The Talos Principle 2 Preview

When Croteam’s The Talos Principle came out in 2014, it immediately drew attention, earning praise from gamers and critics, as well as a number of awards. Puzzle games are released all the time and vary in complexity, but The Talos Principle combined its environmental puzzles with a philosophical mystery that compelled players to keep going even when the challenge seemed a bit much. And though the story was nicely wrapped up and even expanded upon with DLC, many people yearned to see more of the wonderful and tragic world the Croatian developer had created.

Fast forward ten years, and gamers will soon be getting their wish. Published by Devolver Digital, The Talos Principle 2 is coming to multiple platforms on November 2 and promises to bring more of what people loved in the first game while also improving and adding to the mechanics. Game Rant recently got a chance to play through the first several hours of the upcoming sequel and journey through the next chapter of Talos’ intriguing post-apocalyptic, post-human landscapes.

Unlike many sequels, The Talos Principle 2 doesn’t discard what came before and start from scratch. The events of the original game have a very real impact on the story that follows. However, newcomers to the series and those revisiting after years of absence won’t need to play through The Talos Principle first. While many of the details of the original game’s somewhat intricate narrative are left out, the sequel provides a nice recap by immediately dropping the player into the thick of things with some familiar puzzle-solving and then summarizing the rest via a talkative robot.

That’s one of the first things people who played the original game will notice, after admiring the spruced-up graphics for a bit. The setting of The Talos Principle 2 is no longer a simulation, but an Earth that has continued to exist an undetermined amount of time after humans have gone extinct. In their place are robots, 1,000 to be precise, each with distinct personalities, interests, and views on what exactly life is and what should be done with it.

Players are thrown into philosophical pondering from the start, contemplating whether these synthetic humanoids driven by advanced artificial intelligence really are alive or deserve to call themselves human. And after traveling through the vast solitude of the first game, with its vistas of lifeless simulated landscapes, it’s a bit jarring, though welcome, to find oneself moving through a world with other walking, talking, sentient beings who can be engaged in dialogue and questioned about their pet cat.

Some of these new robotic companions accompany the player when a fresh mystery reveals itself, seemingly even more obscure than the first game and requiring an expedition of curious explorers to dig in and figure out what’s going on. It’s a nice change of pace to have some conversation, but it’s still up to the player to solve the many complicated, and sometimes vexing, puzzles entirely on their own.

And despite the alluring story and setting, the puzzles are the centerpiece of The Talos Principle 2. In the first game, some of the challenges skipped right past frustrating and landed squarely in downright discouraging, causing some players to resort to online guides to get things back on track. In The Talos Principle 2, the challenge is most definitely still there, but at least in the first quarter of the game, all the puzzles were ultimately solvable, sometimes after taking a break and trying again with fresh eyes later. Of course, if history and the snippets shown in trailers are any predictor, things will only get tougher.

Several new types of puzzle mechanics are incorporated seamlessly with those established in the first game, meaning the learning curve may be less arduous for those who played The Talos Principle. There are also new gadgets to use in solving these puzzles, like an RGB converter that combines colored beams to spit out a new color and a device that can create holes in walls. These changes add novelty to the puzzle-solving while still maintaining that feeling of familiarity that returning players will appreciate.

The Talos Principle 2 retains a hub structure similar to the first game, but there seems to be more to explore within each hub area of the sequel, including a few rewards for straying from the designated path. Each location has a set number of puzzles to complete before players can progress to the next area, but this doesn’t mean gamers will become deadlocked if they come across a real stumper, or at least the chances are greatly diminished. There are bonus challenges in each zone that can fulfill the requirement if one of the main puzzles proves too difficult, and there are also keys scattered about that will instantly unlock a puzzle.

Just as the amount of time that passed between humanity’s extinction and the start of The Talos Principle was unspecified, the span of years since the end of the first game and the player awakening in this brave new world is also unclear. But the numbers seem mind-boggling, with the continents transforming into unrecognizable land masses, islands existing where there were none before, and AI fine-tuning and challenging itself to the point of autonomous sentience.

And such an incalculable expanse of time is appropriately accompanied by an equally profound soundtrack and setting in The Talos Principle 2. The world feels enormous and unexplored, with just a small blip of civilization almost insignificantly tucked into one little corner, and this awe-inspiring scale is reiterated throughout. The dome enclosing the robot city of New Jerusalem, as large as it is, is dwarfed by the trees and mountains stretching to the horizon just outside. Even as the player character explores, a fox might trot across the path or frogs casually slip beneath the water, unfazed by the unfamiliar presence of humans. It’s a world reclaimed by nature, making it entirely believable that a mystery as huge as the one introduced in The Talos Principle 2 could really have come about without the robots noticing.

The Talos Principle 2 promises to be just as tantalizing and epic as the first game. And from the all-too-brief excursion into the first hours of the sequel, it seems that it may in fact surpass its predecessor in many ways. The puzzles appear to become even more elaborate and the settings more diverse, to such a degree that each player’s experience may vary slightly, with optional items and locations to discover. The blend of complex puzzle elements with a captivating mystery to unravel means that some people may choose to beeline through the puzzles while others opt to wander a bit, with the game offering an engaging adventure for both types of players.

The Talos Principle 2 launches November 2, 2024, on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S. Game Rant was provided a PC code for this preview.