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Exstistential horror, especially an eternity of torture, is literally the most horrifying thing to me. Especially when its done not out of malice, just NOT caring

I think the thing that messes me up about this game is that it finally made the concept of non-continuity through digital copies/teleportation/etc click for me. "Simon" as we played him was never going to get on that Ark. It really brings Catherine's actions into light - she understands that she "herself" is not getting on that Ark, she understands how the project works and knows she's going to die on Earth and the version that might make it on the Ark will be a copy of her, not HER her. Explaining that to someone else who still has that hope must be painful to the point of insanity. I know this game and Jacob Geller's video on head transplants are two pieces of art that made me have to go on a long walk so I didn't think too hard about it and collapse into crisis - I can't imagine what it'd be like to live it.

I never saw Simon as an idiot but as an average person with false hope. Like many of us we latch on to the best outcome instead of the possibility of the most horrible situations. He is told it was a copy but doesn't accept it. There was nothing to return to, another option, or something else to do. It was only this and when you have 1 option you would hope for the best.

I watched someone else play this because I'm too much of a scaredy cat for horror games but I haven't stopped thinking about the ending since that day. It's so crushingly awful to think about - sometimes I'll just randomly be going about my day and think about Soma's ending again. Literally one of the most chilling stories in gaming

Amusing bit of trivia: "Story/Safe Mode" was not originally part of the game. As released, there was no way to disable the monster attacks. That changed when the "Wuss Mode" mod was released, which was basically identical to the eventual gamemode. Assumedly, Frictional saw the mod, decided that removing the monster AI really was a valid game experience, and included it in a patch to spread that experience to the non-modding playerbase.

Simon's "please don't leave me alone" as the power turns off around him gets me everytime :') I'm absolutely terrified of being completely alone like that and the ending just knocked me on my ass

The way i interpreted idea behind "blowy" is that you have to choose between killing a robot that by this point you know it's a scanner of a real person, OR "killing" an object that's not conscious of itself but you attached yourself to it because it was useful to you, and it was kinda cute(even Simon express this). I believe the idea is to show how the value we give to life is relative. How we sometimes might give more value to an inanimate objects that we have history with (and in this case and object that we anthropomorphized) than a real human being that we just met.

This game literally gives me what feels like PTSD when ever i see that last part of Simon being left behind. No exaggeration, my heart clenches, breathing gets hard, and i get extreme anxiety, i become scared too. The crazy part is that it lasts only seconds. This is the only piece of media that does this to me. Idk what this means. Lets just say i would hate to be in Simons situation in real life.

When he said he literally had no mouth my brain flashed to the short story 'I have no mouth and I must scream', I initially dismissed it as just being similar wording, but in the end there is a sort of parallel both protagonists are the last 'human' creatures on a destroyed earth having mercy killed all of their companions, destined to be tortured forever and unable to die.

I never made the connection that Simon was a bit slowwith his realizations bc of his brin damage. I think both him and Catherine were, on some level aware what they were doing, Catherine with the "just robots" and simon with not realizing one of him would go on and one of him would stay behind. I think they were both compartmentalizing hard, not admitting to each other OR themselves what was happening, in order to reach a goal they both thought was the only good goal left. I always wondered how they left-behind-catherine felt. She wasn't surprised, but she also didn't seem scared or sad. Did she think of herself like she thought about the other robots? Would she stay with Simon and just vibe for eternity or would she shut herself down? I kind of feel like she believed what the suicide-ppl thought, that since a version of her made it, she made it. But I wonder if she actually ever let herself think about what would happen after. We know she considered the scans human when it came to preserving human-kind, but not when it came to... needing to kill or use them. How would she apply that to herself? SUCH an interesting character who raises so many interesting questions to ponder when we put herself in her position

54:30 this part always stuck with me. The VA for Simon (Jared Zeus) captured the pure disbelief and horror of the scene perfectly

I'd use the comparison for this game and "I have no mouth and I must scream". Both are existential horror seeped in death and the decay of earth, with identity and choice being at the forefront of each experience. While IHNMAIMS isn't transhumanist per say, there are a lot of parallels through AMs treatment of the five characters you can play as, with death never being a true way of escape, and the idea of the mind being forced to live and relive it's own trauma through a computer simulation. Neither games ending is truly happy either, just a slightly lighter than true black.

