As someone who has found themselves increasingly time-poor and with a more demanding day job, gaming has become more and more about the journey and experience over enduring the challenges and puzzles laid out by some games I may have dedicated weeks towards completing only a few years ago. It is a sad reality, and it means that games like The Talos Principle 2, through no fault of its own, would be overlooked in my books, or more likely, purchased and added to that ‘to-play someday’ pile. “Yet, given the opportunity to play and review The Talos Principle 2, I was instinctively drawn to challenge myself to go through such a game. I have got to say, I’m glad I did. A direct sequel to 2014’s The Talos Principle, players can look forward to a continuation of the game’s thought-provoking and distinct narrative, a medley of well-thought-out puzzles and some beautiful vistas.
The game’s heavy exposition and dialogue can be a blessing or a curse, depending on your preference for narrative depth and your familiarity with the original game’s story. While many puzzle games have impressive narratives, usually the best is reserved for bite-sized experiences that are a couple of hours and brimming with charm, with titles like The Stanley Parable and Superliminal immediately coming to mind. While not as easily accessible as such titles, the developers at Croteam have managed to deliver similar levels of charm on top of an engaging narrative, characters and world-building in a larger form, approximately 15-hour experience. You fill the shoes of an android by the identifier 1000 (more commonly known as 1K), the final android born into the robotic society of New Jerusalem in an age where humans have become extinct and androids are becoming more like humanity – with their own unique personalities, cultures and even a social media platform. They may have been born inside a simulation, but they are beyond that. With the “birth” of 1K however, a new risk emerges, leading 1K and other androids to investigate new megastructures that have appeared outside New Jerusalem – filled with puzzles that you are tasked with solving.
Puzzles are once again the focus of the gameplay mechanics in The Talos Principle 2, and before newcomers even have the chance to become acquainted with what is going on, they are thrust into a comprehensive and surprisingly robust tutorial stage that with minimal handholding will see you equipped with the basic foundations to tackle the challenges ahead. It is here that you learn the first approach to puzzle design for Croteam, and one that I actually appreciate the most – speed and breaking the map are not mechanics you can use to cheese challenges. The way to clear them is through intellectually approaching them or through creative exploration/trial and error. There are no time limits and nothing that requires you to speedrun from Point A to B, which is always good to have developers respect in their puzzle games. Furthermore, if there are challenges you get stuck on (and let’s be honest, you don’t want to look up a guide for online), there are also opportunities to use a small allocation of ‘Prometheus Tokens to skip a puzzle and be given the opportunity to come back later to complete them. Most of the time you will want to go back and complete the challenge as well, given the tokens are a finite resource that can be reclaimed by completing the challenge you weren’t able to initially clear. The Talos Principle 2 features decent difficulty scaling; it challenges players from the beginning without entirely holding their hand through initial challenges – but being able to use these tokens to temporarily skip these challenges was welcome for when the challenge is just that little bit overwhelming, or you “just can’t” right now.
The Talos Principle 2 has been developed on Unreal Engine 5, and takes advantage of some of the engine’s very impressive graphical technologies, delivering a game that is very picturesque and beautiful to the eyes, playing on the PlayStation 5 version, which offers beautiful vistas and pretty consistent 60fps on its Quality Mode. While at least at launch the PC version was receiving some comments on its stability, with some noting crashes, I experienced no stability issues on the console release – coupled with a more reasonable game storage size. However, I believe there are instances where the game could benefit from a ‘less is more’ approach. Some of the areas – for example, the area of New Jerusalem, where there are huge swaths of just textured land with minimal landmarks, sometimes making moving from Point A to Point B dull. Fortunately, when the game focuses more on its hand-crafted puzzle environments where the focus is on a smaller area they do a much better job, being able to communicate everything the puzzle-solver needs to complete the challenge while providing wonderfully designed areas to solve them in.
Despite my qualms, The Talos Principle has an immaculate artistic vision, not only in the visual department but also in the sound department. From atmospheric and minimalistic musical backings that perfectly complement the world, to some amazing voice acting from not only the main cast but also incidental characters – with voice actors such as Erin Fitzgerald and Tim Watson, returning for another outing as their respective characters.
If you are after a game to relax to after a long week or enjoy some mindless fun, The Talos Principle 2 would probably not fit that bill. Having not played a narrative-driven puzzle game of this scale in quite some time, it helped me realise not only how much I missed games like this, but also just how far the genre has come over the years, being not only an improvement over the original Talos Principle game, but even surpassed the original on its incredible merger between narrative and world-building, and offering some genuinely challenging and rewarding challenges to overcome. If this type of game is up your alley, then this is one of the best offerings I can think of in recent years.
A review copy of The Talos Principle 2 was provided by publisher Devolver Digital and their ANZ Publicity Team for the purpose of this review.
The Talos Principle 2 is now available to purchase on the PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X.
