[Review] The Talos Principle

[[MC]Ronin[MC]]

 

Premiere Date: December 11, 2014
Developer: Croteam
Genre: Puzzle Game
Platforms: PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Android, iOS, Microsoft Windows, Nintendo Switch, Linux, Mac OS, MacOS
Writers: Tom Jubert, Jonas Kyratzes
Publishers: Croteam, Devolver Digital

SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS
Windows
MINIMUM:
OS: Windows 7
Processor: Dual-core 2.0 GHz
Memory: 2 GB memory
Graphics: DirectX 11 class GPU with 1GB VRAM (nVidia GeForce 480 GTX, AMD Radeon HD 5870)
DirectX: Version 9.0c
Storage space: 5 GB available space
RECOMMENDED:
OS: Windows 7 64-bit
Processor: Quad-core 3.0 GHz
Memory: 4 GB memory
Graphics Card: AMD RX 480 or NVIDIA GTX 970
DirectX: Version 9.0c
Storage space: 8 GB available space

The Talos Principle, much as its name suggests, is a thinker's game. (No, it doesn't have anything to do with the man-god of Skyrim.) Barely a second goes by when it doesn't encourage you to either stretch the limits of your mind with some brutally tough but rewarding puzzles or to consider the nature of humanity and the conundrums of empiricist philosophy. It's a game I found myself thinking about more often the longer I'm away from it, and I'm surprised that it's the non-puzzle elements that stick with me the most. This disconnect saddens me. While developer Croteam handles both elements well, they don't complement each other as well as they probably should.

It's a fun puzzler — marvelous, even. It doesn't introduce any nifty, novel gimmicks of its own in the vein of Portal's portal gun, but it positively nails using conventional elements like blocks, signal jammers, laser connections, motion-recording devices, and even turrets to complete each puzzle. It eases you into the tough parts (perhaps too gently, as the going is a tad too easy early on), but in time it reaches a pitch of near-orchestral magnitude. Want a real challenge? Go for the puzzles that reward stars.

The Talos Principle's first-person perspective puzzles differ from Portal's with their emphasis on deliberate thinking rather than action and speed. In one puzzle alone, I used to block to disable a force field by setting it on a trigger, after which I took a jammer to disable the fan that was blowing me back down one particular corridor. I stripped the head off the disabled fan, then used a laser connector to trigger another pair of doorways by shooting out three beams. I then doubly disabled one of the open force fields with the jammer, and then popped a new cube on a spring before another fan, which sent the cube flying over the wall into the next room with another trigger. I then reconfigured my jammers and connectors to work my way back to the cube, dumped it on the trigger panel, and claimed the tetromino that was my goal.

Whew. Such moments feel like completing the Triforce in a Zelda game, and this was just one puzzle out of around 120. It happens often, and Talos Principle maintains that essential "Aha!" factor for hours, partly because there are so many gadgets to toy with and combine in interesting ways, although some repetition slips in by the end.

The narrating voice overhead here is Elohim (essentially Hebrew for "god"), and he's basically just around to tell you that you'll gain everlasting life if you finish all the puzzles, create a sense of forbidden mystery around a big central tower, and suggest the entire world around you is a sham. And hitting "H" for a third-person perspective reveals a big surprise of who you’re playing as.

And that's where the philosophy comes in. Running parallel to the puzzle focus is my personal quest to discover who and what I really am and whether I'm actually a "person," explored through little terminals dot each subzone that beep and boop, begging for interaction. I gained insight from listening to audio logs and reading e-mails from the designers of your world contain everything from inane song lyrics to reflections on an important garbage dump/archaeological site. It explores concepts of humanity and being through quotes by writers like John Milton, William Blake, and others. At times, it even adds to the mystery by letting you partake in surveys testing your humanity, but which seem to be administered by a real person.

The Talos Principle asks us to ask ourselves old philosophical questions dating back to Socrates, but by the same token, they're not that hard to grasp. (Some of the sources may also be B.S. created for the story itself.) If there's one thing I don't like about it, it's that the terminal forced me to choose from preset responses most of the time, instead of typing in my own.

We've seen stuff like this in The Stanley Parable as well, although with more humor and sometimes to better effect. Here, we almost never have a chance to laugh. But The Talos Principle brings its own appeal, chiefly in the form of (easily readable) QR codes with messages from robots, yammering about the glory of Elohim, or how hard this or that puzzle is. (We should be able to leave some of our own messages for others to read this way — somewhat Dark Souls style — after launch.)

But the puzzling stands just fine on its own, although the lore enriches it and delivers different endings depending on your choices and actions. Even in opening new zones and items, The Talos Principle maintains this devotion to brain teasers. Collecting Tetris-style tetrominos unlocks new zones, new gadgets to use with the puzzles, and eventually that mysterious tower. Once a full set's collected, you line them up much as you would in Tetris at various interface panels before key doors, and those get just as challenging as the puzzles at times. I once sat at a panel for 15 minutes just trying to get the pieces to fit.
 

Opening those doors is a treat, particularly if you're the sort who's already given to studying the peripatetic philosophy spouted throughout The Talos Principle. There's the Roman ruins level, with its obvious debts to Pompeii, Hadrian's Villa, and the Roman forum. There's the ancient Egyptian level, with its nods to the Oxyrhynchus archaeological site at the core of all this, and there's a medieval level with obvious nods to early France. Even the fantastic creeps in other zones, such as in the tower itself, which seems to hold up the world like Stephen King's Dark Tower. Don't look too closely, and at times these views seem almost realistic, partly because the developers scanned real objects and settings before adding them in. It's void of all animal life, though, aside for tracks for birds you never see, which only adds to the mysteries hiding in the puzzle walls.
Verdict
The Talos Principle is a good world to get lost in. The strong, heady philosophical focus isn't as integrated into the puzzles as it initially suggested, but for those of you who like to flex your minds by action rather than heavy reading or contemplation, the puzzle sections deliver just as well. Much like Portal, The Talos Principle makes you feel smart just by playing it, as the bulk of the puzzles hit that sweet spot between too easy and near-impossible.