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Honestly I think it has to do with story telling. Simon goes to the doctor's office, sits in the chair, "takes a photograph", and wakes up in a totally different environment. It just goes with the story very well, plot holes aside.
So the WAU tossed Simon's mind into that bot just because, like with all the other robots. What resulted was irrelevant, and the WAU probably didn't even realize that Simon was anything special, since the main problem with the WAU is that it can't discern what makes humans actually human.
It just happened that Simon turned out to be something favorable to humanity. Seems possible to me that various other robots that we see throughout the game that can't even properly communicate could have been Simons as well, tossed into machines or tossed into bodies (those breathing corpses we see stuck to the walls around Theta, maybe?).
The fact Simon is in the ARK and we are controlling that Simon indicates this Continuation theory was correct all along and not the ravings of a lunatic. Simon has shown to have waken up after Catherine, I would assume this is because the entity was not yet passed on to this Simon, thus, sadly, it is assumed the Simon in Phi died/killed himself after the ARK was launched, theres a time lapse there. There would really be no other reason for Simon to wake up after the others in the ARK.
tl;dr It all worked out in the end!
I'm getting the impression that arguing wouldn't convey to you how incorrect this is? Just for the hell of it though, I'd like to throw out that we play as Simon on earth before the ARK guy because the game wasn't designed with the ability to simultaneously play multiple characters at once. And additionally, playing ARK Simon first would have ruined the effect - these are the reasons for any "time lapse". And additionally, nothing says Catherine necessarily woke up first, since she could have woken up at the same time in a nearby location, and beat us to the viewpoint because she was faster (i.e. skipped taking her own survey, saving time). Obviously not everyone will wake up in the same location, since that would imply this VR world doesn't even have basic player collision if they occupy the same chair...
Even if she did wake up first, technically, she was also uploaded first. Maybe the upload transferred the mind in as soon as it was done, so Catherine had an additional ~15 seconds real time (which may be longer in the ARK) over Simon while he was panicking over his upload in any case.
All this being said, I guess a lot of people playing this game are actually convinced that computer generated copies of memories are actually real, conscious people. My belief shuts off at them ever even being as convincing as they are in this game, personally. Still, I can see how you might end up believing the aforementioned lunatic in the end if you don't believe you're more than a body (meaning you have a spirit or soul or both as well). Just don't join any VR cults and commit suicide, because I expect you'd end up relatively disappointed with the results good sir.
If it were purely narratives sake they probably would not have included that section of the game at all. They're not amatuers. I dunno what you're going on with me joining a VR cult or something, all that i can assume is that you'd prefer to see the game as hard sci fi with no real anomalous or spiritual elements to it, and when you talk about a game about consciousness and questioning what's real, that's really difficult to tip toe around.
I'm ok with you calling me wrong I do need to refreshen back on a lot of things for the game and review plot points and what characters say, but don't act like a smug ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ and treat me like i'm stupid. I'm here to discuss not be called a VR cultist or whatever you just made up.
They included it because they wanted to. It was kind of a nice reward, and felt very much more like an ending than that sudden moment when the credits roll, honestly. No less hopeless either, because we clearly see that what has effectively happened is that the last scraps of mankind have spent all of their effort to launch a videogame into space, filled with a tiny population of AI that are incapable of accomplishing anything within their paradisal prison. That's all the ARK is, really. Just a sophisticated time capsule that we can hope some aliens find so that humanity might be remembered through copies of a few insane scientists. Maybe if SOMA had been set farther into the future, where scientists learned how to cut and paste actual human consciousness into a machine, rather than copy and paste their memories, things would be different. That would have been hope.
That ending (after the credits) very strongly conveyed to me a full sense of hopelessness, and the reality that mankind is done. Brought some perspective reality to all the talk about the ARK the game had given me, and the scenery was a pleasant final change of pace after such a dark game, honestly. Let me unwind and pull back to see what I'd just done. Launching a pretty thing that no one will ever experience, in essence. That post credits scene would seem inappropriate only if you think exactly as you do though - you believe that these AI memories in the ARK are real people that have been transferred.
