SOMA is quite possibly the only game by Frictional to top Dark Descent. These types and layers of horror that it exposes the player to are not only primal (the fear of big scary monster) but utterly psychological as well. The more you think about and consider what SOMA presents, the more horrifying it becomes. It's a game that asks you right off the bat "What makes you *you?*" Learning that the you that you were just a few hours ago died a century ago, and you're just a brain scan copy inside of a mechanized diver suit filled with ferrofluid makes you ask, simply, what *are* you? You remember being Simon your entire life, you remember your birthdays, hell, the player even plays him as a human getting his brain scan at the start of the game. There's no good answer behind whether or not you're "you" at any point in the game, and trying to conceptualize that very notion is enough to make my face drain of all color. The fact that, part way through the game, you have to face the reality of this by learning that a data transfer doesn't actually *transfer* data, really nails in just how horrific the concept is. You stop being the you that you were up to that point in the game, so much so that you then have to turn off yourself from moments prior in order to save yourself from a horrific fate. That entire sequence is haunting. It's a game that tells you something unthinkable - all of humanity is gone. *Everyone.* Every single human being on the face of the Earth has died. You and the woman in your little smart card are all that's left, and even then, neither of you are human anymore. You don't eat, sleep, use the bathroom, blink. You're electrons firing off in a computer attempting to simulate the shape and functions of the neurons in a human brain that was scanned in over a century prior and became a default program. Is it even possible to conceptualize the notion that you're still around and everyone else, all of the billions upon billions of humans in the world, who spoke, sang, cried, made music, and created culture for millennia, are *all* gone? How would a human mind be able to comprehend such a notion to begin with? And finally, it's a game that shows the horrifying effects of attempting to one-up nature. Creating an unthinking, unfeeling mechanical system that has no understanding of anything besides "preserve life at all costs." The idea of the WAU not knowing what it means for something to be alive or dead, only knowing that it needs to preserve biological human tissue, is genuinely one of the scariest things to conceptualize. It's not even simply being undead, either. The WAU monsters of SOMA are human beings forced alive for all eternity. One can only hope that their brains were completely destroyed before the WAU could take control of them. Otherwise, they're real humans completely unable to control anything, likely unable to feel or see, eventually unable to even hear as their ears are ruptured by the deep sea pressure when the walls of the base inevitably decay and collapse over the years, forced to be unable to catch nature's gift of death until the WAU can no longer sustain them. It'd be hard fought to convince me that *any* piece of media has successfully conveyed so many horrifying topics all at once. While The Dark Descent revels in the horror of slowly realizing what your own evil actions and misdeeds were - realizing that you were a greater monster than anything trying to kill you in castle Brennenburg - realizing that the monsters chasing you EXIST partly as a result of your OWN actions - SOMA takes deeply rooted and primal and internalized notions about the very meaning of one's existence and uses that against its players. What a piece of art. ...thank you for coming to my TED talk.
SOMA is probably Frictional's most depressing and horrifying game to date. The monsters that hunt Simon across Pathos II are people who are *unable* to die. They are doomed to stalk the halls of the station, being forced to live because of the WAU. They are the last people on Earth, and they don't even have a chance to move on. They are just trapped in purgatory, constantly revived by the WAU. Never thought a fate worse than death would be forced immortality.
This all depends on one's opinion of "the soul". i.e. We're playing as one of the original Simon's brain scans, long after he's dead. If souls and the afterlife exists, Simon is there, and the copy we play is a very complex algorithm that's pretending to be self-aware. This is still a very unpleasant state for "fake Simon" personalities to believe they're in, as well as all the other "victims" of the WAU, but it's all digital signals and not truly "people". I think the more horrifying implication is the untold thousands of iterations the WAU must have attempted to "revive humanity" using brain scans - Simon included - that were churned out and left to wander or float in the ocean depths, disoriented and aimless.
@@DisemboweII The fact that WAU plunged into a happy dream, albeit for a short time, even a copy of Simon, which is not human, makes me think that all the creations of WAU will sooner or later be immersed in it, even if they are just copies of consciousness placed in robots. So I think the best way to complete the game is to save the life of absolutely everyone, including older copies of Simon, because sooner or later they will all find their own personal paradise.
idk sounds like bullshit, there's probably dozens of government bunkers doing alright, they saw the comet coming didn't they? Im sure plenty of rich people made plans
@@gerardwolf8507 wish there was more quiet moments to really let you ponder that. The game is brilliant but it feels like a bum rush to reach the ark launcher so you never have a quiet moment to really feel alone and think about how alone you are. (This game needed a moment like the fountain in Amnesia Tdd, a quiet moment where you are left to recuperate and take in the atmosphere for as long as you want)
The final puzzle to escape Akers, seen at 10:10 was a work of genius. You're forced into a one way corner with no other exit but the way you came, and fiddling with it alerts him. And on top of that, the area has several safe rooms, but the puzzle is deep into dangerous territory, forcing you to feel extremely exposed and cornered. But the cherry on top is having to pull those tiny, intricate levers into place, one at a time, which turns from tedious to panic inducing when you hear him shriek and sprint to your location. It's a brilliant combination of level layout, puzzle design and creature ai to use stress to make a puzzle more difficult.
He sure was something, I still remember my first time playing and getting really nervous when Simon said: "There is something not hooked up right" and Akers hissing somewhere behind a wall
That puzzle gave me the worst jumpscare out of any of the other encounters... It took me several seconds of sitting there in the elevator with his screams approaching me before I realized that I had to press the button again inside to make it go down. By the time those doors started closing, his body was halfway in. It made me jump but the doors closed and pushed him out and I just kind of stood there shaking with my heart pounding.
What I love about Akers is that you actually get a glimpse from him in the first section of Theta. In the staff personal rooms (where you fish for details about Brandin, etc) you can take a peak to some other connected rooms. There, you briefly see Akers wandering about. He doesn't notice you here, and even so he can't harm you. I think these subtle things are absolutely brilliant. It's foreshadowing, but also not in-your-face about it and too explicit. It also sets the tone of an intelligent monster that is lurking and wandering about. It really sells it in that Akers is a wandering monstrosity and it was just a coincidence that we didn't meet him sooner. Because he's a formidable monster and scary, too. In my humble impressions, I think Akers is a prototype for where Frictional Games want to take monsters further, and I see bits of Akers in The Bunker.
Yeah, SOMA's true horror does come from the entire setting and grim reality of the situation but honestly... Terry Akers busting the door down and rushing down the stairs towards me scarred me for life. It's the only instance in a video game where I actually couldn't deal with the situation mentally and I froze in place with fear.
These guys always freak me out and are by far some of the scariest enemies. Their grotesque mismatched polyp-filled bodies combined with their inhuman bone-chilling screams make them so terrifying! And Terry is the worst one of them all since he is basically an Alpha Proxy. Plus, he is smart enough to know how doors work, and can't be fooled as easily as his coral puppets!
