SOMA EP3: Creepy Messages

By Shamus Posted Friday Mar 25, 2016

Filed under: Spoiler Warning 74 comments


Link (YouTube)

So it’s about 100 years in the future and computer security boils down to typing in the four-digit number that everyone wears openly on their nametag. I’d love to denounce this as ridiculously goofy and unrealistic, but… I’ve heard worse.

The com center has an interesting little activity for the player. You call all of these different stations. Sure, the game could just list them all is UNAVAILABLE or whatever, but instead the player is allowed to call each one in turn. This is the equivalent of the slow camera peek around the corner in a scary movie. Information is gradually revealed.

It’s the kind of thing that polarizes the experience. If you’re into it, the suspense, curiosity, and anticipation will heighten your enjoyment. On the other hand: If you’re not into it, it makes everything worse. If you know there’s no monster around the corner (because, being genre-savvy, you know this isn’t the right point in the movie for a reveal) then the agonizingly slow reveal of nothing will try your patience and make you want to shout snarky comments at the screen.

EDIT: This entire comment thread of psycho-analyzing Mumbles is some outrageous bullshit. It’s fine to say something makes you uncomfortable. It’s not fine to get judgmental. Comments closed.

 


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74 thoughts on “SOMA EP3: Creepy Messages

  1. silver Harloe says:

    haven’t not played before, going on what I’ve seen and what you nice people keep saying, I take it there was a plan to save human culture from the apocalypse by uploading us all into robots, and the robots are programmed to perceive themselves (and usually each other) as human, and we’re one of them?

    1. IFS says:

      The plan was actually to upload human consciousnesses into a simulation and launch it into space (where it would be safe from stuff happening on earth and could run off solar power in theory indefinitely). People weren’t supposed to be uploaded into robots but something went wrong.

      1. 4th Dimension says:

        Huh, that does sound interesting. And if you can build something like that you are basically doing the singularity and allowing Humanity to go full Geth and colonize the Solar system in their new computer minds.

        But what does it all have to do with an underwater station. From what I could gather from those documents it was supposed to help with the earthquake that would follow the asteroid strike.

        I guess those sphincters are power outlets and you are blacking out when you touch them since your perception filters wouldn’t allow you to see yourself plugging in to recharge.

        1. Daemian Lucifer says:

          1st thing:
          Not quite,since its just a matrix box in space.Them on the inside cannot affect anything on the outside

          2nd thing:
          The installation is partly an underwater lab,and partly a rail launcher for satellites.Which is why the matrix box was sent here,so that it could be then be launched into space easily.

          3rd thing:
          Kind of like that.Well get to the actual explanation probably next week.

          1. 4th Dimension says:

            1st thing That is kind of boring and unimaginative. If you can store concousness into artificial constructs, not giving it’s inhabitants any agency in the physical world is kind of stupid and shortsighted.

            2nd thing WHAT?!? Do they ever explain why did they put a rail launcher. A launch system that fires ballistic vehicles, that start slowing down as soon as they leave it under the BLOODY ocean where the drag is even GREATER?!? There is game logic, but this . . . this is dumb. The only possible explanation would be that they planed to launch it after the apocalypse so they needed a location that wouldn’t be affected by the hit on the ground. But it’s still all kinds of stupid

            1. skulgun says:

              IIRC the barrel goes all the way to the ocean surface?

            2. ? says:

              First of the matrix box was haphazardly assembled by scientists surviving in the facility, they have limited resources

              Second of throughout the game we learn that human minds can’t handle being in non-human body. Simon is in most humanoid body available and details of it’s construction are rather horrific, it’s also not viable for large scale or long term replication. Humanity was blindsided by the apocalypse and improvised solution is not optimal.

            3. Daemian Lucifer says:

              1st:
              Yes,its dumb.I thought the box was supposed to reseed the earth with artificial bodies later on,but people have corrected me that its just there to simulate things.

              2nd:
              It goes from the ocean floor to above the surface,so as the pressure gets reduced,the speed gets increased.This is done so they can have kilometers of it without using a mountain or incredibly huge stilts in order to have it go constantly upwards.

