The talos principle discussion
#THE TALOS PRINCIPLE DISCUSSION FREE#
In Road to Gehenna, Elohim has accepted that the world is coming to an end whether he likes it or not, and creates a copy of Uriel to seek out and free the androids so they are not destroyed because of his sins. And in Road to Gehenna, we learn that other androids before us had the potential to accomplish this task, but Elohim defied his programming to trap them in the simulation to keep it running.Īs some may recall, Uriel was a messenger from the original game that left clues for the star puzzles (the hardest, most obtuse puzzles). If this could be achieved, the virtual world would finally come to an end. The idea was to produce an AI capable of independent thought one that could defy Elohim and ascend the tower. In The Talos Principle, we learned that humanity was destroyed by a dormant disease and that this virtual world was created as a last-ditch effort to maintain humanity’s knowledge. Let’s begin by outlining premise and, please, if you’ve not played the core game, stop now as we’re entering spoiler territory. The biggest issue I had with The Talos Principle had been resolved without changing any mechanics! Of course, there were more puzzles, but its success lies in what Gehenna itself is: a virtual society. Would this provide unnecessary context or more puzzles for the sake of puzzles? Well, as it turned out, it was neither of those things, and while it definitely wouldn’t work without the game before it, I believe Croteam created a superior experience in Road to Gehenna. I had my fill of philosophy and walked away perfectly satisfied from the original game, so I was wasn’t sure I wanted any more. When I heard about the Road to Gehenna expansion, I was equally excited as I was dubious about the idea. But the logs, oh the logs no matter how interesting and well written they were, it was hard to stop for long enough to fully invest while there were puzzles screaming out for my attention. Don’t get me wrong, the philosophy was compelling and discussions with Milton made me want to cry with joy and frustration as he pointed out contradictions and hypocrisy in everything I said. Basically, a lot of the puzzles were quick and very addictive, whereas certain information on the terminals took quite some time to read. However, there was a bit of an issue with pacing. Individually, both the puzzles and information terminals were excellent they also made sense being together.
In-between puzzle-solving, players can choose to engage an AI called Milton whose purpose is to make you question everything. For every ‘God,’ there must also be a ‘Devil,’ and this is where Croteam tried to do something very unique. Nothing about The Talos Principle can be taken at face value, however that is the key message, and where the aforementioned themes come into play.
In the first game, players are awoken by a God-like being called Elohim who tasks you with solving various puzzles in order to obtain ‘sigils.’ Technically speaking, your progression was linear, but as the game takes place in a multi-region open world, Elohim gave you the ‘freedom’ to tackle the puzzles in any order.
In fact, it was the best game of 2014 if you were to ask me personally combining first-person puzzle-solving that could easily go head-to-head with Portal while exploring themes of history, culture, philosophy, religion and transhumanism. For the longest time, Croteam were typecast as ‘Serious Sam developers,’ so it was a big surprise what an unconventional masterpiece The Talos Principle turned out to be. Although, this isn’t the first time something new has birthed from an existing franchise take Devil May Cry, for example, which began life as an iteration of Resident Evil 4. It’s funny to think that The Talos Principle was originally conceived as a new puzzle mechanic for the next Serious Sam game.