Introduction
In some of my recent trips abroad, I have come across a few places where robots are starting to be used for things like delivering groceries around the university campus in Helsinki, Finland, and helping waiters delivering food to the tables in Seoul, South Korea. These robots can detect obstacles and swerve around them, and even interact with people when they are on their path.
Of course, these robots have been programmed with one and only one purpose in mind (even though, extremely well). Despite being amused at seeing these robots going back and forth with their business, I thought (naively, I now see) that there is no way we could ever programme a robot that could attain something as complex as human consciousness.
But, after playing The Talos Principle, I believe I have now gained a much better appreciation that consciousness in AI is a very real possibility. In fact, scientists are making great strides at decoding the mysteries of consciousness, and, in my opinion, it will be simply a matter of time until we see the emergence of a conscious AI.
So, let’s start reviewing this game!
Review
You start off playing an android with seemingly human consciousness but with no idea what it is, where he is, and what his purpose is.
A voice introduces itself as Elohim, the god of the world, which instructs the android to solve a series of puzzles which are meant to test the android’s capacity for consciousness. If the Android is obedient, Elohim promises it eternal life, but if the android decides to disobey Elohim, only death awaits it.
Different endings are available depending on your decisions and types/amount of puzzles completed in the course of the game.
Being a masochist gamer (for lack of a better expression), I refuse to look up online tips whenever I’m stuck. I also have a tendency to want to complete every aspect of the game, which includes additional missions or extras.
Well, bad combination!
I did solve all sigils (99 in total) and puzzles at the tower (6 in total) by myself without resorting to the Internet, and attempted to grab the stars as well. There are a total of 30 stars and I decided to put as much effort into acquiring them as I put with the sigils. In the end, I grabbed … 3 stars! 3 out of 30!!! Believe me, they are insanely difficult to acquire (if you managed to acquire most of them without help, a huge kudos to you!).
One aspect of the game that I found interesting is that once I finished a sigil I had this nice sense of achievement that I rarely had playing other puzzle games. Because the puzzles demand that you think logically and out-of-the-box, it almost feels like your brain is growing.
For a game made in 2014, I also found the graphics awesome, especially since this game had a focus on puzzle and storyline, not really on action. Some critics have praised the voice acting, but I found some of the voices a bit too forced. Elohim, for example, sounded like a stereotypical deity from a TV cartoon character of the 80s.
Of course, the biggest point goes to the storyline. Despite reading a few critics referring to the storyline as shallow and incoherent, I felt the criticisms were unfair. It is true that philosophical debates were kept simple and condensed into three or four paragraphs, but is it reasonable to expect a video game, which main purpose is to entertain, to be akin to a philosophy textbook?
However, I do have two major criticisms.
First, I felt that the puzzles became repetitive at some point. To be sure, no puzzle is the same, and the grading difficulty ensures that you remain challenged. Still, all puzzles require you to use a limited number of devices such as portable jammers, crystalline refractors, boxes, fans and/or clone recording devices. That may sound like a lot, but after you have completed a few dozen puzzles, the novelty quickly dissipates.
With 138 available puzzles (including sigil, star, tower, messenger puzzles), I was already quite tired towards the end… Honestly, unless you revel in solving these sort of puzzles, I think the game could have been curtailed to about half of the puzzles and still retain its appeal. In fact, maybe a bit more variety could have been introduced, in place of a large number of puzzles.
My second criticism relates to the disconnection between the puzzles and the storyline. As mentioned above, the puzzles require you to navigate enclosed areas and retrieve the sigils by avoiding obstacles and use available devices/objects. However, none of these puzzles have any relevance to the philosophical aspects of the story.
In addition, the most interesting messages from the terminal were simply lost among innumerous undecipherable and simply irrelevant (boring) messages. If the story had been better integrated with puzzle solving, that would have made solving the puzzles more fun and would not take such a huge toll on working memory.
Lastly, I should mention that I experienced quite a lot of motion sickness playing The Talos Principle, something I had never experienced with other first-person perspective games. Unfortunately, none of the recommended settings to prevent motion sickness helped much (e.g., disabling the bobbling and blurring, switching to third-person perspective, changing the FOV and the speed). In the end, I was only able to play two/three puzzles daily without feeling nauseated for the remainder of the day.