              1. Narkis says:

                1:
                Eh, it’s not that dumb. The apocalypse hit without warning and rendered the surface uninhabitable. The last 20 guys on earth decided that since they’re all gonna die down there in the abyss with no hope of rescue or fixing things themselves, they might as well create a virtual paradise. Given the constraints of their situation, I can see how it can be the least bad course of action.

                1. Daemian Lucifer says:

                  Im pretty sure its not just the last 20 guys in this installation,but rather that the whole project was started a bit before the comet hit.

                  1. Narkis says:

                    The installation existed beforehand. It was used to launch commercial satellites when everything was normal, and these people were just the launchpad technicians and scientists taking advantage of the environment to run deep sea experiments. There was nothing that started just before the comet hit, these were just the only ones already deep enough to not die immediately.

  2. Daemian Lucifer says:

    So I forget if the game explains this,but how does turning the power OFF get that guy to suffer electric shocks?

    1. Christopher says:

      I think it’s because shutting off either end takes him from being part of a circuit to the end of a circuit. So instead of the power just passing through him and powering him, it just pours directly into him.

    2. Joe Leigh says:

      I’m pretty sure it’s rerouting the power from the lights into a different circuit (which I think opens a door? I don’t remember), which he happens to be in the middle of. There’s that other switch down a hallway you can throw to also power the same thing, which doesn’t reroute through him.

  3. Echo Tango says:

    I just bought this game, because the spoilers of who you really are a robot diving suit that gained sentience, and for the most part, I’m really enjoying it. All the robots who think they’re actually human, the underwater base, and the dead-world stuff reminded me of films like Solaris, Silent Running, and The Fountain. i.e. Makes you think about stuff, and has a nice, (reasonably) well thought-out setting. :)

    I just wish they had doubled down on the spooky, existential sci-fi stuff, and ditched the “scary”/annoying robots. The parts with the run-away-and-hide conflict were just wasting my time. :S

    1. Hermocrates says:

      I would actually be interested in playing this game if there were a mod to remove the antagonistic robots. Otherwise it just seems annoying.

      Wait, am I really wanting a regular game to be more like a “walking simulator?!” *GASP*

      1. 4th Dimension says:

        Or maybe you are fine with a gameplay that boils down to solving tech problems and figuring out what is going on. It would be a fine game. Maybe not this game but there is enough mechanics in there to call it a game.

        You know read tech manuals, and deal with buggy half broken tech. Might be quite fun.

      2. Daemian Lucifer says:

        The game already is a walking simulator for the most part.There are a few enemy sections that are completely isolated from the parts where you get any story.Except for one supper annoying place where you have to carefully sneak around in order to read everything,while a single robot is patrolling around.

        Without the robots,or with a way to kill them,the game wouldve been much more pleasant.

      3. Kylroy says:

        Yes, you’re asking that SOMA remove the only part of the experience that makes it a game rather than an interactive movie. Which is fine by me, because the story and atmosphere are pretty good…and the game is pretty shitty.

        1. Daemian Lucifer says:

          Monsters are not what makes a game a game.If you have interaction,its a video game,whether its a brawler,first person shooter,puzzle,or a walking simulator.

    2. nerdpride says:

      I haven’t played this game either or looked at spoilers and right now I’m just wondering why the player character can tell that the people have robot bodies when the other people appear not to be able to. And what was the deal with the things that looked like actual bodies? Maybe sometime it’ll make more sense.

      At some point I’d kinda like to return to what happened with the robot thing that might’ve been Amy (it sounded like a character anyway) in EP2 since I didn’t really understand anything at that point.

      1. Mattias42 says:

        I think it’s supposed to be some sort of glitch in a augmented reality censor.

        The crew is supposed to only see the crew as they were (the human bodies, your own body) for the sake of making it easier to keep everybody sane and working together, but our poor protagonist is so half-busted he gets to see the world as it really is in fits and spurts. (The robots that ‘think’ they’re people.)

        An interesting idea for a sci-fi horror game, at any rate, and I wish they’d done more with it then a few twitching human models to break up the robot-gorn.

