A Game for Our Time - “The Talos Principle 2” Review

By: George Yonemori

Photo Courtesy of Devolver Digital

The Talos Principle 2 immediately starts dropping truth bombs. Humanity is long extinct because of a deadly virus and climate change, among other things. The androids now inhabiting Earth bemoan their ancestors’ arrogance, stupidity, greed, and incompetence. “Why were their leaders such idiots?” “Why did they hate themselves so much?” Signs around their civilization preach respecting nature and not repeating our mistakes. Each NPC and audio log scattered throughout the levels carries a fiery frustration for how our world works. I just wanted to solve puzzles.

A sequel to a self-contained masterpiece like Croteam’s 2014 first-person sci-fi puzzle game The Talos Principle seemed unnecessary and daunting. The original was brilliant in every sense of the word—a visual and audio delight equally intelligent and approachable. What other game blends Greek and Egyptian philosophy and imagery with a Paradise Lost-style plot—with robots, no less? The phenomenal soundtrack mixes Gregorian chants with the most contemplative of piano arrangements. Its puzzles had me staring at my screen for minutes until the lightbulb flashed, and I yelled, “I love this game!” Its narrative had me flicking between dialogue options with an AI, wondering what it means to be human. Many lesser puzzle games rely on trial and error instead of logic. Puzzles were challenging but never unreasonably difficult. The canonical ending had perfect ambiguity; its questions comfortably existed without answers for nine years. I genuinely cannot recommend it enough.

Announced in 2016—a lifetime ago—this sequel had monumental shoes to fill. Excellent video game sequels, like Mass Effect 2 and Halo 3, evolve concepts and fix issues to refine a well-tested formula. Masterful sequels, like Red Dead Redemption 2, lift their predecessors to new heights through added contextualization. I am ecstatic to say the nine-year wait was worth it. The Talos Principle 2 is a masterful sequel that not only captures what makes the original so powerful but adds new layers of meaning to its existentialist themes. 

Photo Courtesy of Devolver Digital

If the original was Portal, this is Portal 2. The first thing I noticed about the sequel was a significantly higher budget. The original was a lonely experience—only disembodied voices and text logs guided your character. Visually, it still holds up through timeless art direction, but the sequel’s production values demolish it from every angle. Boasting full cutscenes and running on Unreal Engine 5, the designers injected every inch of this world with photorealistic detail to improve the original’s distinctive ancient futurism aesthetic. Even grass moves realistically in the wind. The voice acting is excellent, with Erin Fitzgerald returning from the original. How does a $40 puzzle game about literal robots have better animations and dialogue than many $80 role-playing games? No wonder it takes up 70 gigabytes of storage. And screenshots do not do the visuals justice—this game is drop-dead breathtaking. Running on an RTX 3080 with an AMD Ryzen 5900x, I had some ignorable performance hiccups on maximum settings with ray tracing disabled. No bugs whatsoever. 

Photo Courtesy of Devolver Digital

You play as 1K—the 1000th android. Not eager to repeat our overpopulation and overconsumption, the androids limit themselves to only 1000. Besides solving over 100 varied puzzles, your job is determining whether this society should choose progress or safety. No spoilers, but my ending had me in tears thinking about where the real world is heading. It wasn’t trying to depress me but to make me feel grateful for the privilege of appreciating the world’s beauty. It succeeds. Not everybody gets to enjoy the Earth’s gifts today. This is a game for our time. Why do we hate ourselves so much? The writers don’t have an answer—neither do I. The writing isn’t all sad. Underneath the crippling anxiety is a dry sense of humour. These androids love their cats.

What about the puzzles in this puzzle game? You still connect laser beams and put cubes on pressure plates to progress. They are more accessible now, with the first game’s gun turrets and bombs getting axed. The only way to die this time is to hurl yourself off a cliff. Don’t get me wrong, they didn’t turn it into a walking simulator. I completed the main story after 19 hours, leaving many puzzles unsolved because they genuinely seemed impossible. There is still so much content I didn’t see, plus two other endings. Weak mechanics from the original, like recording yourself to create a double, have been cut and replaced with better ones. Any game that lets me screw with gravity is a winner. There are 12 large zones to explore, each introducing a new central mechanic. Even as I got to the final stretch, I was pleasantly surprised to see another new concept to learn. The worst mechanic is only in the final puzzle and should’ve been removed. The story saves the momentum that the gameplay drops in its last twenty minutes.

The Talos Principle 2 is a masterpiece that improves on something I consider perfect. It’s hypnotically gorgeous, emotionally raw, and fiercely intelligent. Play it right now. 

The Talos Principle 2 is available on PC, Xbox Series X/S, and PS5