But if you don't even recognize, you know what I mean? Like if you don't even recognize that you're just missing all of these Opportunities does he not know that there was a choice there with Simon? It sounds like he didn't realize We're all in which is weird because that one is particularly must go through when he wakes up later Other side of the transfer this one. We're the ones left behind The game ends with simon screaming in the dark just like the other simon We abandoned earlier must go through when he wakes up later That is so You know what I mean? Like it must be you can't miss that choice. That one's pretty explicit No, I don't see how you can miss that like Catherine specifically It might just be a fail in his script like he should have said the one we may have abandoned We may have left behind. Yeah There's a post credit scene that is surprisingly happy york makes it the space you fly off You have a short scene as the other simon who is too stupid to see through kath Oh, not too stupid. He's not too stupid. Here we go Brace myself Yeah, big joseph anderson. He can't get scared by war games that is surprisingly happy york makes it the space You fly off You have a short scene as the other simon who is too stupid to see through kathron's white lies There's no summer white lies. You're the stupid one. She didn't lie She didn't lie She had a whole speech about this Remember simon's the stupid one Oh, man, it's it's such an undersell of that final scene to at least on pathos too like the Those those fuckers up there living at large. They're not us. They're not us and then she says i'm sorry you feel that way like Because she doesn't perceive she from her perspective. It's just like, yeah, no simon and kathron They're up there on the ark, you know and but we save the world, you know, like that's what we did So and i thought i did and then of course it's worth thinking about katharine's pov, right when she describes I think we we talked about in our conversation, right that katharine Doesn't like sleep. There is no non-existence for her. It's always existence forever. How tired must she be? There's a lot to it that's really interesting There's the fact that she didn't really react that hard to her own physical body's death that she's very much gotten comfortable with the idea that She is who she is that that was who that was and the you know said better this way i think yeah It's katharine's a complicated character. She's really interesting I would call that a misdirection in the game to make you think that she's like a villainous or antagonistic character When she's just a girl who is trying to complete her mission and that she encountered a shit ton of complications Because people were killing themselves or people were refusing to launch the ark out of concern for the dangers of the shrapnel slash the Instability of the launching tube and stuff and she's just trying to get it done And who is the only person that can help her a man who is very unstable and deals with pressure very badly so she's like okay, and uh, yeah, you you see throughout the game every time I think it's best illustrated in terms of a on one hand and then the other in Um, I keep forgetting the station's name, but it's the one we crash on after the submarine That's oh, that's uh, isn't that is that theta? I'm pretty sure theta is after that But maybe um, I can't remember I thought theta was where all the dead people were or there's a lot of dead people not the Wait the one where you crash after because you go to After the ship, right? It's up salon to lambda and then where is after that? Uh, delta. I think it's delta. There there you go. Um, so yes, it's delta. Yeah When leaving delta You've you've either taken the chip out of one of the two options, which is another one that you didn't talk about I'm not sure why Catherine is strangely silent And uh, you get a lot from her that like she just doesn't want to address any of these actual points or issues with you Because she's she doesn't trust that it's a good idea to do it with simon Which uh, she might be right. She probably was right. I think she did the best she could Because I mean if simon if simon actually thought that he wasn't gonna, you know That there was a possibility that he wasn't going to make it onto the arc Maybe he wouldn't have helped uh, maybe he wouldn't have gone through because I mean that was difficult for him That was a fucking scary adventure for him. Yeah, you know Thing is wrong with it at least not that I could tell By now you should have fully accepted the idea that these people are alive So this is a victory a strange albeit minor one since earth is ruined but still a victory I can't believe I mean if it's ruined either way. So yes, it's a victory I don't like this ending not because it's optimistic or anything I feel that it deflates and doesn't capitalize on the potential of the story I think I've made it clear at this point how much soma story succeeds Especially in that the true horror is in these narrative moments instead of gameplay ones Because it's not a horror game. They are that Whatever This is where I mean like when I'm fucking running from acres It does it's so weird to be like see that's gameplay scary. It's got nothing to do with the story So what do you mean this man terrorized the people of theta? Yeah, you like consumes character in the story and I am playing as simon one of the characters in the story Yeah, I know who this guy is how he got to where he is. I know the people that tried to save him I know what his voice sounds like and I know that he wants to kill me for several different reasons There could be all kinds of delusions or the fact that he's just like Lost his mind to the point of enjoying Striking people down and stuff. Why are you like separating that out into gameplay and story is so weird I got it Conceptually, it's a fitting end that our third generation simon in our line Anyway ends up alone and probably dead at the bottom of the ocean And for a while I was happy with that moment of dread being the end of the game before the tease after the credits But the more I think about it the more I wish the game went further I get anxious when I make suggestions because they change a lot of the game I don't think it's truly fair to propose changes I can't help but do it sometimes and hope that it's constructive, especially with so much since I've already said too many times One day it will be the game fail You haven't substantiated why they failed Yeah, you haven't even yeah, remember that he started this off by saying that it has totally failed with its gameplay And not once has he even like begun to elaborate on that Wait imagine Imagine being frictional. What do you learn from this video? That people are dumb Well, I mean like you suddenly I guess you learn you need to have permadeath And by the way, there is a I think this is a hundred percent guarantee that they watched this. I don't see how they wouldn't have play right This is one of the most prominent Yeah, we're looking at 99.999 chance They watched this and they took it in and they ended up making fucking amnesia rebirth Made amnesia rebirth. Yep. So good job, Joseph. You fucking really take the company. Uh, you're ruined Like I said, wasn't gonna blame him fully, but he didn't fucking help. Okay, it's uh, and it doesn't help that you don't Clearly doesn't stand somo, which sucks Big event before finding the space gun. It's like the end to the other half of the game You reached the heart of the warden unit and guided by one of the crazy but maybe not that crazy robot monsters Destroyed the AI. It's not a very common. Well, okay. All right. Um, again, this is a choice He doesn't know that the way that he's called or the way that he's called a robot monster So wait, so with it this one he definitely doesn't know that this was a choice. Just doesn't yeah strictly doesn't know Turn around why didn't he check though? Because like I said, I like why didn't he check? You think before you write your Video, you maybe listen to some other reviews talk with some people about it Which is really good to do because some people might have noticed things that you just flat out didn't Exactly, you don't even know it's there to critique Getting other people's perspectives isn't tarnishing yours We would have talked about it years ago because I remember coming up But um the concept of yes, but I value excited friend who did youtube videos and he had this point of view He's like i'll never look at anyone's review of anything i'm reviewing before i've reviewed mine because I don't want My sort of pov my experiences my Values to be changed based on like almost adopting someone else's opinions instead of just expressing my own it's like Okay, I can understand that to some degree. You wouldn't want the purity of it compromised, but at the same time Watching other people's reviews can really help you even understand your own perspective um Because when someone says like someone's not a horror game and you found it terrifying you're like wow That's bizarre. What's what's the reasoning and then you look into it and you're like oh what crazy nonsense Okay, yeah, we're still doesn't really change my pov on on thingy But the reverse can happen sometimes where you believe something isn't working and then you see someone say Yeah, you're supposed to wear the necklace of bountiful fleams and then you can get past this bridge that doesn't appear otherwise And you're like, oh Well, how was I supposed to know and then the person says uh, they give three tool tips in relation to this necklace Oh, I guess I missed those And this is like, oh, yeah, there you go. That that would have been awkward if I'd put that in my video But now I don't I don't need to because this person helped me understand How I didn't understand the thing and I think that we live in a culture that especially with media review That tends to reward and celebrate just however you're feeling from the