The Ultimate SOMA Discussion Thread

[Alardem]

Lovecraft was terrified by the idea that life was ultimately insignificant in the cosmic perspective, and that fear formed the core of his stories - many people picked up on the gooey monsters or kooky occult stuff, though. Unlike him, I don't find that philosophy depressing - it's fascinating and, in my opinion, it grounds us all.

Even the first Amnesia screwed things up a little with the incompetence of the Shadow and the off-screen character of Johann Weyer, who is implied to be an Ub3r-1337 sorcerer with ultimate control over the universes' loci of control (orbs). It's hard for me to take the antagonists seriously when it turns out that Alexander is much more incompetent than a mere human, and that the Shadow is unable to hunt down a scared young man. Even so, the Shadow being more preoccupied with otherworldly Alexander and its human victims simply caught in the crossfire is more faithful to the idea of cosmic insignificance than AMFP, where the Machine literally wants to destroy humanity.

Prometheus could be cited by some as a futuristic adaptation of "Into The Mountains Of Madness". Personally, though, I didn't like that:

Spoiler below!

The Engineers seem to care so damn much about humans. The movie shows that they look like us, are our direct ancestors, created monstrosities specifically tailored for humans, and wanted to destroy the Earth because they were typical sci-fi baddies.

In other words, I'm sick of having aliens which give a damn about humans. SOMA here seems to be geared more around artificial intelligences created by humans, unless my expectations are subverted. (Which they likely will be.)