21 réponses à ce sujet

[Dominus]

Ahoy there, and welcome to the SOMA Thread, an upcoming adventure game by Frictional. It's official website can be found here. It's to be released sometime in 2015. A heads up that the videos below do contain some swearing.
 

Videos So Far:

Gameplay Teaser.
Vivarium.
Mockingbird.
Upsilon.
Lambda.

Update 4/3/2014: Huge Info gained from a new Gameinformer Article which can be found at the last post.

Modifié par DominusVita, 04 avril 2014 - 02:39 .

[Dominus]

Major Update added into the Original Post: The game has been revealed with the title SOMA, and the link to the first video is up. Hold onto your butts.

Modifié par DominusVita, 01 octobre 2013 - 02:02 .

[Dominus]

Alright, major news incoming. The first gameplay teaser for SOMA has been released, and can be found above.

Firstly, the graphics engine has gotten a major overhaul and at least relatively speaking, looks a lot sharper. Secondly, it looks like the live action bits, as far as I can tell, were meant as just part of getting the storyline put in.

Lastly, this looks very disturbing.

Modifié par DominusVita, 12 octobre 2013 - 03:48 .

[spirosz]

This game looks brilliant. I saw some gameplay footage and there was this one section that reminded me of the "inside of a Reaper", so sweet - can't wait.

[spirosz]

And that was the gameplay Dom. The part at 2:02 is what I'm referring to.

[Dominus]

This game looks brilliant. I saw some gameplay footage and there was this one section that reminded me of the "inside of a Reaper", so sweet - can't wait.

Yep, feels an awful lot like the Dead Reaper section from Mass Effect 2. Almost reminds me of the "Real World" from the Matrix.

Going off of the previews so far, I'd say one theme they're playing off of is similar to Phillip K. Dick's "Do Robots Dream of Electric Sheep?" My educated guess is that our protagonist is either some sort of cloned human being who managed to survive whatever processes he went through.

Modifié par DominusVita, 12 octobre 2013 - 03:56 .

[spirosz]

Apparently that gameplay teaser was not apart of the main game - some custom map or something? I read that somewhere, I don't remember where though.

[Dominus]

Good news, everyone. A new gameplay video called Upsilon has popped up, feels a bit more like Dead Space/Aliens this time around. Mostly environmental stuff, but thought it was worth the update. *Adding to the Above Video List*

[spirosz]

Love that ambient music.

[TheRealJayDee]

Looking pretty good!

[Dominus]

A Huge bulk of new information on the game has been released in a new Gameinformer Article. If you wish to learn 16 new things about SOMA, click on the spoiler box below. Some of it's typical Amnesia stuff, but I've underlined the important bits to make things easier.

Spoiler

Frictional built its name on survival horror, and Soma continues down that path, albeit with a much different setting. Whereas Amnesia was set in an Edgar Allen Poe-like fantasy setting where the studio could take liberties with the fiction, Frictional wanted to set Soma in a much more grounded, believable world. That said, the game has a decidedly science fiction tone.

Like Amnesia before it, Soma stands out best for its suffocating atmosphere and tension. Whether we were wandering though a derelict industrial building, exploring the ocean floor, or roaming the flooded halls of a shipwreck, a sense of foreboding never left thanks to the sparse lighting, creepy sound effects, and decaying environments.

Players take the role of Simon, who we know little about at this juncture. Frictional says this is purposeful. "He's not an amnesiac," says creative director Thomas Grip. "He knows very much who he is, but he ends up in a very weird situation to say the least. But exactly how it all starts is a big secret." Given that Frictional has previously stated that Soma is a deep exploration of what it means to be a sentient being, we have some theories on the matter.

Figuring out how Simon ended up in this abandoned facility is your first objective – during the demo he speculates that he must have been kidnapped or something. But finding out why he's there is just the tip of the narrative iceberg. Frictional says the game explores larger themes beyond that. "Instead of just asking 'how did I end up here?' it will be more like, 'why me?' or 'how can this be?'" says writer Mikael Hedberg.

As you explore the environments, you can find black boxes, which are essentially audio logs that chronicle the final moments of a person's life. Most of these deaths seem to be at the hand of a computer system called WUA. When asked if this is some sort sentient A.I. gone rogue like HAL 9000, Hedberg plays coy. "I would stay clear from the HAL comparison, but there's definitely something strange going on," he says. "I don't want to spoil it because that's one of the big mysteries for the setting. There is some sort of programmer or whatever that's working it."

While exploring the environments, Simon comes across objects he can interact with to trigger an extrasensory experience. We came across two of these circumstances, once with a damaged robot and later when we found a dead body in an electrical room. "Simon is able to pick up on different signals and can investigate them in a more intuitive way," Hedberg says.

Many of the environments require basic puzzle solving to progress. For instance, to get a door to open, we needed to remove a strange mechanical tentacle from a console and then restart the system turning a series of knobs. In another instance, we had to find a fuse to place into an electrical box.

To keep atmosphere at the forefront, Frictional doesn't clutter the screen with user interface. With no mini-map or waypoints, you must rely on your intuition to guide you.

Simon isn't the only living person in these derelict environments. A woman named Catherine Chun repeatedly contacts him via the intercom system, asking strange questions like how he's doing and if he "feels capable." Simon thinks this is strange, asking her why her line of questioning is so weird.

