Game Review - Talos Principle (PS4)

The Talos Principle is a unique blend of Puzzles, Platforming, and Philosophy with gorgeous visuals, and cinematic audio.

Recommend: Yes

The Talos Principle starts you off in an ancient Greek/Roman ruin. Crumbling red brick walls with columns that have collapsed and stones lying all over the ground. Your “bed” is a large white stone slab and is directly behind you. Then “BOOM” a voice from out of nowhere scares the crap out of you and gives you the basic story and task to start with. He says his name is Elohim, you are his creation, and you are in his garden. Hmmmm, this all sounds super familiar. Like, on a biblical level. Then he tasks you with finding his “sigils” and that is your purpose. As you wander the tutorial level you’ll come across a terminal. It looks like an Apple IIe or an old IBM beige computer stuck to the top of a metal rod. The interface feels like DOS or BASH, and it uses ASCII characters to render an “eye” that blinks, and the terminal beeps each time the eye blinks. When you log into the terminal it says it’s trying to access 47 million entries…and then it tells you the network is unreachable. You then have some options to try to fix it. You learn through the Milton Library Assistant (MLA) “natural language interface” that you don’t have the proper credentials and need admin credentials. Then it makes you verify you’re human with various “personality” questions. Once you complete that, it says that your application will be reviewed and lets you see the locally cached content of three or four text documents and emails. Other than trying to fix the network connection the terminals are all over the game, and they generally have two or three locally cached documents or emails or web pages.

The tutorial level has you do very basic puzzles to get accustomed to the control scheme and the way you can interact with objects. Throughout the game you’ll earn new tools to help solve harder and more complex puzzles. But none of the puzzles for the main game felt like they were impossible or too hard. I was able to solve a good chunk of them in the first try, and a couple took two or three attempts. But I didn’t get frustrated with anyone of them, it was always enjoyable. Now, I say that the main game puzzles were not impossible or too difficult, but there are special “stars” that you can find, and solving some of the puzzles for that were far more difficult. I found about a third of the stars on my own, but eventually had to look at a walkthrough to get the rest.

Each Level has multiple puzzles to solve and get a “sigil” which looks like a tetromino from Tetris. Those puzzles are separated by a purple “force field” that keeps all tools in the puzzle. The tools you will get to use with the puzzles are a jammer, a hexahedron (box), connector (laser crystal), fan, portable platform, and the recorder. Technically there’s also an Axe, but it’s not used in main game puzzles. The Jammer disables various obstacles and enemies in the puzzle, but only one at a time. the box is used to keep buttons down, put on some enemies to use as a moving platform, to make stairs, or to elevate other tools. The connector is used to redirect laser beams from laser crystals or from other connectors. Side note: you can shoot the laser beams through the purple barrier. That’s very important for some of the star puzzles. The fan is used to move things quickly, either into the air or through a level. Generally, you’ll combine the connector and box and fan to solve some of the more intricate puzzles. The portable platform and the recorder are used together the most. The recorder lets you “record” your actions and then replay them. The replay version of you can be used to put other platforms on, or connect laser beams, or change how may different tools you can use. Each time you interact with a tool while recording, a blue replay version is created.

The real storytellers of the game, though, are the Terminals, MLA, and the “Time Capsules.” Through all of these the story of The Talos Principle is told. The time capsules are recordings from a doctor about some of her thoughts and feelings about the state of the world around her. I’m not going to spoil anything about those, but I highly suggest finding all of them. It’s worth it. The Terminals have just a little information cached, but through it you read small snippets of stories, speeches, research papers, random internet blog posts, and news articles from the web. These help round out what the Talos Principle is and why it exists. And lastly, the MLA is more than it appears at first. It will guide you through the game and also ask you various questions. I jokingly refer to the Talos Principle as “Am I Human” and the MLA is the reason. There are also QR codes hidden through the levels. I also recommend reading those. They’re not as important, but they add some flavor to the game. The plot itself is actually very weak, and you will have the major twists figured out long before they happen, but the world and the details make that a non-issue.

The visuals in the Talos Principle are really nice, especially for a game that’s now 5 years old. For a first-person game it really helps to immerse the player, and the developers used it to hide some secrets, too. The music is also great. It’s very large and wide when it needs to be, like in the “halls” where the doors to the levels are. But in the actual gameplay it’s very soft and stays out of the way. It’s just enough to make sure there’s no dead silence.

Since finishing the game I’ve been recommending it to everybody, and since it was released on Windows, Mac, Linux, iOS, Android, PS4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch, anybody should be able to play it. The game is not perfect. There were some puzzles that felt very similar to earlier puzzles. There were some late-game puzzles that were disappointingly easy. And the philosophy sprinkled in the game is nice until you realize that your choices are very limited, and so when you choose an answer that is similar to what you believe, but not exact, you may be met with a rebuttal that is fair for the answer but not for what you were trying to say. Basically, the philosophy lacks the nuances of real-world philosophy and real-world humans. It’s neat but really restrictive. The best part for me was that each time you entered a puzzle was a checkpoint. So I could literally sit down, play just a puzzle, and then turn off the game and resume my Dad responsibilities.