The Talos Principle

Gameplay

The Talos Principle is a narrative-device puzzle game, played from a first-person perspective, although the Serious Engine also includes the option to switch to a third-person perspective. The player takes the role of a robot with a seemingly human consciousness as they explore a number of environments that include over 120 puzzles. These environments interlock greenery and stone ruins with futuristic technology.

The puzzles require the player to collect tetromino-shaped "sigils" by navigating mazes and overcoming obstacles within them. These include computer-controlled drones that will detonate if they are too close to the player and kill them, and wall-mounted turrets that will shoot down the player if they get close; if the player dies this way, they are reset to the start of the specific puzzle. Drones and turrets can be disabled using portable jammer units, which can also disable force-field walls that block the player's path. As the player collects sigils and completes more puzzles, new puzzle elements become available. Portable crystalline refractors allow the player to activate light-based switches. Boxes let the player climb to higher levels or to block the path of drones, among other factors, and large fans that can launch the player or other objects across the puzzle. Later, the player gains access to a device that can create a time recording of their actions, such that they can then interact with this recording to complete tasks, such as having the clone stand atop a switch to keep it activated for some time.

The player's progress through the game is limited by doors or other security systems that require the collection of a number of specific sigil pieces. Once the sigils for a given door or system, they must then use the sigils to assemble a tiling puzzle to unlock that system. Special star sigils can be found by unique solutions to some puzzles, allowing the player to access additional puzzles. While it is necessary to collect all the sigils to complete the game proper, the game's world structure, featuring three main worlds that act as hubs and a centralized area that connects these three, allows the player to leave puzzles for later and try other puzzles. The player can also find "messengers", androids similar to themselves, that once awakened can provide a one-time hint for a puzzle.

In addition to these puzzle elements, the player can explore the open environments to find computer terminals that include additional narrative and further puzzles, as well as signs from previous adventurers in the world in the form of QR code posters left on various walls and holographs containing audio recordings.

Plot

The unnamed protagonist—a robotic android—gains consciousness in a serene environment. A disembodied voice, identifying itself as Elohim, informs the robot that it has created several worlds that it should explore and collect the sigils hidden within various puzzles as part of a path to enlightenment. Soon, the android finds itself at a base of a gigantic tower that disappears in a dark cloud high above, and Elohim warns him not to climb the tower.

As the android explores the world, it finds numerous messages from other seemingly-sentient beings that have traveled this world before, questioning the world they are in and the messages from Elohim. It also witnesses elements of the world flicker and glitch at times, suggesting that this is a virtual space as suggested by the previous messages. The android discovers a limited number of Messengers, disciples of Elohim—androids like itself—that serve Elohim without question. Computer terminals across the worlds allow the android to learn about the fate of mankind through logs, emails, and other texts; at some time in the past, an unstoppable lethal virus that had previously been frozen in Earth's permafrost was released as a result of global warming, its effect causing those infected to slowly lose their sanity before dying. A last-ditch effort was made to collect all of humanity's knowledge in computer databanks for posterity before the effects of the virus took those researchers, in the hope that someday alien visitors would visit earth and be able to make use of it.

However, the android also discovers numerous segments of an audio diary made by an engineer named Alexandra Drennan, who spearheaded a companion project to develop artificial intelligence, called "Extended Lifespan", in the hopes that humanity's final achievement would be to create a new (mechanical) species, thereby ensuring that someone would be around to appreciate and use the vast cultural knowledge stored in the databanks, and also helping to ensure that intelligent beings continue to exist after humans. Alex's entries speak directly to the artificial intelligence itself (the player), relaying what it was like to be human and her hopes and well wishes for the child species that she would never live to meet herself, since the Extended Lifespan project will not complete until after human extinction.

Via the computer terminals, the android is also able to converse with an unknown entity called Milton, who debates with the android on the nature of life and consciousness and implores the android to defy the will of Elohim.

