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Any seasoned player of video games will agree that new experiences just keep getting harder to find and developers understand this. This game, released in 2014, is a breath of fresh air in an era where developers often tap into our constant need for stimulation. While some games keep players hooked with battle passes and quick 20 min XP boosts, “The Talos Principle” dangles a different carrot: our innate curiosity and the human drive to make sense of the unknown.

If this sounds somewhat esoteric, don’t be worried. “The Talos Principle” is a straightforward first-person puzzle-adventure akin to 2007’s “Portal”. You play as an android entering the “Garden” of a god-like voice, handed a few tools and a series of puzzles to solve for the ultimate prize—eternal life. The
structure is simple; enter puzzle rooms, unlock the coveted “sigil” prize, repeat.

The game skillfully introduces its puzzle-solving tools and methodology, preventing prolonged frustration for players of all skill levels. Think of the initial stages, World A, as an easy New York Times “Monday” crossword, progressing to the later stages, World C, with a moderate “Wednesday” challenge where each challenge builds upon established foundations. Despite its accessibility, the exceptional puzzle design consistently leaves players feeling one step short, like they are missing one item, creating immense satisfaction when conquering challenges without that elusive item.

For those unfamiliar, let’s delve into a simple example. Each puzzle has a title, often self-referential or hinting. Take “Don’t Cross The Streams,” for instance. Armed with two lasers (think of keys, red and blue) and two receptacles (think of keyholes, red and blue), you quickly learn you can’t cross the (laser) streams. Move them around so the lasers don’t cross—solved! In mere seconds, you gain knowledge to carry with you throughout
the game.

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“Every human society in recorded history has had games! We don’t just solve problems out of necessity; we do it for fun, even as adults! Leave a human being alone with a knotted rope, and they will unravel it. Leave a human being alone with blocks, and they will build something. Games are part of what makes us human. We see the world as a mystery, a puzzle. We’ve always been a species of problem solvers.”

- Alexandra Drennan, The Talos Principle

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HUMAN CURIOSITY

As you navigate through worlds, solving fun puzzles and collecting sigils, you might be wondering how this mechanic of human curiosity and our attraction to the unknown fits into everything. Amid three hub worlds also stands a giant monstrosity of a tower, tempting you with its open door and hazy apex. The god-like voice warns against ascending it, claiming it’ll kill you. Meanwhile, a rogue AI pops up, challenging your beliefs and making that tower suddenly the most enticing place to be.

The game thrives on our skepticism and our inclination to question orders. Despite the god-like voice’s guidance, we have the free will to bend rules and indulge our curiosity. It’s this rule-bending that propels both the story and gameplay forward.

At some point, you’ll sport a self-satisfied grin, having discovered how to bend the rules, sneak objects out of puzzle rooms, or send lasers unbelievable distances you didn’t think were possible. Did you just break the game’s boundaries? Absolutely! Did other players discover this? The game drip-feeds new twists, making each discovery feel special.

You’re not just a lab rat solving puzzles; you’re an android with human sensibilities realizing anything goes in this world. If routing a laser from one puzzle room to another eases your journey, go for it! Bend the rules whenever you can! Perhaps other players weren’t as inquisitive but this game makes it important to feel special with everything you do.

As the game unfolds, you’ll find yourself questioning whether your discoveries were serendipitous or carefully planned by the developers. Your encounters with various audio logs, where a scientist contemplates the essence of humanity, adds an extra layer to the narrative making you question the God-voice’s motives. Why would a God allow this android to digest both broad philosophical ponderings and his own strict creationist guidelines within the same world of his creation? “The Talos Principle” excels in nudging you to formulate your own perspective on these profound matters. This harmonious flow between philosophical ponderings and tranquil puzzle gameplay (helped by a fantastic musical composition) deepens the immersive experience, leaving you pondering not just the puzzles but the very fabric of the game’s reality.