I saw on a video covering the entirety of SOMA’s models, cut and early concepts, etc., that Akers was originally intended to be a monster made from two people that were combined by the WAU, hence the bisection from head to hips and the discoloration on the two sides of his head, and the extra arm around his torso. In the future, could you take more time examining these models, and in greater detail? They contain fantastic details and deserve to be shown off as much as possible. Frictional Games knows how to do game design like nobody else. It’d be a shame not to highlight that.
They are similar to zombies, as terry Akers is a corpse brought back to life then went on to overpower almost all of theta’s employees. But in terms of the proxies rather than terry Akers, I think they’re more of sleep walkers. The proxies are basically the same bodies seen “sleeping” throughout Theta, connected to the WAU, in an infinite dream. The only difference being they are portable mind coral and obviously dangerous. The proxies move like sleep walkers too, as with every step they take they suddenly wobble a little. They’re also obviously blind, as they only hunt you through sound, showing that they don’t use their eyes to try to hunt you.
@@justdowhatchyagottado5290 I've never seen it that way, but this theory makes sense! Maybe the proxies really are conscious but in a dream state too, and they only react to player's sounds because while you're sleeping you rely on your hearing rather than sight.
@@justdowhatchyagottado5290honestly, the fact WAU was able to replicate version of the Ark in a bio Organic way and later also revive people like Ross from the dead and keep his mind intact(could also count simon) and not stuck conntected to it like previous people and creation is proof to me that if WAU is kept alive and allowed to continue to evovle and grow, it would have found a way to create and bring humanity and other things back to life, it the Best chance for Humanity compare to the Ark ( also i recall you find reports of sea life thought extint like whales are back and numbers growing rising again, hinting the Wau had some involvement of it)
@@spinozilla2421I think when the Delta people start dying for 'continuity' on the ark's world the WAU noticed and then started manipulating Akers to spread the Mind Coral to Theta to make them stop killing themselves. If they couldn't bear to live in their dream world then the WAU gave it to them.
Jin Yoshida is probably my favourite enemy in SOMA. It's basically the rival/battle against yourself trope from other games, but in a horror game: his hearing is very good to the point of reacting to the sound of turning your flashlight on and off, you are forced into an extremely tight space with him with the only way forward being 2 one way corridors (from one of them he comes out, meaning you have to juke him or do a loop), and then you are pretty much forced up against the wall while face to face with Jin, waiting for the door to open; when stared at, he stops briefly (like the statue enemy trope), but it won't stop him, in a second he starts moving again before returning to his normal speed (kinda mirroring how you avoided most of the previous enemies: you try to stay still to avoid angering them since they can't see/have poor vision)
I think that Akers more likely injected Mind Coral into them rather than Structure gel. Although structure gel did mutate Akers, it also mutated the other monsters in the Game in far different ways. Mind Coral seems more direct in approach since it was what Akers was mutating into.
I would argue that Mindcoral came from Structure Gel, likely a combination with a strain of Coral and the Gel, perhaps something Akers cultivated in himself
Agh, this game is so good after all these years. The depressing yet beautifully isolating atmosphere at the bottom of the ocean on a world in ruins is somehow so intriguing. Love these in-depth videos on the monsters, really well done. Akers is definitely nightmare fuel and the msot iconic to the game imo. My favorite WAU monster is the giant waddling hulk thing in Upsilon personally, I always wondered exactly what or who it was and how it became that monstrosity.
God we need more in this games universe. I thought Amnesia was good, the original penumbras too But SOMA lives rent free in my head every day, the ideas presented in the game hit me right where it hurts the most. The game has a very 'psychedelic' feel to it, this sort of uncanny distortion between understanding and complete unkowable horror. This game needs more, the universe is so beautifully done.
I love how you can get a glimpses of other proxies before you get to dunbat. The fact that it is so subtle, that you can miss it and progress without even noticing it, is absolutely insane.
The vertical groove on Akers is likely not a cut but caused by WAU in order to preserve life via adaptational mutations. Humans and pretty much all of multicellular life on Earth is bilateral, and the groove suspiciously resembles a cell undergoing cytokinesis during mitosis.
What I hate the most is that Akers can sprint. He stumbles around like he can barely walk and it's deceiving because when he hears noise he runs at you like a linebacker.
You know when i saw your videos on outlast i said to myself " that's so cool and it would be great if there were the same videos for SOMA because the monsters look great but it's hard to have a good look at them" and you have answered my wish so thank you and i hope you will do more of SOMA characters !
When I first played SOMA as a teenager, I was actually a little disappointed. The Construct and the Flesher didn't really scare me that much. I only jumped a couple times from the teleporting, but the actual designs didn't scare me that much. That was until I got to the Proxies. The way they walk, the sound they make, all of it was horrific and it actually took me a while to man up enough to get through the Theta basement section and restart the router.
Yeah I have funny memories of that particular room as well, specifically flipping the switch, believing it´s done only to then having to go back down realising that it has to flipped a second time...
There's a theory that the proxies aren't exactly people per say, like they aren't corposes turned to these, but something that fell off Akers and grew into these as it seems that the people Akers "puts to sleep" start to produce this coral-like things. The theory I heard is that Akers somewhat... coughed them out, like coral covered phlegm mixed with pieces of flesh. There's still somewhat unadressed thing here- both Akers and Proxies are a bit of a relic of old version of SOMA's story. Tho they do work without that old story back then the whole Theta was supposed to be aflicted by Brain Coral, a infection that seems to be parallel or caused by WAU experiments. Akers himself in that story wasn't even a special character but a mixing of two bodies animated by the coral. One of the animations you shown here are also proxy animation associated with that older story- the ones where Proxy seems to be trying to pick itself up from a floor are animation of it deataching from mindcoral once disturbed.
I was shocked as a kid when this game didn't get nearly enough attention it deserved and i still think that way. It's one of the only games where the designs actually spooked me (specifically the proxy + akers, i wasn't as scared of the other designs but i did love them) and i still think the sound design specifically for the proxies rlly made it even wilder. i was so sad when i realized i missed the soma simon plushie 😭 truly one of my fave games
I wish that Frictional would consider making a SOMA 2 instead of spewing out more Amnesia, The experience SOMA gave me is unlike anything I've ever played when it comes to horror. It felt different, the monsters bridging the gap between man and machine alongside the backstory felt believable and horrifying, but the thing that stuck with me was the existential dread combined with being isolated in the deep pitch black ocean. If they ever decide to make a new game, I hope that they could somehow recapture what made the first game so amazing.
I´d say making a sequel to SOMA that captures the essence of the original would be very difficult part of what makes SOMA SOMA is that there is nothing else, there are no alternate endings, no afterstory, just what you see and experience
I love these videos a lot! I just wanna offer my own theory here in that I think these guys are more of horrific mutants than revivified people. Same goes for the sleepers. The WAU is shown capable of transforming living tissue I addition to reanimating and restoring vital functions to thy of deceased tissue. They noted when Terry was brought that he was comatose. I dunno, very small nitpick and at the end of the day the distinction doesn’t make much of a difference. Most of those people were either briefly dead or never died to begin with and now are unable to die of natural causes. Anyway, great video! I can’t wait to see whatever you’ve got next for us!
