The radio isn’t working and the food is nearly gone. The machines are showing signs of sentience. Amnesia types Frictional Games have tied weights to your legs, and by September 22nd you’ll be at the bottom of the ocean, fighting to survive the “intolerable isolation” of underwater facility PATHOS-II in SOMA.
At least the place is pretty.
Frictional have released a new trailer, accompanied by a blog post designed to address some of their community’s common questions.
The narration is, frankly, distractingly overwritten. But it does a decent job, through some good old-fashioned juxtaposition, of emphasising the loss of Frictional’s sunken world. And did you see those clams collected at the bottom of that doorway? Exquisite.
Like Amnesia and the Penumbra series before it, SOMA is a horror game. Unlike them, it’s also classic science fiction – tackling ideas like identity, consciousness, and what it means to be human (which, as ever, involves looking at what it means to be robot).
Will you be braving the silence and pressure of the sea bed come the last week of September?