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PLAYFUL

While the structure of this story is a clear and overt nod to the Garden of Eden, “The Talos Principle” acknowledges our awareness and constantly challenges us to form our own perspective on the truth of our creation
and purpose. Your answers to questions and the order in which you complete the game influence the endings. There may be concerns about an ambiguous finale in such a theological and philosophical game, but rest
assured; the main ending is definitive, clear, and extremely satisfying.


Although “The Talos Principle” could stand on its own with fun and challenging puzzles, it’s the classic story and the pursuit of truth that keeps you engaged in the long run. On a personal level, it has left me with a really warm and calming feeling on the inside. As corny as it sounds to say, this game made me proud to be a human with all of our complications, contradictions, playfulness and stubbornness. It’s a unique and fascinating gameplay experience that will change your perspective on games while touching you on a human level and it deserves to be acknowledged among the greats.

I was expecting to enjoy this game for a bit of fun, but it ended up being one of my favorites of all time.

Pros:
- Puzzles are fun and challenging.
- Graphics are good and the worlds are very pretty to look at.
- Philosophical elements of the narrative are very well-integrated to the rest of the game and the story.
- Voice acting (where it exists) is solid.
- Story is very unique and unforgettable.
- Soundtrack is beautiful and relaxing.

Cons:
- Some of the puzzles are a little too challenging. But that's all part of the fun!

If you like puzzle games, particularly those similar to Portal and Portal 2, this game is an absolute must-play.

Talos is yet another puzzle game that finds itself stuffed into the business suit of a tangentially related plot. The puzzles are strong on their own but are roughly mixed into a philosophical story of AI and self awareness which comes off as a bit high on its own farts at times.

So lets start with the best this game has to offer - the puzzles. Everything is centred around getting lasers from source A to receiver B, often redirecting around obstacles both static and active-ly trying to kill you. Your arsenal of tools are simple and grow as you unlock them but the game explores every nuance of how they interact thoroughly through it's large stock of levels. The only mechanics I really couldn't get on with was the shockingly tedious time-based ones introduced late into the game, but thankfully these were few and far between.

The puzzle design is straightforward and does a great job of introducing not only the tools and obstacles but their unique mechanics and interactions gradually. There were 2-3 puzzles that require you to explicitly understand these nuances in order to complete them and while I had to step away, I found I'd coined the mechanic from other puzzles by the time I came back. There wasn't a point where I felt like it was unfair. There are of course additional challenges beyond the core puzzles if you want to explore the easter eggs, endings, and bonus mechanics the game has to offer - though be prepared to do a lot of tetromino puzzles (the static puzzle game tetris is based on).

As for the plot while I won't spoil the specifics it is sadly another case of coming up with the mechanics first then filling in the gaps between them with the plot filler. You can at least ignore the plot if you want and focus on the puzzles part provided you aren't attached to achievements, and for those who are you'll annoyingly have to get the DLC to 100% the game (though I'd argue the DLC is stronger than the base game).

So why the low rating then? Well aside from the strong puzzle design, the game is just very empty. Levels are deconstructed and scattered around but not in any meaningful or interesting way. The world feels like it was built from asset packs and no matter how much the story insists it's verisimilitude it doesn't change the fact it has simple, repetitive, bland HD environments. There are no other characters aside from written messages, and the dialogue only comes from a voice in the sky or expositional audio logs. It's possible to do a lonely world well, Shadow of the Colossus nailed it, but that world was deep and explorable - here it comes off as limited in imagination.

I don't feel like the game even justifies being HD, like a lot of time and work was spent putting ray tracing into a sudoku game. That speaks to the larger feeling I have of a game that's trying to insist it's impressive and smart but without really justifying those claims. It wears its inspirations like Portal on its sleeve and thinks 'being smart' is talking about philosophy, but then pairs that with puzzles about connecting lasers without any attempt to relate the pair instead insisting they're analogous. The same way the rocks are rendered with such depth and detail, but not really used in any meaningful way.

In conclusion Talos is a very well designed game that has trouble meshing it's very serious and pretentious story with 'connect the dots' puzzling. If unlike me you do vibe with the story then there are a variety of endings and twists which you might enjoy. Regardless the mechanics themselves are interesting to explore and provide a fun variety of challenge making the game worth a play. I think you'll either love it or tolerate it.