Rember playing the Bunker and getting to the tunnels and seeing made notes and eyes on the Table I instantly knew whoever I was going to meet was gonna be like Terry Akers (but with a gun) remember even seeing the name Akerman mentioned in a note, tho obviously that not the name of crazed shottgunner, i guess it would have been too on the nose of a reffernce
Love your work, I'll probably need to play this again after watching your videos, I have completed the game and have all the achievements but there's so many mods available now to enhance the experience.
@@umukzusgelos4834 Thanks for replying can we get videos on characters backstory like: Vigdis Jonsdottir etc. plz. I love this game finished it 4 times already.
@@IrrationalGamer well, I will attempt to feature relevant lore into these showcases so at least for the Ark Team Members and the like there will be coverage
@@umukzusgelos4834 Thanks man, I'm really looking for that data buffer part there in the game about her when someone says "I know you're the strong silent type" can you please point me in the right direction? Like what is the exact location of that part. Thanks alot.
think it possible for you to be able to do and identify Aker’s victims? I know couple of them have voicelines and they all seem to be “tuck in Bed” and experiencing a fantasy dream with stuff ike getting promotion and i belive you can find Alice’s body and her enjoy some kind of date with Brandon (which honestly quite sad given Brandon sacrificed himself so Alice and others could escape yet Akers and his proxy found a way and got Alice and couple more people
Do a video about the characters in SOMA. The mockingbirds, our protagonist and the side characters like Sarah Lindwall. Special request since I am too much of a wuss to play this game for myself. Can you show us what exactly Sarah says if we choose to walk away and refuse to kill her. Entirely up to you if you want to do it of course.
there's hidden dialouge from Simon about Carl if you glitch the game. going into the communication center without shutting off the power and them talking to Carl will get you the dialouge once you speak to Catherine
While I greatly love some of the puzzles or challenges, mainly Akers and Yoshida, I think the game would have been great with more puzzles or, I don't know, environmental hazards and challenges rather than monsters. On the other hand, a more immersive sim with monsters but in the style of the Bunker would have been great, too. It just gets a bit weird when it's such an atmospheric/story driven game *and* monster encounters that don't really make that much sense (here at least). You getting me?
It's been a while I admit so my thoughts are less conclusive but the coral wau seems like its own separate thing, maybe an artifact of a previous version of the story so it doesn't fit in with the others. The soma monsters don't need much backstory behind the individuals, but akers seemingly being the reverse of the others puts me off him. Akers' motivation is that he went insane and given how strong the rest of the story is, that aspect of it is weak to me. As well as him over powering the rest of the crew, even if he was enhanced with the wau. I'm not sure what I would do to make it stronger to be fair.
@@chinchilla415 Bunker was a really successful experiment for them and Soma could have worked near perfectly with its design, am interested to see where the series will go. Also given the setting they could have experimented with destroyable terrain, flooding and ticking clock aspects of each section of the station.
Well in a way Akers story (to me) was a reminder of the overall setting and an example of the levels of desperation these people went through when you think of it this way, Akers like his staff were faced with the apocalypse, his operation was shut down, his workers relocated and his post, which he (a 60 year old, who loves chess and equipped with a personality that really loathes to take orders judging by his mail to Cronsteed) was probably proud of suddenly lost all of it´s meaning He even refused to be evacuated and spent months alone at Delta with no one to talk to eventually he lost his sense and began to consume the gel, maybe due to starvation or maybe in an attempt to find a gentle way out His Story, like Robins or Sarangs to me is just another link that made me ultimately think about the question of a life´s worth and what it all means in the end for humanity to either slowly rot away at the bottom of the sea or seek continuation in a simulation but that´s just me
The only thing i still wonder is why transformed Akers is normally hunchback and has his arms like that, the fact that he can lift Simon like that suggests that he has enough strength to support his body being upright.
I always assumed that when the datamining reveals that "Akers was injecting them with that shit", it meant that he did it while they were still alive, therefore the Proxies are somewhat alive, which only made it even more terrifying to me. The howls the Proxies let out are some of the most harrowing sound design in the entire game, but would make no point if they weren't at least to some degree alive. In any case, I've been calling them "the potatoes" since forever to try to make fun of them to make every subsequent playthrough a bit less horrible to encounter them. I never came up with any nicknames to any other enemy.
I vividly remember the first playthrough when I got to the labs. I was wandering around, trying to figure it out what to do, exploring the area when Akers emerged all of a sudden not too far away from me. I don't remember the details, but I freaked out and ran off to the dead end of that cave hallway and my running of course triggered him. So he started to run towards my location. At that moment I realized I was cooked and so I turned around to see him and you do not understand how unspeakably TERRIFYING it looked seeing dark ass creature running down the hallways WAVING its hands around as it runs at you. I expected to see another Proxy, armless, sloppy being, not that tall mf Akers. I almost lost my mind, I couldn't take that anymore, so I closed the game. On the next day, I booted the game, completely sure that the game would send me back to the checkpoint. Nah un... It sent me DIRECTLY back to that very same hallway where I was before I closed the game and so where Akers was respectively. I did not expect that shit at freaking all. Thank goodness he instantly went to the patrolling stage and left me. This game truly f over my sanity xD
Definitely one of my favorite monsters. I love the behind the scenes where the developers talk about how he’s actually trying to say the “n” word when he screams. Makes it even more frightening.
The theta part of the game didnt make sense lore wise because akers and proxies have no reason to go after simon since he is as well a creation of wau, with others it atleast makes sence as they are trying to get structure gel out of simons body.
Played many horror games, silent hill, outlast, amnesia, ect. When i seen the coral puppet for the first time i seen its feet under those machines, then i seen the amalgamation of cells and i froze. Shut the game right off for the first time ever. The mix of malfunctioning flashlight, the ominous soundtrack, guttural noises, trypophobia, and the distortion of vision was to much to handle. Appears like the coral puppets are permanently gasping for air, you can see the hand clutching near there throat in agony.
One thing I noticed about the data log that Catherine reads out describing the Proxy. "It looks normal enough to be mistaken for a crew member at a distance. Tall, dark and ultimately faceless." This description seems to match more to Akers himself than the normal Coral Puppet, on account of the Proxy having a clearly defined face and an inhuman silihouette. Also, I remember hearing that Akers' model was originally going to be used for a more general enemy rather than someone important like Akers. The enemy would have been two bodies mixed together, which is why the Akers model looks bisected and with two skin tones. Do you think this is just another case of the developers switching it around at the last minute?
very likely there was also a lot more planed regarding the substance Akers victims are fused into, they called it mindcoral, and some concept art shows the player walking through a corridor with Coral Like Growths with faces on the walls that forms some kind of hive minds I suppose it deviated too much from the WAU´s regular mutations and was chanced because of it
those monsters have a awesome design, and well written story, but there is one thing that didnt sit right with me, if the elevator and the elevator door is unaccessible, how did the proxies manage to reach the theta crew that was down below? i wish they gave more hints and story on how they breached, attacked and encased the last of the theta crew, while the remaining few escaped to omicron. im also doubtful that the armless proxies would ever manage to encase the theta crew by themselves in mind coral
oh, there is an ingame explanation actually, the elevator is not the only path down there, next to it is a door that leads to a staircase, but Brandon Wan destroyed the control switch for that door by forcing a Wrench into the circutry
@@umukzusgelos4834 yeah thats the thing, the only option left would be service vents but im doubtful that any of them from labs are connected down in the service area
@umukzusgelos4834 I love both games. When I watched a playthrough of SOMA I absolutely loved it, so finding out that the same people who made Amnesia made it is really cool!
