This review contains spoilers
The “walking simulator” is a relatively new phenomenon in the gaming realm. They are an amalgamation of the adventure, puzzle, platforming, and simulator game genres without leaning too heavily into one of them. They are minimal by design compared to other game genres, showcasing narrative, characters, dialogue, and tone over action and gameplay. One would think that the widespread popularity of these types of games signals that the game industry has finally committed to just starting to make films by stripping away most of the gameplay. However, most of these “walking simulator” games are made by indie developers. Perhaps these games have been churned out frequently over the past decade because developers with a small-scale budget can still offer something with substance and spectacle. Frictional Games, the Swedish indie developer, seem to have a grasp on making an effective “walking simulator,” as seen with the smash hit Amnesia: The Dark Descent from 2010. The minimization of the gameplay proved to be incredibly effective in terms of evoking horror in the player. It reminded us that great horror is intended to make the player claustrophobic and defenseless against what lurks in the dark; something was forgotten in the waves of action-horror games that littered the 2000s. Soma, their 2015 follow-up to Amnesia, translated all of the best elements from Amnesia into the domain of science fiction. In doing this, Frictional Games upholds their horror idiosyncrasies with Soma, delivering something as frightening as Amnesia in a different setting while offering something more substantial.
One of the more substantial factors of Soma compared to Amnesia is its riveting narrative. The narrative in Amnesia was intentionally vague, seemingly for the title’s namesake, but was supported by mystique, atmosphere, and spectacle. All of those elements support Soma’s narrative as well, but I feel they are more effective due to the humdrum opening of the game. Simon Jarrett, a young man living in modern-day 2015, wakes up on a sunny, picturesque day in his apartment in Toronto, Canada. He attends an experimental cranial scan to soothe his traumatic brain injury. He drinks his revolting medicine and steps into the doctor’s chair like any mundane checkup. When he sits in the chair, however, the scene of a simple checkup plummets faster than a bird shot out of the sky. Simon is transported to a dark, industrial landscape foreign from the sunny skies of 2015 Toronto. In Amnesia, the player hadn’t a clue where they were, but at least the player had a suspended sense of belief due to zero context about the mysterious foreground. Soma, on the other, handsets up a domestic setting for the player just to eject them out of a sense of familiarity. The player is as startled and confused as Simon is. As a result, adding a certain level of intrigue to the game’s story and characters.
As the game progresses, the circumstances surrounding Simon’s bizarre occurrence become much more interesting. It’s easy to assume that Simon is simply dreaming and that what the player is experiencing is Simon’s frazzled mind in a comatose state. Thankfully, the writers for this game didn’t appease the player’s easy first conclusion. Instead, Soma’s story is a whirlwind of science-fiction existentialism that directly relates to the subject of reality about the Phillip K. Dick quote that opens the game. Once Simon finds his way around the dark facility, he discovers that the year is 2104, and he’s been transported to a futuristic, underwater society called PATHOS-II. He is relieved when he contacts someone named Catherine, who is located in another facility on PATHOS-II. Once he finds Catherine on the Lambda site, he is disappointed to learn that she is merely a robot. Specifically, she is a robotic scan of someone who worked in PATHOS-II, and she lives artificially. She explains that decades ago, Earth failed to stop a comet from colliding with Earth, resulting in an apocalyptic decline for human society and the species itself. The only survivors are the workers of PATHOS-II, who are slowly attempting to reconstruct humanity with the WAU system as an overseer, but all of the workers are dead as well. Simon transplants Catherine into his Omnitool as they venture onward to uncover the ARK, a project conducted by the WAU as the last hope for humanity. During his journey, Simon learns that he, too, is an artificial being. He died way back in 2015 during the brain scan, and his file was saved from being transported to a deceased co-worker of Catherine’s. Yet, Simon is oblivious to this until he discovers it. Simon then transports his being again into a machine capable of descending further into the abyss of the ocean floor, leaving his previous body behind. He finds the ARK and destroys the WAU in the process. Simon’s destination is the Phi site, where he downloads Catherine and himself into the ARK as it blasts into space. Unfortunately, his present consciousness did not transmit into the ARK nor Catherine’s. Simon and Catherine have a heated altercation, and Catherine’s AI fractures, leaving Simon alone in the abyss. Meanwhile, the transmitted versions of Simon and Catherine have successfully entered the ARK. They now exist in a land of serenity that is orbiting the forsaken Earth.
