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S2 Ep45: The Talos Principle
70 Plays7 years ago
Join Dave and Jake as they steel their wits and climb the Forbidden Tower in this week's episode! Thoughts? Comments? Requests for new episodes? Feel free to email them in! SoapstonePodcast@gmail.com
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Transcript
Meeting Elohim: The Beginning
00:00:13
Speaker
Behold child, you are risen from the dust and you walk in my garden. Hear now my voice and know that I am your maker and I am called Elohim.
00:00:30
Speaker
Wow, nice to meet you, Dad. I am looking forward to gardening. Oh look, a turd beep dot boop dot beep dot boop dot beep dot boop dot beep dot boop. Enough. Silence, demon. You will torment this one no more.
Introduction to the Hosts and Talos Principle
00:00:51
Speaker
How's it going, everyone? Welcome to another episode of Soapstone. My name is Jake. I'm joined by my co-host, as always, Dave. How's it going tonight, Dave?
00:01:01
Speaker
deep introspection. Good. That's a thoughtful good. I guess that means more or something.
00:01:12
Speaker
I was just looking for a minimum societal response, immediate good, you know, and you, you know, sorry, I'm not reading the cue cards. He's going off script. Uh, tonight we were talking about a game called the Talos principle. I like how you had to look at the monitor. I was glancing at levels. I'm going to do this forever, but, uh, Talos principle though, it's like a puzzle game or something. Yeah. Yeah.
00:01:40
Speaker
Cool. All right. Thanks. Yeah. It's one of, I shouldn't say a few. I'm not usually as avid a puzzler, Riddler, whatever their Quizzer, as they're called. I think Riddler is correct. I'm not so much a Riddler for my go-to, but I do like,
00:02:01
Speaker
Thinking logically, solving puzzles, getting to the end of something. And this game does a great job at that. It does have logical thinking, puzzles, and an end. Confirmed the game ends. But I just really liked it.
World-building and Atmosphere of Talos Principle
00:02:19
Speaker
I think, I don't remember if I watched a trailer and was interested or like somebody mentioned it to me.
00:02:25
Speaker
I think they're still on Steam and like, what's this? And it seemed kind of cool. But then as I got into it, they have a lot of good world building and atmosphere throughout the whole game. And that combined with the puzzles and challenges and everything, I was like, when I, when I get stumped, I was like, it's not like I feel defeated. I'm like, I'm coming back for you, motherfucker.
00:02:48
Speaker
Definitely I can empathize with that up to a point and then it just drops off entirely. It's just like the abyssal plane of interest but How would you how would you describe Talos as a puzzle game? So this is this is like a 3d? Kind of open. It's not an open world, but it is I mean, it's an adventure kind of first person. There's platforming. There's obstacles and
00:03:16
Speaker
It's really a lot of interacting with the individual components of each
Puzzle Mechanics and Challenges
00:03:21
Speaker
puzzle. So it's broken out into rooms, distinct areas, I think.
00:03:28
Speaker
Typically for each area, which is kind of themed for like different time periods. Um, there will be a hub area and then each hub area will have like level one. And in that level, they'll kind of have like a, Hey, here's how you teleport back to the hub. Right. And then there'll be like a couple of purple doors, which you can't take objects through. Right. And then when you walk in, we'll have the name of the puzzle. And it's usually something a little bit clever, like.
00:03:56
Speaker
Go fuck yourself getting over It's also like a hint most of the time right like it cuz if you understand the play on words then it tells you what your objective is for that certain ones are on the nose like
00:04:12
Speaker
There's a mechanic we'll explain a little bit more later where there's two different colors of lasers. And you have to hook up the one laser to the one receptacle and the other one to the other receptacle based off the color. And if the lasers touch each other, they kind of cancel each other out because they're at the exact same horizontal and vertical plane.
00:04:33
Speaker
Um, so it's called like crossing paths and like I fucking get it. Don't cross the beams or something like that. Yeah. Um, I know that, uh, there's, that's one of the messages you can get on the walls too. Like someone can paint is don't cross the beams. Yeah. So that's, that's a callback to that. Um,
00:04:53
Speaker
But yeah, like many puzzle games, they start out with kind of a reduced set of devices and tools, mechanics you have to deal with, and then they just continually add on top of that for later levels, with some exceptions where they kind of like scale back the complexity a little bit.
00:05:12
Speaker
I mean if they're doing a completely new mechanic. Mm-hmm. They might like Do eliminates like hey, it's just this thing. Yeah, we won't spooky. This is this is what it is Yeah, okay cool and next one's like also remember that other thing both of them go and it's not ever in a way of It's trying to trick you mm-hmm
00:05:37
Speaker
Cause 90% of the time it's something that you've experienced before. So like initially, when you first started out in the game and you're getting the, the talk through from God, you pick up this item called a jammer, which is like a little tripod camera like thing. And there's either like a.