The line "oh no i lost my dunbat, my mum's gonna fkn kill me" delivered in that *chefs kiss* way always gets me

I liked Soma a lot more than the Black Mirror episode because the BM ep involves creating and torturing a sentient mind to do something my dad could program and schedule in the 1990s. In Soma, the situation where you can find and preserve human consciousness has a lot more stakes.

People usually put all the attention into their Amnesia franchise, and while I do agree that Amnesia is an amazing game, I still think Soma is by far the greatest masterpiece of the studio. Great video as always, keep it up!

Also can I just say, I utterly love your style of humor. That perfect blend of a quality 2010's KZfaqr with modern awareness.

I love your analysis, this might be my favourite video on SOMA I've ever watched. I honestly find Catherine a deeply relatable and compelling character - when Simon asks her how she's so chill about her situation, she says something like "I never felt comfortable being human anyway" and it really paints her as someone who's always been unable to relate to other people (even before becoming a disembodied computer voice), and someone excited for the transhumanist innovations of the future. I'm not sure if she was written this way on purpose, but she reads as an autistic character to me (an autistic person) and I find her storyline sympathetic. She was just a scientist trying to do her own little project and then the world ended and suddenly she had to 'save humanity' and try to answer philosophical and ethical questions that are simply not possible to answer. And then everyone gets mad about her answers.

This is one of those cases where the most jaw dropping moments of this game don't even involve the gameplay. The way our minds try to adapt to the existential-script with such atmospheric environments really is an experience beyond words. Genuinely love your content! Keep up the amazing work! :)

Ah, the game that made me have a nervous breakdown about the horror of immortality.

20:05 It's been about a year or two since I've played Soma, but it impacted me so profoundly. I felt such incredible empathy for these "robots" that I did not want to progress the game if it meant hurting them. If I remember correctly, there are many additional dialogue options that you can go through after achieving certain objectives. With Carl here, I could tell him that he was a machine, and he would break down into an inconsoleable existential mess. I also vaguely remember that I was able to "deactivate" him prematurely. I did this as a mercy kill, as it seemed the only humane option. Many of the characters you meet in Soma have these hidden options to understand them further or to achieve some sort of secondary objective, if you will. Even the monsters have lore associated with them. One "person" in particular that I developed an incredible fondness for was this little helper bot who would open doors or illuminate areas on this small island area. It cannot speak, you cannot touch it, and really outside of the context of this game, you might not even recognize that the bot is actually human. I can't remember exactly what happened, but I was seperated from him, probably in getting onto the ride back to the main plateau area(?). I hesitated before getting on. The doors closed, and I thought, "I'll never see him again."

Actually, i've never seen that note telling Simon about the vivid nightmares, i've replayed this game atleast a dozen times and explored every inch and that has always slipped unnoticed. how real is reality when we can't even pick up on all the cues of things not being... 'real'. what a hellish reality we could be very well trapped in, unable to see further. oh and someone did climb the omega gun in adjacent side material to SOMA, basically when *spoilers* catherine dies and everyone goes back to Tau, someone starts putting together a plan to climb it. well once things go very sour, the woman in the story starts climbing the whole way up, having little in the way of bearing as she ascends from the abyss foot by foot. eventually she makes it to the surface the moment before sunrise and with the freedom to choose her own fate. takes off her suit and waits to succumb to the toxic atmosphere, smiling content as she watches the clouds break and the sun rises.

As someone who never allows themselves to catch a thought in their brain in silence (yes I am listening to this during chores because who would clean up all alone with their thoughts running?!) the thought of being all alone, just conscience no body just thoughts floating around throughout infinity...absolutely terrifies me😭

I… actually spared the WAU I feel with enough time it can actually make a real living thing with the scans. I really think it made Simon and he was so successful with such little time, why not give it a chance. I really recommend the video Devils Advocate - SOMA an argument to spare the WAU

I find it interesting that Simons naivete and physical composition and Catherine's computer expertise and unique introspection are the only reasons they haven't gone mad like the others. I always considered that it wasn't just for selfish reasons she shut down Simons questions about the nature of their existence, she may also be trying to prevent his slip into madness. Like he could end up stuck in a recursive logic loop or something by getting too philosophical....

