The Talos Principle

You, a robot, wake up in a tranquil, ruined garden. A booming voice in the sky tells you that he is Elohim, you are his child, and all the world was made to test you and for you to conquer. Pass his trials and you will receive eternal life.

It's a first-person puzzle game with truly insidious puzzles that asks you how you know that you're a person.

It's consumed my life for the past two days. I love it.

 

Tell me more.

 

Sure! Elohim says to you "All these worlds I have made for you. Let these be our covenant: You are free to walk them as you wish, but whatever you do, do not ascend the great tower, for it will surely destroy you."

Elohim has constructed three "temples" with portals to areas with puzzles, and you gather puzzle pieces from the puzzles to open gates and such in the overworld. (Including the doors to the floors of the giant tower outside.)

It may have the whole omniscient robot narrator thing going, but the puzzles have more of an Antichamber vibe. The game consistently challenges you to examine your assumptions about its mechanics and experiment with them to discover new solutions.

Like, an early puzzle was a corridor packed with turrets being patrolled by this floating proximity mine. I could get past by climbing a ladder and hopping over a wall, but you can't climb ladders while carrying an item, and I had to get a box over to a button on the other side.

One thing this game has is these things called Jammers. They're tripods you can set up to disable something, but the thing is reactivated when you pick the Jammer up again.

I tried for like ten minutes to somehow use the stage's one Jammer to ninja my way past the turrets until it struck me: I could disable the roving mine with the Jammer, put the box on the mine, then disable it again once it carried he box to the end.

There was a secret area that I could only unlock by bouncing a laser from another puzzle entirely across the map into the puzzle I was in. Up until then I'd been limiting myself to examining just the current puzzle area. But they're all connected!

As you explore you find computer terminals that connect to some massive library archive. You learn that the earliest available document is dated 1995, and the latest is dated 203F. And I'm assuming those are just the 10 gigabytes that are left uncorrupted out of 5.5 petabytes. You find emails, fragments of wiki articles, comment threads, chat logs, all sorts of data mentioning a project to preserve human history in the face of some progressing disaster. Also passages from the Book of Osiris, a cyberpunk sequel to the legend of Heracles where Athena is the main character, and texts by anxient Greek philosophers arguing a materialist view of the soul and consciousness, starting from the titular Talos Principle: "Even the most faithful philosopher cannot live without his blood."

You can create a new admin account for the library archive system to access more features. The process starts with a survey to prove that you're not a bot. I'm not sure how much it branches, but in my case I failed the survey, and was told that I didn't display enough of the qualities of a person, and therefore could not be categorized as such. Then it turns out there's someone who can communicate with you through the terminals, and they ask you stuff like "What is consciousness? What is it made of? Can I touch it?" and "What to you is the most important distinction between a pebble and a tree? How about a tree and a frog? What is the difference between a frog and yourself?"

Elohim condemns this voice as "the Deceiver", and orders you to ignore it, lest you stray from his path. The Deceiver is curiously averse to saying Elohim's name.

Also throughout the levels you can find painted QR codes on the walls containing the thoughts and observations of other people who are also taking on Elohim's trials. They go by pseudonyms like "Ur1el", who ascended to become one of Elohim's messengers. "The Shepherd", who preaches the conclusions it's reached about the labyrinth. "1w/Faith", who has concluded that all this was created by some great Designer, and that if they can't solve a puzzle, it must surely have been designed to be unsolvable to them. "Samsara", who claims the only solution to these trials is to accept that they will never end. "D0G", who is generally not very impressed by this whole thing.

They all argue about why they're there, how this world works, whether Elohim really made the world and if he's really as all-powerful as he claims, etc. There are other QR codes that record where and why some of them die, from "Process timed out," to "Allowed the Serpent into his heart."

It's awesome and I love it.

 

I'll definitely have to give it a try!

 

Holy shit... I didn't expect there to be a Talos Principle thread. I mean it's old but I'd entertained the thought of making one myself.

Did anyone else feel Elohim was a really surprisingly nuanced and great character? I came in expecting I'd want to punch god in the face and I left crying for the dude. His VA conveys such emotional depth while having that low warm voice simultaneously.

