The Talos Principle 2 + Road to Elysium Expansion

[3 others]

But Talos 2 is on par with the original (although not as great as Gehenna). The puzzles are overall better but the characters worse.

It also costs less than the threepwoodian $20 in steam at this moment. I don't see what's the big issue.

 

[racofer]

every review i read says it's worse than the original, therefore makes no sense to pay more than i did for the original

It's worse than the original. The characters are not as good, the hubs are mostly empty, and the "mystery" is not on par with Talos 1. Some puzzle areas at the late game were clearly rushed with solutions so simple it felt like you got back to the tutorials, and you notice it.

Still, the new mechanics are good and the majority of puzzles are also good; just not as good as in the original game.

It also manages to look worse most of the time while requiring 5x as much computing power to run, but that's Unreal Engine 5 for you.

I recommend waiting for the full version of the game with the DLC and buy it at a discount. It might even come to GOG by then. Get the "demo" in the meantime or replay the original.

 

[Zarniwoop]

Just finished it. Puzzles are pretty good but the story makes no goddamn sense. This is nothing remotely near the level of the original, I was expecting some massive SYKE! PLOT TWIST! at the end but this has nothing like that. It's just a bunch of boring philosophical mumbo jumbo.

 

[Zarniwoop]

One expanded note on the writing and storytelling in this game. I wrote before that "the core flaw of the game is that you're supposedly being prodded towards making a monumental choice between two fundamentally different future visions for the society and one of them is so presented obviously correct it makes Bioshock's save/harvest dichotomy seem like a well-nuanced masterpiece.".

Basically this. The "moral dilemma" as about as subtle as kill a puppy vs save a puppy

 

[Infinitron]

 

[Israfael]

First DLC (or triple DLC even) announced, hopefully it'd be more challenging than the original game (maybe they'd also tweak graphix a bit so it won't burn my eyes in 5 minutes, but it's probably not fixable)

Also, some new thoughts on growth/degrowth and left/right wing narratives by JK:

https://steamcommunity.com/app/835960/discussions/0/4357869680027173026/?ctp=4

 

[Jaedar]

One expanded note on the writing and storytelling in this game. I wrote before that "the core flaw of the game is that you're supposedly being prodded towards making a monumental choice between two fundamentally different future visions for the society and one of them is so presented obviously correct it makes Bioshock's save/harvest dichotomy seem like a well-nuanced masterpiece.".

Basically this. The "moral dilemma" as about as subtle as kill a puppy vs save a puppy

And yet degrowthers are a real ideology, with real political power (they basically run environmentalism these days, and environmentalism has a lot of influence). I agree it's not as cool as the philosophical tones in the original though.

Hexahedron looks cool in the dlc trailer.

 

[3 others]

 

[Beowulf]

Just a reminder, that Friday software releases are best releases

 

[3 others]

Just a reminder, that Friday software releases are best releases

Yeah, except that you have to dedicate the rest of the week to downloading the 1,5TB base game installer first.

 

[Beowulf]

Joke's on you for uninstalling the base game instead of keeping it on your drive for the replay that never comes.

 

[Infinitron]

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/835960/view/6041096475587925027

Road to Elysium is Available Now!
The incredible story of The Talos Principle 2 continues with three new unique chapters

Hi everyone.

We are extremely proud to announce that The Talos Principle 2: Road to Elysium is available now. This three-part coda delivers three individual character-driven stories about love, hope, and despair. But stories are not where things end. Oh, no! All three chapters are tailored to challenge your puzzle-solving skills in new ways. Some of them will be fun and casual, while others will undoubtedly make your heads spin.

The Talos Principle 2 was a story about building a more hopeful future, and Road to Elysium shows the first few steps towards that future. We hope you enjoy playing it as much as we enjoyed creating it.

Much love from Croteam!

 

[Beowulf]

Seems great so far

 

[3 others]

Ah yes, a 40GB DLC

I have built-in antialiasing in my astigmatic eyes, no need for this texture bloat.

 

[Forest Dweller]

There must be a free update that comes with the DLC because mine started an auto-download (34 Gb).

 

[Iucounu]

three individual character-driven stories about love, hope, and despair.

Can the robots be romanced now?