thing No matter what there's just nothing wrong with it You feel things you go you go nuts And this is now bled over and extended into like statements that are just incorrect. It's like You know, if if he was to have said, I hate the fact that there's no choice to destroy the wow Imagine he said that it would be like I mean what Is that is that your precious experience to be protected or what like what happens now The end to the other half of the game You reach the heart of the warden unit and guided by one of the crazy but maybe not that crazy robot monsters Destroy the AI. It's not a very good moment in the game and drove home to me How much I would have preferred some if everything to do with the wow and its monsters were gone and the story was different instead The arc could still exist, but it could have been people experimenting with creating robot bodies instead of an AI With all of the work required by Frictional to make the monster safe So the reason why it's better to be an AI rather than human hands creating all this stuff is because the It's supposed to make you think about the nature of life itself Evolution how all this stuff happens in the first place. What is the difference between an AI? Scrambling at trying to make things alive Like by its own broken definitions compared to how The craziness of all the horrible suffering that we have in all levels of life right now Or like just fucking look at the insect kingdom That shit is considered life when they plant things in your brain make you a zombie to get picked up by other like There's so many so many creatures on earth That if we were to just try and judge them as to whether or not they deserve to exist as a as a piece of life We probably all agreed no That it should be destroyed like tape worms and shit like There is there are some forms of life that are just like fucking delete that shit How did this even happen? Why did this even happen? And yeah, I'm pretty sure the why we're supposed to evoke that if it was all humans that made these experiments We'd start to I think delve too far into like mad scientists sort of territory. We're just not supposed to it's not what someone's about It's wait. No because Catherine describes the wow as cancer like a cancer. Yeah Which is an analogy Kind of follows a lot right because as I understand a cancer cell is basically It's a cell that's become corrupted. It doesn't want to like it doesn't die, right? It will perpetuate itself instead of you know dying And then in fact other cells nearby and then gradually consume So much from the the body that it kills, you know, the the person And then and then there's Ross who says like how can we expect a How can we expect a computer to understand what life is like what it means to be alive the thing that we value about existing? and it's all these and then of course seeing the monsters because When you see the monsters that are the product of the wow It does push you in a certain direction But then in terms of when you think about the manifestation of the consciousness and all of the different robots that you've encountered and entities You know, just it's makes you think it's uh, it's it's uh, it makes you really think what's the counter argument It's like well think about it. What have you been doing this whole game trying to survive? What are you? You're a life swarm created by the wow Yep It's it's genius like it's so interesting to think about When acres connects you up to the uh to the wow you get a glimpse of what maybe it looks like Yeah, which could it could be that all life forms on pathos 2 are experiencing bliss Well, and the first you're not the first robot that you meet who's connected to the wow says why did you disconnect me? I was happy I don't think it's any coincidence that the first robot said that It's to make you question What exactly the wow from the outside appears horrifying But I mean you're presented with more than enough information to make it way more complicated What exactly it actually is and what the experience is for the entities that are connected to it and finally what it could become Exactly. We don't know Yeah You get rid of the wow. That's it. Everything on earth is dead. Um, which you know, maybe maybe that's maybe that's the better outcome Maybe it's not it's complicated For something else that development time and instead of talking about all that we're talking about his fanfic version, which is And that's part of the problem is that he doesn't even fucking realize it Like that there were some of these choices here Could have been spent on different interactions with people and sites around pathos 2 that explore more of the ideas surrounding what makes a consciousness The game could I feel like We covered basically everything that I could expect to be covered in terms of the subjects of consciousness and ai We talked a lot about it. It was There's probably I mean By saying that there's probably more we could talk about is a credit to the game. Um, if anything, uh Yeah, there's so much to discuss and there's so much that lingers with you and stays in your mind It really makes you think and you can't help but Compare things to soma it has that gold standardy kind of quality for Environmental storytelling, uh, even though he doesn't seem to think so. That's not what I heard. Yeah. Wow So there's there's so much to like about it. There's so much that lingers It what a what a shame After firing New York for another hour or two with a different ending with simon finally understanding And working on resolving some of the issues in the base Because things aren't strictly speaking hopeless Paytos too was almost self-sufficient and with the notes you can find in some of the bases showing that they could There's nothing to say. This is his own story that he wanted He wanted a canonical happy ending for the simon left on at the bottom of the ocean I don't understand. Why is he saying all of this resort to catching fish for food? You can begin to see how humanity didn't have to go extinct after all The main plot point could have been kathryn and the other splicing together new people from bits and pieces of different scans What are you talking about? What what the fuck are you splicing different people together? What the hell? Simon can be one of the first ones they make from the legacy section And there could still be a lot of stairs here to explore some of the hybrid scans. He's learned nothing He's learned nothing. This isn't even close to what soba is. This is a story anymore This is like he has learned nothing. Let's just start splicing people together and we can get the old simon and we can put him and we can fix him Like you're literally turning into the wow That's you now He talked about the branded section and how horrifying it was of just like creating and then experimenting You know and how many times did this happen as simon as one of the legacy scans? It's like, yeah, but I mean what if simon and kathryn started doing that Fuckin dr. Frackin started his wife at this point This would effectively be a way that kathryn tries to repopulate the planet with robot bodies that can withstand the He said he feels that it would be like a better a better story if it were people doing it rather than an ai Because if the whole point is that it makes you think when it's an ai that's doing it This is what I mean, like there's so much more to the ai's function I feel than than like some Misguided human that got confused or wants to create these Amalgamations for some reason It's reflected in the fact that the the developers gave you the choice to walk away from the wow Why would they leave you that choice if not because they believe that by that point in the game You might be thinking about whether or not you should even destroy it Whether or not you have a right to whether you have a right to destroy it whether or not, you know Putting an end to life because at this point, you know in the timeline It's pretty bad, especially when you think about life on this planet, you know and how how it began and uh All of the every, you know every the progression of life and everything like that, but it's it's like Holy shit. He's just proposing an entirely different story Yes, and I mean like simons alive at the bottom of the ocean He doesn't just like disappear when the credits roll like what is he gonna do? I don't know You know, we we we don't really know what he's gonna do. Is he what is he gonna do? Is he gonna I mean He's alive. Maybe you're stitching people together to create new things He's got agency. He's got a body. I mean, who knows Try and get up on earth, you know get back to the surface somehow Who knows we didn't see all of pathos too. I mean who knows if he might find someone else I mean, what if he talks to someone and they a lot of stuff could happen Like it's really open-ended. It's not happy ending at all But like I don't know to I'm not gonna say it's like entirely hopeless Like I guess it depends on simon in a lot of ways Like I don't know if he just well I don't know if he sulk's for a couple years down there or whatever and maybe he just has a different perspective Or who knows what he's gonna do um I don't I don't know it just to say no canonically. This is what he does after the end Of the game is like, oh man, I feel like we're really missing out on one of the things that make the ending so so excellent Or the way I think the ending is excellent Multiple copies of themselves for a bigger workforce and how different factions comprised of multiples of the same people could form There's a lot of cool potential for what are we doing? It's just it's completely different. He wants to tell his own story about something there It doesn't even it doesn't sound like a good one either. I wouldn't know No, it's a lot of the points that are being raised that he praised in this game Now there are moments in the game that require the player to make a choice Some of these aren't as clearly presented to you