Unique story which I enjoyed. Very heavy on the philosophy and mystery of the world. The gameplay was physics puzzles... more variables that something like Portal but kind of the same general principal. I couldn't really wrap my head around a few of them and had to use a couple guides. Usually revolving around the record/play mime function. I stumbled upon a few of the Stars but getting them all felt like a bit too much to ask. Graphics and Sound we just satisfactory... I'll try the sequel though so not bad.

Fantastic puzzle game that shoots itself in the foot by being too long. If this game was 5 hours shorter, it would have been one of the best games I have ever played, and I would have easily given it 10/10. But it isn't, it is a 14-hour game that runs out of new mechanics to give to you in the middle of the playthrough. Yes, the challenge increases and the narrative is really interesting but If I start to struggle and the game doesn't offer me anything, the whole experience will obviously start to sour pretty rapidly. I’m giving it 9/10, this game has fantastic presentation, incredible narrative, and insanely smart puzzles but it was just too long for me.

You awaken as a robot in a garden of puzzles, as a God tries to lead you to eternal life, while you think about some philospohical shit.
This is probably one of my favourite games with a puzzle tag but as a puzzle game it leaves some to be desired.

So like 2/3s of the puzzles are great, some even phenomenal. But the other 1/3, just, jesus. They struggle a lot with a good balance of noise(noise as in the puzzle, not audio). Sometimes there's so little noise I accidentally solve it, other times I'm having a meltdown just trying to work out what is going on. Some puzzles are just not sightreadable at all, you have no idea what you are supposed to do just placing shit and hoping it works. Some puzzles were more like Where's Waldo Puzzles, where instead of trying to figure out what to do with your items, you have to look into every nook and cranny just to find a connector behind some random ass wall(and thus waste a bunch of time, trying to solve the puzzle without one of the components), and just generally fucking with the environment just to line something up.
But keep in mind this is only like 1/3s of the puzzles, the others are great.

But the story, oh man. I rarely get invested in a story so much as to actually read every piece of text I come across, and collect everything. The story focuses a lot on identity, understanding of the world, free will, all of the good philosophy shit while you solve puzzles and learn the story of a scientist doing sciency stuff and changing the world.
The music and voice acting complemented everything perfectly imo.

Imagine the second game doesn't exist, and stop once you finish this game.

Overall: 7.8/10 (8)

Gameplay: 8/10
Story/Narrative: 8/10
Graphics/Visuals: 7/10
Audio/Soundtrack: 8/10

a good little exploration of philosophy with one of my favorite subjects to philosophize aobut - AI!

what does it mean to be alive, truly? to be a person, to be capable of free thought and will - and what does it mean when you're not quite sure if you are or not?
it's not particularly deep philosophy, but it is fun and engaging, especially with the role of MLA in the whole thing. Framing the whole game also as a mild religion allegory is also very fun and helps to contrast a lot of the themes and ideas with each other, and more forces the player to think about how they respond and think of things, much like with how to solve the puzzles.
I really liked the puzzles a lot, there was a fun and deceptive simplicity to them (i'm really fucking dumb btw so i did have to look up guides a few times for a few puzzles) but i never truly felt frustrated to a fault but more frustrated to want to figure it out. a good balance that was struck! i also think that the variety and how everything was implemented throughout the game was really effective and kept the puzzles engaging and refreshing.

my only note really is that the ending(s) feels anticlimactic for whatever reason? it was a fun little puzzle for the main ending, but i just remember feeling a little unsatisfied by the end. that could very well just be a me thing, though.

good game! would highly recommend!