 

[3 others]

Having played the DLC for a few evenings, it's about on par with the base Talos 2. Competent and entertaining, but not transcendent. The first part Something Something Orpheus focuses on the laser connectors and introduces a new twist that hasn't been used anywhere this far but unfortunately doesn't do much of note otherwise. The bonus puzzles on the other hand are devious and inventive enough that I haven't been able to crack any of them.

The second part Isle of the Blessed features the insufferably effete green robot in the middle of a Dawson's Creek episode solving a nice variety of semi-difficult mixed puzzles that use the other tools from the base game too.

The third part Into the Abyss is the true successor to Gehenna. The puzzles are elegant yet fiendishly hard. The setting takes a Psychonauts-style turn inside a mind broken by grief, doubt and regret, and even Elohim returns to offer some guidance. I'd like to say more but the difficulty spike is so harsh that it will take time to make any progress.

Playing (but not finishing) the DLC in sequential order, I was slightly underwhelmed by the offering before firing out the 3rd part where the puzzles and the setting start to come together. The first part is nice, but short. The second is nice too, but more of just a continuation of the 7th/8th puzzles from the base game worlds, and some annoyances from Talos 1 puzzles also resurface here. Talos 2 was admirably free of ambiguous puzzle setups unlike its predecessor where some solutions required you to almost accidentally discover that oh, it's possible to jump over that fence or that oh, the machine guns won't shoot me if I ride past them a bit higher up. Isle of the Blessed has a few of those: oh, I can put that object through that hole but not that other object.

The melodramatic plot in both where robots as detached observers dig deeper into the human condition and try to reason love from first principles has potential, but crumbles under a severe misunderstanding of conflict as a cornerstone of all life, some annoying redditisms, and too much focus on unremarkable side characters from Talos Principle 2. I have no recollection what "Sarabhai" or most of the other robots were doing in the base game whatsoever, it's like trying to continue reading Hundred Years' Solitude after a 6 month break. There's also some Anomaly and wormhole travel has become ordinary and I don't know what else. Maybe I got the wrong ending in Talos 2?

Everything is redeemed in the final act though. It's just Byron and Athena, two core characters from the story. The puzzles as stated are excellent - even if you dislike the difficulty, their elegance is admirable. The setting creates a dramatic tension that's not present in the rest of the DLCs. About the only gripe I have is that the voice actor for Athena isn't on par with the others but it's more than offset by the return of Elohim.

Overall, there are probably about 70 fresh puzzles here. Into the Abyss itself has as much content as Gehenna, and that's less than half of the total package here. Unless you unambiguously disliked Talos 2, no reason to skip this.

 

[Israfael]

The bonus puzzles on the other hand are devious and inventive enough that I haven't been able to crack any of them.

I've mostly finished first two (didn't figure out yet how to do the dynamic clock golden door puzzle in the first DLC), the isle bonus puzzles are actually not that hard, you don't have to find a clever idea or use physics 'exploits' (for lack of better word) to do them, you can just solve them sequentially, no trickery involved. I actually had more troubles with some 'normal' puzzles because I forgot some things (like that you can take the beam thingie from your clone's hands etc). Overall I've like it anyway, but the hypercube thing is simultaneously not that hard, but also tests endurance as it takes literally 20 minutes or so just to walk there from start to finish. There are also some fun easter eggs like SS1 "Dunes music" remix that you can find in a pirate chest in the second DLC.

PS Overall, good for the $7 I've paid for the DLCs (could be more expensive in non-ork countries)

 

[3 others]

Finished all the puzzles in the DLC and.... I find out I have very little to add to the initial impressions, which is probably the proper way to describe Talos 2 in a nutshell. It's a competent piece of digital media, I've enjoyed my time with it, I'm glad Croteam put a sequel together, and I will purchase the eventual Talos 3 too, but the "dramatic framework" around the puzzles just isn't that interesting so there's very little to contemplate on the Tree of Woe afterwards. Thankfully the majority of puzzles (especially in the fuck-you-difficult Abyss) are excellent, with good variety between compact brainteasers and more expansive "disentanglement puzzles" where you keep pulling on one thread at a time to arrive at a solution. I was kind of hoping for one last troll puzzle with the recorder from Talos 1, but it never came.

I'm also not a fan of the switch to Unreal Engine 5. Talos 1 still looks very nice even 10 years after release, and I'd say it has better indoor environments unless you really crank up the quality level here. The video directory containing 20GB of unpacked Bink files is also an obscene sight.