Is SOMA post-apocalypse?

[76561198292631324]

Originally posted by Cruna:

Originally posted by The Consumerist:

The question is, is SOMA a post-apocalyptic game?

Well yeah. If we consider the surface being wiped out as apocalypse. But most of those stories are behind the scene.

The case is more messy than it seems. You see, post-apocalypse is a fixed genre. What you talked about, about life on the burned surface, reevolving, fighting for survival with natural or created dangers scavenging throughout the desolate wastelands, be it human, beast or machine, this is post-apocalypse. Take Fallout as the most clean example, but there are plenty other titles to find. See, if SOMA is a post-apocalypse game, then it reinvents the genre at least on couple of different levels. We could argue that oceans void of life are metaphoric of wastelands, but does it provide the options the wastelands give, as it has been known from the post-nuke bander releases?

Certainly there is a strong theme of world end in SOMA and this world end directly causes the story to happen, but does it alone make SOMA post-apocalyptic or is it only an excuse to delve into some other extreme themes in a detached way?

[Sticky Wicket]

To attach a label to it seems pointless.

A good story and game goes way beyond definitions, genres and categories.

Soma is a unique excellently crafted experience, what does it matter if it is "post-apocalyptic" or whatever.

[76561198292631324]

Originally posted by Got to be Real:

To attach a label to it seems pointless.

A good story and game goes way beyond definitions, genres and categories.

Soma is a unique excellently crafted experience, what does it matter if it is "post-apocalyptic" or whatever.

Good to be aware of that, though. Titles transgressing contemporary boundaries and genres craft new ways into the future, perhaps SOMA is one of such titles, meaning it cannot be really called post-apocalypse in that regard either, as it redefines it. But actually, what SOMA is, is "apocalypse" or "world end" game.

[Astralite]

I'd put this in the "WTF Happened Here?!" exploration genre

[hip]

It is. But under water. Which completely throws away every "post apocaliptic" label you have seen so far.

[soldier6661111]

It isn't deeper than a simple yes. Trying to appear "smart".

[Team Vladof]

There was an apocolypse, so by that account it is "post-apoc".

But in most post-apoc, there are humans leftover trying to survive and come back.

In SOMA (depending on the choices you made)...no humans remain, only the WAU .. an AI that's trying to preserve humans and humanity... but instead of natural seletion it's using artificial selection to try to bring life back to some pre-apoc norm it saw. So, in a thousand years of messing around the WAU could have created some kind of super-race or just created the Singularity.

That super race could discover the ARK later, or old brain-scan archives of humans, and try to recreate humans some how. Or, just leave them be...

Who knows.

It's a post-apoc world that is out of the hands of humans.

So, the old "if a tree falls in the woods, but nobody is around to hear it, does it still make a noise" question comes to mind.

If a world hits post-apoc, but nobody is around to care.. is it really post-apoc?

[[S.A.S]sephchan]

wat

[Corlain]

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