as others Fucking obviously since you didn't even know about some of them Well, I mean, it's true. Some of them aren't presented as clearly as others But I mean, is that a bad thing necessarily? I don't I have no idea. I just I just find it funny because Well, it's funny considering that yeah when he's writing this review. He didn't realize that The wow he didn't realize that that was a choice Other stuff like that in the game too the game screws with your head a bit Corpses will move when you leave a room and come back to it This bloody door is closed when you first arrive at this area later It's open like something got out little things like this which are ultimately meaningless for scares or dangers Is something you might not even notice. I'm sure there are a couple that I didn't catch They can they're ultimately meaningless for scares or dangers. It's really weird to describe it that way Especially if it's meant to be for like scaring and making you think right then it succeeded Yeah, it did the thing Like if we actually getting to the point of what does an open door mean is like well Joseph just said something may have crawled out of there, but it's meaningless It's like um when you're playing through the first time and you notice it You might think that that's a monster that you got to worry about that's not meaningless Well, that's kind of what I'm highlighting How you describe it as meaningless while also telling us the meaning of it The fact that you're even highlighting it as a thing that happened, you know, like there's some meaning there Contributed a lot to the feeling of unease for me and was a much more effective way of Okay, did I misunderstand and why did he say it was meaningless? This will move when you leave a room and come back to it This bloody door is closed when you first arrive at this area later It's open like something got out little things like this which are ultimately meaningless for scares or dangers Is something you might not even notice. I'm sure there are a couple that I didn't catch That feels like a broken sense of the feeling of unease Well, yeah, if they ultimately meaningless, but they gave him They're meaningless, but they contribute to a sense of unease. So that's not meaningless It's almost like saying yeah, it's sometimes mean food and it's delicious and it keeps you alive But it's ultimately meaningless. It's like but but it did the thing It's it's so funny. It did the thing it needed to do It achieved exactly. Yeah, it achieved exactly what it was meant to do and It made you uneasy, but some is not a horror game How do you do this? From the times he said it was terrifying and horrific and stuff like that Literally years terrific Several times to describe aspects of this game But it's not a horror game all that explanation yet about brand and one and that didn't feed at all into whether or not This is a horror game. He keeps that separated It's a much more effective way of creeping me out rather than monsters and jump scares And I have to wonder if they're still effective even if you're not consciously aware of them The choices you can make involve killing the last human you find I mean like you you know what? That's a good point if you don't pay as much attention You might not get as much out of the game That's true. I mean that that's a really good point. Joseph. That's a really good point. You should be a video game reviewer Yeah, on life support. She On life support. She asks to be killed. You can also kill your old self after you're calling and pasting So he does know that this is a choice. You're also given the choice to kill a living robot Oh, here we go. It's weird that he puts this all at the very end. Yeah, what the This is bizarre. It's like, oh, by the way, remember that thing I was kind of talking about earlier I it turns out you can actually do the thing back with me on the Helper drone in one part so you can salvage a piece of tech from them to proceed These choices don't change anything. You didn't even highlight the nature of that choice potential was there for some really thoughtful situations Wait, what's happened? Oh the potential was there for thoughtful situations of support. She asks to be killed You can also kill your old self after you're copied and pasted into the new body You're also given the choice to kill a living robot or a helper drone in one part so you can salvage a piece of tech from them to proceed These choices don't change anything but they still made me stop and think and the potential was there for some really thoughtful situations If the story had been built around them No, you fool. Oh my god, you fool is such a correct word I can't believe it Joseph you have the ball sacked up and tell me what they fucked up with and how it could have been better It's so sad because soma is in like Inextricably bound to those decisions The whole story is based around it. That's what the meaning of the story is derived from What does it mean to be human? How do we value one piece of life over another? Like it's it's all of those choices are supposed to accentuate that and all the experiences of playing the game Keep informing your decisions. Come on Those choices are as much the game as running away from a monster Yes I also find it funny that he's like when he talked about the robot a living one or a helper one It's like they're both alive. Maybe like that's we don't actually know what's going on with them I don't know what's going on necessarily with any of the creatures here can't know exactly More interactions and decisions instead of hide and seek with monsters shut up more conversations and goals about Why I don't why the fuck does he poison the well by calling it hide and seek? Like you're running like how how are we not going to color every single Like this is a a mainstay of all kinds of different horror Um, you know the horror genre running from a horrifying enemy. Yes running from a horrifying enemy But if are we just going to denigrate it and say it's just hide and seek. Well, it's just hide and seek Uh halloween friday the 13th nightmare on elm street. They are hide and seek films Oh alien hide and seek film. Yeah, predates is a hide and seek film Timon is a hide and seek film I'm not even hide and seek films. I kind of lame. I'm just saying Finding the solution to the last humans being stuck at the bottom of the ocean instead of destroying a misguided ai Soma is a great experience. You didn't have to destroy it. How successful it is You see this thing even here even on this little recap that he might have added later when he says the choices You could have made he didn't even catch that the wow one here. No, he's definitely not aware of the one Finding a solution to the last humans being stuck at the bottom of the ocean instead of destroying a misguided ai And also what if there isn't a solution? What if it's just right? You did his fucking bat shit conclusion was the we work together and start Create the human race. Yeah patch working people body parts to create a zombie race clones of ourselves You know what the wow was onto something even though we destroyed it You know, I'm Imagine being stuck down there with him and he's like, you know, let's not despair We can still stitch together pieces of metal and flash and hopefully create a new human race. I'd be like joe Are you okay? Are we the baddies? Soma is a great experience even if I question how successful it is as a game in the end I can't help but wonder how much of it was lost by forcing monsters into the story like it wasn't Forcing forcing Monsters, which by the way is incredibly important in and of itself. You're describing them as monsters monsters When I when I refer to them as monsters, it's mockingly right because of the way of course that right They're not like that. It's so complex to call that just say oh, they just force monsters in the story It's like you didn't even fucking pay attention to the whole point of the story If you didn't want to review the game, you didn't have to play it If you didn't want to engage with the game, you didn't have to make a video about it You don't have to review every game that comes out You don't have to do it if it's not your thing if it's beyond your capability to understand If you don't know how it works, you don't have to engage with it Monster even though to the wow, they're no less alive form than you are Hmm Monster monster monster forcing in the monsters Enough to stand on its own which is a real shame because even sort of mangled as it is today It's still managed to be something special It ain't mangled your videos mangled Oh, yeah No What a shit video god damn I hope he's improved over the years because jesus christ was awful Obviously this video uh inspired me to go This was the main one that tipped me over the edge for being like I have to make sober videos And um, it's funny because I almost want to make more of them like so much so fucking good And it's uh, it's unfair that it's barely recognized for that But oh well, um, yeah, so that video is still terrible Not a huge surprise Damn it's almost it's fascinating. It's a fascinating one It's full of contradictions of literal inability to understand the points of the story Missing information I mean the whole like weird fanfiction at the end about basically becoming the wow 2.0 yourself was absolutely fucking bizarre Like jesus christ, what was what is that? That was really weird. Oh my god Yeah, that that yeah, man. It's just a bad video Well, uh You know, it's a lot of the comments Are pretty like chill right now. They're not like, um Like for example three years ago, so recent compared to the last time I looked at this comment section Somo was always scarier the most of the games to me the existential drag lingers with you far beyond a simple jump Scare a feeling of unease in a typical horror game Like wow, that's that's completely counter to the entire video. That's the opposite of his video. Yeah, that's the opposite of what