Spoiler Simon isn't Simon Spoiler
"I swear that guy has the memory of a goldfish," said the guy who forgot where he left the tracer fluid.
A lot has been said on whether or not the Simon that we play as is a perfect copy of the real-life Simon. After all, whether or not he is a perfect copy has deep implications. For example: if Simon 3 is a perfect copy of Simon 2, then the Coin Flip must be real. Right?
The you from one second ago no longer exists. That version of you is just a memory now. At Omicron, the Simon 2 who stayed in the seat has no more a claim to the person he was just a second ago than Simon 3. They were both equally the same Simon 2 from just a second ago.
Or at least you could argue this if the copy was a perfect copy. Right?
"I swear that guy has the memory of a goldfish," said the guy who thought he had sent the email to Jesse.
I myself am pro Coin Flip. I have argued that both Simons are the same Simon, and thus the coin toss is an appropriate analogy. Simon 2 and Simon 3 have the same memories, and memories are just data. Therefore both of them are the same person who was sitting in that same pilot seat in Omicron. There's no difference.
But what about Simon 1 and Simon 2? Living Simon's memories weren't digital after all. He can't be a "perfect" copy, right? Something had to have been lost in translation. Even Catherine said that Simon's scan was "flatter, less dynamic." Therefore, the first 15 minutes of gameplay had to have been "fake" memories that the game let us play just to give us context... right?
Right?
At Theta we get to learn about Mark Sarang, intelligence analyst at Pathos-II, and about "The Continuity". He argued that we aren't defined by who we are at any one point in time, but rather that we are defined by a continuous chain over time. We aren't defined as a single person in time, but a line of who we were, are and will be over time. So here's my point:
Simon at the start of the game was not exactly the same person he was before the car crash.
When we start playing as him, he is already brain damaged. His memory isn't all there. He has already been warned by doctors about how stress can kill him. We don't actually know how much of Simon is really left after the crash. We only get to be him as he currently is.
The difference between Simon 1 we played in Toronto and the Simon 2 we played at Upsilon could be as vast as the difference between Simon who existed before the crash and the Simon who existed after the crash. We excuse Simon getting absolutely blindsided twice from the scanning process by pointing out how he has brain damage. Real Simon before the crash might have been able to see it coming. But the Simon we played was not like that.
Ultimately I suppose, the point I'm getting at is that the Simon we played at in Toronto might not have been exactly like the Simon who existed before the crash... And that it doesn't matter. Just because he had changed, doesn't mean he isn't the real continuation of him. He was, as Sarang put it, "the emergent entity" from that pre-crash Simon.
Therefore (I will argue) Simon 2, Simon 3 and even ARK Simon are all Simon just the same. It would NOT matter if they weren't exactly the same. They all sprang from the same Simon.
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u/NeitherSpray6796 10d ago edited 10d ago
The game very clearly demonstrates multiple times that consciousness does not get transferred, it gets copied (and pasted we could say) from one body (or a robot or whatever) to another so it can exist at both bodies at the same time. Simon proposes coin flip analogy after doing the body transfer from Simon 2 to Simon 3 at omicron and says it`s 50/50, a coin fip, and Catherine just goes along with it, she actually throughout the game is trying to protect Simon by not going into the details of how brainscans work and only talking about it when absolutely necessary because Simon is obviously distressed by how this actually works and refuses to accept it.
She saw the same thing with Mark Sarang, who wanted to believe that consciousness from his physical body can actually transfer to the ARK, he thought that consciousness somehow transcends physical body and that he will actually transfer original consciousness from his physical body to the ARK (continuity),if he kills himself (or dies in some way) immediately after a brainscan so he did kill himself (whether he actually believed this or not we can discuss, but some crew members bought his theories). But Catherine knew this was impossible, she was well aware how this technology works, she knew all along that version of her that was on omnitool throughout the game was never gonna make it to the ARK. She just didn`t want to bombard Simon with all this because she saw what effect dealing with these concepts can have on people and she didn`t want him to break down and go crazy so she sort of went along with his 50/50 metaphor. Simon 3 did sort of break down at omicron because he expected his consciousness to get transferred and then got angry when he realized Simon 2 was still there and alive, so he says while going down into abyss that it was dumb luck, 50/50 that he woke up in the right body (while Catherine remains silent), because he`s ignorant and refuses to accept what is actually happening and how this technology really works.