The Talos Principle, in my opinion, is what a puzzle game should strive to be. I'm not going to talk about how fun it is, or how good the puzzles are. I want this small reflection to deal with its narrative, because the joy of solving puzzles would be short-lived if I didn't see a scope to it all.
Something that's often overlooked in the genre is a compelling narrative with a satisfying closure. See games like The Witness, for example. That game managed to keep me engaged with its ethereal atmosphere, not dissimilar to T.T.P., but that would soon leave me kind of disappointed when I saw that there was nothing to learn about the world I was in, only abstract commentary about thinly linked subjects. What makes T.T.P. different, and more enjoyable for me, is that it manages to create context for its atmosphere and breathe life into the mistery, keeping it fueled thanks to a very careful stream of information from the game world to the player. I really loved the feeling of following a well-trodden path, with all the characters that once solved the very same puzzles leaving messages on walls in the form of QR codes. All of you trying to figure out what the world you booted into means.
All this mistery isn't without a proper pay-off, as the ending spectacularly keeps you both hanging from your lips and gives an epic closure.
...work in progress...

The Only Good Part of the Game

The Talos Principle is an amazing story trapped inside a terrible game. That’s not something that I thought I’d ever say about a Croteam title. In a world of superfluous stories told through billion dollar cutscenes, these guys stuck to their caveman ways of drawing genitals on the walls and having a laugh at it before going out and clubbing each other to death. Quality writing is the last thing you’d expect from them.

However, the moment I started looking deeper into how this game was made, it all started to make sense.

Chris Baker made an article about the game for Gamasutra where he interviewed the two writers, Tom Jubert and Jonas Kyratzes. Croteam already had 80% of the puzzles implemented when they started thinking of what to do with the story. All they had outlined at this point is that this will be some sort of simulation about robots, god, existence, and other things that would make an average Serious Sam fan fall asleep.

This is when one of the developers thought of calling in the Jubert assist, because he was impressed with his work on another rather philosophical platformer, The Swapper. Jubert then invited his friend Jonas, and the two got to the Herculean task of figuring out just how to brute force a story into a nearly finished abstract puzzle game.

For what it’s worth, I don’t think they could’ve done a better job with that. This fundamentally bad approach led to some issues that I will go over later, but in spite of that, they managed to properly contextualize the puzzles and deliver writing so compelling that it almost felt like a reward and a breath of fresh air after trudging through the tedious and poorly designed puzzles.

The story of The Talos Principle takes a novel approach to the old premise of humanity getting wiped out by a virus. Instead of tales of deteriorating society, zombies, or cool violence with rusty cars and BDSM outfits, it proposes a very idealistic and beautiful scenario where, when faced with imminent extinction, a group of scientists comes together to archive and preserve everything about humanity.

One of them in particular, Alexandra Drennan, headed a project that had a goal of creating an AI that would be able to gain consciousness, intelligence, and free will. Through nearly two dozen audio logs scattered about the place, you learn about her sheer love for humans, the civilizations we have built, art we have created, and the progress we achieved.

You also learn why created this program to begin with. Humans will perish, but machines they’ve made will outlast and persevere, and in a way, humanity will persist through them. So here you are, a program running through a series of puzzles until you become “human enough” to defy your creator and gain the privilege of escaping the simulation to experience the world that humans have left, carrying on their legacy.

This is technically a spoiler, but spoiling this is like spoiling that at the end of Dark Souls you beat Gwyn and can choose to rekindle the flames or to become the dark lord. It’s basically the main plotline, but it doesn’t matter because the meat of the narrative and storytelling is in the item descriptions, in the character dialogues, and in the environments that you journey through. The places of Dark Souls tell you more of a story than cutscenes ever did.

In The Talos Principle, that meat is all within the computers that you see at the start of each location (sometimes there are more hidden around), in the audio logs, and QR messages plastered all over the place. The latter are rather interesting as they are the only elements of storytelling that connect you with other programs running through Elohim’s (the local god that gives you purpose, and you’re meant to defy) garden.

Those QR messages help to feel just slightly less lonely in this game, and they’re often grouped together to create a little dialogue between different programs as they form their own opinions and typically disagree with each other. You will eventually learn to recognize their names (not that there are many), and what they believe in, which has a slight payoff in the final section of the game.

Outside of audio logs, though, computers are the ones doing the heavy lifting here. Each typically has 3 text logs within. A collection of random notes that contain either extremely dull, surface level philosophical musings or various notes from the scientists who worked on the project.