        1. Narkis says:

          I think it was more of what the “brain” expected to see. At the beginning of the game you still see your body as normal, until you have reason enough to doubt it. That’s where most robots went crazy: Reality was so different to their expectations, that they rejected reality altogether. But Simon’s new body was close enough to the original to be accepted.

  4. Sarachim says:

    Am I the only one who finds Mumbles’ enthusiasm about torture a little off-putting? It’s getting to me more than the usual SW mayhem, but I’m having trouble articulating why.

    1. Daemian Lucifer says:

      Rutskarn articulated why:They are people in robotic bodies.

      Which is why Im 100% with Mumbles here:It wouldnt be fun to torture them if they were actual robots.

      1. Gruhunchously says:

        And they were probably all jerks anyway. Probably.

      2. Sunshine says:

        So apparently Mumbles is GLaDOS, or on the same wavelength.

        No wonder she loves Batman – in a cartoon world, she’d gravitate towards Gotham to be a supervillain.

      3. Ledel says:

        It says something that people empathize and relate to these mechanical creatures in this game, and it feels like torture/killing when you hurt these mechanical creatures; yet it doesn’t feel even half like that in games like ME, where, even with some of the living beings begging for their life, it feels more cold and mechanical. (to me at least)

    2. Sabrdance (MatthewH) says:

      ditto. Cannibal Religion (sorry, hobby) was in poor taste, but whatever, I could laugh. This is just coming across sadistic.

      1. Daemian Lucifer says:

        Ok,heres the thing you guys are missing:Those are just pixels and code.Those robots arent real.The people in fallouts you can eat,those arent real either.You can torture pixels in the most unimaginable sadistic ways,and still be a good,caring,emphatic person in real life,squeamish about hurting even a fly.

        1. Will says:

          No, that’s why we’re not calling the police on Mumbles. Goings-on in media¹ and reality aren’t completely separated in your head, as research has borne out again and again.² Feeling gross about committing torture, even in a game, is the correct response, and if you don’t, you should probably question why not.

          ¹ Any media, but games are the most effective at confusing fiction and reality.

          ² This is a far cry from “videogames cause violence”, of course. The kneejerk response of “videogames cause nothing” is just as wrong, and annoys me greatly when it gets pulled out.

          1. Daemian Lucifer says:

            “Feeling gross about committing torture, even in a game, is the correct response”

            Not even remotely true(the game part,not the real life part).If you get invested into a game*,and start feeling it as a real thing,then I agree.But you dont necessarily have to be fully invested(or at all).Its perfectly possible to feel nothing for the game,and for various reasons.

            Or are you saying that Josh not being afraid of the scary robot is his fault and he is a psycho for not feeling fear?Is Shamus an emotionless drone for not feeling sad when some kid dies in mass effect 3?

            Just because a game is setting a scene to make you feel a certain way doesnt mean it will actually manage to do it for every single person,no matter how well the scene was crafted.Theres nothing wrong with having a laugh at a sad scene,having a cry when shenanigans are happening,being chill when scary stuff are afoot,or giggling when torture is in play.And just because you felt a certain way does not mean everyone who felt differently is wrong.

            *Any fantasy actually

          2. Shamus says:

            “Feeling gross about committing torture, even in a game, is the correct response, and if you don't, you should probably question why not.”

            Sometimes I like to drive down the sidewalk in GTA and see how many people I can run over. Yet in real life, I shudder just seeing someone get punched in the face. (I can’t even watch MMA, where the entire thing has the consent of both parties.)

            It’s all about how much you perceive them as real. I saw Clementine in Walking Dead as pretty real, but the pedestrians in Saints Row were never more than animated toys to me.

            1. Sarachim says:

              Yeah, I guess that’s why this bugged me. The robots in Soma have good voice acting, and they cry out in pain and beg for mercy instead of just falling down and then vanishing like nameless Saints Row NPCs. I’m not trying to act like a moral guardian here, but it really was upsetting to me to hear someone so enthusiastic about such a lifelike facsimile of a person in distress.

