Is Soma the best written game ever? I'll avoid spoilers.

[Bigbob]

I've played a lot of the greats but I think Soma is a step above. I don't know if this was intentional by Frictional Games but here's why.

FG came up with these very detailed and twisted back stories for most of the characters. After reading everything it's entirely possible to say that this is what happened and when. The who, what, where, when, and why of the Pathos 2 staff is not really that debatable. It's spread out over various audio/data logs that are introduced at different times in the game and takes some effort to comprehend, but it's all there.

The problem is that you can't leave the entire game like that or players could get frustrated and confused and leave with a bad taste in their mouth. The solution is to add a story arc that is easy to understand in one playthrough and brings about it's own ethical questions. The main arc is much more clear cut.

The unfortunate part is many players might finish the main story arc and not delve into these wonderful back stories. When I think that my biggest problem with the story is that players will miss a lot of content, that says a lot about how good the story is.

Not satisfied to leave it at that they added a 3rd layer to the story that is much more open ended and leaves room for debate, surrounding the true enemy of the game. Consider this. Someone could break down the mini back stories of the people involved with the true enemy, and still not really visualize how important that group is.

I think it's also worth noting that the story can appeal to people that want something simple, others that want to dig their heels in and understand the lore of what happened, and also people that want that open ended story angle that could potentially be less grounded in reality. Yet it all ties together without contradicting the other story arcs.

I think it's all so genius. Maybe they should change their name to Frictional Genius?