Finished the game with the normal ending last weekend, but could not have cared any less for the computer conversations. Incredibly boring and ultimately a waste of time, there didn’t seem to be any payoff for the time wasted in those menus. But I got surprisingly invested in finding out the next bit of backstory. And I don’t remember a time when a game made me feel so uncomfortable as the hyper-religious themes of Talos Principle did.
I think the normal puzzles stay pretty straightforward all the way to the end, the solution space tends to be constrained enough that even when you don’t really understand what the final solution is going to be, there’s clearly just one or two possible next steps. That’s actually kind of nice. When you figure out the solution properly, you feel smart. When you don’t and end up brute-forcing it, at least there’s no frustration of being stuck for too long. Also the reliable pace it makes for nice bite-sized gaming sessions, where you actually achieve something. The star puzzles of course were another thing entirely, and the way they required subverting the “rules” were absolutely delightful. The worst puzzles were the ones using the record + replay mechanism, they always involved lots of waiting around so that you could make sure the different executions could be synced up properly.
I kind of want to go back and do the remaining stars (I got about 15). The problem? I don’t want to hunt for the star locations, just figure out how to get the stars given the location. Because really, exploration in this game is pretty miserable. So I picked a few random worlds in order to puzzle these out. 2/4 were just completely unfair. Like one that where the star is completely hidden, with no hints to its location. The only way to open up the secret door to the start is by connecting an invisible light source to an invisible light receptor. How the fuck did garbage like that make it into the game?
I played a good chunk of this, but just decided that playing logic/positioning puzzles in first-person feels tedious to me. I was very intrigued by the religious themes and story elements… I think. They never coalesced into something understandable. Is there a cool story someone wants to spoil for me so I know what I am missing, since I doubt I’m ever going back to it? Or did it stay all nebulous and indistinct?
There’s a pretty clear story, but you need to piece it together from audio logs and in-game text files.
the plot
Humans were destroyed by some kind of an uncurable but slow-moving plague. In a last-ditch effort to leave something behind, they launched a project to build a robot that understands humanity. The game does not represent reality; instead it represents a simulation where prospective AIs for the robot are created / trained / evolved / weeded out (it’s not quite clear how that bit works). It’s not at all clear why solving spatial logic puzzles is supposed to be a good way to achieve that. The simulation has the strange religious tones since religion was important to humans, and a background of gregorian chants and a booming voice of God giving you faint praise will somehow enlighten the AI. This presumably is also why the simulation is loaded with archives containing all kinds of seemingly random crap.
ELOHIM is the AI in charge of the simulation. In order to be proven worthy of being uploaded to the single robot body that humankind managed to build before dying out, your final act must be to defy ELOHIM and his offer of eternal life and instead climb all the way to the top of the tower while solving yet more puzzles. Because disobedience is what being human is all about, apparently. There are other endings where you’re not uploaded to the robot body.
Just started this and I’m super impressed so far. Aside from the qualities everyone else has mentioned, I love the weird combination of beauty and desolation that the environments give. Music is good, too.
I’ve solved every puzzle on my own except two of the “extra” puzzles from the Road the Gehenna. I just sort of forgot about the game, I should come back and finish those.
I admit I cheated the hell out when it comes to the stars and looked them up on the Internet. Their locations are just completely nuts.
The refresh of this thread reminded me that I had a spare key of this game and gaming time to spare while I wait for Stellaris and HoI4 coming in the next two months. I am loving it so far! Puzzle games are usually hit or miss for me, but I feel this game is consistently engaging and satisfying. Two questions though:
I notice the stars often require things out of the specific stages. How do you smuggle things in and out of those purple doors? I realise I can look up cheats on the internet for the star solutions, but I am rather looking for general advice on how to get started so I can then solve them myself. That may not even be possible.
Is the Witness game like this? Might be worth investigating after I finish this one. If anyone who has played both games want to comment on the relative characteristics, that’d be appreciated.
-lasers can pass through the doors. Sometimes getting a star requires getting a blue or red laser into a puzzle from another puzzle. Hmm, these two puzzle doors seem to face each other with no obstruction, maybe if I can get my beam pointing through…
-There are occasionally ways to boost items out of a puzzle. Perhaps you can get something up on a wall, or over. Sometimes they are simply hidden around the meta level.
-fans are your friend. Clever usage can get you to places you may not otherwise get. Look at what a star needs, whether it be a beam, fan, one of the stasis projectors. See what is in the level, and what is not.
-Check angles. Sometimes if you put a beam just so, you may be able to project it over a level.
