The TALOS Principle

"Even the most faithful blogger cannot live without his blood." -Straton of Stageira

"If you can't use your imagination, you might as well be dead." Plenyope of Argos

I've just today finished another game, removing one game from my list of games to play which is already satisfying in itself, but more satisfying was the act of playing and eventually completing the game itself.

Meow

The TALOS Principle is a First-Person Puzzle game with a science-fiction philosophical bent. I think the less that is said about what the game is about is better, as a great part of the game is figuring out what is going on, why it is going on, where you are and what or who you are. Between exploring gorgeous worlds and solving 3-Dimensional puzzles there is plenty of time for contemplating philosophy and the nature of consciousness, morality and the like.

I can't say I've even been a puzzle game enthusiast myself, the only puzzle game I owned before my Steam Summer Sale binge was Tetris on the Game Boy, so I wasn't sure how I would feel about The TALOS Principle. I purchased it in the hopes of getting a puzzle game with a fair learning curve, fun gameplay and interesting narrative as well as philosophy. I'm glad to say that is exactly what I got!

Really it is quite pretty. The world, that is. But the robot also. <3

Most of the gameplay is in separated puzzle rooms where you need to use various tools, many of which you unlock as you progress, to get through increasingly complex puzzles to collect sigils (Tetris pieces). This is really the meaty part of the game, and I personally found the puzzle-solving quite enjoyable! The difficulty starts off nice and easy as you learn just how the world works, like how jammers can disable barriers as well as mines and turrets while you can use connectors to guide laser beams from a source to a destination. I'm far from a puzzling genius, but I found the game's difficulty curve to be very fair, it never felt like the game suddenly spiked in difficulty. It was very satisfying to complete all the puzzles using my own spacial thinking as well as using other forms of reasoning for a few levels that require you to think outside of the box. By the end of the game my mind had adapted to a lot of patterns which helped me solve the puzzles despite their complexity, which was a very satisfying feeling.

This is my jam.

Aside from the puzzling there is the philosophy, which takes the form of audio recordings, text files and discussions with an entity in the game questioning the nature of concepts as consciousness and morality. I actually really liked the audio recordings in this game, they seem like a common and rather trite trend in games these days, but in this game their existence does make sense and I found their contents very pleasing to listen to and think about. The same goes for the text files, their existence is justified and make sense, they range from rather dry philosophical texts and treaties by philosophers but there's also a lot of very human correspondence in these files which to me were the highlight, I found myself always wanting to read and find more files and often being moved in some way after reading them, or laughing even.

Aw yeah, reading.

More problematic and where my first complaint with the game is, would be the times when you are asked to present your own philosophies and have them questioned by a program in the terminal. These questions started off rather basic, such as "What is 2+2" and "What best describes a person", but as the game goes on it becomes rather clear that no matter what you say or do, it's wrong and the program always comes up with counter points to which you can only reply with predefined options. This makes it hard to actually insert your own nuances into the game and late enough in the game you can't make any claim without the terminal somehow twisting it into you somehow being a fascist dictator who wants to put bad humans in work camps or think rocks have the same rights as people or whatever absurd extrapolations it makes from what you say. When I finished the game a lot of this made more sense to me, but it felt frustrating after a certain point putting in options that either get twisted somehow or don't exactly represent my thoughts. Insightful, yes, and an opportunity to think about your belief, but it can still be rather annoying.

I am not amused by your shenanigans, Milton Library Assistant.

Aside from that I also found some of the optional collectibles to be too much of a hassle, a lot of them are cleverly hidden inside the levels and require you to think outside of the box to get them, while others are hidden in hard-to-find corridors or behind hidden switches. I'd say that if you play this game and want to get them all, do not hesitate to use a guide or walkthrough. I did and it saved me a lot of annoyance.

DAMN YOU YOU DAMNED STAR

All in all I am glad I got The TALOS Principle! For the amount for which I got it, about 13 euros, it gave me 28 hours of satisfying gameplay and intriguing plot. The game's base price is 40 euros, but during sales it goes down to as low as as 10 euros so I'd definitely say to check it out if the game's on sale!

This is very childish.