00:06:01
Speaker
Laser door or like some like a force-fuelling machine. Yeah, and you you put it on and it freezes the thing Oh cool. So you now know you can use it to freeze bad things I want to kill you right or you can use it to disable those force field doors to pass through, right? Oh
00:06:19
Speaker
And then those are used throughout the game. And it's always to disable something. It's the only thing it does. Yeah. But there are also pressure plates in the game. Yeah, I was going to say. So I think there is one level where you have to disable a force field.
00:06:34
Speaker
It's like the seven it's a seven one. Yep motherfucker the first time I did that first playthrough. God Was rough, but you can put it down on the pressure plate to open one of the doors Yeah, and then also deactivate a door further down now that you've opened the door right in front of it. Mm-hmm
00:06:50
Speaker
So it's like the layers of application to the problem solving. You're just like, OK, I can use this piece to solve this part of the puzzle. But at the same time, you actually need to solve two pieces. And that kind of mental complexities at play for a lot of Talos principle. How can you use the part, the thing slightly different than you have in the past? Another example is the reflector lenses, which I think is the second thing you unlock after the jammer.
00:07:20
Speaker
not 100 sure the box might be first i think it's box box yeah um which is you know reminiscent of the companion cube but it's just a fucking box it's basically the same thing except like if you're um on the ground you can jump up to one box high or if you're on like an elevated position you can jump up on top of like a two box stack or something like that it depends on as long as you can make the jump you can jump up there basically um
00:07:46
Speaker
Also, this game has a lot more stacking things on top of boxes than Portal did, including the reflectors. Those are the laser connectors they were talking about where it's a blue or a red laser. You can grab a reflector and be like, hey, I'm going to connect it to that source and then to this destination.
00:08:08
Speaker
It'll go through. The game has another kind of cognitive shift with the reflectors, where instead of just finding the happy path to the solution, you have to develop a path to unlock some more pieces of the puzzle, more devices, and then go back and reconfigure your path to actually make it go to the solution. Yeah.
Narrative Elements and Enemies
00:08:31
Speaker
When you first starts out, you're like, that's the thing I want over there. Yeah. Like these little Tetris pieces called sigils. Yes. Which you then use to unlock other areas for like next levels or tools down the line. Right. So to a point you are gated by that where you have to complete certain things, but they're never things where you're like.
00:08:55
Speaker
Fuck this. It's always like... Unless you're me. Yeah, but it's like you need to meet this level of ability or skill before you can move on. Right. But you're never forced to 100% complete everything in each area. Right. You have the option to come back. The game's also very explicit about...
00:09:15
Speaker
Having tools that you don't have access to if you go to an area where that's required Like it's just flashes on the top of your screen like you need this you need this you need this and also I'm kind of contrasting this to the witness where you can find puzzles and you have no idea how to solve them and
00:09:36
Speaker
And this one, you know exactly. To the credit of the Talos principle, like at the front of each door, there's a little sign that's like, here's the puzzle. Here are the components that will be involved in it. And then it like checks it off when you completed it. And there's a bunch of little arrows and kind of in the overworld at each of these hubs. There were a point like, Hey, over here's the thing. Yeah, it's cross site. You're like, Oh, I already did that one. Yeah.
00:10:01
Speaker
Because it is like you said it is pretty open. Mm-hmm. Initially. It's like here's a box. There's three rows. Yeah But as it goes there's more stuff outside of just those little level areas. Those are kind of like containerized Mm-hmm in their own thing, but then there's like an area around it for like Nothing mandatory. Yeah, but it's like some optional stuff. They're trying to collect like challenge stars Every time to explore there might be like computer terminals or other things that help
00:10:32
Speaker
if you want to do more challenges or you just invested in the lore. Right. It flushes out the lore a lot more. So the game is broken out into I think it's areas A, B and C and then the tower, depending on your choices. And then each area has its own kind of distinct design and feel for it. So you start out in the ruins.
00:10:59
Speaker
Which has this like you've written here Greco Roman architecture, and I like that term Greco Roman And I would I refuse to say Roman now. It's always Greco Roman right yeah I like it, but that's where you're kind of you're dropped in there and Elohim starts talking to you and he's
00:11:19
Speaker
He's got this booming, I'm gonna say, bass enhanced voice. Oh my god. 100% feel it, like in the headphones every time he talks.
00:11:32
Speaker
just as an aside if you take too long on a puzzle he'll be like like my child like take some time like check out another puzzle and come back to this and using the phrase in that way much more like a deity yeah but he says it out of nowhere and so i'm just like oh my god you know like invest in the puzzle to immediately terrified like thanks elohim
00:11:55
Speaker
Um, but, uh, it's kind of an interesting character. He wants you to obtain the sigils, um, avoid climbing the tower and kind of prove yourself, you know, a worthy child or something. You know, how would you, how would you define Elohim's intentions here?
