The Talos Principle: Deluxe Edition is a first or third-person puzzle game that apparently takes place in a simulation of some kind. This revelation becomes apparent right at the start the game via a loading screen that goes through an initializing process. But in any case, you play as a robot that is tasked with solving puzzles that were created by an all-knowing, all-seeing entity called Elohim. The world was “built” according to Elohim’s will, filled to the brim with puzzles that’ll lead to enlightenment. However, things don’t appear to be exactly what Elohim claims them to be. Hit the jump to read on.
“Is this all the world is? A seemingly endless series of puzzles connected by a giant temple that acts as a hub world? What’s the purpose of all of this?” These questions bounce around my mind as I solve puzzle after puzzle, I make my way through the seven levels inside Elohim’s great temple. Along the way, I unlock items to use in subsequent puzzles, further complicating the already ingeniously complicated puzzle’s I’ve come across.
The main conceit in The Talos Principle is that you are an artificial being constructed by Elohim’s will or by some other unseen force. As you progress through the game, you’ll come across computer terminals that each give a piece of fragmented text logs, either from the people that created the simulation or from random bloggers. However, text logs aren’t the only things you’ll find once you log onto these terminals. At various points, Elohim will make references to a serpent who will try to lead you astray from Elohim’s chosen path for you.
This is probably the point where some people will begin to catch on to the obvious similarities between The Talos Principle and the story of Adam and Eve. Both of which contain an all-knowing, all-seeing being that has given those who reside in his garden a will of their own while simultaneously encouraging them to never defy his will. This is about where the similarities start and stop as The Talos Principle is not about any particular religion. It is, however, about philosophy. Particularly, it’s about existence and what does it mean to be human or to be alive. It challenges your way of thinking from a purely logical standpoint. A times, it tackles these questions well, but other times it simply doesn’t. There are times where you’re asked philosophical questions but aren’t given the all of the answers, or answer, that actually resonates with you as an individual. Rather, you have to pick from a list of answers that may or may not accurately reflect how you feel about the questions the game is posing to you.
Questioning your philosophy is the more or less the central plot to the story of The Talos Principle, however a secondary plot revolves around the fact that you are not the first “person” to go through and solve these series of puzzles. Which is weird, because since you’re not the first to go through these puzzles, what happened to the rest. Should you try to stray away from the playing area, or if you fall to your death, get blown up, gunned down, or generally anything the game doesn’t really want you to do, time will reverse and you’ll find yourself at the nearest checkpoint before any of those things happened. Throughout the game, you’ll come across QR codes that have messages encoded in them. It becomes immediately obvious that these messages clearly all come from those who came before you. And when you get deeper into the game, you find out that these other “people” were terminated at one point or another. Which kind of makes you question, what makes you special? You know, other than the whole video game thing where you’re the one person that can make a difference.
The Talos Principle has a lot of things going for it: it’s a very competent puzzle game that has and obeys its own rules when solving puzzles, it’s supported by a soundtrack that doesn’t overstay it’s welcome, and it’s an absolute joy to look at. The Talos Principle runs on an engine that makes everything look almost completely photorealistic. At times, when I left the game just sitting idle, it was easy to just kind of forget that it was all in-game assets in a playable form and not a very well made CGI cutscene.
On the topic of the game following its own rules, there’s an internal challenge mode in The Talos Principle which tasks you with retrieving stars that are scattered around each level of the game world. To collect these stars, you have to utilize everything the game has taught you over the course of playing the game. This often forces you to literally think outside of the box that is each puzzle room in every level of the gaming world. One star puzzle had me using an item to redirect a laser to shoot at a target that was all the way across the level and ending in another puzzle room. From there, I used that item to redirect the laser at a receiver that originally had nothing to do with the original solution for the puzzle room I was currently in. A lot of the puzzles in the game force you to think in these ways, so a rule I had to always keep in my mind is that each room will always contain everything you need to complete the puzzle of that room. Unless it’s a special challenge room that is.
Originally, I was worried I was going to finish The Talos Principle too quickly as I was rapidly solving the puzzles in Elohim’s temple.I was happy to discover, however, that there was a door at one end of the temple that lead to an elevator that takes you to another hub area. This area was separated by three structures simply titled “A’, “B”, and “C” with a gigantic tower that stretched high beyond the clothes nearby. I was in the “A” structure. So, having beaten all of the puzzles in “A”, I walked over to structure “B” and went down the elevator to find seven more levels, each with puzzles to solve.
I don’t know if this is obvious or not, but I absolutely adore The Talos Principle. It’s a game that piques the interest of the problem solver inside of me. It also makes me think about my views on what makes a human a human, and what does it really take to qualify something as a person, and other questions such as those. This is a game where all of it’s moving parts work in conjunction to create one cohesive whole that seeks to challenge the player’s philosophy of the world around him or her. It’s the type of game, I’d say, that relies heavily on the player holding on steadfastly to his or her beliefs, never wavering from one’s convictions.Leaving religion out of the conversation, The Talos Principle is a game that wants you to know that it’s trying to teach you something, and it wants you to fail a few times before you can actually get around to understanding everything it’s throwing at you. If you like puzzle games, this is a definite must buy.
The Talos Principle: Deluxe Edition is available on October 13th for PS4 and PC for $49.99. If you buy the game at Best Buy, you’ll a $10 gift card, so you’re essentially paying $10 dollars less than you would if you got the game from anywhere else.
To check out screenshots, the launch video, and my first impressions for The Talos Principle: Deluxe Edition click here and here.