If I were to rank the best ways to be shown a game at conventions and the like, I’d always say ‘hands-on’. It’s just a no-brainer that playing a game yourself is the best way to experience it. But sometimes, what proves more useful is to have a developer play it in front of you while constantly narrating their every move. It’s like a dance lesson - the best way to learn is not by doing, not at first, but to watch and to listen. To see what you must do, not flail around for it. This is how it went with The Talos Principle 2 atGamescom, and I’m ready for it to stump me again and again later this year.
Had I been given a controller and sent away with The Talos Principle 2, I would have stumbled around the new puzzles and tried to figure out what each clue and marking meant, eventually deciphering a solution while the two puzzle masters stared down and judged me. Taking the dance lesson idea further, watching it play out for myself meant it was fully choreographed, with no missteps. I could understand the depth of each puzzle and the construction of each level and its place in the world, rather than head down the wrong pathway and leaving having solved one puzzle for myself but having only scratched the world’s surface.
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This was an instant positive I noticed in the sequel from the first game - a greater sense of control over your own frustrations. In order to reach the next path, there were eight individualised puzzles to solve. The game had ranked them from one to eight by alleged ease, but the devs started at four because that’s the one they wanted to show me. You can leave a puzzle and come back if you prefer, taking on challenges in any order, and can even skip one per batch. If you solve that puzzle naturally later on, you get your ‘skip’ back too, so it’s never wasted. There are also bonus puzzles in each level for optional bonuses that will push the most gifted players further.
Jumping further into the game, the puzzles begin to build on themselves. Though I wouldn’t have flown through it so seamlessly, I figured out the solutions to the early ones as they unfolded before me. Later on, I was perplexed until right when the solution presented itself before my face, but pleasantly surprised that inelegantly throwing contraptions that I could pick up proved to be correct. Fans of the first game will also be pleased to hear that the echo mechanic, where you recorded yourself walking to interact with it in the future, has been replaced by a much less fiddly version of the same thing where you hop from body to body with ease. This is the one place where a hands-off falls down - I can see that a change has been made but I’m still unsure how much this change improves things.
The Talos Principle excelled at narrative compared to its puzzle game brethren, which often just use story as loose framework to take you from one challenge to the other. The first game used robots to interrogate what it means to be alive. The sequel is a direct follow-up, wherein 1,000 robots have been constructed. Originally, the robots had decided that 1,000 was a good, round number, and thus production of further robots should stop. Some robots fear there are already too many, seeing how humans overpopulated and fought over resources, waging war as their societies split. Others think more robots are needed - humans thrived into the billions, and robots do not require food sources as humans did.
But there is more than just ‘more robots’ or ‘no more robots’ at play. This is not just a question of mathematics. One robot has decided their ultimate quest in life is to find their true love. But since all 999 robots have rejected their advances, they claim that failure to produce more robots denies them of their reason for living, in a life they will be trapped in for eternity. But does one man have the right to demand others are created to suit his needs? Do we all have a right to love? And that’s just one of literally a thousand stories.
There’s a deeper story at play too. As the robots venture deeper into the valley, they find an advanced metallic structure, with complex puzzles surrounding it. They surveyed the valley not too long ago, and it was not there - it’s not a relic from humanity, and besides, it’s far too advanced. It also wasn’t created by them - with only 1,000 among them, sneaking off for months at a time to build a gigantic pyramid is impossible. So who built it, and why?
The Talos Principle 2 is a quiet game in a sea of noise, but it’s a high-pitched trill that pierces through the volume and remains in your ears. The sequel seems to build on what came before, and opens up a world of possibilities amongst the brain-twisters the game moves forward through. Like all puzzle games, it asks you questions, but it’s elevated as it makes you ask questions of yourself as well. From what I’ve seen, the sequel will force you to delve even deeper into the big questions in search of its solutions.