“I have no mouth and I must scream”and “Dark Wood”, are up there but Soma is truely its own box of frogs. This game made me feel truely sad as a human being. The rush to get them out at the end only to find a copy was sent in to space, as if there was any other way…god

I really wish the ending had been the digital copies living at the bottom of the ocean survived and decide to do their own thing along with people surviving on the spaceship.

Black Mirror was received INCREDIBLY well in America. The similarities between BM and SOAM is actually insane tbh.

This remains one of my favorite games to this day. You're right, the actual gameplay is very straightforward, but the story itself was what got me hooked. Years after first playing it/watching others run through it and I still think about it. Soma was one of the first games that made me sit back and just debate with myself about what made you human (within the context of the game). Very fun, even if it was trying to trigger an existential crisis. Edit: That moment when Simon realizes that he wasn't "transferred" and was actually copied in Omicron was both heartbreaking and horrific. But even so, he still didn't fully understand until the end of the game. Edit 2: Was there a reason you disliked Catherine so much? Lmao. She had a goal she felt she needed to achieve - to save humanity. While, yes, she manipulated Simon, what other choice did she have? He was an idiot. He REFUSED to accept the reality of his situation, even when she tried to explain. And when he finally accepted that he was no longer human, he was still in denial about the coin toss until the very end. So, yes, she used him, but Simon also used her as well. Her goal was to set off the ARK no matter the cost. His goal was to get himself ON the ARK no matter the cost.

Also- the welder robot that helps you out from the escape shuttle actually runs away in fear after you "BEAT THE SHIT" out of the bloke robot to take his chip. Because yeah, you have choice there- either you murder the barely lucid bloke or the welder bot who fkin saved you out of a can

Excellent video! I originally shared your dislike of Catherine until I found one particularly interesting theory the game revolves around the processing power of her robot brain. As you discussed most of the machines with human minds have difficulty perceiving reality, and the Simons are the most functional people we meet. Given how Catherine is both extremely dismissive of Simon and hyper focused on her goal I believe it's reasonable to assume her mind may be compromised due to the limitations of her vessel. This is especially noticeable if we compare PA Catherine's detached mannerisms to the almost affectionate greeting ARK Catherine gives to ARK Simon. I think it adds to the tragedy of the story that not only is Simon a man out of time, but that he is being led by a barely functioning Catherine. It doesn't redeem her entirely in my mind, but I no longer hate her character overall.

Was hoping you'd cover this gem. SOMA messes with you in more than just one way.

Man Soma is an absolute masterpiece. Haunting and thought provoking.

Soma is a game I've heard of, but never played. That said, your narration of the story, sprinkled with humorous takes and references, just hit the right spot. Loved it, probably more so than if I had played through the game myself.

BABE WAKE UP NEW MERTKAYKAY JUST DROPPED A VID ABT A GAME THAT IM HYPERFIXATED ON

when I played Soma it kinda reminded me of Prey (2017), not just because of the whole twist at the end but because of the walking around an abandoned facility and seeing what everyone left behind. Both games also give you moral choices to make that have little to no impact on the gameplay, they're just there to make you think really. They're also both seriously underrated

I love this game. I don’t care if it’s more of a walking simulator; the story it tells and the existential crises that it produces has me hooked. I talk about this game way too much.

I keep telling myself “he made it, he made it on the ark as a copy, he’s okay in one way” cause I’m trying to make myself feel better about my fears of a similar fate. I’m in such deep denial that all of Simon is stuck forever cause I’m afraid of jinxing myself a similar fate by being scared

Maybe the real Simon was the friends we made along the way

I'm so glad you covered this game! It's definitely one of the most haunting pieces of media I've ever seen. As you said, the gameplay isn't really anything, so it's super hard for me to recommend this game to people, but it's story singlehandedly boosts it up to a sort of "masterpiece" status for me. For most of the game, my understanding was pretty much on par with Simon's, I took the biggest blow after the "transfer" to the new body leaving the original Simon still alive. From that point on I pretty much understood everything and anticipated the ending I figured would come. Even with figuring out how it will possibly end though, the ending still hit me like a ton of bricks. The decision to have the perspective switch to the new body in Omicron, lulling us into a false sense of safety only to later have the ending of the game stay with our current Simon first, rather than immedietly showing the ARK was so brilliant. I'd love to interview the devs and see if they had any debates over which order to show the ending in, the one they went with is definitely the right choice in my mind. Game aside, your content is absolutely incredible, I'm shocked you haven't been picked up by the algorthythm sooner. I found your channel a while ago and have been going through most of your videos, your writing is crazy good! This was the first time in years that I've sat through a Raid ad, just 'cause I was super happy you got a deal with them, get your coin girl, you really deserve it!! It's been a hot minute since I went through your content so it could be that you mentioned it already, but in case not, do you ever plan on potentially making a video on What Remains of Edith Finch?

