Upon the announcement of a sequel to ‘The Talos Principle’, my immediate reaction was negative. The original game is easily the most profound and transformative experience I’ve had in gaming- so I couldn’t imagine a sequel that would live up to that beautiful, open-ended final image of the original.
Given the first game was set in a simulation designed to test the player-character, the sequel had the massive task of now taking place in the ‘real world’, which our robot descendants would- I assume, be inhabiting. To my surprise, CroTeam faced this challenge head on, spawning you into the sequel as the 1000th ‘human’ born into this new robot civilization. The puzzles are now mysterious real life constructions your society has found many miles away from the capital city of New Jerusalem, the only city these robotic humans have managed to build. As it turns out, the dominant perspective among our robot descendants is that human greed is what caused our extinction, leading to their hesitations on ambition, reflected in their societal objective, ‘The Goal’, which was to build only 1000 humans total, meaning you are the final conscious creation of this society.
My initial reaction to the creative decisions here were pure awe and wonder. Riding the train into New Jerusalem for the first time, I was not only impressed by the artists at CroTeam, I was truly proud of what ‘my people’ in this new society had accomplished. In the first game, the building of a new society to replace humanity was a far off dream. Not only for me as the player, but Alexandra Drennan, the human who invented the simulation and robot bodies that lead to this.
The first game certainly gave me an incredible perspective on human existence, but it didn’t contain any character-to-character interaction. It was a more abstract, meditative experience solving those puzzles, listening to Alexandra’s voice messages and reading the many perspectives on human existence. Now, I was surrounded by my robot brothers and sisters, and it was absolutely glorious.
“Hello 1k!”
Most of them waved to me as I made my first tour around New Jerusalem, speaking with the many unique characters spread around the city. One of them, a journalist, asked me for a statement on earlier events, the catalyst of the story, which I refused and got a good laugh out of the rest of the group, noting that I was already showing signs of wisdom. Many of these bots(humans if we are being polite) are interesting and well-spoken. Others are ignorant and promote conspiracy theories. A few stand gazing reflectively at the still pools of water, pondering the purpose of existence, or moping about a lost lover. Deeply entrenched in the humanist spirit of the series, I was quite happy to see all of them just moving about in the real world, existing. As humans once did.
Also in New Jerusalem was a museum dedicated to Alexandra Drennan’s simulation, the setting of the first game, which I have to say is one of the most surreal experiences I’ve had in gaming. There were even some replica puzzles, with the original game’s soundtrack coming from a diegetic speaker built into the exhibit. Despite The Talos Principle coming from a fairly small developer, on a relatively small budget, it’s subject matter and world are of a massive scale. Everything I’d seen up to this point, only a few hours in, had delivered. But If this game wanted to live up to the first, its mystery would have to lead somewhere extraordinary.
The catalyst of this game comes about in the midst of your birth ceremony, when a strange hologram interrupts the mayor’s speech, “The flame has awoken and summons you. Who is brave enough to answer its call?” This leads you, after a tentative approval from the Mayor, on an expedition to a massive pyramid, referred to as the Megastructure. Unlike the lonely experience of the first game, your expedition partners are a constant presence. Backpacking along the paths of these large-scale maps, theorizing on the Megastructure, and congratulating you on your puzzle solving.
GAMEPLAY
To preface, I’m not usually a puzzle gamer, but when I first played the Talos Principle I was immediately sucked into the mystery of it’s strange world, so I went on to play through both the core game and the Road to Gehenna DLC. I’ve grown familiar enough with the mechanics that a lot of TP2 felt like a job to me, specifically because so much of this game is just designed to be easy. Each new area introduces a new mechanic, and therefore the first 4-5 of the 8 puzzles in the area are extremely easy, and the two after that usually aren’t that difficult. Granted, I’m so experienced now that it’s probably my fault, and I have no idea how a new player will experience this, but the latter areas of the first game were a fun challenge, a deeper exploration into the mechanics you’d now spent most of the game learning. TP2 on the other hand, never felt like I was in the endgame, just the end of that specific area.
There were several mechanics introduced that I thought were absolutely brilliant, like the walking on walls mechanic combined with the gravity shifter. These added quite literally a new dimension to the gameplay that I would have loved to see carried much, much further. Instead, those mechanics get mostly sidelined in favor of new mechanics in the next area. I’m disappointed to say that the endgame of Talos Principle 2 doesn’t really feel like the endgame, and I never walked into a single area intimidated by what challenges may await me.