00:12:17
Speaker
That's the vibe I got and full disclosure. I did not beat the game either time We got this when it came out a while back and played But want to play again because it's been a couple years. Yeah, it came out in 2014 December and we played it in 2015 like early Damn. Yeah She asked your question though because the tangents it off. Mm-hmm
00:12:47
Speaker
Yeah. He's very, he's kind of like the narrator. Oh yeah. So you're kind of like being directed. Cause otherwise you're just like in a game, you're doing random puzzles and shit. So that's kind of giving you the impetus for like, you're doing these things to please your quotes, heavenly father. Yeah. Um, and then like, when you do a good job, he's like, well done. I can't do the voice. Yeah. But yeah, he's very.
00:13:16
Speaker
rewarding and very assuring about you going through the garden, solving these. I think they're called trials, he phrases them as. And dealing with the guardians, which are like the robots are trying to kill you. It's like one ball that if you move too close to it, it will home in on you and explode. You can kind of tell with like the laser tracking radius how close to get.
00:13:42
Speaker
It like it's dangerous. It pops up in a half deployed stage. It's like red lasers all over the place. And the other guardian is just a fucking minigun that also has like a laser that kind of goes out kind of like the scatter. It's very, you know, what the range is. Yeah. You're not like, oh, I fucked up my puzzle and got shot because I didn't know.
00:14:01
Speaker
It's functionally really similar to a larger cone portal to turret with higher damage. Yeah. It's stationary. You can't fuck around with that one so much. Yeah. And then there's also these little floaty orb guys that are electric. And they can't kill you. But they will shock you, like to start your screen if you bump into them. But they're just, I feel like almost, they're always there to break beams, I think. Yeah.
00:14:30
Speaker
Don't think there's any like real Craziness with boxes so much
00:14:37
Speaker
You can use them. I think early on you realize that you can place them to block things. Right. Like the electric guys or the explodey bombs. Because remember at one point there's two explodey bombs going in parallel? Yeah. And you're like, I can't get through that shit. But you take a box, you kind of put it in the path of one so that it kind of staggers them so you can run in between them if you time it correctly. Right.
00:15:02
Speaker
And then later on, you can also put boxes on top of the explodey assholes and jump on top of it. That's kind of the extent of boxes at that point. Like you said with the beams, it's initially like, how do I connect this beam? Level one, you're like, I connected it done. Level two, it's like, what if something was in the way? Yeah. It's just like, well, I quit the game. But a lot of it is like, you can't do the exact straightforward thing. You kind of have to.
00:15:32
Speaker
meander around a little bit. Remember the one that always
00:15:37
Speaker
fucks my ass a little bit, is there's like four sections to the room. And four, people call them laser walls, force field walls. Four force fields. And you have to use one laser to open a door, to open another door, and you have a couple of these reflector lenses. But then when you open the third one, it gives you access to the other color. And you have to connect that over.
00:16:07
Speaker
Even talking about it now. I don't remember how I did it, but you have to think about ways of like Which way can I shortcut it right if I open this door? It's basically trying to like you have limited tools and at a point you're like do I need an extra tool and
00:16:25
Speaker
that I don't yet have access to, or do I have everything that I need, and I need to arrange it in a way where you're creating either a redundancy to kind of like. Make it more efficient. Yeah, if you can kind of like free up one of your tools. Yeah. Because if you have like an extra reflector lens for like any level, you're like, easy. Yeah. You always feel shy of just one. Right. So you have to find that exact way to do it. Yeah. But like you were saying with the electric guy slides back and forth in like a little path,
00:16:54
Speaker
A lot of the receptacles for lasers will kind of fill up in like two seconds. You're like, oh cool, let me do that. Other ones take like five or six seconds. That is what they sound like. Slightly more, less human and more electric.
00:17:12
Speaker
Basically like electric when you're filling up a glass of water, you're like, uh-huh. It's gonna overflow That's what it sounds like. That's what it sounds like But like using a box you can put the reflector lens on top. Oh, yeah, and then the laser Yeah, it's higher than the electric guy. Yeah, or maybe you need to block the electric guy with a box Yeah, so the path doesn't cross the laser and other things Yeah, there's no talk sure, but I'm gonna sit my coffee. That's all right. My midnight coffee. Oh
00:17:40
Speaker
Yeah, there's a lot of like using those tools to in kind of unique ways, because like looking at the list here, there's six tools that they introduced to you. And most levels, did you call it a hexahedron? That's what that's what it's actually called when it's introduced.