Kind of reminds me of World of Tomorrow by Don Hertzfeldt. A girl is contacted by a clone of herself from the future. She explains that a version of immortality is made available through cloning, but there is slight deterioration with each new generation. The clone shows the girl glimpses of future lives she'll live, then looks for a memory from the original girl that's been lost over time.

Watching this a second time this mirrors Nier and The Outer Wilds in a lot of ways. How life and the time we have should be valued and how random things can lead to massive changes. The meteor killing most surface life really shows the chaos of the universe and how even in our final moments humanity tries to create order from this. Attempting to launch what is a perfect world in a virtual world in defiance of the chaos of the universe. But like the meteor who says that world will last, will it crash, the solar panels get damage, or maybe Simon will find more robots like him and they'll continue to live on like the Mages from FF9. It's a lot of what ifs but that's what makes Soma great, on the surface there's a lot of dread but when you peel back and use the same chaos that set the game into motion it can lead to something hopeful. That or KayKay is right and Simon is just having a last vision before death.

Soma's weird "what is sentience/what is life" conundrum (and by extension those Black Mirror episodes) reminds me of the teletransportation paradox. If you were broken down into base components on Earth, had that information sent at lightspeed to Mars, then reformed using base components there, would that still be you? They addressed that in Star Trek a lot and their answers never satisfied me. For instance, there's an episode of The Next Generation where the crew discovers that a long time ago a copy of Commander Riker was made during a transporter accident. One William Riker went on to become the first officer on the Enterprise while the other got marooned on a desolate planet. When the question "who is the real Will Riker" was finally asked, the show just said that they both were as, physically at least, they were 100% the same person. They've done this with time travel, spacial anomalies, all sorts of stuff, but that particular story always bothered me because the Will Riker character was my template for what being a man was (Nigel funfact: I was raised by a single mom). I felt like they had done the character dirty somehow and since then I've always been fascinated with the paradox. That fascination won't get me to play a thinly veiled walking sim, but I enjoy listening to people talk about it. On that note, thank you for knocking out another A+ video.

I think this also fits into the Lovecraftian-esque fear of the unknown. The person went into a spooky, weird place to have a not very standard procedure done, and got stuck living through infinite lives because of that one action, because of just knowing something, or experiencing something. He does something without thinking or realizing what it means, and, essentially, makes a deal with the unknown.

Catherine is very interesting in this because whoever she was as a human, we only really know her as the person she was copied as. Obviously at the very end of the game when we find her murdered corpse and the last logge from her and her old ark team she was adamant that her ark project be launched as quick as possible and ended up being killed because the others wanted to wait longer for one reason or another. We hear first hand she was determined and unswayable in her goals, and she seems to have always had that streak to her seeing as Data chip Cathy was scanned well before the very end of her human days. I think by the very end of Human Catherine's life she had accepted the fact that her project was the only possible thing left that had a chance to continue on in some capacity, everyone left alive on Earth was in the station under water, time was destroying it little by little and everyone who was still alive and scanned tended to kill themselves because they knew there was no future; they couldn't live down in the ocean forever when time was destroying the facility little by little, everyone they loved was dead- no food fresh supplies, the ever present threat of being imprisoned under the ocean with an increasingly unstable strcucter around you and piling up dead bodies and science experiments going rogue . There was just nothing, nothing to live for, and nothing that supported continuing to be alive. I think Catherine realized this at some point and at the very least her scanned form was heavily imprinted by this nihilistic mentality in some unconscious way (or maybe she fully acknowledged it and just accepted it for what it's). She just has a goal and that's the most important thing to her. She needs it to be done and done as best as it can be done, and she doesn't want to acknowledge any extra problems by anyone else because they pale in comparison to her ultimate goals. She doesn't want to keep talking about how things work with Simon because he doesn't ultimately need to know because that doesn't *matter* he' he'll never have an opportunity to actually better himself or get over it in any meaningful way, or do anything else meaningful with his existence even if Catherine did take the time to explain things and allow him to get over it, because nothing was ever going to be left for him or her to do, but launch the ark and sit around until they power off or get destroyed in some capacity.

