You reply to my post, you even quote my post, but you ignore answering my question. I don't know why you did that, because it clearly wasn't to start a dialogue.

Here's a difference - I have to read your stupid ass post to know that it is a stupid ass post. You don't have to play the new Safe Mode, becasue you've already been told what it is.

Secondly- no one says you're not allowed to give your "thoughts". You could however do so calmly and without being an ass. And while you do, obviously, have the right to give us your "thoughts" here, you do not have some divine right to do so without being subject to response from others.

Thirdly- I did have a point. I pointed out that the mode is optional, something you seem to have completly missed, misunderstood or intentionally ignored seeing your clamis of "baby stealth is the only gameplay SOMA has, and now it's been removed". Your entire post was based on that entirely false assumption.

Your schoolyard level bullying is far more worthy of mocking. One has to be a truly pathetic, insecure ass to attack and judge people they know nothing else about over their preferred way of playing a video game. You represent the absolute worst the gaming culture has to offer.

Seriously, this thread is really uncomfortably revealing of how unpleasant, toxic and just pathetically childish the gaming community can be, and the people who seem to judge a persons worth by their gaming prowess and/or preferences. All you people speaking in this tone should take long, hard look at yourselves.

Relevant:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ejh_Dt3z46Q

As long as it's an option, I don't care.

So much machismo, here... :D

To be clearer, you can't turn on safe mode on the fly, but you must start a new game and then you can select normal mode or safe mode. So, if you are struck in some place with a monster that you can't evade, you can't turn off safe mode to cheat it, but you must start from anew.

Thanks, Frictional!

In my opinion SOMA is one of the best games, if not the best game that I played in the last years. The whole story and setting is just epic.

Back then I wished there was something like a safe mode, because discovering and unfolding all the pieces was a real great experience and it felt like the monsters were more of a distraction. But then, they played a main role in giving a real uncomfortable horror feeling. I just felt like, after finishing the game, the story could definitely stand on it's own without all the monsters. Will probably give this another replay in safe mode!

In the meantime I'll check http://nextfrictionalgame.com/ weekly because I'm hyped for the next epic experience that Frictional will deliver.

Thanks for making this game.

PS. As for the bikeshedding in this thread, get a life. :-)

Makes sense to me. It should have been an option from the start IMO. Having 3 or 4 levels of difficulty has been a staple of games for decades. Including the changing of enemy behavior. It should prove interesting to be able to explore more where it used to be impossible to do so with enemies actively hunting you.

I'd use this option honestly. (Also, 2 years since I've talked in the forums. Hi GOG!)

While I understand the appeal of games designed to shock and scare and challenge you while being shocked and scared, I've never really played games that tried to terrify you and do little else. Even in a lot of older games, horror or otherwise, the goal is empowerment. Resident evil had guns, Dead Space had guns, If you count Bioshock, guns. Silent Hill and its series, considered some of the scariest games ever, empower you with guns and weapons, and this is irregardless of the mechanics. You are not helpless. What about the games without guns? Well, Stories untold, Sanitarium, Shadowgate, other games people might consider horror are more about pressuring you into uncomfortable situations and are more about your decision making, hence being point and click. But again you have control of the situation, and part of the horror is in suspense of an unwitting end or a disturbing and deeply uncomfortable situation.. Or you have games that are more psychological, or gross out style humor, or others that task you with managing your character's health and sanity.

When you start looking at it, there are actually VERY few chase style horror games, ones that pit you into completely one sided and helpless situations where your ability to survive relies on you navigating a cramped and difficult to recognize space. Hell, even some of those still include some degree of empowerment with weapons. Soma, Amnesia, Bendy and the Ink Machine, I believe Outlast, are VERY rare in the way they approach gameplay as completely removing any sense of empowerment or ability to your character, where avoidance is the only method of approach. It's not just your decisions, it's how you navigate, it's how you act, or hide, or run, and whether or not you do so effectively. And I can fully understand for a lot of people, it's deeply uncomfortable to lose that sense of empowerment. Even in games that have chase sequences that take away your ability to fight back, it's usually only temporary or for a short moment. For someone like me who would get frustrated with a system like this, or wouldn't normally check into chase games like Outlast, it makes the game more narrative focused, and would be more approachable and more appealing. Don't like monster horror and chase? Well, now there's an option that just lets you look at the game as an interactive novel more than not wanting to come back because you die every time, or get frustrated with monsters. And frankly I would say more games would be welcome with such an option.

I'm not telling it to everyone. Only to people like you. If you managed to convey reasonable criticism of the mode in a civil manner, I wouldn't tell you that, for there would be no reason.

It makes your initial post moot, because ot was all based on something entirely false. If you had any dignity you would admit as much in your first response to me, and that would be the end of it. And instead you are still talking about "removing parts of the game" when nothing is being removed.

Your analogy to microtransactions is completely ridiculous. No one demands anyone pay extra for this mode. Nothing has been removed from the base game to make this mode. It has no impact on your gameplay. It is nothing like microtransactions.

And your whining about how the devs could have better used that time - they want to introduce more people to their game. They want a bigger audience for their next game. It's not a scam, it's not unreasonable. If this mode is essentially "baby's first horror game"... what's wrong with that? Introducing more people to the genre? Horrible! How dare they!

You're being totally unreasonable and needlessly hateful.

Well that I don't mind cool, Soma had a good feeling too it.

We're on a site celebrating DRM-free, whose basic principle is, "The game is yours to do with it whatever you please, within legal bounds." So why are you chastising others for doing EXACTLY that? Does it affect how YOU play the game? No. Does it force a change onto your installation? No. Does it break your game? No. Does your personal experience previously playing the game now suffer a retroactive decrease in quality simply because this new mode - completely optional - now exists? No.

I get that you might not want to play in the new manner offered. That's fine. But how is it a big deal - that somehow hurts your own experience - that it opens up another style of play that others might enjoy? This is like griping about some other group of people having their own 'house rules' for when they play Monopoly, Risk, Uno, etc. Don't like those rules? Then play the game by-the-book. Or make up your own house rules.

The "safe mode" removes stealth and any threat from enemy encounters but cool man, keep saying it doesn't. Write another full paragraph on how the one gameplay mechanic SOMA has is not a large chunk of the game. I- and everyone else here knows full well that everything's intact in the base game, that's not, and never was the topic of discussion. The whole spiel about it being optional not making it immune to criticism (hence the comparison to microtransactions) should have clued you in to that if you didn't know already from the title of the thread.

I give up. I don't know if you're really this dense or are just trolling, but I have no more time to waste on your angry, confused rants.

Nice one, you really got me man, especially the part where you used the "angry and stupid" bit again. When you are given even a basic explanation, throw up your hands. Just remember that it was you who started this.

Yes, and I started calm and civil. Too bad you could not respond in kind. As for your explanations, they make no sense and have already been discussed by me before, like the ridiculous comparison to microtransactions you cling to.