If you think like that, then I can see how you'd find the post credits section inappropriate. It'd almost seem like Frictional spent the entire game beating you down into hopeless despair, only to for no apparent reason show you that everything is fine (relative to what everyone in the game had been hoping for) in the end. Catherine got her project into space, Simon made it in too. Now someone will live happily for thousands of years in paradise.
We knew that, we didn't need to be shown so explicitly that it improves our mood. Hell, we might have even been entertaining the possibility that the ARK had been corrupted by the WAU. That Catherine herself might have been an agent of the WAU all along. In that sense, the after credits scene took away that foreboding possibility and gave us confirmation that things worked out, which seems contrary to the game's trend of leaving you uncertain about everything.
Not that it really would have mattered if it were corrupted. Again, the ARK is just NPCs in a near dead MMO where the only server is floating through space. Personally, I think they showed the post credits scene because of the fact that by this point in the game, people should have been feeling extremely skeptical about the ARK, if they aren't outright convinced that it's a waste of time. It was a trigger to make you stop and say "nice...but was this actually worth it after all we've learned?".
I guess ultimately, the post credits scene is different for different people, depending on how you interpret questions from the game. For my part, this game only contained two...three people (in any sense at all) from start to finish. The two dying chicks on life support, and Ross. Everyone else is just a simulation of life, and that includes everyone on the ARK. They're highly advanced NPCs, which basically just means they're very well programmed characters that act exactly like real people. I might like them, but they don't matter. They can be shut off, rebooted, or replaced at any time.
As to the VR cult...I implied that you sound like you'd be in the ranks of all the scientists in this game who killed themselves in order to get transferred to the ARK. You did point blank say that Mark Sarang's theory on Continuity was right, based on shaky reasoning about the delay between the upload and us playing ARK Simon. I have no doubt that you wouldn't actually do this, of course. It was just amusing to make the comment.
Not true. There are a few little questions in both the game and Transmission movie that elude to the human soul. Good example is when the guy in transmission says "I dunno...it feels like they scooped something out" and then starts slowly becoming insane. Its not an assumption, just a curve ball to make you question every angle. There's also subtle little things like (not sure if many of you noticed), alot of the robot counterparts of people sound more..."alive". Take Jonsi for example, it didn't seem very right when I heard her real life counterpart's voice in a datamine, its very monotonal and emotionless. Her copied self's voice is alot more vibrant when you unplug it inside the powerplant, she also claims to be happy which was ....strange.
Another fact, go look inside the sound folder. I've been making an album to do with SOMA and I found some interesting files, like amy's robot. After you unplug her, she would have turned up further down the tunnel and been uploaded to a construct (a crawler specifically which was why she was cut...it also gave away to much plot), she would have also caused the crash instead of the shuttle's track being busted from what I can tell as she has a "shuttle crash" music que attached to her.
another cut peice is the diving suit when you wake up. Just after the guy dies, W.A.U. slaps him into a diving suit, stuck at upsilon (who would have been killed by the cool construct).
All food for thought ya know, not trying to start an argument XD
Oh and also to someones previous commentst:
A plot hole IS NOT something that isnt explained, ok? This does my head in when people say "IT R FULL OF PLOTHOLES!!". A plot hole is when established information gets contradicted later on in the story. Now a plothole SOMA DOES have would be the Curie. Now, the Curie in the Transmission movie is still around at the time everyone is in Pathos II and gets sunk 152 days before the game, contradicting the game's story of it sunk a couple of years back. THAT'S a plothole. Oh speeking of the Curie, again inside the files you'll find out that this plothole was originaly NOT THERE and the Curie had been sunk like the movie says, very recently (the crew would have been taken over with weird W.A.U. things on their heads).
P.S. one more thing, even the name of the game is designed to make you question, SOMA: The body as distinct from the soul, mind or psyche.
Did you miss the part where Herbie-Simon and Ross-Simon both exist simultaneously?
I think you missed an essential part of the game, and you fell prey to the same haphazard reasoning that all of Sarang's followers had.
edit: but with that said. here's an interesting discussion I just found that Frictional Games had even referenced their 6 months after blog post. The reddit OP produces an argument in favor of the coin toss analogy.
Note, this is not evidence in defense of Sono's above post, but rather additional fuel for thought to tackle whether or not the coin flip expectation is reasonable, as noted just two posts above mine by OP.