Initially, I never expected to be floored by Soma’s narrative. I had just figured
the most obvious of set-ups and thought Simon was going to have a Wizard of Oz moment where he has a bad dream during the brain scan, and he recognizes a few faces as he wakes up. The likely scenario of traveling to the future and returning with a hundred years of insight didn’t tickle me either. When Simon peruses the recordings and finds the graduate doctors frustrated at themselves for killing him during the procedure. Simon wasn’t in a hundred-year slumber; he was in a state of oblivion due to being dead, resurrected due to futuristic technology that even we in the 21st century cannot fathom as a possibility. Once this revelation occurred, I suddenly began to become invested in this game’s narrative. The concept of suddenly having one’s brain and consciousness turned off like a light switch for almost a century strikes at the core of existential terror. We as people do this for an average of 6-8 hours a night, putting our consciousness in a state of oblivious purgatory as Simon did. The huge difference is that it’s unlikely that we could be awoken almost a century into the future, but the concept of waking up somewhere unrecognizable with no concept about how much time has passed in the context of Soma is horrifying.
The game plays with the concept of consciousness about existence constantly. With technology, the researchers in the PATHOS-II system are essentially jolted back to life at any given notice. The conscious mind of a deceased worker is mechanically revived for a couple of minutes just to manipulate a passcode out from him. After that, he’s gone again with the simple click of a button. Catherine doesn’t exist unless Simon attaches his Omnitool to a monitor. These monitors are found in most places, but Catherine’s existence relies on technology and Simon has all the control is a bit unnerving, to say the least. It brings the player a sense of existential dread to think that one’s personhood and existence are just a matter of a file uploaded to a computer. When Simon transports his body, the one he’s been piloting since he woke up is sitting dormant in an operating chair. It’s up to the player whether the current Simon euthanizes old Simon or not, and this sequence makes the player consider the reality of consciousness the game wishes to explore. Soma uses the idea of consciousness and existence so flippantly with science-fiction tropes. The ability to perceive one’s humanity with senses and consciousness is depicted so trivially here that it’s quite discomforting. Given that this is a post-apocalyptic scenario, perhaps the narrative suggests that this artificial existence is the only means of preserving humanity as technology progresses. Even the immaculate landscape on the ARK is an artificial simulation. I think this idea of consciousness could only have been executed properly in the video game medium because of the first-person perspective. We, as the player, are only familiar with Simon’s voice and relative background. We only glimpse his futuristic, robotic body once in a shadowy reflection, discounting seeing it in a lifeless state after transporting his consciousness to another unit. The first-person perspective often utilized in video games is the easiest way to convey this sense of consciousness compared to every other visual medium.