You are saying you wish not to feast your eyes on the miraculously sculpted shape of the Discoball Hat wearing Drowner? that aside another SOMA video will arrive on Saturday
@umukzusgelos4834 can you do a video of the hidden side entrance of the curie that leads straight to the engine room? I also found out when glitching the game to skip Catherine that an entire hallway in the Curie won't load, kinda strange. the monster can't enter the unloaded area and will keep reseting at its initial spawn point during the chase sequence
@@mr.hashundredsofprivatepla3711 well as I am aware, as long as it´s not shown in a sexual context it should be fine, in the Ghoul video there was also a little Willy wriggling about but there seem to be no problems until now I could attempt to put a nudity warning, or I could attempt to edit something over it, we will see what works and what doesn´t
hmm, not sure, his limbs are very thin and he seems to have some motoric issues and spasms I believe the Bunker Monster might give him a lot of struggles in case of a confrontation there is also the Tesla which is very large and bulky, they might both be able to grab Akers limbs and break them The Brute might be able to dish out some powerful strikes with his blades but looking at the poor condition of it´s frame I think it would have problems dealing with a powerful foe that is able to damage or tear of it´s plating
I think they are proxies of Akers rather than WAU. They are helping him to find and collect surviving humans to plug into the matrix. Frankly, I don't think they would normaly even be able to harm an actual human in any meaningful way, they are just knocking Simon out with EM.
@@umukzusgelos4834 but still they would not be as useful, especially considering that their task is to capture humans and not just kill them. I think they are there to alert Akers and to obstruct the escape of humans.
It's possible that Akers accidentally ingested a small amount of structure gel, which could have been used by the WAU to suggest that he consume more of it. The WAU could have had an intention like this all along so that it could have someone able to do it's bidding in a more subtle way, anyone that suspected Akers may have thought he was just going crazy. They wouldn't have expected the WAU was at fault. The fact that none of the WAU creatures can see is telling, as it may indicate that they are designed that way for a reason. I'm one of the few people that think that the WAU is actually just completely evil, not just a rogue AI feigning ignorance of people, how they work and what constitutes life. I think it actively wanted to replace humans.
Terry Akers’ model wasn’t supposed to be an actual person but rather an amalgamation of multiple people. The left side is of a Black person hence its darker hue while the right side is of a White person. Ultimately this was repurposed during development.
What is this snake-like "creature"(?) slithering through his several openings in his body? Or is there a fluid running through it which makes it look alive? Or am i missing something?
SOMA is quite possibly the only game by Frictional to top Dark Descent. These types and layers of horror that it exposes the player to are not only primal (the fear of big scary monster) but utterly psychological as well. The more you think about and consider what SOMA presents, the more horrifying it becomes.
It's a game that asks you right off the bat "What makes you *you?*" Learning that the you that you were just a few hours ago died a century ago, and you're just a brain scan copy inside of a mechanized diver suit filled with ferrofluid makes you ask, simply, what *are* you? You remember being Simon your entire life, you remember your birthdays, hell, the player even plays him as a human getting his brain scan at the start of the game. There's no good answer behind whether or not you're "you" at any point in the game, and trying to conceptualize that very notion is enough to make my face drain of all color. The fact that, part way through the game, you have to face the reality of this by learning that a data transfer doesn't actually *transfer* data, really nails in just how horrific the concept is. You stop being the you that you were up to that point in the game, so much so that you then have to turn off yourself from moments prior in order to save yourself from a horrific fate. That entire sequence is haunting.
It's a game that tells you something unthinkable - all of humanity is gone. *Everyone.* Every single human being on the face of the Earth has died. You and the woman in your little smart card are all that's left, and even then, neither of you are human anymore. You don't eat, sleep, use the bathroom, blink. You're electrons firing off in a computer attempting to simulate the shape and functions of the neurons in a human brain that was scanned in over a century prior and became a default program. Is it even possible to conceptualize the notion that you're still around and everyone else, all of the billions upon billions of humans in the world, who spoke, sang, cried, made music, and created culture for millennia, are *all* gone? How would a human mind be able to comprehend such a notion to begin with?
And finally, it's a game that shows the horrifying effects of attempting to one-up nature. Creating an unthinking, unfeeling mechanical system that has no understanding of anything besides "preserve life at all costs." The idea of the WAU not knowing what it means for something to be alive or dead, only knowing that it needs to preserve biological human tissue, is genuinely one of the scariest things to conceptualize. It's not even simply being undead, either. The WAU monsters of SOMA are human beings forced alive for all eternity. One can only hope that their brains were completely destroyed before the WAU could take control of them. Otherwise, they're real humans completely unable to control anything, likely unable to feel or see, eventually unable to even hear as their ears are ruptured by the deep sea pressure when the walls of the base inevitably decay and collapse over the years, forced to be unable to catch nature's gift of death until the WAU can no longer sustain them.
It'd be hard fought to convince me that *any* piece of media has successfully conveyed so many horrifying topics all at once. While The Dark Descent revels in the horror of slowly realizing what your own evil actions and misdeeds were - realizing that you were a greater monster than anything trying to kill you in castle Brennenburg - realizing that the monsters chasing you EXIST partly as a result of your OWN actions - SOMA takes deeply rooted and primal and internalized notions about the very meaning of one's existence and uses that against its players. What a piece of art.
...thank you for coming to my TED talk.
TED talks always appreciated,
I could not have put it better myself
it is. everything else is just shitty. it's amazing how hard they dropped the ball with rebirth
@@KneeCapHill oh come on now, it´s not as bad as people make it sound
If nothing else I'm a big fan of ghouls being used as the common monsters in Rebirth.
SOMA: The Existential Dread
SOMA is probably Frictional's most depressing and horrifying game to date.
The monsters that hunt Simon across Pathos II are people who are *unable* to die. They are doomed to stalk the halls of the station, being forced to live because of the WAU.
They are the last people on Earth, and they don't even have a chance to move on. They are just trapped in purgatory, constantly revived by the WAU.
Never thought a fate worse than death would be forced immortality.
Technically speaking, eventually even the WAU will lose power or begin to break down. But that's long after the confines of the story.
Reminds me of 'I have no mouth, and I must scream.'