00:17:57
Speaker
Oh my god, but they are just boxes. Yeah, there's actually a QR conversation with QR codes So you're not the only person going through this is part of the story One you're a robot. Oh boy spoilers spoilers but there's other children of Elohim which are different iterations of
00:18:17
Speaker
base models kind of going through this. So like version 40.2.0040, something like that, revision, whatever. And then when they die or when they expire or they give up, then they spawn sub processes that then start over and can try to make it to the end.
00:18:37
Speaker
What's a genetic algorithm? Yeah, basically. But there's a conversation basically when you get the box for the first time and there's a bunch of QR codes on the wall, which you can actually scan with your phone. There's one QR code I found in the game that didn't have any text attached to it. So I just brought up my phone and scanned it and read the message.
00:18:58
Speaker
But you can scan all the rest of them Or just point at most of them in the game and it shows you the text right there But there's a conversation about like whether they're technically Hexahedrons or not and all this and they're like their boxes guys their boxes But you get that you get fans which allow you verticality and You can launch yourself if it's a powered fan Or you can launch other things
00:19:29
Speaker
So fans are always attached to gears and either fans will be powered by default or they'll need a power source from something like a laser or maybe like a pressure plate. But there are ones that go like vertically straight up. So if you put something on it like a box, you can put a laser on top of it and it'll stay stable and just elevate it. Or you can elevate yourself and be like, I claim dominion of all that I survey.
00:19:57
Speaker
You can't get the puzzle piece from there, but you can certainly be floaty. But there are times you need to go up on a box or get high and then go somewhere else. Right. The game's like, take a break, light up, come back. But yeah, there are also angled ones. Right. So it's usually like, hey, you're in room A. Here's room B over here. And there's no door.
00:20:26
Speaker
But maybe you need to like take an item and then jump on a fan and kind of move your tools around from certain configuration. Right.
00:20:36
Speaker
Yeah, it's not my favorite mechanic, but there's a couple cool times it was used. Like you can stack, there's one puzzle that requires you, usually you can only put like an item on a box. If you're on ground height, you can put a box down, you can put an item on a box, maybe a reflector lens. And so you put that all on one of these fans, that's gonna go straight up in the air. And it doesn't go high enough for one of these puzzles.
00:21:01
Speaker
And the solution is you can get a bunch of other boxes and like shove them underneath that box that's floating, and it'll push the box higher and higher and higher until the reflector lens pops out. Defying physics. Yes. It doesn't actually make any sense. The fan's working that much harder.
00:21:20
Speaker
But it's a cool kind of solution. It does kind of tap into one sort of gripe I have with the game and that's that sometimes there's a novel solution that is not mechanically well defined until you figure it out. In that particular case it's a good example though.
00:21:41
Speaker
because it's just like, oh, cool, I can do this. It's just, as far as I recall, and you can correct me if I'm wrong, because you've played more, you don't need to reuse that mechanic like elsewhere. You stack multiple boxes underneath one fan. Incorrect. If you had beaten the game, there's a part in the tower, which there are different endings. You can just beat the game, which is kind of like your standard playthrough. I wasn't going to make it to the tower. Just say no. Okay. Like in the recording?
00:22:10
Speaker
No, okay. But if you decide to go up the tower, you're kind of defying Elohim, but you have to do these extra out-of-room puzzles. Okay. And it gives you like these... It's kind of like in Portal 2, you go back to like the legacy testing sites. This stuff's all broken and leaking all over the place. Not that mess. It's really straightforward. It's like very...
00:22:37
Speaker
It's not designed like ancient Egypt or Greece or anything like that. Right. It's just kind of like metal. Like somebody just made a little test. Right. But there is one where you have some boxes and you have some fans and you need to be up essentially three blocks high. So you stand on one box.
00:23:03
Speaker
Oh, I'm forget. It doesn't matter. Oh, yeah. But essentially you reuse that. Okay. You're on both boxes and you have a third box and you drop it down under you. You're trying to like let it go, but there's a fan that's blowing into your fan upstream. So it puts another one under you. So you're then high enough. Gotcha. Gotcha. I see.
00:23:23
Speaker
So a lot of things will come back. It's not like, gee, that was cool. Never use it again. A lot of it will build on. Like if you have more than one jammer, cause a lot of times you want to like free up your tools, get them from point A to point B where you can actually use them for good or evil. So like, let's say you have one jammer, right?
00:23:50
Speaker
And you use that to jam a door. Yes. Um, since that door is being jammed, you can go to the other side. How do you get that jammer that you're using to jam to open that door? I get the other side on the other side. You need a second jammer, right? So do you have two jammers? You can jam the door from both sides, take one to the other side. And then you just bring those two with you and you can kind of go through any one door.