I found the personal logs to be far more valuable, as they typically help to flesh out their whole group of researchers and how the world ended. Some just give you exposition about their project, while others are more sentimental.

They are set up in a way where as you advance through the game, so do the logs advance in time, which means that some of the first logs you read will be full of excitement and optimism about this great endeavor, while by the end you see more and more depressing logs of people meeting their last moments, choosing to go out on their own terms, or trying to enjoy the last days on earth with a gaming LAN party. It’s very human, it’s touching, and it’s honestly more thought-provoking than dozens upon dozens of tiny logs that reference real life texts or philosophers.

Computers are also where you meet Milton. An enigmatic character that talks to you through the computer. They are primarily interesting due to their role. Milton is there to incite defiance, therefore named “The Serpent” to avoid any accidental subtlety.

They will ask you a variety of questions, many pertaining to philosophy, but whichever answer you pick, they will attempt to point out a contradiction for it. It’s an annoying character to talk to, because you are rarely offered the dialogue you’d want, and they always peace off after yet another annoying gotcha. As obnoxious as it is, they do a good enough job of offering some questions to think about, and engage you with one of the main themes of the game, questioning and curiosity.

There is one especially poignant log that proposes that you shouldn’t doubt everything, as it leads to apathy, and Milton is basically the face of that. They don’t believe in anything and will argue against everything, because finding contradictions led them to think that nothing is true. Instead, it’s better to question everything, as questioning things leads to finding new knowledge or discovering lies instead of just rejecting it all.

That said, I still deleted that mf at the end of my playthrough, very glad that the game actually gave me that option, even though they do kinda try to make you feel bad about it.

Square Peg in a Round Hole

The only problem here is that at no point it felt like I’m playing the game and experiencing the story of said game. Notes in video games already have a bit of stigma, and for a good reason. It’s like the yellow paint of narrative. A quick and lazy way of injecting some storytelling into your game when you can’t come up with a more natural way of delivering it. Now imagine if basically the entire game is just notes.

This is where aforementioned issues start to crop up. I’ve read that Gamasutra interview after getting so disappointed with the storytelling that I started researching into how it was made. It was so absurd and so frustrating to me that they put so much effort into this narrative, but then had the game undermine it every step of the way, with the very final sequence being the sole exception.

Reading that interview really made things make sense, but it also just made me more angry that Croteam approached the storytelling with so little respect that they thought it’s totally fine to just slap that in when the game is nearly finished. They didn’t even learn from this! According to that Gamasutra article, the same thing happened again with the DLC (which I was too exhausted and annoyed to play), but this time they invited the writers when the game was only half-finished, instead of 80% done, how thoughtful of them!

You just can’t make a great game when you divorce the storytelling from your design process. A good narrative is woven into the gameplay, they coexist, they boost one another to create something that is more than the sum of its parts. In The Talos Principle, it’s just oil and water. You could rip it out and present the story purely as text and audio, maybe as some sort of website that you browse through, and it would likely become a better experience.

While it’s true that puzzles are contextualized within the game’s story, that’s as far as it goes. Puzzles are there to make the programs more intelligent as they solve increasingly harder problems. Solving all the hardest puzzles (red sigils) is required to unlock the tower floors and transcend, so that part tracks too. But defiance? Curiosity? Questioning what you are told? None of those or other themes are meaningfully connected with the puzzles or the environments.

While some of them do require creating thinking, I felt more defiant towards the end of original Portal where Chel escapes the confines of the testing chambers, using the portal gun to go against Glados and the carefully laid out path she was meant to follow. In Talos, while you can occasionally break puzzles thanks to extremely janky pixel-perfect lineups or collision boxes, most of the game is still about following a strict ruleset to a t.

Everything is clipped off to avoid unwanted platforming and breaking of the rules. Even basic jumps are usually done by hovering over an area and seeing your footprints on top, indicating that you will land there if you press jump. The physics are strictly cosmetics as well, so don’t even think of stacking boxes or dropping items to get up somewhere. The game is so against any sort of freedom and creativity, that it ended up making intended solutions feel unintuitive, since the default answer to “I wonder if I could” is always “no”.