This is not so bad at all, because they are forever locked in a personal paradise and immortal
This all depends on one's opinion of "the soul".
i.e. We're playing as one of the original Simon's brain scans, long after he's dead. If souls and the afterlife exists, Simon is there, and the copy we play is a very complex algorithm that's pretending to be self-aware. This is still a very unpleasant state for "fake Simon" personalities to believe they're in, as well as all the other "victims" of the WAU, but it's all digital signals and not truly "people".
I think the more horrifying implication is the untold thousands of iterations the WAU must have attempted to "revive humanity" using brain scans - Simon included - that were churned out and left to wander or float in the ocean depths, disoriented and aimless.
@@DisemboweII The fact that WAU plunged into a happy dream, albeit for a short time, even a copy of Simon, which is not human, makes me think that all the creations of WAU will sooner or later be immersed in it, even if they are just copies of consciousness placed in robots. So I think the best way to complete the game is to save the life of absolutely everyone, including older copies of Simon, because sooner or later they will all find their own personal paradise.
The scariest thing in this game is not the monster.
Its the fact that, "are we really the last one left on Earth?".
After you decide to kill Sarah Lindwall, yes we are
It really does fill you will a sort of existential dread after finishing it.
idk sounds like bullshit, there's probably dozens of government bunkers doing alright, they saw the comet coming didn't they? Im sure plenty of rich people made plans
As all good horror should, the lasting impressions, lingering questions and implocations are way more unsettling than any jump scare
@@gerardwolf8507 wish there was more quiet moments to really let you ponder that. The game is brilliant but it feels like a bum rush to reach the ark launcher so you never have a quiet moment to really feel alone and think about how alone you are. (This game needed a moment like the fountain in Amnesia Tdd, a quiet moment where you are left to recuperate and take in the atmosphere for as long as you want)
The final puzzle to escape Akers, seen at 10:10 was a work of genius.
You're forced into a one way corner with no other exit but the way you came, and fiddling with it alerts him. And on top of that, the area has several safe rooms, but the puzzle is deep into dangerous territory, forcing you to feel extremely exposed and cornered.
But the cherry on top is having to pull those tiny, intricate levers into place, one at a time, which turns from tedious to panic inducing when you hear him shriek and sprint to your location.
It's a brilliant combination of level layout, puzzle design and creature ai to use stress to make a puzzle more difficult.
He sure was something, I still remember my first time playing and getting really nervous when Simon said: "There is something not hooked up right" and Akers hissing somewhere behind a wall
Wait that was him?
That puzzle gave me the worst jumpscare out of any of the other encounters... It took me several seconds of sitting there in the elevator with his screams approaching me before I realized that I had to press the button again inside to make it go down. By the time those doors started closing, his body was halfway in. It made me jump but the doors closed and pushed him out and I just kind of stood there shaking with my heart pounding.
What I love about Akers is that you actually get a glimpse from him in the first section of Theta. In the staff personal rooms (where you fish for details about Brandin, etc) you can take a peak to some other connected rooms. There, you briefly see Akers wandering about. He doesn't notice you here, and even so he can't harm you. I think these subtle things are absolutely brilliant.
It's foreshadowing, but also not in-your-face about it and too explicit. It also sets the tone of an intelligent monster that is lurking and wandering about. It really sells it in that Akers is a wandering monstrosity and it was just a coincidence that we didn't meet him sooner. Because he's a formidable monster and scary, too.
In my humble impressions, I think Akers is a prototype for where Frictional Games want to take monsters further, and I see bits of Akers in The Bunker.
Yeah, SOMA's true horror does come from the entire setting and grim reality of the situation but honestly... Terry Akers busting the door down and rushing down the stairs towards me scarred me for life. It's the only instance in a video game where I actually couldn't deal with the situation mentally and I froze in place with fear.
These guys always freak me out and are by far some of the scariest enemies. Their grotesque mismatched polyp-filled bodies combined with their inhuman bone-chilling screams make them so terrifying! And Terry is the worst one of them all since he is basically an Alpha Proxy. Plus, he is smart enough to know how doors work, and can't be fooled as easily as his coral puppets!
Isn't terry akers like 8ft too?
They're so detailed and yet you barley see them. And the game likes to makes the screen freak out everytime you look at them. Why frictional games WHY
there is beauty in the mystery, isn´t there?
@umukzusgelos4834 I guess. I hope the squid and angler fish are next
@@crashandcynder probably not next but they too will get their turn
@@umukzusgelos4834 alrighty
You can just turn off the screen static in the game settings if you’re annoyed by it.
“Where we’re going, you won’t need eyes to see”
The amount of detail Frictional Games managed to pack into these monstrosities is nothing less than a grotesque masterpiece
I saw on a video covering the entirety of SOMA’s models, cut and early concepts, etc., that Akers was originally intended to be a monster made from two people that were combined by the WAU, hence the bisection from head to hips and the discoloration on the two sides of his head, and the extra arm around his torso.
In the future, could you take more time examining these models, and in greater detail? They contain fantastic details and deserve to be shown off as much as possible. Frictional Games knows how to do game design like nobody else. It’d be a shame not to highlight that.
I will take this feedback into consideration and will attempt to record any future footage accordingly
Reminds me of the cut Patchwork Man enemy whose face was half sliding off.
You're on blast since release of The Bunker! Keep it up!
I never expected these to be in such high demand to be honest but alas here we are, might as well go with it
Thank you for these videos. SOMA's biomechanical designs are fascinating so getting to see them in full detail is a real treat.
So essentially the theta proxies and Akers are zombies?
Yeah, but i think Akers retains some of his former intelligence
They are similar to zombies, as terry Akers is a corpse brought back to life then went on to overpower almost all of theta’s employees. But in terms of the proxies rather than terry Akers, I think they’re more of sleep walkers. The proxies are basically the same bodies seen “sleeping” throughout Theta, connected to the WAU, in an infinite dream. The only difference being they are portable mind coral and obviously dangerous. The proxies move like sleep walkers too, as with every step they take they suddenly wobble a little. They’re also obviously blind, as they only hunt you through sound, showing that they don’t use their eyes to try to hunt you.
@@justdowhatchyagottado5290 I've never seen it that way, but this theory makes sense! Maybe the proxies really are conscious but in a dream state too, and they only react to player's sounds because while you're sleeping you rely on your hearing rather than sight.
@@justdowhatchyagottado5290honestly, the fact WAU was able to replicate version of the Ark in a bio Organic way and later also revive people like Ross from the dead and keep his mind intact(could also count simon) and not stuck conntected to it like previous people and creation is proof to me that if WAU is kept alive and allowed to continue to evovle and grow, it would have found a way to create and bring humanity and other things back to life, it the Best chance for Humanity compare to the Ark ( also i recall you find reports of sea life thought extint like whales are back and numbers growing rising again, hinting the Wau had some involvement of it)
@@spinozilla2421I think when the Delta people start dying for 'continuity' on the ark's world the WAU noticed and then started manipulating Akers to spread the Mind Coral to Theta to make them stop killing themselves.
