In The Talos Principle, you are a robot who wakes up and hears a voice in the sky. It is Elohim, and he declares that he is your maker. He welcomes you into his garden, which he made for you, and invites you to join him in his temple – if you are worthy.

What follows is a series of puzzles and sigils for you to collect. These unlock new areas and game mechanics necessary for progression. Sure, the mechanics are probably similar to what you’ve seen before – you’ll be redirecting laser beams and placing boxes on buttons to open doors. But this game gets hard – by the end you’ll have been stumped more than once. However, it never gets hopelessly difficult and there’s nothing like that ah-ha! moment when you finally find the solution.

One ingenious mechanic that’s unlocked later produces the most baffling puzzles. It’s a device that allows you to record your movements. Then when you press play, you’ll have to interact with your recorded self to solve the puzzle. For example, there may be a button which opens a door – you’ll record yourself standing on the button so the real you can then walk through it. See here for forty seconds that will make that last paragraph make sense.

Cool isn’t it? Imagine that but with passing objects to yourself and reflecting lasers.

So on the surface it’s a puzzler, but the joy of this game lies in the mystery. What on earth is a robot doing in a futuristic garden following the voice of god? Is there a point?

From time to time you’ll encounter computer terminals which hold journals or short stories. These allow you to piece together the plot and engage with the game’s themes. It’s here you’ll spend a lot of your time wrestling with thought experiments and contemplating your own existence in a way that’ll give you more headaches than the actual puzzles.

Without spoiling too much, very early in the game you are required to make a user account on the computer system. When you try, you must first prove that you are not a bot. How does one do this? You play as a robot, but you yourself are human, so this task should be no problem, right? You’ll be surprised, and your opinion of personhood will constantly be challenged.

This intellectual sparring is done with a program in the computer that exists to categorise all the information in the system’s library. However, it runs into a problem when it tries to categorise you. Because of course, you’re a unique snowflake who’s self-aware – but are you? Prove it.

It’s going to sound odd but the discussions you get into with this Library Assistant make for some fascinating and entertaining gameplay. Often it will outsmart you to hilarious ends. But sometimes it isn’t funny, and that’s because it’s unravelling your existential anxieties and knotting them all together in a way that might tie you up in some eerie introspective places. And yes, I’m talking about dialogue with a machine. It’s that good.

The Talos Principle teaches us that we shouldn’t be too sure of anything we think we know for certain. If you haven’t questioned your morals, doubted any faith you might have, or challenged what you think it means to be self-aware by the end of the game, then you’re glued to your beliefs too strongly. You need to ask yourself why, and the game encourages that in a way I’ve rarely experienced.

Outside of the existential crisis-inducing narrative, the actual story is an interesting one to uncover too. One engaging aspect of the game is piecing together all the scraps of information you find to figure out what’s actually going on. The revelations are just frequent and juicy enough that you’ll want to go on until you’ve revealed everything.

Once it clicks and you’ve grappled with all those philosophical ideas and religious metaphors, the ending is one that truly feels epic and gobsmacking. Not since BioShock have I played a game with such fascinating commentary, and the result is one of the most satisfying gaming experiences I’ve ever enjoyed.

I cannot recommend it enough. Don’t worry – it’s not as intense as I may have made out. It’s mostly a casual and relaxing experience. Only what it encourages you to think about may induce a little existential panic. And surely, that’s something we could all use a bit of from time to time.

 

THERE’S MORE! Follow me @MagoosReviews for updates.

Love Star Wars but hate the prequels? That’s how I feel about The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit. And these trilogies are much more similar than you ever realised!

Need your Game of Thrones fix now that season 6 has ended? Read my breakdown of what went right and wrong with season 5 and stay tuned for my thoughts on season 6!

Film lover? Want some recommendations? Read my picks for the best films of 2015. Or maybe you’d rather share in my hatred of the worst of 2015.

Check out my weekly film reviews, including Civil War and Apocalypse, and find out more about me as a reviewer.