        2. Pilcow says:

          But yesterday you admitted that you had a hard time choosing between the puppy and the mad robot.

          Certain kinds of fiction hang in the fact that we empathize with the characters. Without that all writing is just manuals. There are some times as in the whole Mass Effect 3 where the suspension of disbelief is broken and the characters a words on paper, but in believable fiction, as this was for me, I empathized with the confused humans that lived inside the robots.
          In fact the hardest moment in the game for a moral point of view was the interrogation of the engineer to know the passcode. You were “torturing” and lying to him and the erasing the experience as if, once forgotten any act didn’t have any moral impact. In fact that very moment made me decide to never erase anything whether it be random data or my own conscience in the old body.

          In fact every deceased human being is, as of now, “pixels and code” in our particular or communal memory but we feel that we owe them something.

          And that’s why, at least in my case, the giggling of Mumbles is so dissonant. The guy/robot is showing his suffering and I believe it, even if it's not real, and between the hard choice of leaving it alone or to put it off of its misery, the glee for torturing it is a little grating.

          1. Daemian Lucifer says:

            Yes,I had a hard time.Because that part resonated with me.I dont expect others to have the same reaction.That would be me projecting my feelings onto others,which is wrong.

            See,you resonated with that other part,and I had zero empathy for him.I had very little empathy for the old lady as well.So its perfectly possible to get into just parts of the game,or the whole game,or none of it.Theres nothing wrong with you if the game doesnt work for you 100% of the time,nor is there something wrong with you if it does,or if only parts work for you.Its all subjective.

            1. Sabrdance (MatthewH) says:

              But that isn’t what’s involved here. No one is talking about how it is wrong to play the game. We can read books of terrible events, watch movies of terrible events, and play games of terrible events and maintain an appropriate level of detachment because the underlying ideas are important enough to consider.

              Mumbles wasn’t playing the game, she claimed to be taking pleasure in listening to someone scream in pain. She stopped playing the game so that she could enjoy listening to someone scream in pain. That it was an actor is irrelevant. We don’t let the subjects of the Milgram Experiments off because it was an actor (even though there’s some evidence that a lot of them thought this had to be a trick and were just trying to figure out what would trigger the reveal). That is the textbook definition of sadistic.

              1. Daemian Lucifer says:

                The fact that she knew it was an actor is relevant.The most important thing about the milgram experiments,since you brought it up,is that the subjects dont know that it was all just an act,that they were lead to believe that said person was genuinely in pain.

                I have a very serious proposition for all of you that think that Mumbles is textbook sadistic:Go play the beginners guide.You are being fake davey so hard right now.

                1. Sarachim says:

                  I’m not saying Mumbles is an awful person. She’s probably a really nice person. She’s got a different level of reaction to this particular thing, which is fine. There’s probably some other stuff in games or other fiction that bugs her more than it bugs me.

                  But consider: if I wrote a piece of fanfiction or whatever and put it on the internet, and it included a torture scene, people would expect me to put a trigger warning on that. Everyone who read it would know it’s fiction- noncanonical fiction, even- but people’s emotional responses to fiction are real things that shouldn’t be taken lightly.

                  Lucky for me, this whole “yay torture the robots” thing isn’t triggering for me, just icky.

                  1. Daemian Lucifer says:

                    Ugh,dont get me started on trigger warnings.

                    But ok,I guess that her reaction maybe skirts a bit outside Shamus’s self imposed pg rating.On the other hand,soma has an M rating,so maybe that should be a disclaimer for this whole season of spoiler warning.

                    As for peoples emotional response to fiction,I agree,it shouldnt be taken lightly.But neither should one expect for others to have the same respones as them.

                    1. Pyradox says:

                      How does laughing at robots being tortured skirt a ratings boundary?

                    2. Daemian Lucifer says:

                      Because you dont want to tell a dead baby joke to a kid without the consent of their parents.But its still a maybe,since Im pretty confident a 13 year old can take a joke about torture.

                    3. Pyradox says:

                      That’s not even remotely analogous. The torture was already occurring, one reaction was “oh no”, another was “oh yes”. The joke adds no darker content than that which was already there.