If they couldn't bear to live in their dream world then the WAU gave it to them.
Can you do a video on Jin Yoshida next? I feel like of all the monsters in Soma he is one of the most mysterious.
If my current plans come to fruition all of the monsters from SOMA will be featured, it will take some time however
@@umukzusgelos4834 take your time, it's no rush, appreciate what you do :)
This would be a really good idea! 😄
Jin Yoshida is probably my favourite enemy in SOMA. It's basically the rival/battle against yourself trope from other games, but in a horror game: his hearing is very good to the point of reacting to the sound of turning your flashlight on and off, you are forced into an extremely tight space with him with the only way forward being 2 one way corridors (from one of them he comes out, meaning you have to juke him or do a loop), and then you are pretty much forced up against the wall while face to face with Jin, waiting for the door to open; when stared at, he stops briefly (like the statue enemy trope), but it won't stop him, in a second he starts moving again before returning to his normal speed (kinda mirroring how you avoided most of the previous enemies: you try to stay still to avoid angering them since they can't see/have poor vision)
I think that Akers more likely injected Mind Coral into them rather than Structure gel.
Although structure gel did mutate Akers, it also mutated the other monsters in the Game in far different ways.
Mind Coral seems more direct in approach since it was what Akers was mutating into.
I would argue that Mindcoral came from Structure Gel, likely a combination with a strain of Coral and the Gel, perhaps something Akers cultivated in himself
Karen: My children haven’t taken a vaccine and they’re just fine!
Their children:
children after taking the vaccine:
If they remastered this, it'd be even scarier being able to see more detail and such.
It's been 7 years and yet I still can't stop thinking about this game; it was phenomenal
Agh, this game is so good after all these years. The depressing yet beautifully isolating atmosphere at the bottom of the ocean on a world in ruins is somehow so intriguing. Love these in-depth videos on the monsters, really well done. Akers is definitely nightmare fuel and the msot iconic to the game imo. My favorite WAU monster is the giant waddling hulk thing in Upsilon personally, I always wondered exactly what or who it was and how it became that monstrosity.
God we need more in this games universe. I thought Amnesia was good, the original penumbras too
But SOMA lives rent free in my head every day, the ideas presented in the game hit me right where it hurts the most.
The game has a very 'psychedelic' feel to it, this sort of uncanny distortion between understanding and complete unkowable horror.
This game needs more, the universe is so beautifully done.
I love how you can get a glimpses of other proxies before you get to dunbat. The fact that it is so subtle, that you can miss it and progress without even noticing it, is absolutely insane.
The vertical groove on Akers is likely not a cut but caused by WAU in order to preserve life via adaptational mutations. Humans and pretty much all of multicellular life on Earth is bilateral, and the groove suspiciously resembles a cell undergoing cytokinesis during mitosis.
i wonder if the little spikes poking out of their bodies are used like hairs to detect movement in the air
so glad not only are u going over previous characters, but doing one of them with my absolute fav character
I love this game so so much! Thank you for doing a behind the scenes on Soma. Keep doing more of these games
will do
Terry is a great monster, I love him for what he is in all terms.
The ambient background music made me feel so uneasy watching tho in the middle of the night but it’s so interesting
Please keep making these videos I love getting to see these characters and monsters in detail
The reason their feet are like hooves is because, over time, they kept bumping into things. So, the body adapted as such.
What I hate the most is that Akers can sprint. He stumbles around like he can barely walk and it's deceiving because when he hears noise he runs at you like a linebacker.
You know when i saw your videos on outlast i said to myself " that's so cool and it would be great if there were the same videos for SOMA because the monsters look great but it's hard to have a good look at them" and you have answered my wish so thank you and i hope you will do more of SOMA characters !
I´m glad you enjoy
I don´t believe I ever did a video on Outlast though
@@umukzusgelos4834
Oh yeah you're right it was on Amnesia the bunker, my bad
When I first played SOMA as a teenager, I was actually a little disappointed. The Construct and the Flesher didn't really scare me that much. I only jumped a couple times from the teleporting, but the actual designs didn't scare me that much.
That was until I got to the Proxies. The way they walk, the sound they make, all of it was horrific and it actually took me a while to man up enough to get through the Theta basement section and restart the router.
Yeah I have funny memories of that particular room as well, specifically flipping the switch, believing it´s done only to then having to go back down realising that it has to flipped a second time...
There's a theory that the proxies aren't exactly people per say, like they aren't corposes turned to these, but something that fell off Akers and grew into these as it seems that the people Akers "puts to sleep" start to produce this coral-like things. The theory I heard is that Akers somewhat... coughed them out, like coral covered phlegm mixed with pieces of flesh.
There's still somewhat unadressed thing here- both Akers and Proxies are a bit of a relic of old version of SOMA's story. Tho they do work without that old story back then the whole Theta was supposed to be aflicted by Brain Coral, a infection that seems to be parallel or caused by WAU experiments. Akers himself in that story wasn't even a special character but a mixing of two bodies animated by the coral. One of the animations you shown here are also proxy animation associated with that older story- the ones where Proxy seems to be trying to pick itself up from a floor are animation of it deataching from mindcoral once disturbed.
Thanks a lot for highlighting the effort poured into this game. Great video format too!
I was shocked as a kid when this game didn't get nearly enough attention it deserved and i still think that way. It's one of the only games where the designs actually spooked me (specifically the proxy + akers, i wasn't as scared of the other designs but i did love them) and i still think the sound design specifically for the proxies rlly made it even wilder.
i was so sad when i realized i missed the soma simon plushie 😭 truly one of my fave games
i didn't know those black tubes they're entangled in actually slithered around, i always thought they were immobile
Frictional really delivered with this game . It's terrifying and tragic .
I was just looking for a video like this then you uploaded lol
I wish that Frictional would consider making a SOMA 2 instead of spewing out more Amnesia, The experience SOMA gave me is unlike anything I've ever played when it comes to horror. It felt different, the monsters bridging the gap between man and machine alongside the backstory felt believable and horrifying, but the thing that stuck with me was the existential dread combined with being isolated in the deep pitch black ocean. If they ever decide to make a new game, I hope that they could somehow recapture what made the first game so amazing.
I´d say making a sequel to SOMA that captures the essence of the original would be very difficult
part of what makes SOMA SOMA is that there is nothing else, there are no alternate endings, no afterstory, just what you see and experience
Maybe if there was a prequel of something.
@@MisterJohnDoe I'd also kill to see more of their Penumbra series, though a prequel actual does sound like good potential.
I think I'd rather deal with the comet's impact on the surface than be stuck in PATHOS-II.
I love these videos a lot! I just wanna offer my own theory here in that I think these guys are more of horrific mutants than revivified people. Same goes for the sleepers. The WAU is shown capable of transforming living tissue I addition to reanimating and restoring vital functions to thy of deceased tissue. They noted when Terry was brought that he was comatose. I dunno, very small nitpick and at the end of the day the distinction doesn’t make much of a difference. Most of those people were either briefly dead or never died to begin with and now are unable to die of natural causes.
