Talos principle 2
MSRP $30.00
“The Talos Principle 2 turns puzzle-solving into a sacred act with its super-sized suite of intellectual challenges.”
Pros
interesting world
intense puzzle design
Creative Devices and Twists
a strong intellectual challenge
Shortcoming
dense
Later the puzzles are finished
Humanity is dead and finished. All that’s left is a lonely town populated by 1,000 lost androids. They wander their metallic utopia in search of answers to the impossible questions their creators failed to leave behind. Their very existence is a puzzle, a web of disparate pieces floating in their silicon DNA. But the thing about puzzles – or well-designed ones, anyway – is that no matter how confusing they are, there’s always a solution. It just requires patience and determination.
This is the worldview that lives in Talos principle 2, a cerebral sequel that’s better than its 2014 predecessor in every way. Although it is set up as a sad, dystopian story about the consequences of the end of humanity, there is an underlying optimism in its wide array of robotic characters. Their society is built on bright-eyed curiosity as they seek to solve both the physical and philosophical puzzles of their world. It is a celebration of humanity’s incredible ability to solve any problem.
Talos principle 2 excels at giving players a set of brain-bending puzzles built around strong eureka moments, even if it can feel as long as a philosophy professor with his wandering existential monologues. Only the most determined genre experts can see the ending to its super-sized story, but those who rise to its challenge of mysterious islands will surely walk away with new confidence in their ability to accomplish the impossible.
science and spirituality
the very first, Talos principle 2 Doesn’t look much different from its predecessor. When I boot it up, I’m wandering around a familiar desert and solving straightforward puzzle chambers in first person. The curtain rises quickly and introduces me to the sequel’s bold new direction. There’s a much stronger emphasis on the story this time, as I soon discover that I’m controlling the one thousandth – and last – of the androids born into a robot society, according to a strange law of the country. A celebration begins, but it is cut short when a projection of Prometheus appears and causes confusion among the locals. Next, a team of androids set out to investigate a pyramid-like megastructure located on a mysterious island full of puzzles.
The journey takes players across a dozen explorable biomes surrounding the giant pyramid, each filled with eight primary puzzle chambers and a few secrets to discover in each. That setup gives the sequel a more grand scale than its intimate predecessor. I can spend more time in quiet environments because I find text and audio logs that paint a more thorough picture of android society and the lost race that creates it.
while the first talos theory Was somewhat of a tone piece, the sequel offers a bigger narrative vision that is almost unheard of for the genre. Crew members often come on my comms to chat about the deeper meanings of the puzzles. I often stop to chat with NPCs wandering around and pick their robotic brains about the meaning of life. The Society also has its own social media app where I can engage in philosophical debates with other robots. There’s a lot of dedicated, often entertaining, world building, although it can get dry and sloppy at moments. The paced-slow conversations can make players feel as if they’re sitting in on a semester-long crash course in philosophy that largely picks out as many debates as possible.
puzzle solving is sacred Talos principle 2.
While this may be a touch eye-rolling, it gives intellectually curious players plenty of different bones to chew on. I was stunned by the way the sequel blends spirituality and science. Rather than seeing both concepts as being opposed to each other, it finds common ground between them. Androids are deeply spiritual machines that revere their human creators like gods. Instead of accepting their unknown power, they use scientific theory to uncover the answers they discover. They operate under the assumption that everything, even God, has its own internal logic that can be learned. Considering that the media pits science and faith against each other, this is a thoughtfully nuanced approach to a long-running debate.
And it is one that specifically fits within the boundaries of the genre. This type of level-based puzzler rests on the idea that there is always an answer, no matter how difficult the problem. Players have to trust that the creators (Croteam in this example) have carefully created a complex set of laws that govern its world and all of its challenges. puzzle solving is sacred Talos principle 2, When I finally solve a seemingly impossible problem, I feel close to a digital god.
solving the impossible
This all only works if the puzzles in a game like this are clearly designed, and luckily there is. Talos principle 2 Excellence Each island and its chambers are built around a defined twist that becomes more complex with each primary puzzle. It all starts off simply enough with me redirecting rays of light onto sensors of their matching colors to open doors and finally activate a machine. Those initial eight puzzles taught me the basics of how it works with increasing nuance, allowing me to consider spatial reasoning when solving problems.
Each new turn is placed on top of the previous one. In later chambers RGB splitters are introduced that combine the two colored beams into a new one. Another introduces a teleporter that lets me transport myself and any objects I’m carrying to otherwise inaccessible areas. In the most mind-boggling twist, a series of chambers led me to take control of different Androids and find ways to stack them on top of each other with platforms and boxes. Each device reveals a new natural law of the country which I must commit to memory before I can hand down another mechanic like scripture.
Those who have the patience to push their minds to the limit will be rewarded.
The most impressively designed puzzles may seem absolutely impossible at first glance. Sometimes I’m left standing in a cubicle racking my brain as I try to figure out how I’m going to get past an impassable wall with a handful of tools. Talos principle 2 This doesn’t help players much either, as there’s no prompt or quick undo button for when I make a serious, irreversible error. The only minor help comes from a handful of collectible Prometheus Flames that allow players to bypass a chamber entirely. This is not a friendly experience for more casual players and is sure to have some people looking to YouTube videos for a solution.
However, those who have the patience to push their minds to the limit will be rewarded. Whenever I faced an “impossible” challenge, I would stop and break the problem into pieces instead of trying to solve it all at once. A late puzzle had me trying to open a chamber locked behind a fence I couldn’t climb and a stationary wall I couldn’t cross. I have to go through another blocking wall to get there, as well as free a moving platform and a blue light source. I would tackle each problem individually, learning how I could theoretically bypass each lock with the tools I had, reverse engineering the problem. When I couldn’t figure out the final mystery of the final fence and impassable wall, I turned off the game and went to sleep with reverse-engineering solutions in my mind.
Without realizing it, I was adopting the scientific method to solve rooms like this. I would figure out the problem of each room, inspect every corner of it and see what tools I had to work with, make many small hypotheses and experiment. When an idea fails, I start again, but incorporate any new information I learned from my previous attempt. After a lot of trial and error, I finally solved that tricky room by realizing that I and an electronic-jamming device would need to be located where to unlock the two doors. When I finally solved the puzzle, it felt like I was on another plane.
This feeling lasts throughout the 20+ hour adventure, although it can be mentally exhausting. The late-game puzzle islands run out of creative tools, instead relying on less exciting gimmicks like moving platforms, making it feel like they were at the beginning of the challenge, not the end. Some puzzle suites don’t do a very strong job of teaching your main hook right off the bat, which can make the first chambers on some islands feel harder than their last few. The pacing issues provided only a few moments where I questioned the almighty creators.
That sentiment is not inconsistent Talos principle 2However, the teachings of. The sequel encourages players to question their world and ask why things are the way they are. Is there any good reason for a society to conform to certain universal laws? What do we gain by provoking them? It’s an important debate that centers on one of the story’s most intriguing questions: Why should the Android Society limit its membership to 1,000? It’s never explained, but it’s a goal that Robotkind has blindly pursued like a heavenly mandate at the expense of evolution. There’s probably a good reason, but people won’t know unless they ask “why?”
If you ever find yourself criticizing developer Croteam’s design decisions during a headache-inducing puzzle, you’re playing Talos principle 2 Correct.
Talos principle 2 Testing was done on PC and Steam Deck.