IGF FINALIST SHOW AND TELL: The Talos Principle

by | Mar 3, 2015 | Class Activities, Show & Tell

The Talos Principle is a game which prominently features solving puzzles, exploring a narrative, and traversing a series of sandbox environments which are, in my opinion, populated fairly densely by greco-roman architecture, futuristic machinery, and the occasional late-1990’s era computer terminal.  A major theme in this work is the philosophical examination of humanity by comparing humans to machines in various contexts.

A comparable game that comes to mind is Portal, purely from the mutual focus on puzzles and narrative, as well as the environments; which seem to be designed in such a manner as to draw attention to their clashing elements.  One difference I find particularly notable is that the narrative in The Talos Principle is delivered primarily via text logs, with the vocal narration playing more of a secondary role in terms of story delivery, instead serving primarily as a means of conveying goals that the player should seek to accomplish.  In comparing this particular aspect to another game, I feel Bioshock in particular has similar elements.

As for a description of the actual gameplay, it is fairly bare:  basically, you solve a bunch of puzzles with various gadgets to unlock more puzzles, which you then solve until eventually it runs out of puzzles.