Anyway, great video! I can’t wait to see whatever you’ve got next for us!
Oop sorry, I should have read a little more closely lol about what you had on Akers. Still, awesome video!
"I'll make sure they feel welcomed, hehehe. :)"
Rember playing the Bunker and getting to the tunnels and seeing made notes and eyes on the Table I instantly knew whoever I was going to meet was gonna be like Terry Akers (but with a gun)
remember even seeing the name Akerman mentioned in a note, tho obviously that not the name of crazed shottgunner, i guess it would have been too on the nose of a reffernce
Still my fav game ever it's so cool
Details in this game are crazy as hell
This is my favorite channel on youtube
oh why thank you
Love your work, I'll probably need to play this again after watching your videos, I have completed the game and have all the achievements but there's so many mods available now to enhance the experience.
I´m glad people enjoy
Awesome mate, I hope flesher is next. Keep up the good work.
in the making
@@umukzusgelos4834 Thanks for replying can we get videos on characters backstory like: Vigdis Jonsdottir etc. plz. I love this game finished it 4 times already.
@@IrrationalGamer well, I will attempt to feature relevant lore into these showcases
so at least for the Ark Team Members and the like there will be coverage
@@umukzusgelos4834 Thanks man, I'm really looking for that data buffer part there in the game about her when someone says "I know you're the strong silent type" can you please point me in the right direction? Like what is the exact location of that part. Thanks alot.
@@IrrationalGamer oh that would be the corpse right before Omicrons entrance, who died from lack of oxygen because Omicron was in quarantine
think it possible for you to be able to do and identify Aker’s victims? I know couple of them have voicelines and they all seem to be “tuck in Bed” and experiencing a fantasy dream with stuff ike getting promotion and i belive you can find Alice’s body and her enjoy some kind of date with Brandon (which honestly quite sad given Brandon sacrificed himself so Alice and others could escape yet Akers and his proxy found a way and got Alice and couple more people
There's a video on that, if you search "soma theta wau dreamers" it comes up, with the voicelines and who they belong to.
terry the meatball man
Yeah if the meatball was spoiled long enough that it becomes its own lifeform.
Soma was so good
I feel that the level with Akers was criminally too short. He needed to be around in other parts of the game.
Akers just bitch slaps you and leaves
Do a video about the characters in SOMA. The mockingbirds, our protagonist and the side characters like Sarah Lindwall.
Special request since I am too much of a wuss to play this game for myself. Can you show us what exactly Sarah says if we choose to walk away and refuse to kill her.
Entirely up to you if you want to do it of course.
The Mockingbirds will be up on Saturday
but sure if there is an interest then I´d love to feature the NPCs as well at some point
there's hidden dialouge from Simon about Carl if you glitch the game. going into the communication center without shutting off the power and them talking to Carl will get you the dialouge once you speak to Catherine
The lesser coral puppet kinda looks like the flood from halo
I adore Soma's story, though I do think Akers was a weaker aspect to the more groundedish setting that it has
What do you mean by a weaker aspect?
While I greatly love some of the puzzles or challenges, mainly Akers and Yoshida, I think the game would have been great with more puzzles or, I don't know, environmental hazards and challenges rather than monsters.
On the other hand, a more immersive sim with monsters but in the style of the Bunker would have been great, too. It just gets a bit weird when it's such an atmospheric/story driven game *and* monster encounters that don't really make that much sense (here at least). You getting me?
It's been a while I admit so my thoughts are less conclusive but the coral wau seems like its own separate thing, maybe an artifact of a previous version of the story so it doesn't fit in with the others. The soma monsters don't need much backstory behind the individuals, but akers seemingly being the reverse of the others puts me off him.
Akers' motivation is that he went insane and given how strong the rest of the story is, that aspect of it is weak to me. As well as him over powering the rest of the crew, even if he was enhanced with the wau.
I'm not sure what I would do to make it stronger to be fair.
@@chinchilla415 Bunker was a really successful experiment for them and Soma could have worked near perfectly with its design, am interested to see where the series will go. Also given the setting they could have experimented with destroyable terrain, flooding and ticking clock aspects of each section of the station.
Well in a way Akers story (to me) was a reminder of the overall setting and an example of the levels of desperation these people went through
when you think of it this way,
Akers like his staff were faced with the apocalypse, his operation was shut down, his workers relocated and his post, which he (a 60 year old, who loves chess and equipped with a personality that really loathes to take orders judging by his mail to Cronsteed) was probably proud of suddenly lost all of it´s meaning
He even refused to be evacuated and spent months alone at Delta with no one to talk to
eventually he lost his sense and began to consume the gel, maybe due to starvation or maybe in an attempt to find a gentle way out
His Story, like Robins or Sarangs to me is just another link that made me ultimately think about the question of a life´s worth and what it all means in the end for humanity to either slowly rot away at the bottom of the sea or seek continuation in a simulation
but that´s just me
The only thing i still wonder is why transformed Akers is normally hunchback and has his arms like that, the fact that he can lift Simon like that suggests that he has enough strength to support his body being upright.
I suppose he leans forward to hear better and keeps his arms to compensate for his lack of sight
More SOMA please!!
I always assumed that when the datamining reveals that "Akers was injecting them with that shit", it meant that he did it while they were still alive, therefore the Proxies are somewhat alive, which only made it even more terrifying to me. The howls the Proxies let out are some of the most harrowing sound design in the entire game, but would make no point if they weren't at least to some degree alive. In any case, I've been calling them "the potatoes" since forever to try to make fun of them to make every subsequent playthrough a bit less horrible to encounter them. I never came up with any nicknames to any other enemy.
I vividly remember the first playthrough when I got to the labs. I was wandering around, trying to figure it out what to do, exploring the area when Akers emerged all of a sudden not too far away from me. I don't remember the details, but I freaked out and ran off to the dead end of that cave hallway and my running of course triggered him. So he started to run towards my location. At that moment I realized I was cooked and so I turned around to see him and you do not understand how unspeakably TERRIFYING it looked seeing dark ass creature running down the hallways WAVING its hands around as it runs at you. I expected to see another Proxy, armless, sloppy being, not that tall mf Akers. I almost lost my mind, I couldn't take that anymore, so I closed the game. On the next day, I booted the game, completely sure that the game would send me back to the checkpoint. Nah un... It sent me DIRECTLY back to that very same hallway where I was before I closed the game and so where Akers was respectively. I did not expect that shit at freaking all. Thank goodness he instantly went to the patrolling stage and left me. This game truly f over my sanity xD
YES!!! FINALLY!!!!!
Soma is a harrowing reminder why we must never let a paperclip maximizer-type AI have ANY control over people or the environment around us.
It should be common sense but gets forgotten all too quickly indeed...
