Hands on with The Talos Principal II - Preview
The Talos Principle is back once again with a plethora of mind-bending puzzles and deep questions around philosophy and the existence of humanity. The Talos Principle II takes what made the first title successful and appears to be expanding upon that formula to deliver one of the best modern day puzzling experiences.
The Talos Principle II picks up in ideology of where the first title finished off. You are born into a new world, where biological humanity is extinct. However in a twist human culture lives on in a city of 1000 robots, who attempt to emulate the life that their last human creator envisioned for them. A result of millennia of simulations run by an A.I, you take the role of 1K, the 1000 and possibly final robot human to be born into the new world of New Jerusalem.
The story is solid, and there is a world of background lore to understand and dive into if you so desire. The Talos Principle II looks at the idea of what is possible in a post-biological world as a result of an A.I given freedom to bring humanity back. Taking the idea of a puzzle based game and expanded upon it, The Talos Principle II is more than just the sum of its parts. It is an experience, a journey. It poses questions of philosophy and the impact of humanity on the world, weaving in elements of Greek Mythos, and questions of existence. Weaved between these periods of deep insight are mind-bending and challenging puzzles, that feel rewarded and enjoyable to experience.
There appears to be a lot going for The Talos Principle II which will give a wide range of gamers something to do, enjoy and experience. For those who want to focus on just the puzzling element, the game doesn’t hamstring you in this. You can ignore the world lore, and for the most part seem to power through the story elements with little regard for the actual answers and impacts. You’ve got ten standard puzzles per area, with a required eight for each section to be progressed. The puzzles for the most part, whilst I didn’t find them particularly difficult, require a little bit of thinking to solve. There was only one puzzle that I was unable to work out, which I was able to bypass with a collectible item that allows you to automatically solve a puzzle. To keep the puzzle interesting however, skipping it this way does not reveal the solution to you, so you would still need to solve it properly if you wanted to get that feeling of completion.
For those who like a little bit more meat on the bones The Talos Principle II offers a large overworld, with plenty of things to see and explore. There is terminals with massive lore dumps available for those who want to get fully involved in the depths of what the new world truly entails. Secret shrines with unique solutions, and a myriad of voice memos from prior explorers to help you explore the ideas of the philosophy being presented in a far more approachable way. A Skyrim-esque compass guidance system is used. With waypoints indicated on the wayfinder. A lack of a world map does mean exploring can get a little tiresome, and in the preview build the icons of a previous area wouldn’t always de-load. This meant there was two areas worth of icons on the wayfinder that resulted in it becoming incredibly cluttered and difficult to use for navigation. This is likely a problem with this pre-release build and something I would like to see fixed before release.
There was also some issues with the motion blur of the game in this early build. Even when turning it off, it didn’t fully go away, and I found that playing for longer than a couple hours caused me to get pretty bad headaches. This is, again, likely a build issue. But something I would like the developers to ensure is working fully on release. The game is incredibly gorgeous, being one of the nicest games I’ve ever actually played and seen. The world is vast and gorgeous, but getting motion sick from exploring it does diminish the experience.
The Talos Principle II is shaping up to be one of the best puzzle games of recent memory, making me reminisce for the days of Myst. The puzzling is different obviously, but the world building and the questions the game raises are just as poignant. There is a lot good here in The Talos Principle II. If the entirety of the game is as exciting and enjoyable as the first five hours are, then we could potentially be looking at the measuring stick for future modern era Puzzle games.
The Talos Principal 2 will release on November 3rd for PC, Xbox Series X|S and PlayStation 5.