My other main issue with the gameplay is that each of the 12 areas are MASSSIVE, and for a lot of this game, you’ll be hold down the sprint button. On one hand, I like that the worlds are big, it’s a strong contrast to the first game and it gives Talos 2 the epic atmosphere that it deserves. On the other hand, starting every new area by sprinting 2 miles, darting in and out of easy puzzles was the opposite of atmospheric. So, it has some upsides and downsides, but I digress. It didn’t ruin the game for me, but it definitely wasn’t perfectly executed.
STORY CRITICISMS
Returning to the story, each of the characters accompanying me on the expedition I found to be interesting and fun to be around, but as much as I like them all, I found they got along a little too well for what happens throughout the story. I think some tension or some edge on at least one character would have added some weight to the plot, which was heavily lacking at junctions where the story asked for it. Characters may say they are upset about certain events after they’ve happened, but they don’t panic when things go south, or ridicule one another at any point. I hate to say this, but the big plot moments of the Talos Principle 2, emotionally fall flat.
My main critique of the storyline branches off of this because the massive-scale story ends up simplifying the questions that the writing and voice entries did a much better job of exploring. Whereas the ending of Talos Principle 1 felt right, like it had lived up to something beyond the game that I’d started many hours before, Talos Principle 2’s ending feels like an oversimplification of every thought I’d had across my playtime. This isn’t to put down TP2, because those thoughts were much more meaningful to me than the first game’s. While TP1 centered around what it means to be human, TP2 centers around what it takes to have faith in humanity, and in the latter part of TP2, I appreciated that deeply.
Walking back through New Jerusalem for what I imagined to be the last time, I was submerged in some really profound emotions. My criticisms for this game may come across as harsh, but there’s absolutely no doubt that it’s instilled in me a capacity for human faith, something I immediately would find missing in the real world when I put down the game. Perhaps I’ve just been indoctrinated with humanism, but there’s no doubt that I was profoundly impacted during my play through. I personally can’t foresee a point in my life now where the idea of an unshakeable faith in humanity won’t tug at my heartstrings, and for that, I consider Talos Principle II a beautiful piece of art.
“Think of the world we could build if we believed in ourselves.”
-Alexandra Drennan
Given the first game was set in a simulation designed to test the player-character, the sequel had the massive task of now taking place in the ‘real world’, which our robot descendants would- I assume, be inhabiting. To my surprise, CroTeam faced this challenge head on, spawning you into the sequel as the 1000th ‘human’ born into this new robot civilization. The puzzles are now mysterious real life constructions your society has found many miles away from the capital city of New Jerusalem, the only city these robotic humans have managed to build. As it turns out, the dominant perspective among our robot descendants is that human greed is what caused our extinction, leading to their hesitations on ambition, reflected in their societal objective, ‘The Goal’, which was to build only 1000 humans total, meaning you are the final conscious creation of this society.
My initial reaction to the creative decisions here were pure awe and wonder. Riding the train into New Jerusalem for the first time, I was not only impressed by the artists at CroTeam, I was truly proud of what ‘my people’ in this new society had accomplished. In the first game, the building of a new society to replace humanity was a far off dream. Not only for me as the player, but Alexandra Drennan, the human who invented the simulation and robot bodies that lead to this.
The first game certainly gave me an incredible perspective on human existence, but it didn’t contain any character-to-character interaction. It was a more abstract, meditative experience solving those puzzles, listening to Alexandra’s voice messages and reading the many perspectives on human existence. Now, I was surrounded by my robot brothers and sisters, and it was absolutely glorious.
“Hello 1k!”
Most of them waved to me as I made my first tour around New Jerusalem, speaking with the many unique characters spread around the city. One of them, a journalist, asked me for a statement on earlier events, the catalyst of the story, which I refused and got a good laugh out of the rest of the group, noting that I was already showing signs of wisdom. Many of these bots(humans if we are being polite) are interesting and well-spoken. Others are ignorant and promote conspiracy theories. A few stand gazing reflectively at the still pools of water, pondering the purpose of existence, or moping about a lost lover. Deeply entrenched in the humanist spirit of the series, I was quite happy to see all of them just moving about in the real world, existing. As humans once did.