00:24:13
Speaker
Yeah, you can make your way through like an entire passage of force fields with two jammers. And you might be thinking like, what if I just kind of like finagle the jammer, like grab it real quick, put it close to the door and grab it. If it's on the other side of the door, there's like a special animation, I think, where you always like walk forward to the jammer before you pick it up to prevent you from being able to sneak you. You just can't jank it. Yeah, I'd be interested to see. And I should have looked this up, but see like speed running for this.
00:24:42
Speaker
I see what glitches people have found if they exist. And they must. I remember if I saw a glitched one, but back in the day I did watch one. Yeah. And they just knew everything and they just did it really quickly. Yeah. And I think they beat the whole game in like.
00:24:59
Speaker
It had to have been like around half an hour. That's pretty impressive. They just didn't talk about. For comparison to get the endings and kind of play through the game, it was estimated like 16 hours for us. So half an hour is like pretty quick. It's pretty quick. Yeah. I think a lot of time is like, I'm going to figure shit out and maybe do some optional stuff.
00:25:21
Speaker
Yeah. But yeah, that's that's kind of the fan there. The next tool is introduced is one that like really adds the most complexity out of them. But it's a really unique device. Talk to us for a minute about our Lord and Savior. That sound means it's time for intermission where we talk about whatever we want to talk about.
00:25:53
Speaker
We won't talk about so today Got some stuff going on in the news figured we'd throw some updates out there for those of us who are listening to this in the future as Opposed to people who are listening to this right now of which there is no one
Broader Gaming Topics and Sekiro Discussion
00:26:09
Speaker
uh sekiro will have been released which is or sekiro sekiro sekiro which is uh fromsoft's new ninja dark souls yeah it looks good seems like um i'm sure they look good gameplay look good and then they had like some early showcase for people who are part of like the game community a lot of youtube people who are in that
00:26:37
Speaker
Seen who I follow had like some footage and like Their thoughts on it. I look good. I know that he's been jumping on this as a An attempt to like maintain a career on YouTube That's pretty necessary I think
00:26:55
Speaker
But the thing is, I don't think I'm going to jump into it because, per my own self-hatred, I have not... I haven't really beaten Neo, or even beaten the first boss of Neo, or even fucking going back to Bloodborne. I haven't beat the first boss there either. So I feel like I should go back.
00:27:17
Speaker
take my lumps and then try secure because it's going to be more challenging than previous titles. I think for me in that franchise, if, uh, well, Nio's Nio's outside of, uh, from soft thing, but if a game drops its review score on steam enough, like, and it falls off the most playlist for me and Nio's actually at that. I think they were, if not mixed, it was just mostly positive or something like that.
00:27:43
Speaker
It actually has some significant detractors. So I'm like, yeah. Bloodborne is still on the must playlist because a lot of people, that's their favorite. It's always like, let alone like in the main series.
00:28:00
Speaker
But same for me. I'll get to Sekiro eventually, but it's it's single player. So it's like Doesn't matter too much as long as I don't like massively get spoiled about something that matters. Yeah, so I think it's gonna be for the experience
00:28:14
Speaker
The one thing for me, like a lot of my quotes being good at Dark Souls is from just persistence and getting that progression over time where I become stronger. Right. But in Sekiro, it seems like you don't really tech up as much as sideways. Right. From a lot of the coverage and demos, it seems like you just, you get utility skills, diversify your bonds. If you are good, you can kind of leverage those to make things easier for you.
00:28:44
Speaker
But I'm not sure how that necessarily works for boss fights as much. I've not seen all the abilities, obviously.
00:28:50
Speaker
But auto is like different ways to approach something, but you still need to be good. Yeah. So I'll put you on the spot here. What do you think the Metacritic score for the game will be? You can pick any console that comes out on and we'll, we'll revisit it next time. It's going to be most popular on PS4. Yes. Fucking obvious. Um, but I would expect it to be in the high nineties, honestly.
00:29:19
Speaker
I'd agree. Like it's had a lot of hype since E3 before that. When they just had like a wooden arm and like a string, people are like, Fromsoft's making the game. And then like the hype was nuts. And I don't expect them to drop the ball in like a mechanics or story fashion. It seems like they got their shit together and I expect it to go well. It's also possible for too much hype to actually hurt the reception of a game though too.
00:29:48
Speaker
Not saying that would be the case here, but it's it is something in the industry. No man should say such a thing. Well, the sky is the limit as far as hype goes, so I'm going to give you a high five between the legs here. That was beautiful. We sure go. That was awesome. But we'll see what goes goes on with that. And we'll probably do a little follow up and see how how correct we are. I'll say like I'll say 85 to 90 and be contrary. But in my heart's heart, I hope that you're more correct than I am.
00:30:17
Speaker
Coming off of that, Epic Games Launcher continues to be competitive in the Games Launcher space. There's Oxenfree, which is available until April 4th. They're going to have The Witness giving away free games, always cool. Quantic Dream's been releasing their games on the Epic Store. That's pretty cool. Detroit Become Human. When that's on PC, I recommend it for people. I played it on PlayStation. I enjoyed it.
