The Body and Beyond: The Posthuman Horrors of Soma

Abstract

 The 2015 survival-horror game ‘Soma’ uses a dystopian setting to a far different use than most works of visual storytelling from the said genre–beyond the spectacle itself–to invoke a deep contemplation over the intervention of science into human existence, and the potential threat this ‘post-human’ future poses, not to the physical human existence, but to the idea of humanity itself. This paper analyzes the narrative elements of the game to understand the world it portrays, to see how close it is to a plausible reality, and what it means as a part of experiencing an interactive story.