Soma, the next game from the folks behind Amnesia will be out in 2015 for PC and PlayStation 4, and it’s a doozy — a sci-fi horror game starring a psychotic computer that sounds like an angrier GLaD0S. Here’s the first bit of gameplay footage.
The folks at Frictional Games have been teasing this reveal for the past couple of weeks, but this is the first time we’re actually seeing gameplay from their newest project.
Here’s creative director Thomas Grip describing Soma:
SOMA is meant to be a proper sci-fi game, and to get that right we couldn’t let the themes be an afterthought. My favourite works of sci-fi are the ones that use fantastic worlds to probe important issues in a way that down-to-earth settings just cannot. Great sci-fi authors like Asimov, Dick and Heinlein all do this. We want to give SOMA this quality as well.
The subject that SOMA will discuss is consciousness. Personally, I find it the most profound questions that it is possible to ask. “How can the feeling of subjective experience arise from a chunk of flesh?” Exploring this further takes us to questions such as “Can machines be conscious?” and “Do we have free will?” It quickly gets very disturbing and is ideal for a futuristic horror setting. It is the kind of sci-fi that we want to make.
From the start, we knew that this could not just come through background story or dialog. We want you to PLAY through this. It must be an integral part of the gameplay and not just fluff.
Part of this comes through the game’s monsters. You will encounter a number of strange creatures, each an embodiment of an aspect of our themes. In order to survive the journey, you need to understand how they work and in the process take on extremely unsettling subjects.
Our goal is for SOMA to not just be another carnival ride of cheap scares. It is meant to chill you at the core and confront you with questions about your very existence.
So what do you think is scarier, this game, or the fact that a bunch of old dudes can shut down the US government for two weeks and counting?
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