he Came the video to be simultaneously Makes these points in the video I mean, yeah, it's a contradictive mess a horror game I don't understand why he said that when he repeatedly said that the game horror horrific Not a horror game, but it's horrific And look at this I in regards to you complaining the doctor repeated Exposition to Simon that they should already know informed consent is one of the most important concepts of modern medicine This means you're and they go on to explain it. I'm just saying you're like Such a bad video it's like So it was so terrifying it left me feeling a sense of dread for weeks after I finished playing it Not a horror game, bro. So That's right They said I'm sad you missed the survey section there's two in the game And with the knowledge you have before the first since it is like, yeah, no, he didn't do that Yeah, that's a that's a big thing to talk about that they present you with the same questions at different points in the game To see how the experience itself has changed your perception on these things What a great idea that was someone's got the helper robot You have a choice to kill might have a human mind the robot itself doesn't have the capacity to speak But it shows human or animal characteristics such as being grateful that you freed it Yeah, well, he didn't notice that when we talk about the whole thing, right the game somo which as rags has helpfully pointed out as the greek word for body that like a lot that there's a level of like dysphoria between The consciousness and the way that that can manifest in the world And there's a lot of conflicting information in terms of the robots that you encounter in their perception I mean the other robot that you were talking to like his perception of reality It's totally different from what it actually is. He's just like talking gibberish Meanwhile, the helper robot who comes across more like a like a dog, right? Like a really helpful doggo Seems to actually grasp the situation So it's kind of an interesting thing to explore in terms of like the consciousness and the way that that manifests And how you don't quite know what their experiences are but still need to make judgments In order to you know, advance your own situation anyway And there's a lot of that throughout the game the fact that he just said oh, yeah, you know, like The human robot and then just like the helper robot thing the fact that you just said it so flippantly and dismissively It's like shit, man. Like, you know How much did you not understand about the experience? A lot, um That's all I think I'll quote from this is that he didn't understand a lot of what the game was uh had to say Top comment from one year ago It's still a horror game joe So if existential dread and shock over a worldview altering revelation can be catalysts for horror And someone responds to that comment saying he never said it wasn't a horror game. He just said it wasn't a good one No, he literally he put it up on the screen in text On the screen saying that something isn't a horror game. It isn't scary. You can't get more explicit than that He made it a point to explicitly have it in text that there it is Like it's he wanted you to make sure that this is a point that was really driven home Up with you that really sticks with you exactly soma isn't really a horror game. It isn't scary Played soma for the first time last month. Sorry. You didn't have the same experience as me in terms of the scares This game got me pretty good. Do you know what I mean? Like there's so many people in the top comments They're just like it was scary though Well, I think I think it's what you said, you know, you're getting brave Eventually people will hear about soma play soma and then get something from it because it's a great game Look at this this one's from six years ago. Man that robot girl asking is this the arc? I was so worried something had gone wrong devastated me Yeah, that's fucking sad. Oh, well That's really fucking sad, isn't it? Honestly, it's really think You know, I think the story would be improved if uh, if simon and kathrin started splicing together people's consciousness Jesus Christ It's it's hard enough to find out who's human and who isn't human when it's just one mind when you start splicing multiple people together Jesus Christ now that's a horror scenario Honestly, I think this game is even more scarier than amnesia the dark descent Not because of the monsters which are absolutely horrifying But the isolated post apocalyptic mariana trench like setting added so much horror to it as well Not to mention the feeling of hopelessness throughout the game It's no coincidence that you're meant to feel like the whole universe is crashing around you Simultaneously physically doing that and then from a mental perspective. This is absolutely like this is adjacent to live crafty and horror for sure Oh, it is a it's a yeah It's it's just a different kind of horror and the dark descent is terrifying and so is this But they just are different flavors of it. I have a similar kind of experience. Um, and they're meaningfully different Um and and I and I value them both immensely for the different experiences that they bring We're not done yet though. So this is another sort of you know, is it with Getting soma. Let's find out. Hi everyone. This is karak from acg and today I bring you the review for soma by frictional games available for pc mac linux and ps4 This game tells the tale of simon a man with brain damage from a prior accident Who goes in to get his brain scanned in the hope that the doctor it's not it's not a future accident It's not an accident that hasn't occurred yet. It's a prior accident. Okay. I just making sure I just get sometimes I get confused Doctors might be able to find a way to fix the issues He's having you know just like total recall and quade and as you know that went off without a hitch The same thing happens here with simon waking up somewhere completely alien to him The game then delves into the mystery itself virtual reality murder and transformation In fact, there are just a great deal of similarities and theme to total recall Which makes sense as the first quote you see is from the author of total recall A first person horror game set in the confines of an unknown location with a character. Yeah, I guess What it was the first quote again, I I didn't I can't even remember It's uh the quote on reality, right? I think it's the reality is that which when you Thought believing in it doesn't go away. Yeah Gotcha Yeah, it's a good one The questioning who he is with minimal weaponry to defend themselves This sounds like the typical setup of a hundred horror games, right? Well, let's see if soma deals the goods offering an elegant eclectic wrong The experience of what someone might see if they took a drink of its namesake Or maybe soma falls flat on its face a direly negligent title with only subtle useless connections to the literary works of Phillip k dick and hp. Lovecraft. So let's check it out. This is the review for soma underwater bunkers a world Where craftsman drills breed like wild cats rampant ai is it man? This is a A busy script only strained. Yeah, this is this is uh, we got a lot of a lot of words are happening I think uh busy is a good way of describing it There was any other kind and see an enemy fisting remember to subscribe if you like the review All right are up first chromatic aberration the game That's what this should be called if a little is awesome, then a ton must be better, right? You see at first the game just looks good not great But acceptable with fairly high resolution textures and highly interactive environments Did I say interactive? Sorry. I mean cluttered Shit is strewn everywhere and at times it feels like the entire game is playing some kind of trick as if They just now realized interactive and physics based items can be put in an engine and so crap It's throwable spinnable. Unflickable my why is that? I didn't realize it would be so upsetting to have a mug and you could lift it up if you want to Well, I don't want to the skip past the chronic chronic chronic Aberration part right um that too But like don't show all these things that don't have it except specifically when it does pop up Which is specific for when it happens. It happens for a reason in the contextually Um, I I don't know. I guess he didn't notice that aberration the game max pain three is chromatic aberration the game It's got a lot. Yeah You can turn off as well Yeah, so yes at that point. It's like so what the what's the problem then? And like what why can't you just look they're just items It probably would make it might take them more work to make all these items non-movable than to just Put them in there and have them be something you can interact with and move around This point is that it's senseless. They're just here for the sake of being here not for any reason Doesn't every object has a narrative or mechanical purpose if you want to pick up the cup you can do it Yeah, sometimes the mug is just a mug and that's unacceptable rag. Yeah Okay, um, I'm sorry my dude that the green mug doesn't have any Big narrative or meaningful gameplay purpose Sorry, there are bits and bobs household objects that would exist in people's rooms that only really help you feel like these rooms are real And people used to live here. So really it's just crap I feel like when people say how come I can interact with everything is the exact kind of person I can understand saying I can't interact with anything. Yeah. Yeah I might as well throw it in there the important items change the icon on the screen Resulting in that swinging around kind of gameplay where you look for whatever you couldn't do a sentence without chopping that up That was I was actually struggling to know what he said exactly there. How's the Look, you know, it's a it's a youtube video. It's not live You can do a number of takes until you get a good one if you can't manage to get out