I wasn’t expecting to get invested in Soma’s characters as I did. High-concept science-fiction stories tend to be light on characterization so as not to distract from the science-fiction narrative. Still, I was pleasantly surprised that Soma managed to create substantial characters. Simon is the epitome of an everyman character, catapulted into a scenario beyond his reach. His situation garnered a sense of sympathy from me, especially when it was revealed that he died a century ago and was now an artificial life form. His dialogue is relatively mundane, but his voice actor does a great job at personalizing it, so Simon’s personality isn’t as robotic as his body. His unorthodox relationship with Catherine also adds a great amount of characterization to Simon, and I suppose that extends to Catherine as well. Both of them are practically the only substantial characters in the entire game, so it’s nice that these characters develop a certain rapport with each other. They banter, argue, joke around, etc. like normal people, and their conversations act as a source of levity. During the final sequence of the arc, when Simon’s data was buffering in the five-second time window, I had my fists clenched in suspense along with Simon, hoping for the best, something I never expected to do with his character near the beginning. This makes the game's ending all the more gut-wrenching as I dreaded thinking about the lonely, cataclysmic existence Simon is about to face. Their relationship is also cleverly disguised as a love plot which is not explicitly detailed in the game. They are two lonely souls in the same hostile environment who build a relationship with one another because of it, an easy set-up for a romantic angle with two characters if I’ve ever heard one. I’m glad that the game did not make this the prime trajectory in the game, as it would’ve been distracting, but the game’s conclusion with both of them on the ARK leads me to believe Simon and Catherine’s relationship shifted into an Adam and Eve scenario.
While the narrative is the backbone of Soma, there is still a video game to be played here. Frictional Games most likely didn’t strain themselves in this department as Soma plays almost exactly like Amnesia. It’s a first-person “walking simulator” that combines adventure game progression with a Half-Life-Esque physics engine sans the physics puzzles. The player is also rendered utterly defenseless against any enemies they might come across, a minimal choice for the intended fear factor. The Omnitool is the main device at Simon’s disposal, but it cannot be used to ward off futuristic sea creatures. The progression in Soma is not based on puzzle solving but rather tinkering around with everything and checking every nook and cranny for anything of importance. The player gets a sense of this as early as Simon wakes up and has to rip up everything in his apartment to find his disgusting brain fluid. As engaging as puzzles usually are in games, I suppose a puzzle-intensive game would distract from the artistic goals of the developers. I’m trying to be open-minded by wrapping my head around what a “walking simulator” is supposed to accomplish, considering the effective qualities. I don’t mind that the gameplay was relatively sparse because it served its purpose to progress Soma’s strong narrative. The only criticism I have regarding this is the underwater sections. Often, Simon will wade through the trenches of the Atlantic to get to another section of PATHOS-II. The first time the player has to do this, it has a certain spectacle. However, this does not retain upon the fourth or fifth time the game drops the player in one of these sections. Frictional Games should’ve adopted the Bioshock rule of keeping the underwater setting as a consistent backdrop.
Soma also borrows the same kind of monsters from Amnesia and the same methods of dealing with them. As I mentioned before, Simon is defenseless against these strange creatures, so the practical solution is to hide from them and shimmy around when he can. The creatures will make throaty, squelching noises and bellow high-pitched yelps to notify their presence. Simon’s visor also becomes erratic and hazy the closer he gets to the monsters, signifying that they are close by. The monsters are also attracted to light, so the flashlight should be strategically used along with when to bust a move. The obvious drawback to this is that the abandoned facilities of PATHOS-II are incredibly dark, so navigating through them while trying to avoid monsters is more aggravating than hair-raising. These claustrophobic corners also prevent the player from running away from these monsters, something at least feasible in Amnesia. While the monsters in Soma are legitimately scary with many tense moments around them, I’m not sure they are necessary. The core horror of Soma is in its existential narrative, so it doesn’t need any of the leftover monsters from Amnesia for it to be an impressionable horror game. I guess the developers got scared and figured people would be put off by a horror game that doesn’t offer tangible monsters, so they added them for safe measures. Soma also comes with a “safe mode” without any monsters, which is intended as an easy mode. However, most people see it as the optimal way to experience the game without distractions. I played the normal mode for an authentic experience, but I could see myself siding with this opinion.
