Amnesia Studio Unveils New SOMA Environmental Trailer

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Frictional Games, the studio behind Amnesia: The Dark Descent, has put out a trailer showing off some the creepy environments in its new game SOMA.

SOMA, you may recall, is the new project in the works at Frictional Games, who you may recall is the studio behind Amnesia: The Dark Descent, which you may recall scared the ever-loving crap out of you in 2010. So isn’t it great to know that they’re taking all the lessons they learned from that game and its Penumbra predecessor and using them to come up with an experience that will be even more horrifically awful?

It sure is! And although the SOMA “Upsilon” trailer isn’t much to look at in terms of action and exciting things happening on the screen, if you take a moment to imagine yourself in them – moving through them, interacting with them, praying that they let you pass without doing anything too terribly awful to you – they become a little more interesting as something to look forward to.

In an accompanying blog post, Frictional explained how SOMA’s “foundational design pillars” will follow the principles established in its previous games by creating a believable game world and then allowing players to discover that world, as much as possible, on their own.

“We do not force players to notice events by use of cutscenes and similar, but assume they will properly explore the environment and act in a rational fashion. We simply set up situations and then let the player have full control over their actions,” the post says. “While we do our utmost to make the narrative unfold in a fluent and intuitive way, we will not cater to players that make irrational decisions. The environment is set up to be taken seriously and we expect the players to do so too.”

SOMA is being developed for the PC and PS4 and is expected to be ready sometime in 2015.

Source: Frictional Games

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