of very short paragraph Maybe he did which indicates an even larger issue But uh, I surely you can as a youtuber You can get out a short paragraph that you have pre-scripted Down onto a word processor without having to take multiple cuts and spliced to get oh, no Sliced together multiple like sentences into some monstrous Abomination for matters versus finding the 333rd craftsman drill Once you awaken in your new digs the setup becomes much easier on the eyes with unique and mysterious locations Exuding the eerie feeling. You know, the developer was going for originally nothing ever looks so it wasn't eerie from the start How was it not eerie from the start? I guess not in the dark room with spooky lights and all that Sparking and then horrible giggling and screaming sounds and stuff I guess it wasn't enough. Okay Great though, it's passable with a high number of environmental effects Like when seeing the bad guys your vision begins to corrupt like movies would have you believe computer code does when you get hacked It's all fairly bog standard stuff But it presented well if a little on the basic side Animations enemy design and texturing are all also done pretty well But at times it really does feel like they were cribbing from the likes of aliens the last of us and system shock across their entire design In what way do you mean that? Uh aliens the last of us You're gonna have to justify the words you just said aliens because the fact that there's wall things and things can be in the walls Is that what we're doing because the flesh like And technology meld has like alien isn't about that My guess is that he's talking about how the technology is kind of looks a little bit dated while being futuristic at the same time I thought he was because of the visual that he's talking about the The way that like the the wow and the flesh and everything and in the walls I think that's what he meant the last of us with that Because of the mush the spores and the the mushroom stuff because The comparison is weird because this is like fleshy bits compared to fungus Someone feels like it's own shit even obviously it would have inspiration, but like at the same time It's like this is like you couldn't just say it's good and just move on Yeah, this is sufficiently different than other things Yeah, the most yeah, I don't know anything that uh That really would be confused with this I think that the design of the wow and the structure gel elements and I mean the rat was a good example of how it Just makes something that doesn't look like anything that I've really ever seen. Uh, I think it's got great unique vibes to it Most enemies move with a politician's grace meandering fellows without usable Politicians great. Okay, that's absolutely for doing much more than quite a lot of politicians are very graceful Not that they're not all zombies Yeah, a lot of politicians are very smooth mouthed and you know, silver tongued and charismatic Headbutting the way through doors and occasionally turning on the speed when they sense you where the game does excel However, our little robotic animations, which is strange to say but to me personally the role But was he complaining that they get faster when they sense you? It is that's the strangest of the yeah the strangest of the structure of it The sentences yeah the way that he structures this Makes me feel as if that is supposed to be a complaint Which I don't agree with do you meet within the game have far more emotion and atmospheric resonance than any of the creatures you actually face What do you mean? Why? Because they're talking to you Because they're like as opposed to screaming talking to you. Is it? Yeah, I yeah, I don't know. Uh, these I Okay, that could be due to their insanely low risk factor the creatures I mean, but I'll get to that in a moment underwater environments are done very well Though with texturing and polygon clipping across fluids and other missteps sort of taking that back Especially when you're not submerged in water when you're submerged in water, it's fine But anywhere else where water is moving around or within a room. It actually looks pretty poor Overall, I would say okay to the graphics But with some missteps like they're insane overuse of chromatic aberration a little is good No, this is the server room there's actively a monster that that you have to avoid loads of electrical systems as well Like I don't know this Turn it off if you don't like it There's a total narrative reason 100% why there's a chromatic aberrate of effect That's going on and if it escaped you then I don't know you suck at your job I guess I'm not sure Must be great the injury effects in the game turn the chromatic aberration as well as other effects up to a point of causing some pretty serious I stream you you are a machine getting damaged like it's supposed to I say you can turn it off if it is actually causing an ice train then yeah, you can turn it off Right turn it off. This is like complaining that by default the game is set to 90 fov But I like 100 and I can set it to 100 but I ain't gonna Okay, then If not just downright being ugly and due to the way the game works There's a chance you might be in the state for a very very long time Yeah, experience in the world like someone's macing you every 30 seconds is not much fun Lastly the graphical design of the world means lights flashing strobing knobs to nominate levers to levitate and all kinds of interaction However, due to the way the game is presented It can be downright impossible to tell if a button is pushable or if it's just static Resulting in you swiping your view left and right across every generator. I swear I never had this issue like if it's a random drill on a table. I'm like, well, I'm not gonna do anything with that Right. I don't need I don't need that but if I'm looking for And there's glowing buttons the buttons often glow. They're they often have a big green or red glowing. Yeah Or levers they usually have been importantly. Yeah, I don't have this. Yeah. I mean, it's all it's all pretty intuitive I think most of us I know how to fix it if we put yellow paint on all of the ones Yeah, yellow paint. Yeah the people who came before you they're like you might be a Fucking idiot in dumb stupid head. It's some yellow paint. We need to make sure that you don't miss this ladder So we need to we need to splotch it in yellow paint Gyrady gear power switch and light switch in a room It's a design decision that I think would have been helped with a bit more graphical finesse sound music and voice Oh, hi Didn't hear you come in It's weird that he says the name of the next section and not really that much different of a cadence or inflection Yeah, then what he's normally been saying and that's supposed to be the indicator that the next section is beginning without any sort of like visual You know thing for it Simon jaren right dr. Munchie. Oh, it's so much louder just mr. Munchie, but i'm working on it Actually, you're helping me right now. Is this part of your thesis work? Yeah I guess he's on the button. He didn't even have to wiggle his thing over everything He he did nail it. He pressed the button. He just pressed the button because it looks like a button. He used his eyeballs He just picked up the object It was just right there and he just like instantly moved his cursor to be fairly yellow on that object Oh, that's true. Yeah, that's right. That's right. And the button was yellow too. I suppose, yeah I like how the little loading icon in the bottom right is a little brain scan. Yep. Yeah Oh, wow You just went and sat up first in the trilogy of awesome as usual and it's excellent with 3d audio cues continually played That's probably footage of his actual playthrough that kathar was like you're gonna have to take a chip out of one of these like, okay All right, I will do that lady in computer You sneak stealth swim and sprint past enemies on your way to finding out Just what the hell is or isn't going on those enemies also sound really amazing Though a couple of those sounds do seem to be a little bit cribbed from past horror games though also What do you mean like when are they are you making an accusation goggling seem to be cribbed? Like are you saying they are Or just can you provide an example of what you mean by that? But how could you possibly Say like like when a creature goes brah, it's like, yeah, that's kind of copying that other creature that went brah Maybe that is what he means like yeah, how could you possibly That's quite an accusation to make Without like any supporting evidence whatsoever or a specific being mentioned And if you don't know then keep your mouth shut Some audio effects are missing in places like many times sounds reverberating Normally underwater just seem to cause the game to miss out on that extra immersion level that's required for a horror title And to me that was a big misstep especially when you're supposed to be underwater and things do sound the same It's sort of like hearing gunshots normally and destiny on the moon music Now this was Oh You're in gunshots in destiny on the moon music Destiny I imagine that the reason why is because all of the planets And everything in destiny. There's like magic that makes them habitable. So it's probably gotten atmosphere Hence the guns sound the same I don't even like destiny Like that's probably why And I don't know I've thought it was sufficient in some of the differences in sounds between water and I did. Yeah part of the problem is when we have no examples It's just like I mean if you say so dude Like okay dynamic ambient meaning it's soothing layers of constant synths And rarely any formative beats until something interesting happens or you start getting chased by the bad guys That look like they have a case of amsterdam rot. It just doesn't really get into your head It does what it's supposed to layering another atmosphere on top of the visual and physical experience But it's really no more than that voice