“Imagine if you put all the cookies on an island with all the stimulus in the world and fast forward a thousand years” That is, for better and for worse, an actual plot line in Sword Art Online: Alicization

I think there's one sentient robot you encounter earlier than your example, but he's very hard to hear with all the static and scary noises the game throws at you and I only noticed he was even there in hindsight. Very early on, you're in a lit room and then the lights go off. There's a robot on the floor saying things like "you, not me" over and over. It's the only room where you have to touch the WAU flower/butthole. And when you do it cuts his power and kills him I found this one creepier in hindsight because on my first playthrough I had killed him without ever knowing he was there.

I absolutely adore SOMA. It is a game that grips me every time. I love that you can burden yourself to help out NPCs, but if you are not paying attention you can accidentally do irreversible harm to the world. I have seen a lot of people argue that Simon is stupid. Even Catherine says so. But I think that he has been put into the nightmare and is simply trying to cling to what he knows so that he doesn't loose his mind. He is literally in over his head, and clinging to any strand of hope he can get. He is much more composed and rational than I would be tbh. But I also love how Catherine plays into this aspect of Simon to keep him on track. Because all that matters in the end is the Arc.

Your essay launched an interesting discussion with my friends about "the end." Simon the robot never realized when he was doing something for the last time (which could be as big as speaking with his impassive AI companion or opening a door) because he was so busy trekking forward. When you hit a dead end and are left with all the things you lost having gaining nothing equivalent, like paradise, it's crushing. That's a bit of a tangent from what you were discussing, but the way you zeroed in on Simon's situation was especially fun to listen to. Great video, as always!

This game and what remains of Edith Finch were both games that gave me serious existential dread about how easy you could lose something or someone you love, and I think it really gave me a feeling that 2020 was going to be a bad year because of something big that was going to happen and it also gave me the thought and feeling the world was going to end throughout the summer of 2019 it definitely was an eye opening experience

i really enjoy your voice and commentary on just about anything! i’m really glad i found your channel, please keep making these great videos!

I just wanted to say that I appreciated the "called a fat cow" -> "spent time ruminating" joke at the beginning.

Great to see a new upload from you Mert, you've quickly become one of my fave creators (binged your stuff the past couple of weeks). Also love the ideas discussed in SOMA so can't wait for your take

I loved how the game got you to interrogate your own relationship to existence and its value. I did kill the lady that wanted to die and if I can recall you can sit with her until she passes so she won't be alone and I did. I don't think the suicides were quite as stupid as it might first appear. If all Simons are equal, then when Simon 1 kills himself once Simon 2 is created and they do it at the same moment (which is the goal) there is no fork in the path and there is a "continuity" of existence. The current Simon doesn't have to deal with the moral issue of any previous ones, there is only the singular existence of the current Simon and as long as he does this for future incarnations it will be, for all practical purposes a "transfer" of consciousness to another body. I don't think it's true or a good road to go down but it's not stupid. If anything it's overthought. I do sometimes still get chills thinking of the Simon on the ocean floor locked up in that cage. But I think your "final exam" for what constitutes life is how you handle the WAU. Do you think life is to be valued absolutely? Then the WAU must continue keeping everything alive. Does life only have value if it's recognizably human? At what point does non-human life inherit the right to exist? It's a lot to chew on.

This whole thing, with the slices of consciousness and 'cookies,' reminds me a lot of the movie Source Code! Ignore the presence of Jake Gyllenhell, and there's a really interesting story there. I don't want to say anything else because spoilers though :x

Oh btw It is stated why Simon is there as a scan- he is a legacy scan used as a example to what AI should be. Essentially- he is a template of human brain on which all newest AI in world of SOMA were built. Not literally turning Simon's brain into AIs, but as a... showcase how human brain works so people can program AIs in "it's image". And if you listen to one of the logs in Delta (or Omicron) you can find that Simon agreed for his scan to be used for science while he was on his death bed. And you technically meet another robot that you unplug before the one in the powerplant control room. In the room before a vent section is the first "WAU butthole you finger" and there is a voice that tells you to not touch it, after you touch the "WAU flower" the voice is gone. My thinking is that the scan was probably built into the control panel you just touched, WAU isn't above putting scans into industrial equipment (Dunbat as an example) And WAU's "Magnetic Shriek" aside from being a gesture of self preservation might have been "allowed to kill" because WAU was already on it's way of "resurecting" people. The law was baypassed because it had a way to return the human to life, even tho this state of living is extremaly dubious and stress inducing for the creation