One of the biggest challenges facing Frictional during the development of Soma is transitioning the narrative to feature a more present protagonist. "We're definitely trying to merge the story a little bit more," Hedberg says. "In Amnesia, we had much more passive storytelling with one very clear goal: Find Alexander and confront him basically, and then depending on how the player sees the back story he will make an open choice. In Soma, it's much more of an active quest; we're trying to keep the player in the narrative at all times. Simon talks in present time. In Amnesia, Daniel didn't speak unless he was scared, and then he mumbled something. All the other dialogue was passive voice where he was retelling something. We want Simon to be there, we want him to interact with Catherine and the characters he comes upon."

Catherine occasionally offers guidance and asks you to perform jobs for her. During this demo, she tells Simon to leave the abandoned industrial complex, which is called Upsilon, and take the tram to the Theta building. Before he has a chance to leave the comm station, suddenly the room floods with water.

The demo jumps ahead to find Simon on the ocean floor. Here the game takes a different turn – you can head in any direction, with only some dimly lit lights in the distance to guide you. Frictional says this move from claustrophobic indoor environments to sprawling seabed is made to keep the game from feeling like it's hitting the same note over and over. Grip says the "blanket of oppression" is more effective when you let the player come up for air from time to time.

After exploring the seabed for a while you can find the hull of a sunken ship, the MS Curie. Upon entering, Catherine warns us to avoid the Jiangshi, which is a reanimated corpse in Chinese folklore. Like Amnesia's protagonist, Daniel, Simon is defenseless when he comes across these types of threats. Since you can't directly confront them in combat, you must use stealth to move around them or hide when they are nearby. The demo abruptly ends when Simon turns a corner and suddenly comes face-to-face with one of these bloated, grotesque figures.

Frictional estimates the game should end up at around eight hours long, and the studio is intentionally slowing the pace of discovery early on. "It's a bit risky," Grip says. "There's going to be a reward that comes five hours into the game, so it's a very slow burn. Some of the stuff that you see now are just the seeds we are planting."

When asked if the narrative ties directly into the live-action teasers the studio has been releasing up to this point, Hedberg confirms they are related. "There's definitely going to be some overlap because we want that to feel like they are definitely a part of that universe," he says. "There's a story for both the two characters that appear in the short films – Adam Golaski and Imogen Reed. I don't want to reveal more about that but they have a story and we keep them in mind."

The game is currently on track for a 2015 release, which is a wide enough window to give Frictional the latitude to make sure the game players will eventually experience is as close as possible to the studio's vision.

[ObserverStatus]

Not sure how to feel about Simon regularly conversing with Catherine throughout the course of the game, I can't imagine it doing the atmosphere any favors. Still, we'll see.

[Dominus]

Good news everyone! A new trailer has popped out, called the Lambda Trailer. More enticing than the previous ones they've made.

Not sure how to feel about Simon regularly conversing with Catherine throughout the course of the game, I can't imagine it doing the atmosphere any favors. Still, we'll see.

Get the feeling it may be more like Dead Space than Amnesia, as you'll no longer be a passive observer. Might be a minor change, like the difference between BioShock and BioShock Infinite. Dunno ¯\(°_o)/¯

[Chewin]

Looks impressive. Was quite disappointed with the horror elements of A Machine for Pigs, so hope this one might have what the previous installment lacked. Will keep and eye on this one in the future.

[ObserverStatus]

Good news everyone! A new trailer has popped out, called the Lambda Trailer. More enticing than the previous ones they've made.

Mockingbird is my favorite trailer, but to each his own.

[Dominus]

RESSURECTI-....

So it seems the game is slated for September 22nd on PC and PS4. (Source)

Also got new gameplay footage, getting serious System Shock 2 Vibes...

[TheChris92]

Hopefully, unlike Amnesia, it won't suffer from repetitive evironment design and enemy encounters. It became so obtuse that it felt like the cosmic monstrosity was summoned by the auto-save function. Although the atmosphere seems to be intact, and the environment looks promising if not a bit too much like Dead Space, System Shock, Doom and pretty much your average horror game -- I need something more out of a first-person game, other than walking around hallways waiting for the next jumpscare to happen.

[Dominus]

The Original Campaign wasn't perfect - Gaining virtually any major inventory item invoked the nasty face-thing of nastiness. Besides inventory/physics puzzles, walking in the creepy mansion unarmed is about the long and short of it. I suspect a lot of YouTube personalities were likely reeling it in for the sake of entertaining their audience. Originally saw the Tobuscus playthrough before buying the game, he greatly overrated the scare factor. And got a ton of views, most like. One of the better tricks they pulled was the "Underwater Monsters". The puzzles themselves seem a *bit* more interesting from the free Justine DLC.
 

------

S'far as SOMA, my faith is somewhat stronger from the video - like you said, they've got the atmosphere right. The new creature has more of a big daddy thing going on - I like how they've filtered its audio in disturbing ways. Besides an actively voiced protagonist and some other bits, it isn't far from what we already know from Frictional. It'll at least be loads better than A Machine for Pigs via The Chinese Room. Not like that takes much.

[spinachdiaper]

Games like this give me daytime nightmares.