Also in New Jerusalem was a museum dedicated to Alexandra Drennan’s simulation, the setting of the first game, which I have to say is one of the most surreal experiences I’ve had in gaming. There were even some replica puzzles, with the original game’s soundtrack coming from a diegetic speaker built into the exhibit. Despite The Talos Principle coming from a fairly small developer, on a relatively small budget, it’s subject matter and world are of a massive scale. Everything I’d seen up to this point, only a few hours in, had delivered. But If this game wanted to live up to the first, its mystery would have to lead somewhere extraordinary.
The catalyst of this game comes about in the midst of your birth ceremony, when a strange hologram interrupts the mayor’s speech, “The flame has awoken and summons you. Who is brave enough to answer its call?” This leads you, after a tentative approval from the Mayor, on an expedition to a massive pyramid, referred to as the Megastructure. Unlike the lonely experience of the first game, your expedition partners are a constant presence. Backpacking along the paths of these large-scale maps, theorizing on the Megastructure, and congratulating you on your puzzle solving.
GAMEPLAY
To preface, I’m not usually a puzzle gamer, but when I first played the Talos Principle I was immediately sucked into the mystery of it’s strange world, so I went on to play through both the core game and the Road to Gehenna DLC. I’ve grown familiar enough with the mechanics that a lot of TP2 felt like a job to me, specifically because so much of this game is just designed to be easy. Each new area introduces a new mechanic, and therefore the first 4-5 of the 8 puzzles in the area are extremely easy, and the two after that usually aren’t that difficult. Granted, I’m so experienced now that it’s probably my fault, and I have no idea how a new player will experience this, but the latter areas of the first game were a fun challenge, a deeper exploration into the mechanics you’d now spent most of the game learning. TP2 on the other hand, never felt like I was in the endgame, just the end of that specific area.
There were several mechanics introduced that I thought were absolutely brilliant, like the walking on walls mechanic combined with the gravity shifter. These added quite literally a new dimension to the gameplay that I would have loved to see carried much, much further. Instead, those mechanics get mostly sidelined in favor of new mechanics in the next area. I’m disappointed to say that the endgame of Talos Principle 2 doesn’t really feel like the endgame, and I never walked into a single area intimidated by what challenges may await me.
My other main issue with the gameplay is that each of the 12 areas are MASSSIVE, and for a lot of this game, you’ll be hold down the sprint button. On one hand, I like that the worlds are big, it’s a strong contrast to the first game and it gives Talos 2 the epic atmosphere that it deserves. On the other hand, starting every new area by sprinting 2 miles, darting in and out of easy puzzles was the opposite of atmospheric. So, it has some upsides and downsides, but I digress. It didn’t ruin the game for me, but it definitely wasn’t perfectly executed.
STORY CRITICISMS
Returning to the story, each of the characters accompanying me on the expedition I found to be interesting and fun to be around, but as much as I like them all, I found they got along a little too well for what happens throughout the story. I think some tension or some edge on at least one character would have added some weight to the plot, which was heavily lacking at junctions where the story asked for it. Characters may say they are upset about certain events after they’ve happened, but they don’t panic when things go south, or ridicule one another at any point. I hate to say this, but the big plot moments of the Talos Principle 2, emotionally fall flat.
My main critique of the storyline branches off of this because the massive-scale story ends up simplifying the questions that the writing and voice entries did a much better job of exploring. Whereas the ending of Talos Principle 1 felt right, like it had lived up to something beyond the game that I’d started many hours before, Talos Principle 2’s ending feels like an oversimplification of every thought I’d had across my playtime. This isn’t to put down TP2, because those thoughts were much more meaningful to me than the first game’s. While TP1 centered around what it means to be human, TP2 centers around what it takes to have faith in humanity, and in the latter part of TP2, I appreciated that deeply.
Walking back through New Jerusalem for what I imagined to be the last time, I was submerged in some really profound emotions. My criticisms for this game may come across as harsh, but there’s absolutely no doubt that it’s instilled in me a capacity for human faith, something I immediately would find missing in the real world when I put down the game. Perhaps I’ve just been indoctrinated with humanism, but there’s no doubt that I was profoundly impacted during my play through. I personally can’t foresee a point in my life now where the idea of an unshakeable faith in humanity won’t tug at my heartstrings, and for that, I consider Talos Principle II a beautiful piece of art.
“Think of the world we could build if we believed in ourselves.”
-Alexandra Drennan