The new first-person puzzler from Croteam looks great and makes fantastic headaches in three colours. We played an advanced preview version.
As the puzzles really get going, I become a dog again. This is what good puzzle games feel like to me: I want to get through the door with a long stick in my mouth, get stuck on the frame and feel infinitely stupid.
First I don”t understand why the stick doesn”t just fit through the door. Then I understand that it”s too wide. Then I despair. The puzzle is impossible! I can”t make the door wider! And then, after a quarter of an hour of brooding, when I turn the stick sideways and get through smoothly, I feel like the very cleverest.
This is how The Talos Principle 2 plays out in my head. It was similar with the predecessor.
Both games rely on logic puzzles in which I handle switches, cubes, pressure plates and light beams. Just finding my way around a spatial puzzle becomes a challenge for me from the first-person perspective.
But once the solution is understood, it feels simple. Only a few puzzles become cumbersome to execute.
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Waiting for the flash of inspiration
In The Talos Principle I solved about half of the puzzles on the first try. The second half falls into the dog-eat-dog category. I doubted myself, the game, the technique, and racked my brains for days. Each flash of inspiration gave me minutes of elation. But it could take hours to come.
Normally, I don”t last long in games like this. But Talos 1 managed to do something that usually only exceptional games like Portal do for me: it had such an original and well-told story that I was dying to know what would happen next. I could often pass the time until the next brainwave by chatting with the computer terminals.
The multiple-choice dialogues between philosophy lesson and text adventure were the real main attraction for me. They seemed to me like a game in their own right. But they also connected everything together and provided the reason why I was wandering as a robot through a world full of absurd logic puzzles in the first place.
Little happening in the new world
The Talos Principle 2 is a sequel, but makes a big time jump and tells a standalone story. When it comes to puzzling, it feels like Talos 1 – only newer and more beautiful.
The Unreal Engine 5 game flaunts atmospheric lighting effects and a high level of detail, right down to the weeds sprouting between the stone slabs. On my older PC, I was only able to try it out in the second highest level of detail and was still impressed.
Away from the puzzles, Talos 2 is a completely different game. In Talos 1, I was wandering lonely through weathered ruins. Talos 2 begins with my birth in a robot city as individual number 1,000.
The scenario is unusual and it seems incomparably more elaborate than in Talos 1. The robots speak and move alive. Their world is full of contradictions. They live in a supposed utopia city that looks more like a semi-abandoned holiday resort.
The open but empty city is not a technical flaw, but part of the story. The museum in particular is full of good gags and clever details. I notice: little is happening in the supposed capital, there is tense boredom.
The intelligent computer beings of New Jerusalem see themselves as descendants of the extinct human race. They want to do better than their biological ancestors. But when I arrive in the city, there is already strife.
Riddle Expedition
This is the absolute beginning of the story; I don”t want to tell much more because I liked the surprises in the game. The robot ensemble seems well written and loves heated discussions, and the English script and voice acting win me over. The expansive multiple-choice conversations quickly lead to political black ice.
After the short prologue, Talos 2 sent me on an expedition. It seems to make up the main course of the game. I travel with my robo-group to a mysterious island where mighty futuristic ruins stand around. Who built them? How long have they been standing there? These are exciting questions. But before any clues, the designers have first laid down puzzle routes.
New colour theory
And here it is all over again, just like in Talos 1. A handful of new game mechanics is enough to give me brutal dog-stick moments. The first new toy is colours: Blue, red and green spotlights hang on the walls in the puzzle rooms again.
They have to be properly redirected to activate switches and open doors. But this time I don”t just have to redirect the rays, I also have to mix the colours appropriately so that a door opens. By the way, those who see colours differently will find various ways to change them in the options. Respect!
No sooner have I internalised the subtleties of colour mixing and redirection than the next device comes along: It can open circular holes in walls – and hair-raising new possibilities.
The puzzles in the Talos 2 preview are didactic. First, I have to understand a new way to solve a puzzle – like redirecting beams across two floors so they don”t cross and block each other. And then later puzzles require me to use the new knowledge.
This is supposed to be so hard
In principle, not all puzzles have to be solved in order to continue in the game. Smarter people than me look forward to a few optional head-scratchers hiding away from the necessary puzzles.
Also, while exploring, I found ways to skip at least a few puzzles. But that didn”t convince me. If I simply skip a solution path, then I haven”t learned anything. And then the missed lesson might fall on my feet in a later puzzle.
I would have liked a gentle hint or two when I”ve quite obviously been up the creek in the same puzzle for a quarter of an hour. But that is also a question of game philosophy. This game wants to break my head. And when I finally get it, the elation is all the greater.
I”m looking forward to the headache. The Talos Principle 2 will be released on November 2, 2023 for PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S.
Editor”s Verdict
The quality of games this year is making my backlog grow alarmingly. However, The Talos Principle 2 feels to me like it”s running out of competition. Presentation and puzzles reach a very high level, not only compared to its predecessor. Above all, the story captivates me. The robots are deeper and their problems more interesting than anything I”ve played or seen recently. I”ll make time for this one.