Sad because the soundtrack in silver is wonderful. We're done with it too. Yeah. Yeah, it didn't really make it impact. All right That's it that fucking This the main theme like the song they play in the credits. It always just gets to me there's a song Inextricably connected to everything to do with this game at this point This is hit and miss with some characters hitting emotional resonance really well like some of the robots left around the abandoned complexes You end up spending most of your game time in others like simon hit Most of the time but for what's being experienced sometimes he sounds like a bartender listening to the town drunk. Uh-huh. Okay. Hmm Really, that's interesting now without spoiling the game I could say that you could explain some of that away with the plot But not all of it depending on the timing and the subject matter being discussed Gameplay again Not even examples, but oh yeah boilers I can say this simon goes in to have his head examined and from that point on just like total recall You're sent on a ride as you question. You've saved total recall Why does he keep comparing it to total recall? It's really not that it's really not connected at all Everything from your existence as simon to the future of mankind to virtual torture You uncover the mystery in the tried and true manner in which massive mysteries like this must be solved By turning dials and knobs because as we know the universe runs on the circle of life And what better way to demonstrate that than a knob that goes from nothing to something Which then turns on a thingy which elites the dudad so that the whatchamacallit can be activated You see these problems are all right at the beginning So so like if I don't actually have a degree in Futuristic electrical engineering like how do you think this is What I need these reviewers to start telling you what the fuck they want in order to navigate this place You press buttons and you pull levers. Yeah. Yeah, you as you assemble components. You get things and you move them around Yeah This little panel was opened and brandon one, I think stabbed the Previous one or friday or whatever. So you have to get a replacement chip Make sure it's got the right stuff on it put it in and close the clasps and then close the thing Yes There's context for an universe. It's simple from a gameplay point of view. Yes. Yes. Yes. What's the problem? The whole point of the panel is that it is accessible by other people for repair and maintenance and utility purposes That's the point. You're not going into the individual wires and trying to manufacture the Metal strands and weave them together so the electricity can flow through and why the fuck would you Why why tell me what you want Doodads Tell me by the numbers as a horror game you're presented with a mystery and you go forth Danger is required and so it shall be here this time It's in the form of corrupted man things mixed with an underwater infection and an ai that's figured out like all ai's Are want to do that human shouldn't be at the top of the food chain. They should be somewhere right around No, no Opposite of that You you didn't engage with the story you didn't listen to any of it your brain was on autopilot you It's not funny though. He's like it's like every other ai and it's like no That's it's the point. It's not at all like every other ai, but okay That's that's pretty maddening. I um, I'm really not pleased at all by that You just I mean like you just didn't you didn't listen you didn't pay attention Don't worry rags. We've only we're only mostly through now the two most watched reviews for soma I get the impression that like it almost gets because there's like this sort of semi casual Ha, yeah, look at me just talking about my fucking video games Like that that's the kind of tone of this review so he can kind of like skirt past Yeah, let's get out. Let's get it done. Let's get through this particularly cause isn't the format for this like Oh, should you buy it? Should you rent it? Like it's not it's not being like i'm an all-encompassing critique I'm just a guy let me know what I thought about this wacky video game and whether or not I think you should buy it or rent it And then you could kind of almost like it's it's easier to just save wrong You can just like you can just say any shit you want I guess, you know This is this is the bad you have to accept with free speech. I suppose you just It's like you said rags if you're not that interested you don't have to talk about it. It's okay Yeah, yeah, but what if you need to cover old games that come out for anyone about that? That's true if you just have to but this is clearly an example of he just was not paying attention He wasn't engaging with the story You shouldn't have reviewed this game You should never viewed it also There are some bits about what year it may be or may not be and how you came to be there But to stay out of spoiler territory. I can just say for the most part It's handled with all the dexterity of smashing your thumb with a hammer But you didn't even know what happened You don't even know what's going on How can you say it was it was no and then he says it was badly handled okay Was it badly handled or did you handle it badly? I'm fascinated by the fact that this was so over what was this thing that didn't happen. Oh, yeah That's interesting. I guess good job, man You basically run around taking clues from and helping out a virtual pal inside your local p Catherine's a virtual Catherine's a virtual pal PDA soma starts with a system shock feel at first system shock 2 But as you're exploring even as the mystery unfolds around you You realize fairly quickly that this is all going to be doing the same thing through the entire game There is no subtle layering of new gameplay activity. Oh, you don't find an assault rifle and mow those fuckers down Yeah, I guess we don't yeah We did evolve the gameplay from walking and pressing buttons and reading things. It's like, okay, but All right, the game never fucking said it was gonna later on. I guess it didn't I'm sorry. It wasn't a completely different game in every way. I suppose He's after the beginning resulting in a mechanical meandering through an underwater habitat That's of course been abandoned, which means flicking switches experiencing bad timing in the form of it's been abandoned That's what's happening. He has no idea what's going on in this game. He doesn't have any idea He's just like walked through it. He tried to Get this one out. Do you think he knows that there was an apocalypse? Uh, just a second this came out On eight years ago september 21st. Let me look up when summer came out All right, I imagine that this would have come out real close to release. Oh, yeah, that's what I'm looking How to come out for release might have been uh, you know Yes Oh Yep, this came out one day before release on steam Right, so this was one of the so this came out september 21st Yeah, this came, uh, this came out september 21st 2015 And the soma game came out september 22nd 2015 So, yeah, this guy got a review of the embargo. I assume He heard the fuck through it, uh, which is the opposite of what the embargo is there for it's to give you time To make an informed review, right? That's the purpose of the embargo. You'd hope But I guess maybe five hours before he was like, oh shit. I have to have a video out in five hours um Yeah, I uh, yeah, he clearly rushed through it in order to get his review out on time Everything going wrong right when it seems like it should and lots and lots of walking tons of walking Boat loads of walking, but interspersed with occasionally places Man, you know mario. I fuck, you know mario. It's just a lot of running Oh, so much running around and jumping and running. Wow. You know, it's and it never evolves It's always running and jumping and it's always it's you're always going to right You're always going from left to right. What's up with that? That's kind of uh, wow repetitive Stale boring gameplay. This will never stand the test of time And honestly, I bet if the if you didn't do a lot of walking. He'd bitch. You don't go anywhere He just has that kind of like these videos They just bitch about stuff because they never explain why they never say why something's bad They never say what they would do to fix it. They never say what it's lacking It's just it's bad. You just walk a lot as if that isn't most games but Or maybe it's face. It's like a one night stand that way. You can never tell which one Luckily controls good. Why do you get into one night stands with ugly women? I don't understand. Why would you say that? Does is he he's saying that he only has one night stands with ugly women? It's a joke rags. Yeah rags All right, good though. Once you get injured you're a slobbering Shambling mess of a man until you heal up, but it looks cool and though it can be ultimately No, it doesn't look cool because you were bitching about the chromatic aberration It doesn't look cool. You can't you contradicted yourself You were bitching and whining and moaning about how it looks like when you got hurt and now you're like, yeah, it looks cool Oh, you couldn't The script was written in an off to learn The script was written overestimating it It was after 15 minutes it still shows an attention to detail missing in some other you were injured for 15 minutes Damn Other titles where you're fine seven seconds after taking a crowbar to the balls to be honest I was just really surprised about how wrote and basic that the story was and it's He didn't pay attention to the story. He literally I think that what he did was he did actually the kind of the same thing that joseph anderson did Where he had this idea of what it was in his head And at that point This guy even more so than joseph completely stopped engaging with the story I guess because he believed What I think the story is is what oh, this is total recall or whatever and he just stopped engaging You know and then