I noticed that in the bottom left corner of the soma website (http://nextfrictionalgame.com/) there are five Chinese characters. My wife is Chinese, so I asked her what they meant.

She read them and started laughing. I asked her what was going on, and I guess they're an old and pretty well known Chinese adage that roughly translates into "The sky is very high and the king is far away".

In context, people in China would say that in regards to committing illegal activities. China was/is huge, and there is a ton of trouble you could get yourself into, and since the Emporor was only one man and so far away, his gaze would only reach so far and could only concentrate on a small number of issues at once, meaning that there was often no repercussions for your wrongdoings.

So, basically, it means "Do anything you want because the law can't touch us"

...which is super creepy, when this game appears to take place on a space station or space ship of some kind, assuredly beyond the grasp of whatever government or ruling body makes the laws on Earth. I get a very Dead Space/System Shock/Event Horizon/Alien series feeling from this.

Ohh...nice find! Thanks for sharing that sir! cc: @patrickklepek

Could probably mean that they're...SPACE GHOST PIRATES??!!!

Yep, there's a Wikipedia page for this particular proverb too.

Well it's usually "the mountain is high and the king/emperor is far away", not sky (probably first time i've ever seen that being written). Pretty cool to include Chinese proverbs as a tagline. Also pretty cool, is that you got a Chinese wife.

@gaspower Thanks for cc'ing Patrick, I should have been smart enough to know that he'd probably be interested in this

@themangalist Yeah, she said she translated it that way "so that I would understand" =)

I've tried to learn some Chinese myself, but, well...yeah...

I can ask for water!

@nocall: Well the chinese characters did say "sky", and the poster above found the wiki page for it. So apparently I must have stayed in alternative universe China where the proverb says "mountain".

@themangalist: the wiki page mentions that variant too (in the last paragraph); it's probably a regional thing.

Hmmm?

PHANTOM SPACE MAN!

In space, no one can hear you break the law.

Now that I think about it, this sounds a lot more like Analogue: A Hate Story than Dead Space.

@audiobusting: Well it makes more sense with "mountain" because this usually refers to bandits/outlaws in the country sides, or royalties having their fiefdoms far away from the imperial palace so they could stage a coup. I can't think of a proper explanation for "sky" though.

@audiobusting: This time the girl is a necromorph.

天高皇帝远 (tian gao huang di yuan)

天 = sky / heaven

高 = high / tall

皇帝 = emperor

远 = far

Basically it means remote area that's far away from government.

@themangalist said:

I'm guessing the sky variant meant that the gods in heaven are too far high to see you do bad things. Anyway, I'm getting the feeling that the website isn't referring to not being under a government in particular, but more like being "off the grid" in general.

What if you could translate it to...

Space is very big, and help is very far.

nah, those Chinese words combined together only mean that particular proverb

whatever and however you interpret it, it still means "we are far away from government/authority (so we can do whatever we want)" metaphorically

trust me duder, I speak cantonese :D