In Frictional Games' SOMA, the machines think they're human and not all is as it seems. Something is lurking in the dark and your radio is dead, leaving you isolated from the rest of the world.
With the release of a new trailer, Frictional has some questions for SOMA players:
"What does it really mean to be human?" writes the developer in a press release. "Are we bound to the flesh of our bodies, or do we simply inhabit them?"
SOMA takes place in an underwater research facility called PATHOS-II. In the game, you wander through the facility with a dead radio and little food while meeting machines that think they're just like you. You must decide what to do about PATHOS-II, as well as what you believe is worth fighting for. Meanwhile, something is hunting you down as you stumble your way through the facility in the dark.
Frictional is no stranger to scaring gamers: it successfully terrified players of its Amnesia titles and is set to do so again with SOMA.
Part of the secret to creating a spooky game like SOMA involves the sounds you hear while traversing through the environments of PATHOS-II. No audio detail was overlooked in the development of the game.
SOMA's audio director Samuel Justice described the creative process on Frictional's blog:
"SOMA deals with many interesting themes, but the main focus is on what it means to be a living, breathing, conscious entity. From the start we decided to take that description and run with it for the 'air' soundscape, where everything is heavily grounded in reality.
"The world of Pathos-II sounds dirty, gritty, crumbly. When walking through the corridors of Upsilon we want you to feel cold and lonely through the sound alone and when you hear something that doesn't sound quite human in the distance, that still needs to sound realistic and grounded."
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