My hands are sweating. As I walk inside narrow metal hallways, I notice that Iâm hearing things that, frankly, Iâm not even sure are actually there. Hollow screeches. Faraway wails. It reminds me of seeing a shadow in the corner of your eyes, a darkness your sight never catches up with but that youâre still convinced is present, waiting.
Something has happened here. I donât know what, exactlyâall I see are the ruins of a once-bustling industrial facility. The diligent machinery and assembly lines whir and absent-mindedly try to complete useless tasks, monitors flicker on and off in the distance, cables swing and spark in silence. The facility carries the eeriness of an uninhabited place that keeps running with a complete disregard of human presenceâIâm not sure if the horror lies in the obvious tragedy that has struck and may eventually affect me in some way, or if the horror lies in the casual reminder that the universe doesnât even care about what has happened here. Maybe a little of both.
Last month I got the chance to try out SOMA, the upcoming sci-fi horror game for PC and PS4 being developed by Frictional Games, the folks behind Amnesia: The Dark Descent. You play as Simon, a character that has somehow ended up in a strange situation. I donât know the specifics beyond that, as the particulars of the situation were kept a secret. Frictional didnât want to spoil things for me. What I can tell you is that, despite playing for about an hour, I didnât see an actual enemy or threat until the very end of the demoâthe game burns slowly, wants to get under your skin before it gets your blood pumping.
Most of the time, you can quickly tell how to get to the next area despite lacking a mini-map or a quest marker, and the puzzles I experienced were all rather simple. Grab a thing in one room and place it inside another thing in the room. Press some buttons and nobs. Read a post-it note. You wonât want to blaze through to the next area, though. Or perhaps itâs more accurate to say you canât. You might come across a dead body thatâs obviously hanged itself, or you might find yourself interacting with a machine thatâs weeping because it canât see, because it feels scared. The machine may not be alive, not in the same sense we are, but itâs still afraid of dying. Like I said, the entire thing is a little unsettling. Part of you might feel like you want to get the hell out of there and back to safety, and part of you canât help but take a closer look. Curiosity is a dangerous thing indeed.
âThe thing that weâre looking for is to really get into your mind in a different way,â Thomas Grip, co-founder of Frictional Games, told me. âItâs not just a theme park ride where monsters pop up and so forth, but weâre sort of wanting to plant a few ideas as you go alongâŠthis [part of the demo] is sort of the start, where we plant a few seeds.â
The âseedsâ heâs referring to are sci-fi related, as you mightâve gathered from the teaser trailers in the past few months:
As I played, I learned about a device that humans implanted in their brains, appropriately called black boxes, which can somehow be used to regulate peopleâs emotions from afar. Black boxes also allowed me to find corpses and learn about their last living momentsâwhich is probably the most novel take on audio logs in a video game that Iâve ever heard. The black boxes allow the player to start putting a story together as they play, a story which is never outright spelled out for you. Grip firmly believes there is power in choosing to not spoon-feed the story to players, as most games tend to do.
âWeâre relying a lot on the player putting the pieces together, everything in that level has a coherent story structure,â Grip explained. âYou found the man that had died, the corpse, and the woman that hung herself. Thatâs all connected.â
Hereâs what I pieced together. As I played I learned that many of the deaths seemed to be connected to a computer AI system gone rogue. And the promotional material almost made it seem as if the game takes place in space or on a near-future Earthâbecause thatâs usually where a lot of sci-fi takes place. Thatâs not actually the case.
âThe world itself is a bit more complicated [than in previous games]. The whole underwater thingâŠmost of the game is underwater,â Grip said. âNormally you see space, and thatâs sci-fi, but we have this deep, mysterious waterâthe ocean is not really explored, and itâs different, everything looks different.â
About half of what I played was underwaterâfirst in the ocean, and then in sunken remains of a ship. Being underwater made for an interesting contrast to the initial claustrophobic industrial setting, and it also acted as a good reminder that we donât actually have to get lost in alien worlds to experience strange, unknown horrors. Anyone with a cursory knowledge of ocean life knows that the deeper down we go, the darker it gets, and the more horrifying the creatures can become. But even if youâre not diving deep into the ocean, youâll still experience all sorts of unfamiliar wildlife in a setting that is incredibly hostile to humans. The sea, though underexplored in most games as a horror setting, is just naturally terrifyingâBioShock knew this, and SOMA is here to take that even further.
âThereâs tons of wildlife, thereâs crabs, thereâs sharksâweâve especially built it so they react, [crabs] hide from you and they dig under the sand, thereâs tons to explore [in the environment],â Grip told me.
Curiously, open water felt just as tense and frightening as the denser, more compact facility you start out inâthough for entirely different reasons. Being underwater means things will rust and become overrun with moss and seaweed, which add to the sense that youâre an intruder. I also noticed without knowing where to goâagain, some parts of the game are in the open oceanâI found myself silently panicking about where to go next. That seems intentional, though. Either the game was messing with me, or I couldnât hold it together enough to get my bearings. Thankfully, I was never lost for too longâjust long enough that the game kept me on my toes.
And then thereâs the Jiangshi, a dangerous type of creature I only caught a glimpse at the end of the demo when I was playing in the underwater section. Those of you who have played Amnesia might not be surprised to hear that you canât actually fight back in combatâyouâre expected to move around them or hide. After I scrambled all over the sunken ship, the Jiangshi managed to corner me. I could hear my heart racing as it crept closer and closerâthere was nothing I could do but await my demise. Thatâs when the demo ended. You might also be interested in knowing that, mythologically, Jiangshi are Chinese reanimated corpses, like vampires or zombiesâI donât know if Frictional will riff off that idea much, since the creature looked sort of like a weird and upsetting take on a diving suit, but it seems worth mentioning.
Intense stuffâand this is that I never actually discovered what in the world was going on, story-wise. Donât worry, though. Grip told me that once players get their hands on it, it wonât take long for them to put the pieces together. Itâll be a bit of a wait, thoughâcurrently the game is scheduled to come out in 2015.
âYou can figure out the mystery from the very beginning. All the clues are there, but the idea is that itâs going to be hard for players to accept.â
Judging from this trailer?
Whatever the mystery ends up being, itâs gonna be disturbing. I canât wait.
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