Soma, designer Ian Thomas told me, is a game about identity. Its horror comes not from monster closets or boo scares, but from questions about self and humanity that will haunt you the more you ponder them. Frictional Games, who previously brought us Amnesia and Penumbra, certainly knows how to get under a player’s skin and wriggle around like some kind of awful brain-eating worm - but Soma seemed quite ordinary while I was playing it. As Simon, I was exploring some kind of facility, a voice in my ear urging me to get to Comms. It wasn’t a particularly inviting environment, given that the computers were down and the power was out in places, but it didn’t seem particularly scary. And then I met Carl.
The storytelling in Soma comes through exploring its environment, examining small details and considering context. You’ll encounter friends and enemies as you try to piece together the clues you find, though it won’t be immediately obvious who’s on your side. You’ll need to be smart about what you’re seeing, says Thomas, to determine whether or not someone is a potential threat. And while there are no traditional weapons in the game, there are many different kinds of enemies, so be prepared to feel some serious panic. And probably run. Or hide. Or both.
Carl in the robot body doesn’t know he’s dead. I don’t know how to tell him he’s dead. Then again, what made him Carl is still there, so...is he really gone? And what was it that killed him in the first place? What is anyone doing there and where is “there”, anyway? So many questions. The answers will come on September 22, when Soma is released for PS4 and PC.
