[jjoonathan]

(spoiler warning)

Self-delusion is one of the major themes of SOMA. Simon and Catherine partake. I can understand how it came across as annoying and lazy writing, respectively, but it's not. Well... if the writing was annoying or lazy, it wasn't for those reasons.

As for the book comparison, I also think that's slightly uncharitable. Books go far deeper because the written medium facilitates doing so, but interactive media have their own unique benefits: they can force you to make decisions, prohibiting the kind of lazy fence-sitting that's so easy with passive media. I wouldn't object if someone found the book analysis more valuable, or vice-versa, but without a specific disambiguating goal in mind I don't think it's fair to judge one by its strengths and the other by its weakness.