Few things have messed me up, and upset me, as much as Frictional's Soma. I chewed over its ending for months after completing it and even now, a decade later, I'm still not sure I'm entirely okay with it. Any of it. So Ontos being very firmly pitched as a 'spiritual successor' to its story of brain scans, consciousness, and identity, is like a big red flag I want to wrap myself in; rolling around its folds to see what trauma it can inflict on me this time.
Creative director Thomas Grip claims Ontos will push Soma's ideas and philosophical themes "even further than we’ve ever gone before". Which is a lot like saying 'we're going to drive this splinter deeper under your fingernail than anyone's ever reached'. Without spoiling too much, Soma was technically about trying to escape from an underwater base and save humanity, but it took place against a background where all of humanity was gone and the player character, Simon, and most of who you meet, are all simply digitized brain scan recordings running in machines and other devices.
