The Talos Principle: Deluxe Edition - Review

Who would’ve thought the Croteam, the creators of Serious Sam and solely Serious Sam games for just over a decade, would release a thoughtful philosophical first person puzzle game in 2014. Not because there’s anything wrong with Serious Sam games or that Croteam aren’t capable of making other games, it was just unexpected. In 2014 The Talos Principle was released and it was great. Since then, it has appeared on all the platforms even including mobiles. Finally it’s the Switch’s turn for even more people to ponder consciousness and do a whole heap of puzzles.

You find yourself in a garden with no knowledge of how you got there, but you have robot hands. A voice calling themselves Elohim (a name from Greek mythology) booms throughout the garden like a God. You’re encouraged to explore and collect sigils (let’s face it, they’re tetrominoes) to further open more areas/worlds. To get these sigils, you need to complete puzzles around the area. Each sigil and puzzle is it’s own little area, connected to a world/environment hub. You’re encouraged to keep solving puzzles and collect sigils as this opens up more areas of the world. But do not enter the looming tower in the middle! Of course this means you’re gonna go try and get in this tower, but along the way you’ll see notes and logs left by others before you that help expose the truth of the world and why you’re there. At computer terminals dotted throughout the hubs you’ll encounter the Milton Library Interface (MLI). It pokes and prods your mind to find out more about your thoughts on sentience and what makes something ‘human’. 

I found my time with the MLI to be very thoughtful, it will ask questions about the nature of humanity, consciousness and free will. If you think about it enough you can see what conclusions it might guide you towards, but it was always interesting to see how it would throw your choices back at you, pointing out inconsistencies in the logic. While I enjoyed solving the puzzles, it was these interactions I wanted to get to. Philosophy in video games isn’t exactly new, especially when it comes to the nature of Artificial Intelligence and what makes someone human. Through the whole game you obviously have robot hands, so it’s unlikely you’re a human and then you’re left with questions about what happened and what you are. There’s also a bunch of references and noted about mythology just in case you wanted to add more mystery to proceedings.

Included also is the DLC, The Road to Gehenna. This takes part after the story, so it's better to play it later as it contains spoilers to what’s going on. For that reason I won’t go into the story, but it’s a nice addition to everything from the main game. There are more puzzles to complete, all using the obstacles from the main game. Of course it leans towards the more difficult side of things. 

Everything is done in the first person perspective. Unlike Serious Sam there’s no weapons to hold, just equipment to help solve the many puzzles. Initially puzzles involve jamming the electric barriers, spherical sentries and automated gun turrets. This is done by physically picking up jammers and aiming them at the obstacle you want to jam. As you complete more worlds, you’ll gain access to a variety of different types of puzzles. There’s re/directing beams of energy around to unlock gates, crates to disrupt sentry movements or to get to higher ground. There’s well over 100 puzzles and you’ll find that even the scope of the worlds are bigger than you might expect. At first, it’s the smaller hub area with each ‘room’ containing a sigil. Later on it’s only part of a larger hub which contains more of these smaller hubs. If that doesn’t sound a little confusing, these larger hub areas are also one of several. The puzzles might seem at first to be the kind you would tire of if it was a puzzle within another game, such as Zelda mirror puzzles. In the Talos Principle you’re there for the puzzles, solving these were much more fun than I expected. If you get stumped in an area, you can usually go to another section and work on some puzzles until you’re ready to try again. Every now and then I’d get really stumped, sometimes it would just take some time away to come back with a fresh look to see something I missed. 

The Talos Principle’s visuals present you with fairly serene areas. There’s no monsters or enemies chasing you down as you explore the scenery around the puzzle areas. The hub areas feel purposely empty, you feel like you’re in some forbidden heavenly space just for you to wander and roam. There can be a bit too much empty space, but you have to go out of your way to really experience that. There are generally clear signs about where each sigil is and the visuals communicate everything well. Something you’ll find when at least playing on the handheld mode is that the text is too small. It is mostly an issue when you want to read the files on the monitors. To Croteams credit they have different options for font size and the largest should make the text easily readable. 

There’s only so much to say about the sound, it’s not something you really notice much. It's there in the background and it’s nice. There’s also voice logs and Elohim that play through certain points through the game loud and clear. More importantly is the distinct sounds of the moving parts within the puzzles, such as the sound of a sentry’s sensors to know you’ve gotten to close, or when you’re about to be in range of a turret.  The sound is effective, it’s nice to have in the background, and does a good job of communicating if there’s something nearby.

How does the game run on the Switch? For a game five years old it shouldn’t be too bad. The good news is that it runs fine, there are even options for favouring visuals or performance. On the handheld it doesn’t really matter as you’re limited to a lower resolution, but it helps in docked. Draw distances are notable when you select performance, as unimportant foliage can pop up out of nowhere. The framerate can jump around also, more so when you favour the visuals, but you at least have the option of what takes the hit. Ultimately it’s perfectly fine if you pick performance as the visuals are never bad, besides it still looks scenic enough regardless.

The Talos Principle: Deluxe Edition is a dream for physical puzzle fans who like being challenged philosophically too. For me it scratched an itch I didn’t realise I had, usually wary of mirror/light reflecting puzzles in games. In this game, I found myself enjoying working out every area, with the added bonus of an interesting story that pokes and prods your thoughts in some unexpected ways. Being the Deluxe Edition there is the added bonus of the expansion The Road to Gehenna, giving you more of that story and even more puzzles to do.

Review code provided by Devolver Digital