I need to go back, and I’ve not gotten a ton of stars, but about a dozen. Enough to get an idea of the type of thinking they are aiming for. If you can’t easily see what you need, do other levels in the area. Usually the best choice rather than force through as soon as you see it. Sometimes you may need to unlock a tool first even, so don’t fret if you aren’t certain.
I think the most important tip for finding stars is that the game assists you with jumping by putting shadow footprints where you’re looking and a “press space to jump here prompt”. If that message shows up on a wall or a parapet, it’s a sure sing that something fishy is going on, since many, many stars require to jump on or above the walls of the puzzle areas.
I’m finally getting around to trying the DLC Road to Gehenna. Crap this is either much tougher than the original or with the long layoff my brain forgot how to think about these puzzles. I’m only on the 2nd puzzle, I think it’s called The Swapper, and I can’t figure out how the heck I can open the blue and then the red door with 1 laser tripod. I mean, I think I’ve got an idea on what I’m supposed to do, but I have no idea how I can actually do it.
so I picked this up, on level 3 so far, crashed about 5 times and while I think the whole writing thing is pretty decent, I hate to say it but I just want to play puzzles and I click through all the terminals just to save the text and am not reading them anymore.
How much am I missing out?
Also, fuck the stars. I’ve only got a few, and those were the ones that I could see. Too many of them are invisible and from what I’ve read online, you basically need to follow guides online.
It’s a shame you can’t just type anything on the barcodes and instead have to select one of a set of sentences.
That’s how I felt about The Witness. I didn’t want to get lost looking for my next puzzle, I just wanted to play a damn puzzle. That said, there were some puzzles wandering around that were cool, but I abandoned the game.
I can’t remember if the terminal bits are necessary. I remember feeling a bit lost story wise because I got a little impatient.
you abandoned The Talos Principle or you abandoned The Witness? I read enough on the Witness where it scared me away. So far (granted I’m probably only 1/8 the way through Talos if there are 120 puzzles), they are providing a challenge about 1/2 the time - when they introduce a new concept, it’s pretty easy for several puzzles, but then it gets tougher.
It’s really interesting how they’ve crafted these because with a minimal amount of things to maneuver, it’s pretty amazing how complicated some of these get.
I abandoned The Witness. I finished The Talos Principal and liked it a ton. I did find the DLC for Talos a bit too hard after I had been away from the game for a long time. I couldn’t just jump back into it and didn’t want to replay it.
The terminals give the entire backstory of what happened to the world, and frame some additional content. It’s worth reading, or at least skimming and thinking about the choices you make.
As far as stars, I found most of them without any additional help. You just need to explore and look for out of the way places. You can’t get the good ending without at least some of the stars. (There are 3 main endings).
Also note that many of them require… parallel thinking. I solved all the ones I found on my own. Just look for things out of place, such as a laser crystal that is not part of a puzzle solution. Odds are that, somewhere, they are part of a star solution.
If you can get something to somewhere it doesn’t ‘belong’, odds are it is useful to do. See if placing boxes or jump pads in odd locations would allow you access to the tops of walls and stuff.
So I wrapped up the main game today, yeah I know, super late to this one. I’ve been meaning to play it forever, I do love a good puzzle game and I’ve been hearing how great this one is, and since it turned up on Game Pass I figured it was time before it bops back off into the ether.
My general impression is pretty favorable. I really dug the meta story, piecing together what had happened to get me to this existence, I guess you’d call it, and what had happened to humanity. I enjoyed learning the ropes and getting the hang of all the various abilities and mechanics and stringing them together to create solutions to the various puzzles. And for probably the first 2/3 of the game, let’s say into Building C, I was going strong.
But at a certain point the puzzles stopped being fun for me and I just started running out of steam. Seeing a new hub with several new puzzles to solve went from exhilarating to ‘oh god, there’s more?’ The whole experience just wore out its welcome. So many people compare this game with Portal but I really think at least one aspect of Portal’s lasting popularity was that it got in, did its thing, and it was over. Like a good punk rock song it said its piece and didn’t hang around. I’m sure plenty of people would disagree but I wasn’t sad to see the end of this one.
Or have I? I guess there’s the Gehenna content to power through, even if it sounds as if it might be even tougher and more involved. I didn’t much care for the time manipulation puzzles specifically though I did feel pretty clever when I managed to beat them. And ‘Time Flies’ can go screw itself.
I only got so far into this. It was the amount of back and forth within the puzzles themselves, as well as trying to find the undone ones again. Enjoyable but not quite paced right for me. Great Gamepass title.
I was really enjoying it then I got to some level that was so twitchy - and you had to time it so exquisitely, I just gave up and uninstalled. It was too bad, I was enjoying up to that point. Steam tells me I was 9 hours into it.