This hands down the best analysis of Soma I have seen. It is one of my favorite games, and it was amazing to see someone cover the themes of existential horror that it evokes! So many essays only scratch the surface of these themes, but you dove deep into them! The comparison to black mirror was excellent too, that is another piece of media that lives rent free in my head. Those same thought experiments with the cookies have haunted me as well and I can’t believe I never thought to compare it to soma! Thanks so much for making such a great video!

YEEEEEEESSSSSS! I absolutely ADORED SOMA. This game had all the horror vibes with just the right amount of let up between the chases and drag down horror moments. All that aside, I've only found your channel a week ago or so and have accidently chewed through all your videos. Listening at work is exactly what I need to get by during these hellish summer days. Thank you for the hours of entertainment.

"Simon sits down, there's a bright flash and- TRY GOOGLE FI"

Soma is one of those games that you’ll never forget- I think about it often

thank you for making a video on soma! its one of my favorite games and i always love having discussions about it and its themes great video!!

SOMA is absolutely lit, I'm so glad to see you reviewing it!

I remember getting this as a freebie some years back and just never bothered to play past the first hour or so. I definitely should have given it more of a chance, especially since it's setting is very much my jam now. Also congrats on 30k!!

Congrats on 35K! I greatly enjoy your long format videos, I listen during work. Looking forward to more videos from you!

God, I've had this game stuck in my head for so long and I've loved it so much. I'm really glad to see more people talking about it. Especially this format! Fantastic video as always!

Black Mirror as a fictional world feels like an unholy marriage between "phone bad" boomer comics and fuckton of copium

A piece of amazing sci-fi horror writing that I still think of years after playing it. So happy to see you doing a video on it!

Yay another video! I just found your channel recently and I’ve watched everything…..lol I love how in depth and honest your videos are!

I was just thinking how good a video about soma you'd make if you ever made one, my day has been completely made! This truly was an incredible video, fantastic work and it's so nice to hear you enjoyed it as much as I did ^-^

Completely agree, this story most likely wouldn' t work in any other media. For me one of the strongest moments definitely was the last living human on Earth. What a bizzare, sad and frightening idea for a scene.

While the ending is an absolute punch in the gut, nothing caused me more dread than hearing the other Simon talk after switching suits and the conversation with Catherine in the elevator afterward.

I spared the second Simon after the transfer. It was actually slightly reassuring at the end when i realized Deep Sea Simon had someone to hang out with

You asked for recommendations (sorta) and hearing you describe this reminded me of I have no mouth and I must scream! It’s one of my favorite books and I believe it has a graphic novel and a game as well!!

Just watching it now and congrats mert you've come along way since 2020 and I'm super happy for you and the progress you've made. You deserve every bit of success from the youtubes. Keep it up dude!

I'm so excited to see this, gonna repeat watch for sure over the course of a few days leading into going to bed (I promise that's a compliment, it's why I've seen so much hbomberguy!)

Well done as usual Mert, your attention to detail is something I appreciate for every second of your videos. I did not have the same reaction to this game that you did, but that is mostly down to how I interact with and consume games. I tend to not look for the underlying themes, just how much I enjoy the gameplay.

i thought i’d watched all the delicious analysis videos on soma, and that any others i watched would just be unique ways (still entertaining) of making the same points. but then you go and drop this and prove me wrong. you always manage to see things from a different perspective than my other favorite game analysis channels, and i love that.

