So what did everyone think of the 'old SOMA' and the Verticle Slice material?

[SlackerinDeNile]

I watched the Verticle Slice gameplay trailer from 2013 again and i'd noticed not many people here were talking about SOMA's old versions and all the cut story elements. Were they that boring or is everyone still focused on the current release version?

Personally I really dig it, I can see why they made so many changes to this game over its long development time but there are so many cool aspects that had to be left out, for fairly obvious reasons but it doesn't negate their cool factor. For example, the old music is awesome, not that the soundtrack in the final release isn't awesome but this one sounds like a really good Frictional Games soundtrack, very atmospheric. I kind of prefer that old machine being to the WAU in the final release, its more breath-taking, intimidating and omniscient, I have no idea what role it would have played or what its goals and ambitions were, but its scary and badass. What the hell is the Cabal exactly? They don't look or sound like the villains from the Blood games so were they some sort of post-apocalyptic cult? The remnants of mankind? What was Catherine's role? Why was she their prisoner?

However, like some others noted before me, the old personalities of David and Simon are kind of annoying and all over the place in tone, glad the developers changed things there.

Unless someone already knows the jist of the old story (Frictional and their friends probably) I have a few theories as to what was going on in the Vertical Slice version...

Spoiler below!

Simon was either always a 'brain in the jar' victim of the WAU-like entity and was constantly being rebooted, experimented on and toyed with for whatever reason, possibly to explore or enhance human consciousness for AI benefit.

The game was set in a post-apocalyptic far future in a world ruled by a machine race, like Terminator but with much more intelligent machines. The surface was possibly uninhabitable or completely taken over by machines, possibly a bit of both. The 'ruination' the Cabal recorder speaks of could either be World War 3, a giant comet or a war against the machines.

The Cabal are the mutated remains of humanity and worship human ingenuity and craft, no doubt they are enemies of the machines for whatever reason, perhaps the machines wanted to assimilate or experiment on them. Or, like in The Matrix, they already were some sort of machine experiment. They reconstructed the Catherine AI in order to understand their machine enemies better, but Catherine, like Simon was likely from a time before the apocalypse so she may not have known anything useful. They believe Simon is a soldier of the machine race and they're probably right to some extent.

What would Simon and Catherine's goals have been in this crazy world? Stop the machines I guess, find out what they want, why they do what they do and why they're following and manipulating Simon. Possibly even ally with the Cabal if it was an option.

Oh, I also get the impression that the 'mind coral' from Theta would have appeared in the game somehow no matter what. Frictional seemed to really dig that concept.

[Danarogon AP]

Personally I prefer the version of the story they decided to go with. The original plot had a bunch of ideas good on their own, but meshed together formed a weird unfocused mess. The final story even suffers a bit of that because they still wanted to retain some elements of the previous plot (probably to reuse some finished maps, characters and game assets). But it is far more focused, clear and interesting than the previous one. And I'm glad they decided to change it.

[SlackerinDeNile]

Personally I prefer the version of the story they decided to go with. The original plot had a bunch of ideas good on their own, but meshed together formed a weird unfocused mess. The final story even suffers a bit of that because they still wanted to retain some elements of the previous plot (probably to reuse some finished maps, characters and game assets). But it is far more focused, clear and interesting than the previous one. And I'm glad they decided to change it.

I agree with you there, although with the old story I get the impression that the 'unfocused mess' elements were kind of intentional, it gives it the feel of a bizarre vivid, lucid dream or some sort of advanced game simulation gone wrong. That and it was still early days, that video was clearly an unfinished alpha version, even if it did look and sound pretty damn cool.

[Striker]

I remember this story line now, and remember going into the game for some reason with the prejudice that it was going to remind me of the Alien movies.

I think the final product worked out very well.

[Danarogon AP]

I agree with you there, although with the old story I get the impression that the 'unfocused mess' elements were kind of intentional, it gives it the feel of a bizarre vivid, lucid dream or some sort of advanced game simulation gone wrong. That and it was still early days, that video was clearly an unfinished alpha version, even if it did look and sound pretty damn cool.

Yeah. But the "It's all a dream" plot line has been done multiple times before, in books, movies, games, you name it. It is a dry dead horse. While the trans-humanism, existential themes of digital minds, and the implications that come with them were almost completely ignored by most story tellers. It makes SOMA's story a far more terrifying one, because it asks us very strong questions that the original story did not ask as well.

[GhylTarvoke]

Yeah. But the "It's all a dream" plot line has been done multiple times before, in books, movies, games, you name it. It is a dry dead horse. While the trans-humanism, existential themes of digital minds, and the implications that come with them were almost completely ignored by most story tellers. It makes SOMA's story a far more terrifying one, because it asks us very strong questions that the original story did not ask as well.

I gotta agree with this. If Simon had woken up to find a bizarro version of PACE labs (with structure gel spurting from the water fountain, etc.), I would've just thought, "What's the point in continuing?"

[Danimelo03]

About the "mindcoral", i believe it was the first version of the structure gel, a way by which the WAU can manifest in the real wolrd, like that "tentacles" that appear in real time during the gameplay of the vertical slice.
So the "coral puppets" (a name that appears in the game files regarding Terry Akers and the proxies) could be humans under the influence of the mindcoral, an equivalent to the "proxies", that are the human infected with the structure gel in the final version of the game.

[SlackerinDeNile]

About the "mindcoral", i believe it was the first version of the structure gel, a way by which the WAU can manifest in the real wolrd, like that "tentacles" that appear in real time during the gameplay of the vertical slice.
So the "coral puppets" (a name that appears in the game files regarding Terry Akers and the proxies) could be humans under the influence of the mindcoral, an equivalent to the "proxies", that are the human infected with the structure gel in the final version of the game.

I doubt it was the WAU's first attempt at human genetic manipulation in either version of the game. The WAU is clearly not suited to carry out bio-engineering beyond creating dangerous bio-weapons, I bet the Umbrella corporation would love to get its hands on it.

[Danimelo03]

"I doubt it was the WAU's first attempt at human genetic manipulation in either version of the game. The WAU is clearly not suited to carry out bio-engineering beyond creating dangerous bio-weapons, I bet the Umbrella corporation would love to get its hands on it."
[/quote]

Well, i didn't write anything about genetic manipulation. I don't know where you read it. but it was not in my previous comment.

Ok, I think I did not express myself well. My theory is:

1) in 2013, Frictional made the "vertical slice", a pre-alpha version of a game without a name in which that tentacles that appear in real time during the gameplay are the mindcoral, a way the vertical-slice-version-WAU used to manifest in the real wolrd. Also, in "vertical slice", when the mindcoral "infect" a human, it becomes a mindcoral puppet.
There was no structure gel in this version, Frictional has not created structure gel yet.
And i'm not saying that the mindcoral was actually a coral, but the people from the Cabal gang could have nicknamed that tentacles as mind coral.

2) Later, in 2015, they made SOMA. There's no mindcoral and it never existed in the SOMA universe. Actually Frictional decided to cut off the mindcoral thing and cutt off the tentacles appearing at the screen in real time and replace it for structure gel. Now, when a human is "infected" by structure gel, it becomes a proxy.
Frictional probably reused the 3d models they built for mindcoral puppets (in the vertical slice) as the models for the proxies in SOMA. That's why you still find the name coral puppets in the game files.

Of course you don't have to agree with me, I'm just trying to make sure my theory was understood.

[SlackerinDeNile]

Cool man, I get you.