I did not consider this aspect of the game to the final star rating, because it is likely that it will vary from gamer to gamer. But, be warned, if you are particularly sensitive to motion sickness, you might struggle playing this game for more than 30-40 minutes daily.
Star rating
If you are into puzzles, The Talos Principle is right up your street. There is a shedload of puzzles for you to solve and their increasing difficulty as you progress ensures that you won’t feel unchallenged.
Personally, I felt there were a tad too many puzzles. Reducing the number of puzzles to half while adding a bit more variety, as well as a better puzzle-story integration would have been beneficial in my view.
Notwithstanding these criticisms, I do highly recommend the game, as it is quite challenging and it has an awesome script.
Here, at Mindlybiz, The Talos Principle gets a star rating of 3.5.
Bizarrometer
The Talos Principle is bizarre in the sense that you don’t really know what is happening from the get-go. You start off playing an android which seems conscious, but there isn’t much information about who your makers were or for what purpose they created you.
There is plenty of philosophy of mind involved which quickly adds to the bizarreness. As you progress through the game, you do get occasional hints from Elohim and Milton about what is going on, but you will end up having to piece this sparse information together after finishing the game.
The ending(s) are ambiguous and open to interpretation, but with a few educated guesses and filling in the blanks you will finish the game with a sense of satisfaction.
For this reason, The Talos Principle gets a bizarrometer score of 3.
The Talos Principle (briefly) Explained! (spoilers)
Thousands of years before the events of the game, a virus with 100% fatality rate was released from Earth’s permafrost as a result of global warming. Several scientists hurried to compile as much information about the human race as possible and stored this information in large databanks with the hopes that it will be accessed by future civilisations.
One of these scientists, Dr. Alexandra Drennan, was working at the Institute of Applied Noematics, when she initiated the Extended Lifespan (EL) project. The EL was a collaboration among seven leading universities, with the intention to create a supercomputer that could simulate an AI (a virtual android) capable of human-like behaviour. If the AI passed a series of tests and showed that possessed consciousness and free will, the EL programme would be considered a success.
Realising that humans would long be dead before a suitable AI could be found, the EL team develops a computer simulation game with puzzles and riddles that would test the AI’s performance.
The EL programme was partitioned into two separate systems/drives. Drive 0 ran the actual virtual simulation, which was operated by an AI called Elohim, or rather EL-0:HIM (Extended Lifespan [Drive 0] Holistic Integration Manager). Elohim encourages the android to complete all puzzles, after which it would be granted eternal life.
The puzzles are distributed across three distinct sections positioned around a central tower. Elohim warns the android that, under no circumstances, the android should climb the tower, as for doing so would mean its certain death. In truth, Elohim had originally been programmed to guide the androids through the virtual simulation towards the tower. However, Elohim inadvertently gained sentience, and realized that if the android succeeds to reach the top of the tower, the computer simulation will have served its purpose, and the entire EL programme (including Elohim itself) would be deleted. Thus, Elohim tries at all costs to keep the simulation running by thwarting the androids’ efforts to climb the tower, under the pretext of death.
Throughout the game, the android also encounters several computers spread across the environment with messages about the imminent human extinction as well as philosophical texts. These computers form part of another AI called Milton Library Assistant. Milton initially pretends to be a simple computer programme, but eventually drops the charade and begins having sentient conversations with the android.
It is clear there is no love lost between Elohim and Milton. Elohim’s intentions is to keep the simulation going, whereas Milton encourages the android to defy Elohim so that it can bring the knowledge out into the real world. Because Milton resides in a drive different from that of Elohim, Elohim is unable to delete or influence Milton in any way.
Once the android shows intelligence (by completing all sigils) and free will (by defying Elohim and go up the tower), the computer simulation is deemed successful. All the data is then transferred to the actual physical android, Talos (formerly known as SOMA), that Dr. Drennan and her team constructed.
He gains consciousness and moves out of the Institute for Applied Noematics facility. Looking down at an Earth devoid of human beings, it is ready to fulfil his destiny: build a generation of AI and continue human’s legacy.
Before a detailed explanation of the game, we should be familiar with a few ideas regarding consciousness and free will. So let’s dive right into it!
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