I was gleefully surprised by what Soma had to offer. The premise of a game being a “walking simulator” was a strong detractor initially, and the first few hours of the game fulfilled my already low expectations. As the game progressed and the story started to unfold, I became heavily invested in the world, characters, lore, and narrative of Soma. It’s a heavy game where subtle horror creeps into the player’s mind and makes them consider their surroundings like any effective piece of psychological horror should do. Unfortunately, this sense of subtlety is marred by the developers getting cold feet and trying to offer the same thrills as their hit previous title Amnesia. Soma proved that it didn’t need monsters to be effectively scary (although the sections with monsters did raise my blood pressure). The moments from this game that sticks in my mind aren’t hiding from walking scrotums with barnacles on them but the state of human consciousness and how it makes me who I am, something that might keep me up at night. Maybe I’ll replay this game on “safe mode” to fully relish Soma without any unnecessary distractions one day, and I’ll fully appreciate the game.
------
Attribution: https://erockreviews.blogspot.com
One of the more substantial factors of Soma compared to Amnesia is its riveting narrative. The narrative in Amnesia was intentionally vague, seemingly for the title’s namesake, but was supported by mystique, atmosphere, and spectacle. All of those elements support Soma’s narrative as well, but I feel they are more effective due to the humdrum opening of the game. Simon Jarrett, a young man living in modern-day 2015, wakes up on a sunny, picturesque day in his apartment in Toronto, Canada. He attends an experimental cranial scan to soothe his traumatic brain injury. He drinks his revolting medicine and steps into the doctor’s chair like any mundane checkup. When he sits in the chair, however, the scene of a simple checkup plummets faster than a bird shot out of the sky. Simon is transported to a dark, industrial landscape foreign from the sunny skies of 2015 Toronto. In Amnesia, the player hadn’t a clue where they were, but at least the player had a suspended sense of belief due to zero context about the mysterious foreground. Soma, on the other, handsets up a domestic setting for the player just to eject them out of a sense of familiarity. The player is as startled and confused as Simon is. As a result, adding a certain level of intrigue to the game’s story and characters.
As the game progresses, the circumstances surrounding Simon’s bizarre occurrence become much more interesting. It’s easy to assume that Simon is simply dreaming and that what the player is experiencing is Simon’s frazzled mind in a comatose state. Thankfully, the writers for this game didn’t appease the player’s easy first conclusion. Instead, Soma’s story is a whirlwind of science-fiction existentialism that directly relates to the subject of reality about the Phillip K. Dick quote that opens the game. Once Simon finds his way around the dark facility, he discovers that the year is 2104, and he’s been transported to a futuristic, underwater society called PATHOS-II. He is relieved when he contacts someone named Catherine, who is located in another facility on PATHOS-II. Once he finds Catherine on the Lambda site, he is disappointed to learn that she is merely a robot. Specifically, she is a robotic scan of someone who worked in PATHOS-II, and she lives artificially. She explains that decades ago, Earth failed to stop a comet from colliding with Earth, resulting in an apocalyptic decline for human society and the species itself. The only survivors are the workers of PATHOS-II, who are slowly attempting to reconstruct humanity with the WAU system as an overseer, but all of the workers are dead as well. Simon transplants Catherine into his Omnitool as they venture onward to uncover the ARK, a project conducted by the WAU as the last hope for humanity. During his journey, Simon learns that he, too, is an artificial being. He died way back in 2015 during the brain scan, and his file was saved from being transported to a deceased co-worker of Catherine’s. Yet, Simon is oblivious to this until he discovers it. Simon then transports his being again into a machine capable of descending further into the abyss of the ocean floor, leaving his previous body behind. He finds the ARK and destroys the WAU in the process. Simon’s destination is the Phi site, where he downloads Catherine and himself into the ARK as it blasts into space. Unfortunately, his present consciousness did not transmit into the ARK nor Catherine’s. Simon and Catherine have a heated altercation, and Catherine’s AI fractures, leaving Simon alone in the abyss. Meanwhile, the transmitted versions of Simon and Catherine have successfully entered the ARK. They now exist in a land of serenity that is orbiting the forsaken Earth.
