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What you talking about it was great. You're having a complex over "I figured it out before the end guys!" And everyone figures it out. You're supposed to figure it out. That's the point of the ending. And if it doesn't instigate some existential and introspective thinking that'd add to the overall experience of playing SOMA you're not doing it right.
For me, the game was not only my favourite out of all the horror games I've ever played, but it was also something I thought about for months after finishing, something I made mods for, and something that changed the way I think about life.
The ending will definitely be a lot less impactful for some people but there is no avoiding that.
Your realization and understanding of experiencing it is what gives it depth and power, not the specifics themselves.
I can't say that I agree. That point of the game just didn't resonate with me, hard to feel for any of the "characters" in the game seeing what the situation is. When Simon "changes bodies" to use the heavy pressure suit he is shown that the "personality transfer" isn't really a transfer, but a copy and paste. And now has to decide what to do with the other Simon. So why is it a shock to him when they're left behind after lauching the rocket?
The entire thing is just miserable. Simon 2 is a suit with a dead person in it, Simon 3 same but even more gross. Real Simon is dead like 100 years ago. The world has ended and the surface is uninhabitable. And the best thing to hope for is launching a computer to space with a snapshot of their personalities, with no one left alive to maintain it? I'm supposed to care for that? In my opinion, everything there was to care for is already gone. The ARK isn't life, the characters as they "live" in the game isn't life. There is no hope of ever restoring real human life again, and they know even if they send the computer into space they aren't going to go there anyway. So what's the point?
It is an extremely depressing experience yeah. Point is maybe to experience it and value everything we have? I don't know man. The point is it makes you think past "shoot next bad guy" and I thought that was pretty cool of an experience from a game. And completely different than anything else I've played. And playing as Simon who refuses to accept reality I'm pretty sure was a tactic they used to ensure the player understood what's goin on down there. By making you smarter than the protagonist, you're the one making the connections rather than the game telling you what to think. Also gives you freedom to think in different directions as to what're the best choices to make.
On the over hand i did not really realised it short before the launch. You just get kinda focused into the game so you work like on auto-pilot. "gotta get the ARK out and get onto it, then go into space ... wait a minute"
The moment that was really more "shocking" for me was seeing "yourself" sitting in that chair. I could not bring myself to switch him off. He was as fake or as real as i am in that moment. He still can end himself when he realise what happend.
The real shocker at the end is when Cath "dies". Whats worse than being trapped at the bottom of the ocean for god knows how long? Be there all alone. That really hit the feels man.
It's better than nothing, and what else did they have to do? A nice space station full of actual living people would have been nice, but they didn't have one, and I imagine the space gun would crush human bodies into paste. So all they had was virtual people, brain scans, somewhere safe with a millennium of life expected. Better than the ARK running out of power and being destroyed when the station failed, which might not be long the way WAU was messing everything up.
The ARK is real to the people on it, who themselves are real, to themselves and each other. Yeah a poor alternative, but it seems from playing as Simon and talking to Catherine, that the simulated brain scans are pretty faithful copies. They react as if they were alive.
Really though, it's all there is. Still I bet Catherine is going to have a few words with all the people on board who killed themselves and nearly ruined the project. They had the same sort of trouble with the idea of a duplicate, as Simon did. Thinking that by destroying their original self, "they" would wake up in the ARK. To the people on the ARK, that would be true, but it would be true regardless of what happened to their original material selves. Simon DID wake up on the ARK, as promised. Just the dozy corpse-suit version sat under the sea didn't realise what being copied meant, despite it happening twice to him by that point.
And the fact that your actions have no consequencies is even worst.
(I played Persona 4 Golden just before this game and there was tons of choices so I might be biased xD)
-why was simon here? what brought him to life long after everyone died?
-why wasnt the ARK launched in the first place? From the blackbox recording it sounds like 1 guy was against launching it but they never explained further than that
-who was guiding you to kill the WAU and why? The whole time I thought it was the WAU but then why would it want you to kill it?
-Why did the WAU try to kill everything?
All of your questions are actually answered in the game if you look close enough.
1) The WAU brought him back.
2) They weren't sure the ARK was going to make it and they didn't want to risk destroying the copies of peoples minds on the ARK.
3) Johan Ross. He was a psychologist stationed in site Alpha. The WAU was originally programmed to keep the sites in tact but after the comet crash its purpose was to keep humanity alive. It was just an algorithm, but it's definition of humanity or human life was a little "different".
4) It didn't try to kill anyone. In fact, quite the opposite. It tried to keep everybody alive. Like Amy said: It won't let anything die.
After playing as Simon, you should feel that yes, artificial life IS life. By the time we reach the ending, we have been with Simon for quite a while, we are aware of his condition and his misgivings, but we have also been able to observe that he IS alive. Part of the horror / catharsis of the game is the relativization of the very notion of "life" (plus consience, soul, humanity etc.).
So the ARK project is worthwhile.
And his shock in the end is illogical and fundamentally human: it's one thing to understand conceptually something (that "move" = "copy" +/- "delete"), and a whole other thing to experience it - and this was the first time THIS version of Simon had experienced it. His whole history so far consisted of having been the copy that made it to the other side. He had never had a chance to actually internalize the idea. Hence the anger and despair.
And the Simon on the ARK is ok - he did make it through. Of course, he is just a copy, but one perfectly identical with the original - so he is just as alive as he had been in the beginning of the game.
It's depressing from the pov of the standard understanding of "life". It's alienating because this is not the only understanding possible - so we need to expand the old notion, ending up outside the usual metaphysical mental map, where there be mental dragons. And it's cathartic for the same reason.
Look man, I am alive right now. If I die, I wouldn't want there to be some machine with my brain imprinted on it that thinks it's me. It's not me.
What is me or not me? How is it defined? If all your memories, experiences etc are copied how do someone distinguish between copy and original? By biological body? What if it's an indistinguishable biological clone with the same memories? Like gen 3 synts in Fallout 4.
For everyone else including clones it'll be the same person as you.
What if some machine perfectly replicates person atom by atom(at the exact moment of cloning) with all the same memories and noone can say who is the original when they exit? Both would have the same memories and continuity of thoughts and consider themselves original.