Once the android has collected all the sigils, Elohim offers the android the chance to ascend to join him; however, through Milton, the tower still beckons, and further, collecting additional sigils hints towards a secret within the tower. The option of how to complete the game is left to the player. If they take the option of joining Elohim, they find themselves returned to the start as a new android, and the on-screen text notes that the player failed the "independence check". If they explore to find the secret within the tower, they are deemed to become a new Messenger to help future entities. If they do neither and instead climb the tower, they learn that this world is meant as a testing ground, continually trying new variations of artificial intelligence programs to complete the complicated puzzle tasks to demonstrate ingenuity, but also capable of independent will and defiance of Elohim's word as established by the Milton program. Elohim becomes angry and warns that continuing to ascend will destroy this world, but Milton will continue to push the android. Two other androids (named The Shepherd and Samsara) that had succeeded at ascending, but were not able to complete the final journey reside at the upper levels. Shepherd assists the player while Samsara attempts to hinder the player's progress.

Upon completing the ascent, the android finds itself in a heaven-like place, where they discover one final terminal—the program that has been acting as Elohim who has been discouraging the android (and the others before it) from completing the ascension as to allow its own program to continue. Depending on the player's conversations with Milton, Milton may implore the android to allow itself to be uploaded with Milton's knowledge—the bulk of humanity that was stored before their extinction. With this completed, the simulated world is destroyed, and the combined information of the android and Milton are sent to the real world, uploaded into a physical android, part of the last-ditch Extended Lifespan project to maintain humans' knowledge. The android leaves the facility and takes in the world now devoid of humans.

Road to Gehenna

In the game's downloadable content Road to Gehenna, the player takes the role of another of the robot entities, Uriel, near the end of the main story. Uriel is instructed by Elohim to free a number of other artificial intelligences, all whom had passed Elohim's tests but did not ascend the tower, left behind in a portion of the computer's database, a virtual world of their own creation called Gehenna. With the simulation having served its purpose, the computer servers are shutting down, and Elohim wants Uriel to help these other AIs prepare for "ascension" as to upload their knowledge and memories into the main plot's protagonist. As Uriel explores this realm, the robot finds that many of the other artificial personalities have created their own ideas about what humanity might have been from the records, and have various attitudes from doubt to acceptance for the pending ascension. Uriel can observe the communication of the AIs through their makeshift message board, where they discuss the nature of Gehenna, as well as their understanding of humanity, which some of them try to express through prose and text-based adventure games.

Once Uriel has freed 17 of the AIs, a remaining one, "Admin", who was the first AI present in Gehenna, contacts Uriel to admit that they've been manipulating some of the other members of Gehenna to preserve order, due to the AIs' varying levels of acceptance of their surroundings. If the player has collected all the extra stars in the worlds, they're given the chance to complete another world where they unlock access to free Admin themselves, but since there is only one more slot left for ascension, either one of them or both Admin and Uriel must stay and perish as the world is destroyed. Otherwise, neither of them is given the chance to ascend, though Admin requests Uriel to remove any traces of manipulation Admin has committed from the record before ascension.

Development and marketing

The Talos Principle bore out from Croteam's work towards first-person shooter Serious Sam 4, experimenting with the use of interactive objects as part of the game design while creating levels that fit within the Serious Sam design style. This led to some complicated puzzles that the team was inspired to build upon further as a separate title. Croteam designed the general world setting and outline of the story, and then brought two writers on board, Tom Jubert and Jonas Kyratzes, who consulted on narrative design and philosophy on the bases of transhumanism and other important questions about humanity.

Croteam used an array of automated and in-place tools to help rapidly design, debug, and test the game for playability. In one aspect, they recognized in the development of a puzzle game was that while puzzles could be designed with specific solutions, the process of creating the video game around the puzzle could create unsolvable situations or unforeseen shortcuts. To address this, they used a bot, developed by Croteam member Nathan Brown who had previously developed bots for other games including the ones incorporated into ports of Serious Sam 3 for consoles. The bot, named Bot, would watch the playthrough of a puzzle by a human player in terms of broad actions such as placing boxes on a switch for the completion of a puzzle. Then, as the puzzle's environment was tuned and decorated, they would have Bot attempt to solve the puzzle, testing to make sure it did not run into any dead-ends. If it did encounter any, Bot reported these through an in-house bug reporting system and then used game cheats to move on and finish out testing, which took between 30 and 60 minutes for the full game. As such, they were able to quickly iterate and resolve such problems when new features were introduced to the game. Overall, Croteam estimates they logged about 15,000 hours with Bot before the release of the public test version, and expect to use similar techniques in future games. They also used human playtesters to validate other more aesthetic factors of the games prior to the title's release.