Initially, I never expected to be floored by Soma’s narrative. I had just figured
the most obvious of set-ups and thought Simon was going to have a Wizard of Oz moment where he has a bad dream during the brain scan, and he recognizes a few faces as he wakes up. The likely scenario of traveling to the future and returning with a hundred years of insight didn’t tickle me either. When Simon peruses the recordings and finds the graduate doctors frustrated at themselves for killing him during the procedure. Simon wasn’t in a hundred-year slumber; he was in a state of oblivion due to being dead, resurrected due to futuristic technology that even we in the 21st century cannot fathom as a possibility. Once this revelation occurred, I suddenly began to become invested in this game’s narrative. The concept of suddenly having one’s brain and consciousness turned off like a light switch for almost a century strikes at the core of existential terror. We as people do this for an average of 6-8 hours a night, putting our consciousness in a state of oblivious purgatory as Simon did. The huge difference is that it’s unlikely that we could be awoken almost a century into the future, but the concept of waking up somewhere unrecognizable with no concept about how much time has passed in the context of Soma is horrifying.
The game plays with the concept of consciousness about existence constantly. With technology, the researchers in the PATHOS-II system are essentially jolted back to life at any given notice. The conscious mind of a deceased worker is mechanically revived for a couple of minutes just to manipulate a passcode out from him. After that, he’s gone again with the simple click of a button. Catherine doesn’t exist unless Simon attaches his Omnitool to a monitor. These monitors are found in most places, but Catherine’s existence relies on technology and Simon has all the control is a bit unnerving, to say the least. It brings the player a sense of existential dread to think that one’s personhood and existence are just a matter of a file uploaded to a computer. When Simon transports his body, the one he’s been piloting since he woke up is sitting dormant in an operating chair. It’s up to the player whether the current Simon euthanizes old Simon or not, and this sequence makes the player consider the reality of consciousness the game wishes to explore. Soma uses the idea of consciousness and existence so flippantly with science-fiction tropes. The ability to perceive one’s humanity with senses and consciousness is depicted so trivially here that it’s quite discomforting. Given that this is a post-apocalyptic scenario, perhaps the narrative suggests that this artificial existence is the only means of preserving humanity as technology progresses. Even the immaculate landscape on the ARK is an artificial simulation. I think this idea of consciousness could only have been executed properly in the video game medium because of the first-person perspective. We, as the player, are only familiar with Simon’s voice and relative background. We only glimpse his futuristic, robotic body once in a shadowy reflection, discounting seeing it in a lifeless state after transporting his consciousness to another unit. The first-person perspective often utilized in video games is the easiest way to convey this sense of consciousness compared to every other visual medium.
I wasn’t expecting to get invested in Soma’s characters as I did. High-concept science-fiction stories tend to be light on characterization so as not to distract from the science-fiction narrative. Still, I was pleasantly surprised that Soma managed to create substantial characters. Simon is the epitome of an everyman character, catapulted into a scenario beyond his reach. His situation garnered a sense of sympathy from me, especially when it was revealed that he died a century ago and was now an artificial life form. His dialogue is relatively mundane, but his voice actor does a great job at personalizing it, so Simon’s personality isn’t as robotic as his body. His unorthodox relationship with Catherine also adds a great amount of characterization to Simon, and I suppose that extends to Catherine as well. Both of them are practically the only substantial characters in the entire game, so it’s nice that these characters develop a certain rapport with each other. They banter, argue, joke around, etc. like normal people, and their conversations act as a source of levity. During the final sequence of the arc, when Simon’s data was buffering in the five-second time window, I had my fists clenched in suspense along with Simon, hoping for the best, something I never expected to do with his character near the beginning. This makes the game's ending all the more gut-wrenching as I dreaded thinking about the lonely, cataclysmic existence Simon is about to face. Their relationship is also cleverly disguised as a love plot which is not explicitly detailed in the game. They are two lonely souls in the same hostile environment who build a relationship with one another because of it, an easy set-up for a romantic angle with two characters if I’ve ever heard one. I’m glad that the game did not make this the prime trajectory in the game, as it would’ve been distracting, but the game’s conclusion with both of them on the ARK leads me to believe Simon and Catherine’s relationship shifted into an Adam and Eve scenario.