                    4. Daemian Lucifer says:

                      Thats why I said in the very next sentence that the game already has an M rating.

                  2. Mumbles says:

                    LMFAO calling me a TEXT BOOK SADIST does not really jive with I BET SHE’S A LOVELY PERSON.

                  3. Pyradox says:

                    You realise this is an internet comedy show, right?

                    If most of the hosts are uncomfortable with something, then the appropriate comedy response is for one of them to have the opposite reaction and be way into it. That’s like textbook black comedy. It’s how you entertain people watching your internet comedy show.

                    I play games as the most paragon, lawful good, “everyone has to be happy or so help me” person in the world. I were hosting, you’d better believe I’d have gone for the “yay, torture” angle if nobody else did.

                    This isn’t even going into the fact that not everyone buys into a game’s fiction the same way. Not only do people’s emotional responses differ, but the way they perceive the scenario in the first place does too. Someone who isn’t suspending their disbelief is reacting to a very different scene than someone who is.

                    Also, not everyone plays with the same goals in mind. There are absolutely people who try and arrange games into the most comedically absurd state possible, regardless of the wellbeing of the in-game characters. That doesn’t make them sociopaths, but it can make them excellent QA testers.

    3. krellen says:

      You might not be the only one, but I found Mumbles hilarious. There’s nothing wrong with her.

      1. What I find interesting about this whole response thread is how some people have been willing to jump in and defend a fictional character with like three lines of dialog and five animations against an actual person.

        I mean I can understand why that might happen (fictional characters are built for us to relate to, after all); I just find it interesting how different people’s reactions to this are.

        Which isn’t much of a substantial comment on its own, so speaking of reactions – my thoughts on this game so far: I like simulacra stories better when they look at how the differences between a person and their simulacrum would affect the resulting being. This? Oh we’re all totally human, just not in the traditional biological sense? How does that work? What are you doing? That’s not a good assumption to make! Reading a person’s brain and then sending that information over to run on a different set of hardware really does not seem to me like it would create anything like a reasonable copy of that person, or possibly even something recognisably human. The actual underlying biology

        Oh

        Never mind; it’s not a simulacra story, is it. It’s a haunted house, except you’re already dead, albeit maybe slightly less so than the others. And robots. How is that story so popular?

    4. Drlemaster says:

      Different folks have different tolerances for pretend sociopathy. Mine is really effin’ low. If the folks on screen seem even slightly like real people (or animals), it bothers the hell out of to harm them. But I can kill not-real-seeming mooks all day. Other folks have no problem pretending to torture pretend sapient robots. I don’t know if you can extrapolate anything about someone’s real life morality from that. Especially since anyone could be posturing to some extent.

      1. nerdpride says:

        You (Drlemaster) sound similar to me. I don’t know what I would do in real life. Maybe it is good that videogames sometimes give us this power trip feeling so that we could guess what our morality would be like in some circumstances. But I doubt the power fantasy is much more than a trick for selling games.

        I guess the game to actually talk about this in is like Grand Theft Auto V. But I’m not very interested in anyone playing it. Meh. Seems like an over-awarded series of games to me.

        I remember in Skyrim Mumbles told Josh not to kill a fox but she was OK with other icky bits like trapping people’s souls and things. Maybe it’s more of a funny thing? Like look at this self-obsessed videogame about moral choices or frightening things and you can just murderlol all of it?

        Was this the episode where she complained that most videogame women were generic side-kicks? I’m not disagreeing with her that there should probably be more female player characters or whatever, but it seems to me that her personality is a little similar to some of those female characters.

        Mumbles, may I ask what kind of female characters you want to see? A torture, bad woman mentality? Is that generic like I suspect or not? Maybe a good Diecast question. And she knows about comic books so she probably knows a lot about different ways women fit in stories.

        1. Pyradox says:

          I think you’re missing the point of being sick of seeing female support characters. It’s not about the personality of the woman in question – not when you run the spectrum of Alyx Vance to SHODAN. It’s that this is an “approved” role for a female character to have.