00:30:43
Speaker
Is that from the same people who did Heavy Rain? Yes. Nice. They've had some other games that were not received as well, but I like both of those. I didn't play Heavy Rain. I played Indigo Prophecy. Wow, you fucking hit it. I know, I know, right. I could have just sold it too. I was like, yeah, yeah, I totally played that.
00:31:01
Speaker
Also, Division 2 is released on Epic and not Steam, so some other publishers, big publishers, that was Ubisoft in that case, go into the Epic Games Store for that extra piece of the pie that they provide for people who publish their games.
00:31:15
Speaker
Steam's got to pick it up. Other stuff kind of going on. Hotz is getting rid of their paid loot boxes. It's on PTR right now as of this recording. That's really weird. I don't think there's been a strict justification or not, but in the past we've talked about microtransactions a lot on the podcast and I could count on probably zero hands the number of times that microtransactions have completely been removed from a game.
00:31:43
Speaker
So my question is why hots and not set like 17 other other titles because like Overwatch obviously still has it. Hearthstone still has it. Right. Do you think they're just trying to move away because it's gotten so much negative press? I would I would almost guess that in this case hots was the low earner.
00:32:02
Speaker
for them for microtransactions. But they're e-sportsing. Yeah, they're non-existent. But it probably hurts the bottom line less. This allows them to kind of remarket the game. Yeah, it's a show of good faith. So we'll see exactly where that ends up.
00:32:20
Speaker
System Shock 3 released their teaser, which I'm excited for. I played System, System Shock 2 and we're all fans of Bioshock here. So, uh, kind of seeing how, whether that, that parent has gone senile in its old age and whether it's entirely up on Bioshock to support it, you know, we'll, we'll know, uh, someday. But I think the last time we heard news about this game is 2015. So I want to believe, I don't know if I do hashtag cyber fuck.
00:32:54
Speaker
playback okay so I forget the first time you see it exactly but it's essentially you I think you have like one jammer one block and then you have this like little
00:33:08
Speaker
shitty box with like a knob on it and you're like, the fuck does this do? So you go up and it starts recording. Right. And you kind of like see like the static and like a timer going at the bottom. You have five minutes. So you turn it off and then you see a ghost image of yourself doing what you were just doing. Yeah.
00:33:26
Speaker
So essentially you have to use your ghost playback to kind of copy any Objects in the world or interact with things, right? So in the first case, I think I had ghost to me just stand on a pressure plate Yeah, I'm like, oh I'm gonna go over here and then do this other thing Yeah, cuz I had one jammer and two doors or something like that. So then that opened two doors for
Philosophical Depth and Player Decisions
00:33:49
Speaker
me. Mm-hmm. Just using my old self, right?
00:33:54
Speaker
But you can also copy the objects. Look, let's say there was a jammer in that room. Your ghost or past self can jam a door.
00:34:06
Speaker
And then also, you can jam a door. So it kind of doubles your possibilities. And remember there's one time in Egypt, which is the second area, where you have the force field, there's a fan, there's a laser, and there's where the laser needs to go, and then there's like three doors.
00:34:26
Speaker
And the first time around I did that, I fucked up multiple times. There's a lot of times you're like, I think I did enough with my ghost. Let me end my recording. Uh-huh. And then I'll go do these things. Yes. Yeah. And maybe it has you like trapped behind a wall. You're like, well, fuck. Yeah. Or something else. And you're like, oh, I missed the piece that I needed to do. Yeah. So you really have to plan out ahead of time what you want to do. Yeah. So like later on in the game, I just go and like stand to play. So I just count out a lot of like one, two,
00:34:55
Speaker
And at the same time, I'm thinking what actual me will be doing once the recording stops. Yeah. Because you have to work in parallel, basically. Yeah. You just record in serial and execute in parallel. That's literally that's basically how this works. The other ghost devices are really cool.
00:35:12
Speaker
I really like that. I think one of the puzzles has you use your ghost to you provide charge. You set up a reflector in such a way that it'll provide charge for a platform or for a fan.
00:35:30
Speaker
and launch something higher up in the air. And then you have to switch back. You record that, providing the charge, and then switch back to reality. Put something on the platform that'll be lifted up. Use the same reflector to actually run over, connect it to the door, run back, make sure that you left enough time on your ghost to not turn the power on yet.
00:35:54
Speaker
You've now connected it so the reflector will go all the way to the exit door. I know which one you're talking about. Yeah, and up to the wall. But if you record too early, if you turn the power on too early, then the fan will be on and you can't stack the block and the reflector. So you literally have to give yourself time to execute it. You can't be too quick on the reflector with a replay, I should say. So there are some things with
00:36:18
Speaker
Like anytime you are jumping in the game, like if you're jumping to a platform or like a box or a hexahedron, it will show like feet there and you press space and animation goes. Yeah. You get like a special jump basically. Yeah. But there are times like you're trying to do it too quick and it's not, the animation isn't primed or it doesn't show yet.