While the narrative is the backbone of Soma, there is still a video game to be played here. Frictional Games most likely didn’t strain themselves in this department as Soma plays almost exactly like Amnesia. It’s a first-person “walking simulator” that combines adventure game progression with a Half-Life-Esque physics engine sans the physics puzzles. The player is also rendered utterly defenseless against any enemies they might come across, a minimal choice for the intended fear factor. The Omnitool is the main device at Simon’s disposal, but it cannot be used to ward off futuristic sea creatures. The progression in Soma is not based on puzzle solving but rather tinkering around with everything and checking every nook and cranny for anything of importance. The player gets a sense of this as early as Simon wakes up and has to rip up everything in his apartment to find his disgusting brain fluid. As engaging as puzzles usually are in games, I suppose a puzzle-intensive game would distract from the artistic goals of the developers. I’m trying to be open-minded by wrapping my head around what a “walking simulator” is supposed to accomplish, considering the effective qualities. I don’t mind that the gameplay was relatively sparse because it served its purpose to progress Soma’s strong narrative. The only criticism I have regarding this is the underwater sections. Often, Simon will wade through the trenches of the Atlantic to get to another section of PATHOS-II. The first time the player has to do this, it has a certain spectacle. However, this does not retain upon the fourth or fifth time the game drops the player in one of these sections. Frictional Games should’ve adopted the Bioshock rule of keeping the underwater setting as a consistent backdrop.
Soma also borrows the same kind of monsters from Amnesia and the same methods of dealing with them. As I mentioned before, Simon is defenseless against these strange creatures, so the practical solution is to hide from them and shimmy around when he can. The creatures will make throaty, squelching noises and bellow high-pitched yelps to notify their presence. Simon’s visor also becomes erratic and hazy the closer he gets to the monsters, signifying that they are close by. The monsters are also attracted to light, so the flashlight should be strategically used along with when to bust a move. The obvious drawback to this is that the abandoned facilities of PATHOS-II are incredibly dark, so navigating through them while trying to avoid monsters is more aggravating than hair-raising. These claustrophobic corners also prevent the player from running away from these monsters, something at least feasible in Amnesia. While the monsters in Soma are legitimately scary with many tense moments around them, I’m not sure they are necessary. The core horror of Soma is in its existential narrative, so it doesn’t need any of the leftover monsters from Amnesia for it to be an impressionable horror game. I guess the developers got scared and figured people would be put off by a horror game that doesn’t offer tangible monsters, so they added them for safe measures. Soma also comes with a “safe mode” without any monsters, which is intended as an easy mode. However, most people see it as the optimal way to experience the game without distractions. I played the normal mode for an authentic experience, but I could see myself siding with this opinion.
I was gleefully surprised by what Soma had to offer. The premise of a game being a “walking simulator” was a strong detractor initially, and the first few hours of the game fulfilled my already low expectations. As the game progressed and the story started to unfold, I became heavily invested in the world, characters, lore, and narrative of Soma. It’s a heavy game where subtle horror creeps into the player’s mind and makes them consider their surroundings like any effective piece of psychological horror should do. Unfortunately, this sense of subtlety is marred by the developers getting cold feet and trying to offer the same thrills as their hit previous title Amnesia. Soma proved that it didn’t need monsters to be effectively scary (although the sections with monsters did raise my blood pressure). The moments from this game that sticks in my mind aren’t hiding from walking scrotums with barnacles on them but the state of human consciousness and how it makes me who I am, something that might keep me up at night. Maybe I’ll replay this game on “safe mode” to fully relish Soma without any unnecessary distractions one day, and I’ll fully appreciate the game.
------
Attribution: https://erockreviews.blogspot.com