But you also get a lot of information just by looking around, from big scenes like a bloody corpse with a drill in its hand to smaller touches like a game of hangman with the answer “quantum mechanics”. Interaction with some objects will trigger audio clips of past conversations, a standard for exploratory games that’s actually given a reasonable explanation in this one. Each underwater base tells a different part of the story. That said, the world of Soma is absolutely full of detail.
Their relationship threads through the story and holds it together in a way that pure environmental storytelling might not.
Catherine is rational, reassuring, but with her own interests beyond those of the player character. Simon’s reactions are admirably authentic, sometimes overwhelmed but mostly determined and with a sense of humour that might sound inappropriate but seems a realistic survival mechanism. If at times the point is hammered home a little too strongly by Simon, the protagonist, wondering aloud to himself or to guide Catherine, the personality of the characters makes up for it. As in The Swapper, in which you solve puzzles by creating clones of your character that you then kill, the interactivity makes this philosophical exploration far more impactful than the same topic considered in a book or a film. Whether or not you believe that psychological continuity ensures personal identity, to progress you have to disable the robot, potentially killing a person who’s aware of your actions. “Soma” is Greek for “body”, as in “psychosomatic”, but the question Soma asks is whether identity can continue through psychology alone.Įarly in the game, the player character comes across a robot that’s convinced it’s human, specifically that it’s the person whose memories occupy its robotic brain. Soma is essentially an existential nightmare about personal identity. The thing is, this game is horrifying enough without them. But the sea is rarely a threat – the ocean floor is often just a beautiful corridor between the underwater bases in which you experience more traditional horror gaming fare: ie running away from monsters. Taking place in a remote underwater research facility, it plays on fears of the deep sea, of drowning and darkness and the disturbing alien lifeforms that dwell down there – all a welcome change from the mansions and asylums that tend to haunt horror titles. S oma is a horror game that should try to act less like a horror game.
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