[SPOILERS] Johan Ross

[Omertoso]

I made a wee lil' mistake in my playthrough.

When I finally found the ARK, I was afraid of something also finding it and stealing, or even worse, destroying it, resulting in a bad ending. So I decided to not do anything unnecessary and just get it blasted into space.

After I completed the game, I have been lurking around this forum reading what other people have thought about SOMA, and I found out that the meanie looking dude who makes Simon kill the WAU was Johan Ross. And now I'm really interested - what was in that room? What happened in the Alpha section? How did Johan Ross become like that?

Really, it's just one room I missed and I'm getting all these questions. Does anyone know? Or, if one is not eager to explain things in words, one can provide me a save file so that I may go explore through the room myself.

[centuryon]

Site Alpha from what I get was where the WAU Core was housed, and Johan Ross was one of only a few employees (seemingly mostly from Carthage and not directly from Pathos) tasked with maintaining it. The Warden of course was tasked with preserving life of its charges in the Pathos facility (this was mainly in terms of regulating the station's atmosphere and other environmental controls, pre-Comet).

Post Exctinction-Level-Event, the Warden began to refocus its programming, and almost instantly began to reprogram all the structure gel around its Core, thus beginning its expansion out of its conventional housing, which would balloon and completely overrun Site Alpha. Ross could only monitor the WAU from that point on and not really be able to control it. At some point he realized the WAU's influence was fast expanding out of Alpha and into the surrounding environment, altering construction in The Abyss and the local Fauna. It's "tentacles" would eventually grow right out of the Abyss and into the rest of the Pathos facility.

In in-game readings you can find in Omicron and Tau, you figure out that Ross tried to warn the "Surface" (outside the Abyss) about the WAU and how to terminate it. In his escape attempt however he was overrun by WAU's fauna and attacked, his suit becoming infected with Structure Gel. He did manage to take the lift up out of the Abyss and his body was collected by Omicron personnel, but he was put in stasis while the gel continued to alter him.

What's unanswered is why the WAU seemed to be concerned for Ross despite his intentions on its destruction, and why Ross was able to resist becoming like the other monsters that the WAU had created.

[Omertoso]

Holy. That was a fast response. And I thought I could go sleep early tonight. Regardless, thanks a lot! Things are clearer now.

Regarding your last sentences, did WAU particularly have any self-defence systems up? All I remember is that WAU wanted to "preserve life," which resulted to all the structure gel spread around the place, making dead things alive once more. However these creatures weren't particularly in WAU's control, so perhaps Ross "only" had to fight back the resulting insanity and get out of the chamber.

Alternatively WAU thought Ross was still one of its creations due to the gel infection. Hurrah for simplicity!

After the SOMA Transmission videos, I kinda got confused about what WAU really is, what with Ganks' hallucinations(?) and all.

[centuryon]

It's kind of hard to say what's actually "In WAU's Control". The staff of Pathos, and certainly those in The Abyss, seemed to believe that the Warden was controlling the altered Fauna down there, and they also seem to think that the "Helper Bots" which were infected first were acting under WAU's control as well.

Also, Frictional's Thomas Grip said the Transmissions are not 100% Canon, so it's not an entirely literal prequel for SOMA, though clearly a lot of elements do fit.