It all starts when you’re born. But for the human civilisation in The Talos Principle 2, that doesn’t mean going through decades of physical growth, biological change, maturing mental capabilities. You are born into a world where the final acts of biological humans led to the creation of robotic humans, giving them a chance to continue our legacy, hopefully doing so in a way that breaks the cycle and avoids repeating our mistakes.
That urge has defined almost everything about the city that these robots have built and the decisions that they’ve made. You aren’t just one of an endlessly growing number of people, but are destined to be the last, the one-thousandth and final being that emerges. You’re meant to be a capstone to this society, the final piece of the puzzle for a sustainable future.
Except, that plan is not yet complete, the city of New Jerusalem restricted by limitations and faltering projects that would make HS2 look like a blip, with power cuts, incomplete infrastructure and more. There’s debates among the city’s people over whether or not this is the right path to take, but it’s all completely upended at your first birthday party. As fireworks fill the sky and the mayor makes a speech, everything is upended by the appearance of a titanic smoke monster turned hologram, identifying themselves as Prometheus and inviting your people to a totally different part of this world and an exploration of the unknown.
Five of the thousand take up this invitation, with Byron, Melville, Yaqut and Alcatraz joining you. They each provide a different perspective and viewpoint into the world, from optimism to being conservative and wary of potential dangers. Their personalities and beliefs are sure to be challenged by what you encounter, with a huge pyramid megastructure awaiting the group with untold challenges inside.
The puzzles in The Talos Principle 2 are just as obvious and prominent as in the first game, and this is something pondered by the characters that have embarked on this journey. A lot of the fundamentals and puzzle mechanics of the original carry forward to the sequel, with plenty of guiding lasers, jamming force fields, putting things on switches, and good old boxes, but there’s also some intriguing new elements that the game will explore.
Some of these will be fairly logical continuations of old ideas, such as the ability to combine red, green and blue lasers to make new colours, but there’s also new ideas like gravity manipulation and mind transference that will emerge deeper into the game – this latter one has raises some major philosophical quandaries, as you swap between bodies at will.
There’s twelve regions that the full game will feature, each one challenging you to complete eight puzzles, but there’s plenty of leeway within this system. For one, you can find and earn a Prometheus Spark, which can be used to skip past a puzzle and notch another completion toward the area’s conclusion – you can go back and complete a puzzle to retrieve the spark, for an added bonus. There’s also additional lost puzzles that are hidden away and won’t necessarily be sign-posted, and you can seek out the ultra-challenging Monuments, as well.
While I’ve pondered my way through the game’s opening hours myself, one thing I loved, with the developers giving me a guided tour of some highlights from later, was seeing how these various tricks and elements could come together in combination. You can’t use a teleporter to bypass gates, and the holes made by an energy drill are both impermanent and too small for you to pass through, but you can combine them to make a hole, chuck a teleporter through and then skip to the other side. I’m really keen to see speed runners take this game on.
A puzzle game that explored deep philosophical topics, bending your mind in more than one sense of the phrase, The Talos Principle was not a game that needed a sequel. Of course, just because you don’t need something doesn’t mean there isn’t value in having it, and there’s tons of philosophical regions that The Talos Principle 2 can explore, expanding the scope from what it means to be human to explore society and the individual. Once again, it promises a fascinating narrative to sink into, when it launches in November.