he just walked around and didn't care You know when katherine said drain his battery if you want I'd rather not stay plugged in He walked over to the body hit drain and then left Yeah, because my virtual pal told me so yeah, like he wouldn't he'd be like, what do you think about that choice? Be like what choice you like you could have drained it could have not and he's like, yeah Okay This is pretty basic and boring Well, then it absolutely offers nothing of interest after a couple hours in It gets This guy is like Imagine fucking having written sobered listening to this you'd be like, oh Okay No one that they were fucking discouraged Imagine seeing these fucking reviews, man. It's like what have we done? We've made a horrible game apparently You have the analogies of the barbarian marveling at the gates of Rome, but this is like, um This is like a grasshopper You know like in front of michael angelo's david and it doesn't have any like capacity to understand what it is That's in front of it. It's just not it physically can't do it This block is in my way. It feels like it's annoying. He's a grasshopper in front of david He doesn't he literally can't comprehend what it is. He's in front of what he's looking at Let a glacial pace the kind which dickens would say whoa Alas your indiscretions are too short and your environments overstay much Honestly, the entire game is opening a door walking and listening to someone talk to you about crap But constantly not telling you what the same fuck. I hate when people say the entire game is this the entire Game for like the majority of first-person shooters is center the screen on the thing you want to kill If you want to get that reductive or the entire thing amara's you just run and jump But like that's a stupid way of describing a game Most games have a core loop of like an activity that you just keep doing over and over and over again But it's the context and the variety and all of that that like makes for the experience as a whole And it's really annoying because like I guess yeah If you don't buy into the story at all and you have no interest in paying attention to what's happening Or the world and like the areas you're going through then yeah I guess the game is just press the button and then the door opens and then grab the thing and then put it there But like why is he describing it in such a reductive way? Time because he doesn't give a shit doesn't understand it doesn't care Yeah, I think I think it's time to say he didn't give a shit about uh the game Yeah, this is an 11 minute I'll graciously call this a review of a game that he got a copy for he wanted to get it out in time maybe he was I don't know like he procrastinated And or he just didn't care or he doesn't give a shit and he just puts out videos Hey, they get views whatever, you know They're not telling you at the same time you can occasionally hear the story being stretched out Then sometimes the bad guys see you give me an example which usually involves just nearly yeah But the thing is is that when you say that I'd be like give me the spoilers though, so I can't do that Go on man If they do see you and smash into you or headbutt you it results in you being knocked out and then back up And if you don't find a sea creature to finger fiddle to heal yourself It might happen again or a couple times until you finally die This kind of lack of terror and fear of life means for the most part You never feel any real threat after the initial kiana They're not Wow design the game in the hopes that you don't fucking die all the time They're hoping you listen to the rules and then you have the tension of actually trying to complete it Instead of walking into the monster directly and looking right at it when you're explicitly told not to And where's the gamer mentality of like I want to succeed at this challenge That's presented to me like I don't It wow this is shit. What is it? This it's the problem is that there are some people who are just too stupid for soma I think that's the There are legitimately people. It's just like that's just The fedora is growing on your head there. No, it's like I listen to these people Try and like talk about this game and like you're actually too stupid to engage with this game You're not thinking you think that this is just another call of duty or something. Well, but that's the actual problem It's not that they couldn't understand this at all It's that they didn't even try like they're playing it like the dark descent which you can kind of play this way Because it's a several sequences in which you need to get the key from over there So you can open the door. There's a spooky monster though, and then it's really terrifying more surface level I guess it's more I guess I'm not even trying to it's more So just soma was like if you went in with the wrong expectations, then yeah, you can really not enjoy it And the story can start to grate on you. I guess because you're like, I don't want a humor story I want to do more running around and stuff And and block it all out. I'm sure these people are capable of understanding what soma was about They just didn't care. They didn't want to know and so that's that's the result we got Reeves whoa, these guys are like starfish and dudes that had a baby Listen folks, this is the last frontier deep dark place where mankind since ancient times felt leviathans rested That has awesome locations like the mariana trench stigian abyss and my favorite challenger deep And yet all this mystery and cool names and awesome locations does nothing the game simply isn't Sorry, what is he talking about? Oh, no, right. So could you pause right when he's about to say the meme? Nothing the game simply isn't scary. It is intense Getting head butted by the walking coral factories known as bad guys it takes a good deal of hits to die So you get head butted usually transporting that enemy a safe distance away and then you wake up There's almost no actual gameplay except finding ways to power things on without power or Gameplay As he shows on the screen him sneaking around the monster that would otherwise kill him We'll continue There weren't enough assault rifles and explosions in this game It sucks balls. Where are the terrorists? And unlike say the vanishing nebeth and kardor even everyone has gone to the rapture Soma just creaks like an old boat anytime the story tries to get going spring in a leak Just when you think it would and then come talking about Why you sound like you didn't play any of the same game again He'd be like, yeah, but no spoilers, you know, so I just got a I can't provide examples Crashing down under the weight of its own rote gameplay Added that the almost immeasurably small emotional response you get from the characters and you're left with an empty leaking crashing boat It was just utterly disappointing in almost all ways Especially when it comes to doling out the story and well the gameplay fun factor The first hour was actually fun the second less so and by the 8th I could count on my seeing enemy juice and crusted fingers just how How was the first hour fun? But as you learn more and you get closer and closer to finally launching the arc It just gets like less fun As the as the as you go through each distinct Station at pathos 2 and they're all so different from one another um And like the it's got this incredible sense of progression from when you are in the you know When you first get down there and you can see that oh the it's nice and it's lovely It went to the ocean and then at the end it's just pitch black and you can only you can barely see the lights I don't know I I gotta say I find this video way more intolerable than the Joseph Anderson one because at least he made arguments When he tried Joseph Anderson did try he absolutely tried whereas this one just comes across as fuck it I just got to fucking get this video out. Um, oh, yeah, soma. This is new game. I've got a review copy for sure I'll play it just fucking get it out there and then move on to the next game Like to me this comes across as incredibly soulless I wouldn't be surprised the guy who made this video if you said to him, what do you think of soma? He might be like what Yeah, like you would it's just absolutely oblivious to its existence I just find that lame though because it's just yeah, like how many people were like, oh, fuck. All right Well, I guess I wouldn't play it who would have played it and then it really enjoyed it I mean It's it's not exactly a conspiracy to assume that there was a knock-on effect significant from these reviewers who did a Piss poor job of assessing so much to the point where lots of consumers Like the developers worked really hard on it and then they threw it out there And then like their hard work was at the mercy of people who didn't care at all Yeah, isn't that isn't that so lame to think about that that all the time that they would have spent Having conversations about how to create like creating the game and and decisions for narrative and blending gameplay and choices And then it's just like yeah, but I mean fuck you better hope that the guy who's going to review it Actually gives a shit otherwise. It's just you know, oh, yeah You know first hour was pretty fun and then the second hour wasn't so good and then by the 8th It was fucking miserable. So yeah, you know some it's not that worthwhile Well, let's see what is what's his fun factor rating if you have I don't even know what I don't even know what a fun factor I feel like that's a terrible metric to have for something that you would apply to every video game ever What's the fun factor of spec ops the lane? What's the fun factor there? You know like not every game is trying to be fun in the in the strict sense of providing positive emotions Yeah, fun is a strictly positive emotion. Um, like like definition, uh, and I don't you don't have fun playing. So I guess you can of course, but you don't really have fun I wouldn't describe it as fun. I