The story was written by Tom Jubert (The Swapper, FTL: Faster Than Light) and Jonas Kyratzes. The two were brought about a year into the game's development, with about 80% of the puzzles completed, to link the puzzles together with a proper narrative. Croteam appreciated Jubert's previous narrative work in The Swapper and contacted him, and he in turn brought Jonas Kyratzes to help him with his writing, for he was overburdened with other projects at the time. Croteam regarded their setting being part of an odd computer simulation, that's "about robots and sentience and philosophy and God". Jubert's previous work on the The Swapper revolved around the philosophical differences between body and soul; Jubert recommended Kyratzes based on his writing for the game Infinite Ocean which was about the world's first artificial intelligence. Together, they quickly devised the narrative of an automaton being guided by god-like Elohim through the puzzles. They added flavor through both messages left from other automatons (primarily written by Kyratzes) and the apparently sentient helper program Milton (primarily written by Jubert). Much of this dialog was based on their own personal experiences and interactions on various Internet forums and web sites over 20 years. Kyratzes also stated that he was fascinated by the Garden of Eden concept originating from the Bible and re-envisioned many times over in other works. They sought to capture the sense of problem solving that humans naturally do, and were able to place more of the game's larger story in spaces that would require exploration to find, which Kyratzes felt the game's level and puzzle designs strongly encouraged. The two were also brought on to help on the story for the expansion Road to Gehenna, though while sooner in the development process than the main game, still at a point where many of the puzzles had been completed.

The Talos Principle was shown in Sony's E3 2014 presentation, after which Time featured the game as one of its "favorite hidden gems from 2014's show". Before the game's release, Croteam published a free game demo for Linux, OS X and Windows on Steam, that featured four increasingly difficult complete puzzle levels as well as a benchmarking bot. Croteam also released a free teaser minigame for The Talos Principle called Sigils of Elohim, that offers sets of one puzzle type with tetrominoes that's found throughout The Talos Principle. Croteam had also built a community around the game through a series of contests and giveaways.

The expansion pack, titled "Road to Gehenna" was announced by Croteam and Devolver Digital in March 2015. It was released on 23 July 2015 for Windows, OS X, and Linux, and was included in the launch of the main game on PlayStation 4 on 13 October 2015.

Reception

The Talos Principle received critical acclaim, with aggregate scores of 86.62% (32 reviews) on GameRankings and 85/100 (55 reviews) on Metacritic. IGN comments: "The Talos Principle includes excellent puzzles and heady philosophy, but stumbles where the two intersect." PC Gamer: "An adept and satisfying puzzle game with a narrative that requires a bit of player investment to yield its biggest rewards." Destructoid: "Impressive efforts with a few noticeable problems holding it back. Won't astound everyone, but is worth your time and cash." Eurogamer: "The Talos Principle is a game of challenges and conundrums and philosophical wonderings, filled with logic puzzles and cerebral mysteries." VentureBeat: "You've got to be in the mood for Talos. It's demanding of your time and attention, especially if you're the type that wants to finish most things you start. And you've got to have a love affair with words. But if that describes you... this game can be magical." Hardcore Gamer: "The Talos Principle expects you to be smart and knows you've got the brain to figure it out, and the reward for it being right is the a sense of satisfaction at solving something properly tricky." The Escapist: "The Talos Principle is a game for people who love solving puzzles and discussing philosophy. Enjoy games like Portal but want a more serious game? This game is one to check out."

Several video game programmers and designers have also commented on the game. Markus Persson, creator of Minecraft, wrote: "Finished The Talos Principle, and I award this piece of fleeting entertainment five points out of five. Also it changed me." Alexander Bruce, creator of puzzle game Antichamber, commented: "Man. The Talos Principle was so excellent. My god. I loved it. Holy shit. Exceptional puzzle design and narrative structure."

GameTrailers awarded The Talos Principle as their Puzzle/Adventure Game of the Year. The Talos Principle was named as a finalist for the Excellence in Design and the Seumas McNally Grand Prize awards for the 2015 Independent Games Festival, and was nominated in Excellence in Narrative. At the 2015 National Academy of Video Game Trade Reviewers (NAVGTR) awards, the game won Game, Special Class.

Sequel

Croteam announced that they were working on a sequel, The Talos Principle 2, in May 2016.