The Talos Principle Review. Puzzles vs. Religion?
The credits have rolled on The Talos Principle.
The Talos Principle is a first person puzzle game in the vein of Portal, Q.U.B.E, and probably Myst and Riven, but I’m not sure because I didn’t have a PC when Myst and Riven were popular. Still I feel I had to mention them here to avoid angry comments about my lack of knowledge of the first person puzzle genre.
The puzzles are the best kind of puzzles. Just a few mechanics to keep track of and each series of puzzles builds upon the rules of previous puzzles. It’s near puzzle perfection. Each solved puzzle rewards you with a tetromino-shaped sigil. Collect enough sigils and you advance in the game. But depending on which direction you choose advance, you’ll either suffer the wrath of or enjoy the praise of Elohim, the godlike narrative voice. Advance as Elohim commands, and you’ll be praised. Advance up the forbidden tower, and you’ll be chastised.
This choice in either defiance of or honor of a religious deity is where the game tries to be more than a game. But I’m not sure it succeeds.
I’m not sure if this game is a rebuke of religion, a celebration of religion, or just a commentary on religion. I hesitate to claim the latter because there’s no way popular media can simply showcase religion without having some inherent message. Religion is just too important to too many people. It’s very polarizing. I lean toward the former, a rebuke of religion, possibly because I’m not a religious person myself so anytime religion is mentioned in popular media the inherent message I embrace is one of sarcasm. As in, “these characters believe in god. Oh, boy. Buckle up. This is going to be hilarious.”
But the religious aspects of The Talos Principle are confusing. Not because of depth. Quite the opposite, actually. Everything is superficial. The omnipresent narrative voice here is named Elohim, which is literally one of the Herbrew words for god. The voice speaks in commanding echoes, constantly reminding the player that the tasks at hand—the puzzles—are trials meant to prove the player worthy of ascension and everlasting life. But just as soon as I dismiss any celebration of religion, I realize that the tedious, seemingly arbitrary puzzles set forth by this 1 dimensional deity are the very reason I bought the game. Puzzles. If the rote ceremony of religion is dumb, then why is the game supporting it and why am I having such a great time with it? So, yay religion?
Thankfully, the puzzles are the focus here. Sure, there’s lore and a proper story to follow, mostly delivered by terminals, sometimes delivered by audio time-capsules, but always boring and dismissable. But again, there’s a religion comparison to be made. How many of you watching this right now know someone who claims to be religious but hasn’t read the entirely of the religion’s text. If you don’t have your hand raised right now, you’re either lying or are part of a reclusive cult devoid of all religions forms of entertainment. If the latter, wow, I’m surprised you found this review. And if this is the first piece of non-cult material you’re taking in, you can stop now. This is absolutely the best that it gets. You struck gold here. This is it.
So, boo religion?
Some of the sigils are harder to acquire than others. Collect enough of these red sigils and you can ascend to the top of a forbidden tower. The implication here is that only the smartest people will question religious doctrine. So, definitely boo religion, right?
If this game were a person, it’d be the most annoying person. This is the kind of game that would insist we’re all just collections of atoms and that we don’t actually feel anything because feeling is just a chemical reaction borne not out of emotion but out of logical inevitability. It’s also the type of person who would call people sheep and claim its spirit animal (if we even have spirits, right) is a dog because dog spelled backwards is god. And this person is the antithesis of god. Not that this game necessarily believes in god. It just wants to create as many opportunities as possible to tell you that it doesn’t believe in god. This game probably quotes Nietzsche and every time you say Freudian-slip, this game probably loves to tell you that Freud’s sample sets were too small to be properly scientific. Look game, I don’t care. Freudian-slip is just a thing people say to break the tension after an awkward comment. And besides, the proper term for a Freudian-slip is a parapraxis. Bring that nugget out next time you’re not at a party, you dick!
Learn more about The Talos Principle at Croteam’s website
Credits:
- Pump Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com), Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