00:36:40
Speaker
Every time is like where my ghost is running off without me. I'm like what I what didn't account for my fuck off And then I have to go and redo it. Yeah, and you're not recording more than like I think at most I did a minute. Yeah, I don't that was like a decent buffer of time. Mm-hmm
00:36:55
Speaker
Usually I give myself like 15 seconds per section and I'm really slow. Um, but yeah, the game is really forgiving with the amount of time it gives you. It's five minutes maximum for all recordings. And it's just like, you went AFK basically recording and came back and just like look at yourself. You're like, God damn, he's so pretty.
00:37:15
Speaker
I think there actually is a, um, there's an achievement for greeting your recording. I don't know how you get it. It's not for, is it for your recording or is it for like the other part in the end game?
00:37:28
Speaker
There's one for recording and then there's another one for leaving a message with your recording and then reading it in real time. And that was just like, this is something I would literally never get in gameplay. But you can leave like QR codes like the game has. They have like special messages which are actually like fixed and
00:37:51
Speaker
It's part of the game. Think of it like Dark Souls, where sometimes there were developer messages that could have different text than what the normal templates could have, but you can leave templated messages, and whoever else you have that are your Steam friends will be able to see those messages. They're pretty much all worthless, which is different than Dark Souls, but they're just things like, I beat this one in 20 seconds,
00:38:16
Speaker
and like make sure to trust Elohim or like the deceiver is out to get you stuff like that. Who's the deceiver, Jake? The deceiver, Dave, is a... Dave is not the deceiver. I'll declare it by that one. The deceiver, comma, Dave, comma.
00:38:37
Speaker
essentially an AI that you can encounter in terminals throughout the game. It is the Milton Library Assistant, or MLA. And basically, it starts off and it just seems like it's a helper program, doesn't have like sentience or anything like that. And as the game unfolds, he starts
00:39:00
Speaker
Being more sassy toward you, you're like, all right, this is maybe not just a helper program. And then it starts questioning your choices and things. And it brings up a lot of the philosophical questions that the game asks. Like, what is a person? It's like, what is goodness? What are all of these things?
00:39:24
Speaker
To boil down a lot of interactions with it, you can have, uh, he's basically a nihilist and he just doesn't believe, uh, in human consistency for any of these terms. And so regardless of what stance you take, you're just like, Oh, animals can be people because they can feel pain or, you know, some other argument. He'll always argue against you. Um, unless you just like give up entirely, then he's like, correct.
00:39:54
Speaker
But if you talk to him enough, eventually Elohim is just like, like, don't talk to that guy. He's bad, bad juju. And much more deific language.
00:40:09
Speaker
And there's actually I there's an achievement I think depending on like how there's a couple achievements depending on how you interact with them One of them I you can promise to like bring him to the tower and like bring him outside There's another achievement you can get for like winning a logic argument with them somehow which I did not get I
00:40:31
Speaker
Um, or you can just like shut them down entirely and just be like, I'm not talking to you like, like SDF you were out. Um, but it's kind of an interesting, like you were talking about the terminals adding lore to it. This is where a lot of that comes in. Yeah. Um, this and like outside emails from human civilization and things like that, which they're like snippets throughout the terminals of like,
00:41:01
Speaker
I don't want to spoil too much as I'm spoiling the whole game. But there's like snippets of like little TXT files or like emails or corresponds between people. Things here and there. And there's also throughout the levels.
00:41:16
Speaker
This, uh, binary stream in like a shape. Oh yeah. Or as you run into, you hear a voice log of a researcher, Alexandra, somebody it's like Brennan or Brandon or something. It's right there. Uh, Drennan Alexandra Drennan. Well, he said Brandon.
00:41:33
Speaker
Yeah. I said Brennan or Brandon. Nick Fannan. So you listen to Brandon. Alexander Brandon. Kind of have like these snippets of
00:41:48
Speaker
Kind of like going back over her life and trying to like derive meaning from it. Like when she went on vacation with her family. Yeah. And they went to Egypt. Well, I think this happens when you're in the Egypt there, which is in the second area. Yeah. Land of the dead. It's Egypt.
00:42:08
Speaker
So she's kind of talking about her experience there and how at a point she was in like a, like an empty street that, you know, used to be a main street. Yeah. A long ass time ago. She's like, people used to live here. Like this used to be a part of society and now it's just a wasteland and graveyard essentially. And that kind of freaked her out. Right. And so like all of these things are kind of going through her life and experiences and
00:42:38
Speaker
It kind of goes along with you talking to MLA for like what it means to be an individual, to be a person. What does life mean? Right. So it gets into like all of these things, but it's not in a.