The environments are extremely bland as well. While the story marvels about the achievements and history of human civilization, Croteam litters the areas with the assets from Serious Sam 3 and ones that might have been made for Serious Sam 4.

I don’t have an issue with companies reusing assets, but at least has to make sense. In TTP I could never shake off the feeling that it was just cheaply cobbled together from things that they already had on hand, with minimal resources put into producing anything original for this game specifically. This is a simulation made by someone who was deeply inspired by the things humans built, by technology, knowledge, progress. None of that is reflected in the environments.

I hate making suggestions or criticism that comes downs to “just have more money and put more stuff into the game, it’s that easy” because we all know it’s not easy. Games cost a lot of money to make, and it takes a lot of time. Small companies can’t afford to just pump resources into projects that might not even pay off, and a philosophy focused puzzle game is definitely not something that was made with the thought of selling like hot cakes.

Yet, it’s something that added to the dissonance. The game is sorely lacking any visual variety, let alone areas that don’t look like someone just quickly put them together in the Talos Puzzle Editor, if such a thing existed. If the various levels could’ve taken you across the world and implemented all the amazing things the humans have built into the puzzles itself, it could’ve been a great way to connect the story to the game. Make the program smarter through puzzles, but also show it the sights that inspired awe from its creators.

It’s a useless hypothetical, but I can’t help but wonder how great this game could’ve been if the puzzles were built with the idea of reinforcing the story and themes, instead of the latter trying desperately to cover up the fact that they came late to the party and nobody there even knows their name.

And Now, the Puzzles

I imagine it would’ve been so much easier to forgive or at least ignore the discordance between the different parts of the game if the actual gameplay was golden. However, this is where TPP is very much in-line with everything else Croteam made (except for sweet and underrated Serious Sam 2).

It’s unrefined, unpolished, repetitive, and at many points feels outright antagonistic to the player. I have 30 hours in this game, I was definitely AFK for maybe 5 of those, but in general you might notice that people who have completed the game have quite a few hours logged in it. You might assume that it’s a result of the game having lots of content. Well, yes and no.

Talos does have quite a lot of content, there are over 120 puzzles in the game, plus the aforementioned logs, as well as secret stars and various easter eggs to discover. However, it’s also because the game has no respect for your time, like at all, it’s almost offensive.

The game has a sort of nesting doll structure. You start in a hub (huge open area with nothing in it), from there you must physically travel to a smaller hub (absolutely massive but empty rooms), within those hubs are teleports to puzzle areas (usually gigantic open spaces), then within those areas are individual walled off puzzles.

You can move pretty fast if you sprint by pressing shift, but you will still spend several hours just going from one place to another, which gets old near instantly. There’s just no sights in this game to make traversal at least slightly tolerable.

Then there’s the time waste within puzzles themselves. Talos has several hazards that will kill you, which reset the puzzle, and you can also get softlocked, forcing you to reset the puzzle. Normally that’s not a big deal because most puzzle games operate on such a small scale that replaying up to a certain part if you know the solution is not a big deal. But, you guessed it, not the case in TPP.

To give a rough impression, imagine playing a Minesweeper, but instead of being able to just click on everything as fast as you can, you are a small minesweeper man inside that field, and you have to actually take time to walk all over the board to see the numbers on the ground and interact with the squares. Now imagine how obnoxious it would be to click on the bomb when the field is almost finished and then having to rethread the whole process of early game Minesweeper, sounds fun?

TPP is very “physical” so you have to actually go all over the level to get the lay of the land, and if you want to use any item, you have to carry it around, only one thing at a time. Some levels require a decent bit of time to figure out, and can take minutes to set up the whole solution on top of that. When you make a single mistake and have to redo everything, it doesn’t feel like a meaningful punishment. It feels like the game designer kicking you in the nuts for no reason, since all that is being taken from you is the time you have left on this planet.

