This shit is gonna haunt you.

Hello.

I just want to explain in fast words why SOMA is great, just enough to make anyone who hasn’t played it yet put it higher in their list.

More than being a great game, is a great experience if you let it.

SOMA is not for everyone; the game asks a lot from you. It needs you to completely immerse yourself in the world to be able to enjoy it at his highest potential, to suspend your disbelief at maximum, to not treat it like a “game” if you know what I mean.

They help you by making it look beautiful, with good music, a great atmosphere, great themes, good characters and a good story, but you have to do your part. You kind of have to play it right. I mean, it makes no sense to play like a maniac a game when you need to be careful, use stealth and absorb your surroundings.

Is kind of a problem, is annoying and it is funny when I see somebody beating the game faster because they just run like crazy and somehow, they get rewarded for it. Of course, they get punish in not actually experiencing things right.

But that’s not the big one. There might be a sense of futility, and annoyance can be born from that.

Choices ARE important in SOMA, never let anyone tell you the opposite, they are, just not the way it usually is. They are not going to affect the story or the characters, you can choose one of two options and the result at the end would pretty much be the same for the story, but not for you, never for you.

The choices in SOMA are questions of morality, the choices in SOMA test your philosophy on life, on what makes us human, on consciousness. Unlike a movie when you see a character make a decision and take action based on hers or his moral principles, in the game, it is you making those choices. Yes, you control Simon, but the point is that you’re supposed to put yourself in his place, you’re the one pressing the button, this are your actions.

Yes, it is a game and that might no be the best thing for you, you might want to have a different ending or a different path, but that’s not the purpose of SOMA. Making those choices hits you harder that watching a film or reading a book would. YOU press the button, and then you see the consequences of your actions.

Yes, the encounters are not that good, the game is not that hard and it is quite short, BUT, very few games can have such an impact on you as a person.

That’s all for this part, hope it is enough. 

Now I want to share a little anecdote of me playing the game, my experience with certain decision.

It is a spoiler so, if you haven’t played the game yet, go away now and play it.

If you already have and like me you are capable of connecting with good storytelling on a deep and emotional level and you still have your memories of your experience close to your chest, you might want to know my reaction to a certain hard decision.

STARTS HERE.

SPOILER.

Remember that moment when you get clone and Catherine gives you a choice?

I’m not kidding when I say that I thought about it for forty something minutes or so before pressing the button. It seemed a long time for me at the time, but now, I probably should have thought about it for even longer.

I also google for a bit looking for arguments that I hadn’t thought about. They did not help at the end. 

I made a bad choice, I unplugged Simon II. I clearly thought it was the right choice even tho it wasn’t morally perfect, it just seemed right.

Despite all my time thinking and the complex arguments in my head and in google, I sought comfort in the basic idea of preventing him future suffering.

I mean … He was alone, abandoned, with no possibility of escape and trapped with crazy monster who wanted to kill him. I thought that I would want that to happened, to not suffer, but I can’t  know, not really. I think that. But in the actual moment? I might choose different. 

He still was his own person and I didn’t have the right to choose for him. But I thought I was being kind. Yes, If he wanted to die, he could have kill himself and save himself that pain, but he would have suffer much before that.

It only hit me days later that … I stole from him a good experience. I just couldn't think about every possibility in that moment. Forty minutes and still I was under pressure and could not think to the fullest of my capacity. It was only when I was done with the game that I thought about him finding a sense of peace. Yes, he was alone and abandoned, but the mission was being carry on. He helped save the ark, helped humanity. He fulfilled a purpose, perform a good act. He could have died … happy. And I took that from him. 

Man, is lucky it is just a fucking game at the end cause, holy cow, that would have severely fuck me up. 

Can you imagine that shit in real life? Oh, by Allah, how much therapy?

I’m done now.

Alaoz!