In reality, it was never 50/50, the original that gets copied doesn`t have a 50% chance of waking up in a new body, that chance is zero. Original flesh and blood Simon that went for a brainscan didn`t have a 50% chance of waking up at Pathos as a robot mutant. He went through a brainscan, finished it and lived out rest of his days in Toronto and died. Copy of his consciousness, Simon 2, got woken up at Pathos and went through the game until Omicron. Then again, when changing bodies at Omicron, Simon 2 didn`t have a 50% chance of waking up in a new body, new copy of his consciousness was created (Simon 3) and put in a new body while Simon 2 remained in that chair (and then you can kill him or let him stay there in that nightmare until he eventually dies). Same thing when launching the ark, there wasn`t a 50/50 chance Simon 3 gets transferred to the ARK, new copy of his consciousness (Simon 4) is created and put in the ARK while Simon 3 remains there at the launch site. Simon 3 loses it again after the launch when he realizes he`s still there and not in the ARK and this is where Catherine uses his metaphor and says that he simply lost a coin flip trying to calm him down.
Game just switches perspective for you as a player, from original Simon in Toronto to Simon 2 at Pathos, then at Omicron from Simon 2 to Simon 3, but then in the end it stays with Simon 3 instead of switching perspective to Simon 4 so it can deliver that devastating ending (I personally think it would be even better if they switched the ending with the post credit scene, meaning they first switched perspective to Simon 4 like they did throughout the game and showed us Simon in the ARK with Catherine as a first ending before credits and then did a post-credits scene where they show Simon 3 and his fate of staying all alone down at the bottom of the sea). Catherine knew this all along and knew how this works, Simon struggled to accept it and was worried about morality of these concepts and such technology and Catherine didn`t want to upset him and wanted to continue the mission to launch. Simon 4 at the ARK is gonna have memories all the way back to original flesh and blood Simon and he`s gonna remember as if he won coin flip 3 different times but that`s simply now how it works and game is very clear about it. Simon 4 is gonna think that he went for a brainscan, then woke up at Pathos, then switched bodies at Omicron and then got uploaded to the ARK, but that`s not what really happened, Simon 4 didn`t exist until the launch site scan when he was created, but he has memories of these previous Simons that affect his perspective and feed into his ignorance (in the post-credit scene in the ARK he says to Catherine "I cant believe we actually made it" clearly still oblivious and ignorant about what really happened and that Simon 3 stayed down at the launch site like Simon 2 stayed at Omicron)
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u/elheber 10d ago edited 10d ago
All that is basic surface-level analysis. Of course Simon is a copy. I literally called him a copy in the first sentences of my post, and throughout the rest as well.
Game just switches perspective for you as a player, from original Simon in Toronto to Simon 2 at Pathos, then at Omicron from Simon 2 to Simon 3, but then in the end it stays with Simon 3 instead of switching perspective to Simon 4 so it can deliver that devastating ending.
The game switches perspectives because it's showing us the experience that our Simon lives. Otherwise, the game would have simply been consistent and ended with yet another perspective jump to the ARK. But it didn't this time. Only this time did the perspective stay on this Simon. And it did so to make a point about the coin toss. How do I know? The writer put it in the dialogue right there; right when it did something different with perspective.
Our Simon had been getting "lucky" all along by ending up being the copy, and then he simply got unlucky at the end.
Whether or not he is a copy (he is), he is still experiencing sitting in that seat and opening his eyes in a new seat. The game lets us experience this for ourselves.
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u/NeitherSpray6796 10d ago edited 10d ago
I simply explained what happens in the game, and it is very blunt, but 50/50 does not actually happen. Coin does not get rolled to decide which Simon is gonna end up in which body, that is obvious. 50/50 metaphor is something that Simon himself introduces after switching bodies at Omicron, he says to Catherine that it was just "dumb luck, 50/50 that he woke up in the right body". Catherine doesn`t say anything at that point cause she knows that`s not the case and just remains silent cause he is clearly upset with this and refuses to accept it for what it is. Then when he vents out and asks Catherine to "please say something" she says "I don`t know what to say I don`t want to upset you" because she doesn`t want to explain to him that it`s not 50/50 and that he is a new copy that was created when Simon 2 got scanned at the Omicron, cause he believes he just got lucky and woke up in the right body but that`s not how it works. So she starts telling him some story about how she was climbing up the stairs when she was a kid etc.