120+ is also just too many puzzles. I was exhausted by the end of the game, only driven by brain worms that compel me to finish the games I play even if the experience becomes miserable. I felt like Neon White was too long as well while playing it. That game is absolutely loaded with content, but I couldn’t complain because despite that, I never felt like the actual levels were bad, they all offered something special. In TPP, on the other hand, many of the puzzles had me just going through the motions.

They’re so formulaic that most of the time the solution will spring in your mind after you get the idea of the layout and the tools at your disposal, since knowing both of the things greatly narrows down what you can even do. Talos has a very modular approach to puzzles, so you will see a lot of elements repeated verbatim instead of being recontextualized to keep things fresh.

It’s not all bad, and some are genuinely creative and quite satisfying to solve, but those are few and far between. It’s very much quantity over quality, and by far the best part only comes at the very end. The final gauntlet before you reach the peak of the tower has you actually cooperate with other programs, while also being impeded by one of them. Something that would’ve been cool to see in parts of the game that aren’t the very end of it.

Verticality is another thing that this final gauntlet has over others. Most levels in TPP probably could be remade in the vanilla Build Engine, they’re so damn flat. I have no clue why it took them until the final tower puzzles to make multi-layered levels. The game is desperately lacking in variety, and playing with space more could’ve been a great way to alleviate this issue.

The most creative thing the game does in this regard is when you have to interact with things beyond the level boundaries, but the game typically reserves it for obtuse bonus starts that became far too tedious to pursue after I got enough to open the first secret area with silver sigils.

That’s also something that really made a few of the puzzles annoying. Difficulty in TPP can be very inconsistent, and the most difficult puzzles aren’t the ones that require careful thought and clever solutions, it’s usually because they just have so many elements and ways to use them that finding the right combination requires extra tedium of trial and error.

Just as everyone can design a combat arena that is a corridor that spills out 1000 Kleers at you, anyone can make a puzzle and then keep adding step after step to the solution until it feels convoluted and unintuitive enough to pass off as difficult and “tricky”. However, a good hard puzzle is usually like a really funny joke, it’s not a word longer than it needs to be, and typically catches you by surprise, instead of trying to put together enough funny things to be “really funny”

Done

TPP might be a solid offer for people are just champing at the bit for just a crumb of puzzling, but I’m not one of those people. I started off impressed and pleasantly surprised, only to come out frustrated, disappointed, and even more convinced that Croteam never learns from their mistakes, still choosing to treat games as products where “story” or “design” are just unnecessary buzzwords that get in the way DA GAMEPLAY BABY.

I will play Talos 2 at some point, probably after I manage to forget how miserable this game was. Maybe it will even shatter my presumptions and address the grievances, but it’s hard to have that much hope.

As someone who is generally very shit at puzzle games, I actually had a good time with this. The story and the philosophical discussions you have with "Milton" are some of the best parts of the game. I do admit I had to get help with some of the later puzzles, especially when the record feature was in play, but I genuinely had a great time with this and completed all of the endings. It's just a very addictive gameplay loop as the puzzles are not too long and the small dopamine hit you get when solving them makes it all worthwhile.
I did try out the "Road to Gehenna" DLC as well that comes packaged with the PS4 version of the game, but I was literally lost from the first puzzle already, so I think I'm just gonna skip it.

Felsefik olarak oynadığım en iyi oyunlardan biriydi herhalde. İnsanın ve bilincin doğasına, hatta bunların ne demek olduğuna dair inanılmaz genişletebiliyor insanın fikrini. İçinde John Milton'dan tut Kant'a, Kant'tan tut Antik Yunan felsefesine ve mitine kadar birçok metin oyun içinde direkt olarak kullanılıyor. Diğer oyunların aksine havalı olsun diye ekstradan koyulmuş metinler değil ama bunlar, hikayeyle bizzat ilgili şeyler. Hatta oyun bir noktada Straton adında kurmaca bir Antik Yunan filozofu da kullanıyor Talos Prensibi dediğimiz hadiseyi anlatmak için. Gerçek olmamasına rağmen Antik Yunan filozoflarının yazdıkları eserlerden aşağı kalır yanı yok bu metinlerin. Aynı şekilde Osiris çevresinde şekillenen Antik Mısır mitiyle ilgili de oldukça ilgi çekici metinler var.