          It’s not progressive to have them in a role that they’re expected to occupy – it’s the opposite. it’s playing things safe. It’s not putting in the work or taking the risk to give women different roles in a story, or as part of gameplay. It’s just following an easy cliche.

          If in every game you played, the guy (or whatever is the most relevant demographic you belong to) was the helpful support character wouldn’t it strike you as odd? Wouldn’t it be frustrating that the most important role someone like you is allowed to play in a story is “sitting around telling the hero what to do”?

  5. psivamp says:

    I absolutely loved the revised perception thing when Simon is underwater and decides to see himself in a diving suit instead of just clothes.

    It’s kind of a thing that might actually happen. I saw a video in psychology several years ago with an experiment performed on people with split-brain ( severed corpus callosum ). It turned out that you could communicate to both halves of the brain seperately, but only the left hemisphere was able to speak. So, they instructed this guy’s right hemisphere to draw a telephone and then asked him verbally to explain what he was doing. He had been right-handed, so the right hemisphere of his brain was drawing with his less coordinated hand and wasn’t doing a stellar job and he had to guess for a minute or so before he was right.

    Memory is a narrative and, apparently, there are parts of the human brain dedicated to making it up when we don’t have a clue what is really going on.

    1. Mintskittle says:

      It does happen, albeit on a small scale. There’s actually a gap in your vision where the optic nerve connects to your eyeball. You just don’t notice it because your eye is using the surrounding area to fill in the missing bits.

      http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/bb/blindspot1.html

      1. Christopher says:

        From Terry Prachett’s Small Gods:

        “It is a popular fact that nine-tenths of the brain is not used and, like most popular facts, it is wrong… It is used. And one of its functions is to make the miraculous seem ordinary and turn the unusual into the usual.

        Because if this was not the case, then human beings, faced with the daily wondrousness of everything, would go around wearing big stupid grins, similar to those worn by certain remote tribesmen who occasionally get raided by the authorities and have the contents of their plastic greenhouses very seriously inspected.”

  6. lethal_guitar says:

    It shows the right station’s name when Catherine first calls you, so if you remember it, you can call it right away and don’t need to try multiple stations. The game rewards you for paying attention :)

  7. Christopher says:

    You’re on a base underwater that has no access point that anyone can get to without it being logged by at least three different computers.

    It makes sense there’s lax internal security because theirs such an incredible layer of external security, and this is actually a big problem in real life as well.

    If people see you in a “secure area’ and you aren’t acting like a suspicious idiot, they often assume that you’re supposed to be there. Because clearly, if you’re there, you got past the external security, and that’s so tight no one would ever be able to get by it!

    1. Shamus says:

      Sure, but the computer restricts what you can do based on login. This implies you don’t want Ann to perform actions only permitted for Bob. But then Ann can just type in Bob’s number. If both are trusted, then why restrict their options? If they’re not trusted, why the ineffectual security?

      1. Christopher says:

        In a open area or even in a corporate office, this is true, but this is a heavily regulated facility at the bottom of the sea. I imagine to even get a job here you have to get so many clearances and background checks you have no such thing as a private life.

        It might have less to do with security and way more to do with organizational efficiency. I think it’s mentioned somewhere the whole place is a UN style operation so theirs no “oh someones going to steal tech” worries, and since it benefits everyone there’s no concern of sabotage.

        In the very first room theirs that orientation message that points out that security is kind of a joke internally; technicians are essentially allowed anywhere as long as they go and ask permission to go into a place to fix something first and get the necessary cipher. They aren’t concerned with security leaks so much as biohazards or other Bad Stuff getting out.

        Also, I just realized, I think you may be off the mark because both Bob and Ann have access to the same stuff. I think it’s the console that determines what you can do on it, not the log in. The log in might just be there for personal email and notes and logging purposes. Both ID codes that you can log in on at Upsilon give you the same options, just different emails.

      2. Daemian Lucifer says:

        Ive seen this thing used in some places,where a single computer is shared by multiple people,with easy to guess passwords that give you access to different things.This is done not because of security,but so you would know who did what.That way,if a mistake happens,you can just go to the person who messed up and say “That was a mistake,dont do it again”,instead of trying to hunt who messed up.Also,not everyone needs the same programs,so this reduces cluttering on the screen,thus making their job easier.