describe it as captivating or enthralling. Yeah engaging Um, interesting, but not fun. It's not a fun video game Definitely wouldn't call it that how many cool things that happened in that entire hour It loses steam far too quickly and gets bogged down in repetitive and ultimately reductionist gameplay that makes it So I rate games on a buy wait for sale wait for a deep sale or never touch it again rating scale This is a wait for a deep sale a deep deep deep sale deep sale the game is this he's given it the rating He's just off saying don't play it at all I was about to say why not just tell people You know like at least some people who watched Joseph Anderson's review would still come away believing it was worthwhile to play it You know, yeah, this guy They told him how fucking wrong he was Because when he says wait for a deep deep deep deep sale, he's talking about like wait for it to be two dollars Yeah, he's basically saying if his writing if you broke down the buy wait for sale into like an out of 10 This is about as close to like a one as you can get without it being a one Yeah, if it was my scale I would just at this point if I had to say all this I'd be like, you know, just don't buy it Just do other things. Just yeah, honestly going by everything. He said if it was accurate I'd probably say avoid the game Yeah, how can you like what is in here of any value other than the underwater segments look kind of cool I was like, well, is that justifying playing this a whole game just to see some cool underwater segments Put together well enough and mostly stable And for those who want to walk around flicking switches and occasionally questioning your own existence and time management the title So that's it for me, I hope you like the review if you did hit thumbs up if you didn't hit thumbs down And no you suck balls This is like I it's worthless. This video is worthless. It's no it's worse than worthless. It's actively damaging It's actively detrimental to a really great video game So So now I want to read some of the top comments I'm sure he loved out last I'm sure he thought out last amazing So the top comments on this video first one a very smart and thought provoking game. I loved it. It's like, huh, okay It's very different than the video next one. One of the best game stories ever and well realized How can this be a bad game? Oh, I see there's nothing to shoot at Next top comment I personally love the game love the story and the pacing as well as the exploration The game makes you think about and question what makes you feel uneasy, which I loved Yes, the game has some missteps in areas But I was willing to look past when it came to progressing the story for me eight out of ten And that comment is eight years old by the way All right, so people at the time Yeah, I don't like. Ah, yeah, no good. Next one says I for one love this game Horsen expecting your review to be so scathing. I thought it was beautiful in a depressing way Thank the lord For all of these comments. I know this video is old, but you interpreted the story so different from me You said the AI wanted to end mankind, but I thought it wanted to save it Hmm People being so nice for no reason I love this guy's reviews, but his opinion on soma is 100 not close to bide Well, yeah, you can say like that Uh Interesting I couldn't disagree with you more Soma has been the best game I've ever played at least a few scale games based on how much emotion they generate In fact, I consider it so good that it's basically destroyed most other games for me Everything seems so mediocre in comparison And uh, he responded that's good. Always like people enjoying their games Yeah, okay, dude There you go, acg I totally deep deep deep sale, but hey look, you know, it's cool, man If you're enjoying it, you can just get what you want out of it They go, I totally disagree here This game is one of my favorites graphics are all there to set up a specific mood They aren't going for beautiful or ugly in this game. They're going for something to affect the player The audio underwater was perfect. The only sounds that were off of metal sounds just passable. I don't even necessarily agree with that Um, they've got a whole set of comments here basically just explaining what they loved about it And he responded enjoy the game a lot of folks do By the way, these comments he's been putting them on two years after this video came up What do you mean? So the video was posted like eight years ago and these comments he's been leaving here are six years ago Oh, okay. I guess one day he just decided to uh respond to people on soma I gotta say that that one that you read sounded a little bit big mad They're all uh They're all a little I feel like they're all kind of mad at him without trying to express it too much, you know Yeah, they're all being pretty kind I have to say I really enjoyed this game the gameplay wasn't anything new or interesting But the themes it explored really resonated with me and he responded very cool Yeah, like you know what I mean? Doesn't that just cover crosses like a little bit pissed off? Yeah, good for you, dude, you know, yeah, all right Like so many others here I think the game was awesome a must buy for sci-fi fans, but as a horror game It's much more story based than many others and not as scary. So I get the disappointment Whatever There's so many comments that just say it's their favorite game And then you got amnesia rebirth Yeah, which as far as I know has been panned like I don't think anyone really likes that game that much Well, then I guess maybe there'll be maybe they'll make another well They made amnesia the bunker which is apparently much more returned to form like dr. Cent which I'll be playing halloween, okay But that's something Yeah, um, and who knows what's next for them Amnesia rebirth, how's that doing on steam? Mostly positive. That's like 96 positive or something like that. I guess we're done with this video. Yes It's going away. It's going away. We're deleting. Well, I don't that know we're done with uh Delete forever. I like how it says you're delete forever Yes, I wish you could be deleted forever erase this data don't allow anything to bring it back Uh, but yeah, that's that's it for us talking about soma in a specific sort of way And of course those were two videos that made it into my coverage of soma Back in the years before I really pissed you off, didn't I oh they weren't the only two there was plenty I remember being annoyed at loads of people's videos. I um I mean You know on one hand it's like well It's a lot to ask that everybody fully interpret perfectly the game before like when they got days to interview Sorry to in real time. Well, so I was actually going to go that direction. It's like the Nature of reviewers to rush out these reviews is like you can't expect them to get everything right And it's like yeah, but I expect them to get some things right like this getting ridiculous Rather than just making incorrect claim up to incorrect claim with no substantiating References at all and then you watch someone like markiplier player who by the end of it is just sitting there And contemplate what it all beats it went through all the choices in a significant way as well That he was worried that people weren't going to get it and he was totally correct That was that was strangely prophetic of him at the end He's at the credit to the game and he said he's worried that people are not going to engage with this game And not going to understand what he was trying to do And the thing is over time I'd say that it's its reputation has gotten better and people have gotten to understand it I don't know anybody who says like to this day like soma so shit It's like no I don't think there's anyone passionately hating it in the way like tlj still has while also having passionate lovers Like soma the only people that all laugh to the people who love it seemingly And they can get and recommended it and then you recommend it around because soma is really really special um And it's a shame we couldn't encourage more stuff like that or perhaps as part of what makes it so special Is that it doesn't have a wide appeal. It's one of those situations. I don't know You kind of um, I don't know I feel like these guys if they'd given it a fair shake in their reviews that we could have ended up in a place That was far more fair for it um And maybe amnesia rebirth didn't have to If soma was hyper successful, I'd like to believe that yeah frictional wouldn't would have made something better again Who knows? Oh, well at least look right at least at least we got soma at least we have. Oh, yeah Yeah, we we we lucked out on that one for this timeline. So It's often referenced for me. It's just the best story in video games But it's there's a you know, there's a couple of other contenders. It's just that one is particularly impressive It's so good and I do like what that person said in one of the comments that um Whether or not it's got these floors here and there in whatever way it's the game that made them feel the most Which yeah, that's important. It's a big factor for art Um, but yeah, thank you all so much for watching. This was a strange cobbled together episode of different pieces And uh, there's a kind of discussion. I think a lot of efet fans are waiting for which was the we delve into a bit of soma And a trip down memory lane at least for me Wondering what should I just say it's just funny to remember all of the horrors that was the matter of the review of this fucking game To say What are you gonna do? Are you going to do other than? Uh, I don't know what we're doing. I guess Yeah, that's what he's gonna do Play soma. It's really good. I recommend soma. You should check it out. It's a fun game, right guys An engaging game an enthralling game. Yeah a captivating game. Yes Makes you think Well and on that note, we shall say goodbye everybody Yeah, see everybody All right. Bye. Bye. See you later everybody