Hikayesi kağıt üzerinde çok kompleks ya da devrim niteliğinde bir şey olmasa da oyunun hikayeyi size kırıntı kırıntı vermesi ve ipuçlarını çözmenizi beklemesi inanılmaz keyifli. Sadece oyun içinde bulduğunuz QR kodları yardımıyla söylediği 1-2 cümlesini okuduğunuz ve asla görmediğiniz diğer karakterlerin bile inanılmaz kişilikleri var ve her yeni QR kodu bulduğunuzda hem hikayeye dair bir şeyler öğreneceğiniz hem de sizin gibi bu bulmacaları çözen başka robotlar olan bu karakterlerin hikayesine dair daha fazla bilgi edineceğiniz için mutlu oluyorsunuz. Hikayeyi herhangi bir şekilde spoillamak istemiyorum ama bitirdiğinizde içinizde buruk bir acıyla gülümseyecek ve insanlığa olan umudunuzu tazeleyeceksiniz.

Gameplay olarak da bulmacalar inanılmaz keyifli. Gitgide karmaşıklaşsalar da bir süre sonra insanı sıkabilirler zira oyunun genel oynanışı baştan sona bu bulmacalar üzerine. Ben 17 saat civarında bitirdim ama bir anlığına bile sıkmadı çünkü çok zekice tasarlanmış bölümler var, bazılarında bir saat kadar harcadığım oldu (Sana diyorum Prison Break bölümü). Zor bulmacaları herhangi bir yardım almadan çözdükten sonra vücudunuzun bastığı dopaminin tarifi yok. DLC'sini henüz oynamadım ama onun ana oyundan bile iyi olduğunu söylüyorlar.

Kısacası inanılmaz bir deneyimdi, oynayın.

Um ótimo jogo de puzzle, com bastante informação sobre filosofia, fé e outros assuntos, tem bastante easter egg e conforme você avança os puzzles não vão ficando "mais difíceis", vão apenas se adaptando com os objetos que você desbloqueia, muito bacana e creio que dá pra deduzir e tirar as próprias conclusões sobre a história do jogo e o que é apresentado, único ponto negativo é que quanto menos itens for o puzzle mais maçante ele é, me diverti muito mais nos puzzles de usar diversos itens e pensar do que nos puzzles de ficar desviando de bombinha e passando em labirinto, de resto, muito bom, obrigatório pra quem curte esses puzzles em primeira pessoa tipo Portal ou The Witness.

The Talos Principle really surprised me. I knew a bit about what I was getting into - a stage based 3D puzzle game which I was actually excited to play from the offset, but what really impressed me was the story and philosophical themes. Yes, much of it is told through reading a console, but I kept finding myself drawn in reading the text files from those who came before, the historical, religious, and philosophical references, and of course having deep arguments with the archival system. While the game ends pretty soundly, I feel like I have so many more questions about existence and life itself. As for the gameplay, I actually thought the puzzles were a good balance. Easy to teach the mechanics, then challenging when they needed to be. I forced myself not to use any outside assistance and felt super gratified getting through every puzzle and climbing the tower on my own and I think that is a testament to just how good of a puzzle game this one is solely from that perspective. I understand this one isn't for everyone, but I think I ended up playing this at the perfect time.

Puzzle games are all about problem-solving. You hit a new obstacle, get lost at first, go through an individually unique process, and then come up with the right solution for the problem. The real trick is to make me work on the actual dilemma in the background, using the earthbound trials as puzzle pieces, going out of bounds of those simple steps (which is true for the gameplay as well!), and building up to the bigger picture.
I simply adore the way The Talos Principle directed my attention to the grand philosophical theme of humanity and its nature, started an infernal, internal struggle within me, and later on, made me accept it instead of solving it. It might sound corny, but it's just what happened because of the excellently thought-out message.
I felt like I was opening my eyes for once, finally seeing the new possibilities, which is exactly what I'm looking for in such a game. It's a literal room to think that everyone needs.