  8. Gruhunchously says:

    Uh oh…seems the dudebros came and got Mumbles. That is, if the robot-people advocacy groups didn’t get her first.

  9. Sleeping Dragon says:

    That’s a wasted marketing opportunity right there at the end Shamus. You should immediately go “oh look, you found a good robot… which reminds me, did I mention I have a game coming out…”

  10. Corpital says:

    You know what’d be nice? A game with creepy massages. You walk down a dark corridor with your ridiculously awful flashlight, trying to find a way out. You’re nervous and tense when suddenly a ghostly ghost appears behind you, massages your back and then vanishes. Preety spooky, huh?

    1. nerdpride says:

      But does the game have a happy ending?

  11. djshire says:

    Chinese Room had some financial troubles while making this game, all of the….sunken costs

    1. Alex says:

      The Chinese Room didn’t make SOMA. They make the bad games.

  12. Ninety-Three says:

    I’m still trying to figure out if Mumbles is being sincere about how much she tortured the robots, or if she’s just making “lol Mumbles is a psycho cannibal” jokes.

  13. Better late than never: I’ve been a regular reader of the blog and watcher of Spoiler Warning since the Mass Effect 3 debacle years back and have since consumed a startlingly large portion of your content. In all that time enjoyably watching and reading I can’t recall being directly influenced to ever purchase anything it was you or your compatriots in critique were covering, either because I wasn’t interested in playing through it myself – such as the Mass Effect series – or because I had played it well beforehand. Your burgeoning SOMA play through will be the first time in memory that I’ve actively stopped watching your content so as to first play the game for myself. So congratulations! You’ve just made someone else money!

    Seeing as how the most common and negative complaint about the game seems to be the forced and contrived “monster” encounters and repetitive hid-and-seek segments, I’ve chosen – perhaps poorly – to make my first run of the game with the “wuss mode” mod installed. I love exploration, world building, and environmental storytelling and hate arbitrary and forced mechanics for the sake of genre convention, so hopefully this heightens the experience rather than detracting from it. Totally not because I could give Campster a run for his ignominious title. Nope, not even a little bit.

    1. Daemian Lucifer says:

      The game is still eerie and creepy even without the monsters,so youll get plenty of the atmosphere with none of the annoyance.So good call.

  14. Mumbles says:

    Lol you guys found me out. I’m actually a cannibal, sadistic, mentally fucked up person IRL. I escape from super villain prison every week to record a Let’s Play and podcast.

    1. GTRichey says:

      Mumbles = Matanza??? This is now my head canon.

    2. Andrew Simms says:

      It’s not ‘escaping’ if Shamus keeps showing up to sign for your day-passes. ;P

      (Srsly though we <3 you)

      1. Neil W says:

        That’s not Shamus, it’s Rutskarn standing on Josh’s shoulders in a trenchcoat.

  15. some guy says:

    Mumbles, you are a valued member of SW, right up there with shamus, josh, rutskarn and chris (in no particular order). Don’t let saltiness keep you from having fun on spoiler warning. Clearly you are a considerate human being to actually bail from the show for the weekend just because of some drama.

    The reality is, it is a game, I’m guessing mumbles knew she was playing a game and was having fun with it. We’ve all gone and killed a bunch of people in video games for no other reason then it was amusing, perhaps even fiddled with their corpses, left them naked and posed for all the townsfolk to see. I personally love watching dumb people suffer terrible fates in horror movies. Which I’m pretty sure is half the appeal of the genre. We all feed on tragedy, so why can’t we just admit it.

    Please don’t let people push you out of another week. Let illness, wrestling or boredom drive you away.

    I also just wanna thank you guys for even making spoiler warning, the die cast, all the written content. It’s awesome, you’re all awesome. Please keep doing what you’re doing for as long as you enjoy it. I’ve almost finished all of the seasons of spoiler warning, it’s gotten me through some tough times. I look forward to seeing if Josh can complete his soma goomba stomp at some point in the play through.

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