Would you ever consider doing a showcase of the penumbra series characters and monsters?
at one point perhaps
Definitely one of my favorite monsters. I love the behind the scenes where the developers talk about how he’s actually trying to say the “n” word when he screams. Makes it even more frightening.
he does? that´s.... an odd choice
have to watch that again some time
cant wait for jin yoshida's vid
The theta part of the game didnt make sense lore wise because akers and proxies have no reason to go after simon since he is as well a creation of wau, with others it atleast makes sence as they are trying to get structure gel out of simons body.
they are blind and likely cannot tell the difference
Played many horror games, silent hill, outlast, amnesia, ect. When i seen the coral puppet for the first time i seen its feet under those machines, then i seen the amalgamation of cells and i froze. Shut the game right off for the first time ever. The mix of malfunctioning flashlight, the ominous soundtrack, guttural noises, trypophobia, and the distortion of vision was to much to handle. Appears like the coral puppets are permanently gasping for air, you can see the hand clutching near there throat in agony.
1:37 brooooo he poggin' :O
You should put the player model next to them for a size comparison
Is he insane but alive, or just a reanimated corpse?
11:46 Hi squidward
One thing I noticed about the data log that Catherine reads out describing the Proxy.
"It looks normal enough to be mistaken for a crew member at a distance. Tall, dark and ultimately faceless."
This description seems to match more to Akers himself than the normal Coral Puppet, on account of the Proxy having a clearly defined face and an inhuman silihouette. Also, I remember hearing that Akers' model was originally going to be used for a more general enemy rather than someone important like Akers. The enemy would have been two bodies mixed together, which is why the Akers model looks bisected and with two skin tones.
Do you think this is just another case of the developers switching it around at the last minute?
very likely
there was also a lot more planed regarding the substance Akers victims are fused into, they called it mindcoral, and some concept art shows the player walking through a corridor with Coral Like Growths with faces on the walls that forms some kind of hive minds
I suppose it deviated too much from the WAU´s regular mutations and was chanced because of it
those monsters have a awesome design, and well written story, but there is one thing that didnt sit right with me, if the elevator and the elevator door is unaccessible, how did the proxies manage to reach the theta crew that was down below? i wish they gave more hints and story on how they breached, attacked and encased the last of the theta crew, while the remaining few escaped to omicron. im also doubtful that the armless proxies would ever manage to encase the theta crew by themselves in mind coral
oh, there is an ingame explanation actually,
the elevator is not the only path down there, next to it is a door that leads to a staircase, but Brandon Wan destroyed the control switch for that door by forcing a Wrench into the circutry
@@umukzusgelos4834 yeah thats the thing, the only option left would be service vents but im doubtful that any of them from labs are connected down in the service area
WAIT SOMA WAS MADE BY THE PEOPLE WHO MADE AMNESIA?!
yes, and it´s arguably their most successful project after The Dark Descent
@umukzusgelos4834 I love both games. When I watched a playthrough of SOMA I absolutely loved it, so finding out that the same people who made Amnesia made it is really cool!
Can you do a closer look on other SOMA monsters like this? (Maybe exclude the Flesher, for obvious reasons)
You are saying you wish not to feast your eyes on the miraculously sculpted shape of the Discoball Hat wearing Drowner?
that aside another SOMA video will arrive on Saturday
@umukzusgelos4834 can you do a video of the hidden side entrance of the curie that leads straight to the engine room? I also found out when glitching the game to skip Catherine that an entire hallway in the Curie won't load, kinda strange. the monster can't enter the unloaded area and will keep reseting at its initial spawn point during the chase sequence
@@numbersbubble oh? I don´t believe I ever heard of that
@@umukzusgelos4834I mean I would actually love to see the Flesher up close and personal. Just don’t want you to be striked.
@@mr.hashundredsofprivatepla3711 well as I am aware, as long as it´s not shown in a sexual context it should be fine, in the Ghoul video there was also a little Willy wriggling about but there seem to be no problems until now
I could attempt to put a nudity warning, or I could attempt to edit something over it, we will see what works and what doesn´t
cool
Feat wise, do you think Terry Akers is the strongest humanoid monster that Frictional Games has made? He might be even stronger than the Brute.
hmm, not sure, his limbs are very thin and he seems to have some motoric issues and spasms
I believe the Bunker Monster might give him a lot of struggles in case of a confrontation
there is also the Tesla which is very large and bulky, they might both be able to grab Akers limbs and break them
The Brute might be able to dish out some powerful strikes with his blades but looking at the poor condition of it´s frame I think it would have problems dealing with a powerful foe that is able to damage or tear of it´s plating
I think they are proxies of Akers rather than WAU. They are helping him to find and collect surviving humans to plug into the matrix. Frankly, I don't think they would normaly even be able to harm an actual human in any meaningful way, they are just knocking Simon out with EM.
I would not underestimate the damage, that a bulky mass like the proxies when colliding with a human at full speed could do
@@umukzusgelos4834 but still they would not be as useful, especially considering that their task is to capture humans and not just kill them. I think they are there to alert Akers and to obstruct the escape of humans.
It's possible that Akers accidentally ingested a small amount of structure gel, which could have been used by the WAU to suggest that he consume more of it. The WAU could have had an intention like this all along so that it could have someone able to do it's bidding in a more subtle way, anyone that suspected Akers may have thought he was just going crazy. They wouldn't have expected the WAU was at fault. The fact that none of the WAU creatures can see is telling, as it may indicate that they are designed that way for a reason.
I'm one of the few people that think that the WAU is actually just completely evil, not just a rogue AI feigning ignorance of people, how they work and what constitutes life. I think it actively wanted to replace humans.
I believe Catherine ingame puts it best:
"we don´t share it´s definition of human or life for that matter"
Evil potatoes
10:00 salut!
What’s the music?
-Dark Encounter2 (Proxy Alert)
-Dark Encounter4 (Proxy Ambient)
-Dark Encounter5 (Akers Ambient)
-Dark Encounter1(Akers Alert)
-Theta Laboratory Ambience
To be fair with how the government doesn’t do one single base. They lot have 25 operations and half of them don’t know other operations exist
The black moving tube is disgusting
They are more annoying than scary in gameplay.
And in lore... I'd say that everything that WAU does is scary.
Terry Akers’ model wasn’t supposed to be an actual person but rather an amalgamation of multiple people. The left side is of a Black person hence its darker hue while the right side is of a White person. Ultimately this was repurposed during development.
типичная российская РСП😁
Thank you ! I really enjoy your take on the characters you've shown until now. I learned a lot on these intriguing games thanks to you
I´m glad you enjoyed it
What is this snake-like "creature"(?) slithering through his several openings in his body?
Or is there a fluid running through it which makes it look alive?
Or am i missing something?
it´s like a cable of a kind
@@umukzusgelos4834 Yeah thought of something like this, but it's kinda "moving".
Or maybe the liquid circulating in it fakes "movement". 🤔
@@Killerkarotte1 My guess is that whatever it is, it might be what keeps them moving or what keeps them from hardening and getting stiff and immobile
@@umukzusgelos4834 Yeah. Sounds plausible! But let's not overthink it to much. 😉
I enjoy your videos so much anyway. Very informative.
@@Killerkarotte1 Glad to hear