[SPOILER] Ending, Simon and bias

[SineDeus]

Personally, I'm on the side of Touchdown, and i think that the Frictional team definitely discussed those points in more depth than simply a narrative piece, they have so fully fleshed out this game down even the physics of it that i wouldn't think they would approach that subject lightly. I think the point about you being Simon-3 and the beginning just being memory at the base of the continuity is correct. It makes the most sense that you as the player are Simon-3 and that is the one you relate the most towards, making the player believe at least a little in the theory of continuity, giving more validation to the suicides and making the ending less obvious. You definitely are on point about Simon's experience, and the cognitive bias, if he for one second believes that he won't be able to get on the ARK with his same consciousness, he has absolutely no reason to continue on, it's almost a test of faith. Catherine spends the game as kind of the anti-question to the humanity in Simon, IE she is very down to earth because she has been so far removed from her humanity. Since every Simon is simply a copy of the last one's mind and memory, they do not have the same subjective experiences as the previous, they merely know what they did experience. In other words, each Simon does it's own thing and actually experiences that and can recollect doing what it does, but the future ones can only know what happened previously but they can't remember it. Almost like blacking out drunk and your friends tell you what happened but you can't actually remember the experience. I think that's why the jump between consciousness is slightly problematic, because is it truly the consciousness that transfers or is it just a new scan of your mind leaving where it left off? If that's true than that validates the point that Simon-3 would be the one you play, because all things previous is merely a recorded experience hardwired into your data. Also, in the previews for the game on the page, there is a section talking about the machines attempting to remember themselves previously but it only coming back in mixed/altered forms, glitchy and not fully complete. Since you're a robot all memories can be corrupted and you can remember your previous self as different than it actually was, creating more believability that he didn't quite wrap his head around not getting onto the ARK