The Talos Principle
All right, so bear with me here guys. I've discovered a lot more about The Talos Principle since yesterday, which of course presents the first moral dilemma of today: how much is this passage of discovery instrumental to the game's appeal? I'm talking figuring out a new mechanic in Thekla's The Witness, or deciphering what the tetrominos (a lot of these enigmatic puzzle games seem to have those, huh?) mean in Polytron's Fez. I think it's probably just safe if I hit today's entry with a big ol' "potential spoilers for the game experience, if not the game's plot, which I still haven't figured out but have enough vague ideas about that I could piece it together if given enough time and maybe guessed large chunks of it" proviso. Fairly standard, as disclaimers go. If you just want to know what this game is on a basic level that gives away very little, I'd recommend yesterday's update or maybe the site's Quick Look. For those who want to follow me down the rabbit hole, or have beaten the game in the two years since it came out, read on.
All right, so you know that I mentioned that I've been unlocking weird objects? They're actually puzzle elements. Every puzzle also includes a diagram which includes the tetromino you'll get if you win, as well as a group of smaller symbols that tell you what elements are involved in the completion of the puzzle. If you haven't unlocked one of those elements, you can't complete the puzzle. At least, not in the intended way. In addition, the color of the tetromino is significant: green ones are for essential progress, yellow are for unlocking the next puzzle element, and red are for some mysterious purpose that I have some ideas about, but currently aren't necessary for progress. Naturally, these red ones tend to be hiding inside comparatively more challenging puzzles. The stars, too, have been unlocking new areas with gray blocks, which have what I imagine to be some portentous end-game purpose.
The game doesn't surface any of this; like everything else in the game, from the plot to the core mechanics, it wants you to figure this out on your own. The journey doesn't mean anything if you aren't learning all the time and putting that acquired knowledge to use. Hence all the dilly-dallying in the opening paragraph. The puzzles have started throwing around some crazy wind physics and cloning business too, essentially absorbing the ideas of other puzzle-platformers into a massive gestalt brainscrew that promises to keep going for one more world at least.
As for the incidental plot, there's still the sonorous voice of Elohim telling me to stay on the straight and narrow and keep solving puzzles. A few other players have emerged, however: the computer AI that is in charge of the archive of all human knowledge has started asking me pointed questions about the nature of consciousness, and Elohim has forbade me from talking to it. There's also other "players"; the game has a basic cross-game communication system which feels a little cribbed from Demon's Souls, in which you are occasionally given the option to paint a message on a wall that provides some hint for a nearby puzzle or is simply you dicking around. The list of things you can write steadily increases as the game continues, offering commentary on the computer archive AI, the nature of the world, Elohim and the forbidden tower of mystery that Elohim doesn't want you to climb that I fully expect to be filled with knowledge apples. There's also a handful of NPC voices that become almost like companions, and you can see what each of them thinks about the world: "1w/Faith" has fully embraced Elohim's Kool-Aid, while others are a little more doubtful and quizzical. "Sheep" is frequently posing sweeping, hypothetical quandaries about our purpose here, while characters like "DOG" and "Samsara" are just as frequently throwing shade at the philosophers and complaining about how many puzzles there are. They do feel a lot like other players, to the game's credit, and it's sometimes a bummer whenever you come across the place where one of them fell, with only an apparently automated epitaph left behind to commemorate them. I didn't think I'd feel this emotional about a bunch of QR codes painted onto a wall. Usually they just lead to YouTube adverts about cars.
All the while, I'm still finding audio logs of one Alexandra Drennan, a young science whiz who was apparently involved in some significant AI creation project as its lead, and some varied reading material on the many terminals: items ranging from salacious chatlogs to excerpts of classical literature to staff memos from the aforementioned AI creation project's team and those from the big digital archival project that was going on next door. We've yet to be told how, exactly, the world ended or what success this AI program saw, but I imagine the game's keeping that information close to its chest for now. I'll probably find out once I climb that enormous tower, huh. Well, provided I don't get lightning-fried to slag by our good buddy Elohim, though something tells me that guy is all bark, no bolt...
(If it wasn't clear, this is going to be a three-day series. I think I just hit the halfway point? I'm certainly impressed with what I've played so far, and these incremental puzzle element additions are handled really well. I appreciate that the visual code the game uses for its stage descriptors allows me determine which ones are safe to skip, if my time limit should come down to the wire tomorrow.)
Log in to comment