Idk if the gameplay will be to your liking, but I think you will enjoy the story of the zero Escape series. 1. 9 hours 9 persons 9 doors 2. Virtues last reward 3. Zero time dilemma They are available on steam. Each of them is a visual novel with a lot of endings and decisions. In betweem you will also be placed in Escaperooms which you need to solve. I loved it and the topics discussed in these games seem to interest you.

if i remember right you can actually take the time to reroute the power that would have been going through Carl to go through somewhere else safely, but you would have to evade one of the murder robots to do so

This ad read transition has me crying. It sounds so slapped on in post. 9.5 out of 10, one of the best I've seen

This game caused many spooky existential conversations with me and my friends. A really genuinely thought provoking story that asks really disturbing questions. Something I always found a bit creepy was the fact that if enemies are enabled, the robot asking for structure gel will pop a load of tools out when it gets upset and try to rip you open with them for your gel. You’re a robot that thinks you’re a person, he’s allegedly the same, he just thinks he’s a guy trying to get his structure gel for whatever reason and you’re “just a robot”. Really makes me imagine those robots you tased to death would probably be seeing something similar on their end as you were when some psycho robot was trying to stab you and screaming about gel. Great vid again, you ever have an interest in Silent Hill 2 by the way? Also a story driven horror game that tackles some…heavy issues, though they’re quite different issues to this game. Also whore Christmas is my favourite time of the year. Great fun for the whole family

Loved this game. Can't wait to watch this

Once, I met one of the vice presidents of the United States, backstage at a concert. Nice guy, kinda nerdy, big on environmentalism. So he decided he'd show me his musical talent, turns out the dude plays drums. Unfortunately, it wasn't that great at first, he was a little off beat, kinda slow. But I recognised some symptoms, and I realised it was because his blood sugar levels were kinda low. So I popped to the kitchen, made him a jam sandwich, and after he ate it, he played perfectly. Now you may be wondering why I'd make this long, obviously false story in this comment section. But in that story, I did the same thing I'm doing right now. Feeding the Al-Gore-Rhythm.

I've thought about Soma at least once a month since it was released. Wonderful video on it! I have never seen Black Mirror(because watching new media is inordinately hard) and the whole 'cookie' thing is absolutely terrifying! Certainly has a way to make you appreciate the life you have.

Even your Raid ad reads are full of wit and amazing vocabulary. Love it.

The White Christmas episode reminds me a lot of the short story collection Axiomatic by Greg Egan, particularly "Learning to be Me" and "Closer" (also a bit of "The Cutie"). All very creepy sci-fi stories with existential questions.

Awesome this game is amazing. I have a lot of trouble getting through the scary games where you can't defend yourself and the inclusion of a mode where the monsters don't chase you around and insta kill you is great. This is one of my favorite games, my love of transhumanism stuff and my fear of the ocean really made this game shine

I just want to say that these types of videos are usually ones I turn on in the background while doing something else. However, your videos are so well articulated and formatted that I find myself too focused on everything you’re talking about that I forget what I might have been doing before. It’s so cool to find videos that can keep my interest so well, as I am someone with a very short attention span. Thanks so much for making the content you do. I love hearing your thoughts about any game.

Binged a bunch of your videos today. You're a really engaging and well-spoken narrator and scriptwriter! These videos are super enjoyable to watch. Hope you're doing well, take care :D

"Hells of our own creation" is a topic Jacob Geller did some time ago and something Id love to go into myself. SOMA, ...And I Must Scream, SuperHot Series, Silent Hill 2&3, Returnal, Risk Of Rain 2 in a way, and literally and IRL convention. A cool topic for sure. Oh and by the way what the SOMA's humans did with their consciousness is word for word what the humans did in Kirby as confirmed by Forgotten Land.

I was about to say that Soma could be great season 1/2 Black mirror episode! White Christmas is probably the closest thing we have to Soma on the small screen. That being said I personally found "Well be right back" as my favorite episode of black mirror as it asked what are humans? What is loss? And what is grief? And how we deal with these subjects while we have these digital footprints that for many of us will long outlive our own lives.

I’ve always liked Catherine and I view her relationship with Simon as “warming up slowly” rather than how you describe her, but I get it and maybe I’m just coping

I knew some people who'd played this game and weren't impressed, possibly because all they cared about was the gameplay. It messed me up. It borderline ruined my life for months, and I never cease to be amazed and horrified by it, no matter how many times I keep re-experiencing it. This, to me, is the peak example of the power of video games as an art medium. This game horrifies me, and probably always will, and I absolutely adore it.

There's this video game - I can't remember for the life of me what it was called - but the whole concept was you were the last human not in this digital 'afterlife' scan, and the planet or ship or whatever you were on was doomed, so you had to go through the game and find the scanner to save yourself... only for the scan to indeed take a copy of your brain... but leaves you, yourself, in reality. Because, yeah, scanning your brain wouldn't take your soul with you, so... what's the point? It's literally this game but ...not! Because the ending - you see and hear your 'copy' make it safely into paradise. It was pristine and white, the room, however. And your copy was physical and you could HEAR them in the other room...