(Also Milton was my fav, as satanic allegories tend to be)

 

I am eternal frustration, because I'm bad at timing and even with a walkthrough I'm stuck on one of the Osiris/Hall Of The Dead puzzles with a bunch of those patrolling boombots :P V fun though, most of my frustration is because I want the rest of the story dangit I don't care about these puzzle cubes

 

There's also a bunch of hidden rooms, accessable by doing things like walking through walls or going right to the edge of the map. One's found by falling through a patch of floor, and in it Elohim monologues.

 

The Elohim room is the most important room you could stumble on. It's also the least hidden, probably because it's meant to be discovered.

 

Oh man I've had this game on my Steam wishlist for a while but I haven't gotten it yet. Probs cause the demo for Mac was glitchy af. Has anyone played the full game on Mac OS?

 

I'd been :/ on the game since most descriptions were pretty vague but you guys sold me on it. Bought it last night, playing it now. :D Graphics are pretty. And I like Elohim's voice.

 

there is a guy, i think uriel? it has been A While my laptop can barely run the game

anyway if see a QR code from the guy, there's a star nearby, and he sometimes has a hint

one of the hints is in the only QR code in the game that needs an actual phone to read it-the player character can't read it

 

oh gosh. you bringing up uriel reminds me... If anyone finishes the game: the DLC is so good and so worth it, and one of the most worthwhile DLCs I've ever played. Uh, it had a lot to say about the importance of fan created media much to my surprise? Good stuff

 

I love this game so much and like no one has played it!!!

I have such feels about Shepherd. Because they help you through the final (amaziballs) level but can't leave themselves. Also just by default, in games like that I tend to rp as my Shepard from Mass Effect and it just all seemed really fitting.

And agreed, road to Gehenna is such a good dlc. I love the ending of you stay, and just see everything turn to dust... But also swelling with pride bc you know the distraction means your ai from the game succeeds. And now you know they won't be alone. Also the track that plays, the Fall of Gehenna is sooo good.

I listen to the whole game sound track all the time. False God and The Fall of Gehenna are probably the best, but really all of it is top quality.

 

Shepherd hurts because they make that decision... Idk, some discussion about... the sacrifices of others, especially with them. Also loved how Samsara and Shepherd are these two incredibly different minded people who find themselves up there. I feel a lot for both of them.

@Kittenly who was your favourite gehenna character? My favourite tht I can Never Talk About is Admin. officially the obscurest fucker.

 

@Charlie Hmm... It's been long enough that I don't remember the specifics all that well. I did really love Admin, and I loved the ending I chose. Basically it's clear that I need to replay it :D

One of my favorite parts of Gehenna is that bit where you make a bildungsroman, and all of them are just. Terrible. But at the same time it's so endearing because these AIs are learning how to create stories and to criticize them. ;-;

 

@Kittenly Hey Gehenna is super fun to play. I've always wanted to do another playthrough to see if agreeing w Rockwell about the revolution changes anything, but man those puzzles are hard sometimes. I loved all the endings I got even though the ending I loved most was a pain in the ass to get (imo the 'true end' bc most true ends are a pain in the ass).

I love the bildungsroman, and it was actually really fun haha. I was so happy to see them make their shitty fanfic and weirdly Gehenna gave me feelings when I see Jeff Goldblum's face.

 

Oh yes! I still get a weird surge of affection when ever I see Jeff Goldblum because of this game. I think I got all the stars... (GOD DAMN THEY WERE ANNOYING THOUGH). I decided as I was playing that I wouldn't look up any puzzle solutions, but stars were fair game.

 

Some of the DLC is just fun (the Serious DLC) but Road to Gehenna is like, a game in itself. It's like... I guess it's not officially labelled a sequel, but it's something like it, and a very meaty DLC that gives you a lot to think about.

@Kittenly I actually agreed to the same thing haha. Like, I promised myself to give the puzzles my best but gave up at the stars, esp since I wanted to

Spoiler

save Admin so very very much. Admin's 'but... you said you'd save me' crushed me when I played the route where you don't save them.

 

@Charlie I didn't play that route omg ;-;

I'm not sure what the Serious DLC is, but Road to Gehenna is just as good as the base game. And it's different. I mean you still have to solve the puzzles, but the base game is about a single character's journey and is much more about exploring the beautiful land and then deciding it's not enough. There are a few other characters like Elohim, Milton, Alex, and some of the other ai's in the system. But none of them except perhaps Milton really interact with you.

Gehenna deals with community and identity and you are much more a character (Gabriel instead of the blank slate ai). It has a very different feel. I love both of them