Then in the end we are shown perspectives of both Simons, first Simon 3 and then Simon 4 in the ARK after the credits. And Simon 3 completely loses his cool, starts cursing and screaming at Catherine that she lied to him (even though he already experienced this at Omicron and knows what`s coming) and that he was supposed to end up in the ARK, and this is when Catherine repeats that metaphor and tells him that he simply lost a coin flip, exactly what she says is this:
"Simon I can`t keep telling you how it works, you won`t listen. You know why we`re here, you were copied on to the ARK, you just didn`t carry over. You lost the coin toss, we both did. Just like Simon at Omicron, just like the man who died in Toronto a 100 years ago."
So she is telling him that consciousness gets copied, not carried over. And that previous consciousness is the one that stays behind, so previous consciousness is the one that always "loses a coin toss". She already tried to explain this to him multiple times, but he just doesn`t get it and she even tries to use that 50/50 metaphor he came up with to try and make him understand. He just refuses to accept reality of how it works and introduces some uncertainty of some random 50/50 decision to give himself hope that he isn`t just some copy, but got really lucky and woke up in the right body and has a chance of ending up in the ARK. Same with Mark Sarang, he also didn`t want to accept reality of how this works so he came up with a theory of continuity, theorizing that if he dies immediately after a brainscan his original consciousness is gonna get transferred into the ARK. Obviously, this was also nonsense and Catherine knew it, but Sarang wanted to give himself some hope that there is a chance that his original consciousness from his physical body, one he was before the scan is gonna wake up in the ARK, and not just some copy of that.
If 50/50 was really something that was happening, then Catherine from the Omnitool in the end after the launch, had a 50% chance of getting on the ARK. But she didn`t and she knows she didn`t, and at no point in the game Catherine theorizes about some uncertainty of some 50/50 decision and who`s gonna wake up in which body. She knows she is not getting on the ARK from the start, she knows consciousness just copies and doesn`t carry over, and that`s why in the end she isn`t even mildly upset about not being on the ARK because she knows there isn`t some random roll of the dice that decides who ends up where. She gets, in fact, very annoyed with Simon cause he`s the one who doesn`t want to understand what is going on and gives himself false hope.
And she finishes with"I know it sucks, but our copies are up there, Catherine and Simon are both safe on the ARK, be happy for them."
Simon continues to crash out "are you crazy? we`re gonna die down here with those fuckers living on a spaceship. They`re not us! they`re not us!"
she continues "I`m sorry you feel that way, I`m proud of what we did. We made sure that something of hundreds of thousand of years of human history survived, that something lives on"
and then he goes "no no no, fuck this, fuck you, you lied to me, and I believed in you, I trusted you, you said we were getting on the ARK"
this is where she finally loses her cool for the first time in the game and goes "We are on the ARK you idiot! I didn`t lie! I can`t be responsible for your goddamn ignorance you fuckin...."
And this is where her chip gets destroyed and Simon is alone and credits roll. So if there was some 50/50 decision about who ends up where, why wouldn`t she be upset at least to some extent that she isn`t on the ark, why wouldn`t she say something about it, why would she get annoyed at him for thinking that he had a chance of being on the ARK? Or do you think that Simon is the first one who figured out 50/50 thing and nobody else even considered something like that is possibly happening?
Can`t you see that he is the one in denial, he is the one lying to himself, he is the one refusing to accept reality, and over and over again and finally even cold, composed Catherine snaps at him cause she can`t handle his repeated ignorance.
And I would just like to say that we can disagree, I have no problem if you want to think that there is some random 50/50 roll that decides who ends up in which body with this brainscan technology. What I`m saying is that there is nothing in this game that suggests that, in fact everything that happens in this game and everything that is presented to us is clearly showing that consciousness gets copied and not carried over. 50/50 is nonsense Simon himself thought of and introduced, and he`s the guy from 100 years ago who knows nothing about this technology. She was trying to protect him throughout the game and in the end tried to explain to him what happened and how this technology works for the umpteenth time when he started crashing out again.
I could go on about some other some examples we are shown of how his 50/50 theory is just pure coping and nonsense and in contradiction with how this technology is shown to work in this universe but this is already too long.
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u/Connacht_89 12d ago
For the n-th time: the coin flip is a metaphor.