How freaky is the freaky computer? Well… watch this video all the way to the end. It's around a six or seven out of ten on the freakiness scale, I'd say.
Frictional Games, makers of the first Amnesia game The Dark Descent (and publisher of The Chinese Room's sequel, A Machine for Pigs) have been teasing a new game on their site since around Saturday. The tease has been mostly unintelligible until now—a sort of ARG thing, progress bars and hidden messages and that sort of thing.
Today, it looks like they're finally unveiling more tangible information. Specifically, a new video called "Vivarium," which you can watch above. It involves a woman in a room with a big, weird machine—it starts chill and ends freaky, as these things tend to do. The Frictional site (and the video) also make frequent references to Soma, which makes me think that's the title of the new game.
Our own supersleuth Superannuation agreed last week, mentioning Frictional's registration of somagame.com and offering that "Soma typically refers to an intoxicating substance, the body as separate from the mind, or a cell body—all of which seem fairly apt territory for Frictional." In a blog post last year, Frictional said their next game would be aimed at 2014.
The video description is as follows:
The machine has the appearance of a heavily modified monitor fixed to a massive nest of cables and controls. Machinist Peter Strasky found the contraption during a salvage mission [distorted word] the screen rolled and flickered, but it shut down as it was pulled out from the container.
None of the crew stepped forward to take credit, but the construction suggests [distorted word] since Thabo is unavailable for questioning, the machine's origin remains a mystery.
Considering the lack of information and the general unease it has started to cause, the machine will be disassembled.
[Distorted word] screen lit up and showed distorted schematics. After trying different switches and keys, the oblique levers were found to be torsion attenuation controls which could stabilize the pict [distorted word] revealing a complex set of instructions. The machine is now under quarantine.
AM Engineer Imogen Reed has asked for an exception [distorted word]. Special permission granted.
So, looks like the woman in the video is Engineer Reed, and we get to watch her get to know this weird machine. Frictional will doubtless be teasing more about Soma (or whatever the game is called) as we go—if you want to follow it bit by bit, stay tuned to their site.