8 Exact Moments We Knew Video Game Characters Were Doomed To Die

3. Explaining How Body Switching Works - SOMA

SOMA has a devilishly dark ending that puts any great horror movie to shame. You spend the entire game attempting to launch an ark into space after the Earth has all but been destroyed, and humanity has transferred its remaining consciousness into machines to survive. Your job is to upload you and the consciousness of your partner to a digital ark and fire it into space so humanity can continue to survive in virtual reality after the planet dies.

In the end, you manage to succeed, but not quite in the way your character expected. That's because the upload process isn't like a regular transfer, instead it's more of a duplication. Uploading to the ark means that your consciousness is copied, creating two versions of it, all with the same memories. Consequently, a version of your character makes it out, but the one you've been playing as remains trapped on a dying planet in a shell of a body.

It's a great, haunting twist, however this process actually is laid out in full hours prior. You need to upload your consciousness once prior to the ending to take advantage of a stronger body. Unlike during the ending, when you first accomplish this, your perspective switches and you control the new body. However, your old body remains trapped to the chair you just beamed out of, leaving two versions of the character.

The same thing happens at the end of the game, only this time you don't jump with the consciousness, a fact which you might have been preparing for the whole time.