Something I often thing about with regards to Soma is how similar the WAU and Catherine end up in attempting to "preserve humanity". I'm referring specifically to the WAU's practice of putting humans into a deep dream vs Catherine's Ark; two solutions to the problem that in practice are not that radically different. Both offer an artificial fantasy for the last vestiges of humanity to escape into as they are preserved in perpetuity, and both have been paid for in blood and suffering at the hands of a callous creator in pursuit of a greater good. Yet while the latter is generally accepted as a worthwhile endeavor, the former is often considered something so grotesque and inhumane that death is a mercy in comparison. How eagerly people jump at "mercy killing" in games is a whole other can of worms I won't get into, but I just wonder if the WAU's yucky looking meat dream network gets such a bad rap just because of the physical form it takes.

thanks for the great video! i haven't played soma myself, but i've tried listening to podcasts discussing the themes before and had a hard time following along. your explanation and thoughts made me feel like i understand it better than i did before :)

Very good analysis, glad you drew that parallel between Soma and Black Mirror. Don't think I've seen any other essay discussing it. About the "coin toss"/"continuity" theory: it's probably worth noting the fact that, in those kinds of extremely difficult psychological circumstances (i.e. realizing that the Earth is destroyed and you are among the last living humans), the crew of Theta will have gone more than a bit mad, being very susceptible to manipulation and grasping at every straw in order to maintain some semblance of normality or control. Among Soma fans, it's more or less accepted that Mark Sarang's ideas on continuity are basically just a huge coping mechanism with absolutely no basis in fact, a way of dealing with the horrible reality of being stuck at the bottom of the sea with dwindling resources and the clock ticking. Given the circumstances, however, it's no surprise that the survivors of PATHOS-II would have been extremely receptive to these kinds of fantasies, in spite of their absurd nature. A very interesting aspect here is that Sarang, along with Johan Ross and Julia Dahl (and possibly Paula Lansky), are directly employed by Carthage Industries, the megacorporation which essentially owns the whole facility. This is never revealed to the other members of the crew, which generates all sorts of theories about the interests and goals of Carthage, and how Sarang and Ross in particular facilitated them in their capacity as Carthage employees. We know that Ross was directly responsible for the WAU and had been working at the secret Site Alpha, which was where the core of the WAU could be found. In parallel, it's also quite possible that, as an intelligence analyst, Sarang was tasked by Carthage to provide some kind of psychological "crowd control" directed at the rest of Theta even before the comet hit, and came up with "continuity" as a method of managing the collective loss of sanity in that specific context. We have very little information about the actual content of the e-mails between Ross, Sarang and the higher-ups at Carthage, so it's mostly just speculation. One theory is that, as the inevitability of the impact set in, the board of Carthage Industries told Ross to accelerate his experiments with the WAU as a backup plan for humanity, while Sarang, who was probably going crazy himself, was put in the unenviable position of keeping Theta running smoothly, with disastrous consequences on both fronts. One highly speculative train of thought connected to this narrative is that some members of Carthage who were not on PATHOS-II survived the impact, clinging to the hope that humanity could be rebuilt and that they could continue to advance their corporate interests in a more distant future. I don't think this is totally unreasonable because 1. a powerful entity like Carthage could have found some way of ensuring the survival of at least a fraction of its employees until the WAU would "learn" how to do things properly; and 2. the International Asteroid Deflection Program (IADP) had already been attempting to deflect the comet for some unspecified amount of time before the actual impact, so preparations could be made in case of failure. In any case, I recommend having a look at the myriad of discussions on the Soma subreddit for more thought-provoking opinions.

I find that Brooker often relies on his characters being sociopathic, stupid, or both plus unfettered for his stories to work - but JESUS is White Christmas terrifying. (Black Museum also gave me a full on panic attack.)

Finishing this game for the first time was devastating.

THANK YOU for this video. It was very interesting. Especially because I liked the game (and Black Mirror) too. And there's just something in your way of talking that makes it never a bore to listen to. And, I too, try to bring up game talk in conversations about anything other than games. Unfortunately, I have next to no friends that share my love for games.