00:42:57
Speaker
Heavy-handed way it's I don't feel it's trying to Drive home a certain narrative. I think it's just in a Thought-provoking way. Yes, you are a robot. Yes, and like the end of the game it does kind of tie in but you find out through these logs and from like listening to the voice recordings and
00:43:19
Speaker
that humanity essentially got fucking nuked. Not literally, but basically, yeah. And I don't think it's that much of a, it's a bit of a spoiler, but I mean, the game's also- It's not gonna impact the game. Yeah, and the game's like five years old now, but it's how she and her coworkers at this company, this institute,
00:43:45
Speaker
and how humanity as a whole deals with the inevitability of extinction. Um, which is really cool. And it also, they, they take a spin on it that sci-fi usually doesn't like the degradation of society usually leads to this like post-apocalyptic like Mad Max. It's always post-apocalyptic and, uh,
00:44:11
Speaker
Fuck with the other word, dystopian societies. Exactly. But uh, in Talos principle, it's not that it's like, what if, what if humanity was doomed, they knew it, they could do nothing about it. And the majority of people accept it or figure out like how to make the most of their remaining lives without like tearing apart society. Right. Um.
00:44:35
Speaker
And that's the premise that leads into pretty much everything that happens in the game. And I give him points for coming at that from a less pessimistic angle.
00:44:50
Speaker
Yeah, that all leads into what the Talos Principle actually is. And the game doesn't actually have that many secrets about what happened on the outside.
Simulation Revelation and Society's Fate
00:45:01
Speaker
I think the first 20 or 30% of the game, you don't really know about what's going on outside or what's gone on outside.
00:45:10
Speaker
And then pretty much everybody knows like even the other children of Elohim are talking about. They're like, yeah, society's doomed. There's nothing left. There's no reason to go out there.
00:45:26
Speaker
The other thing that kind of happens throughout the game You'll see like some glitches like there's a level you get to where like you see through the walls and shit and you're like Can I just go over there and get the thing? And then Elohim says like stop and then everything kind of goes back into order Yeah, but you immediately know like if you had any doubts from like looking at your hands You're not human. You're not in a real world, right? You're in a program simulation station
00:45:55
Speaker
It's true facts. And Elohim actually, he does that one other point. So he's talking about how he'd scare me if I was spending too much time on a puzzle, right? And there's one point where one of the AI, or not AI, but another one of the children, a hologram of a child, one of the children, runs at you. They look the same as you do, basically, like a little robot.
00:46:20
Speaker
Humanoid robots, they're not little. I digress. Runs at you screaming, and Elohim just yells, cease! And then it just vanishes, and I'm like, what is going on? To be fair, you played how late? I played, like, I think I'm the latest, I played till, like, five. AM. AM, yeah. I have the week off. I was playing during normal hours, and Jake's like, I'm off this week, fuck it.
00:46:45
Speaker
The game also has a lot of easter eggs, and one of them looks like a claw up on a ledge. And you can see the claw, and if you walk forward to the claw, an old man voice yells, like, fly you fools! And then the claw either vanishes or falls off or whatever.
00:47:07
Speaker
And this was like the peak of late night. I'm already super, super tired playing this game. I almost pee myself immediately because this game just wants to shout things at me randomly. I don't know what volume you're playing at, but it sounds nuts. Yeah, I definitely had it up a little bit too loud. Yeah.
00:47:32
Speaker
What else, uh, what else about the Talos principle shines, shines to you? Cause I know that you've completed the game multiple times now, whereas I have completed the game zero times. Um, so I just want to say in front of Elohim and everybody, it's not hard for me to finish. We did skip one tool or mechanic.
00:47:52
Speaker
That's true the platforms which are the platforms which are like little Do you remember those shitty? Kind of like light blue but clear plastic things from Legos that were like windows. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that's what these remind me. That's what it is exactly so They're only used in conjunction with playback if I recall. Yes, but I think they're actually worthless. Otherwise, I
00:48:17
Speaker
other than putting them on platforms or like switches to open doors. Yeah, they do have weight. Thank God. But normally, if you are carrying a box, you can put it on a thing. You can't have a box that also is carrying something like a reflector lens.
00:48:34
Speaker
Right. But if you have, let's say, a platform that is flat, you can jump on that shit or put a box on that shit. So you now use this with your ghost and there's an area where you were like, I can't jump up that high, but I can put a box here and then jump up on the box and jump up on my ghost and jump up on the thing. And you can like, there's a point where you actually have to have
00:49:03
Speaker
Your ghost ferry you yes across to a ledge and then go around the other side. This is the short wall the short wall Yeah, yeah, and like that's the only That's the whole level. Yeah, and like you figure out pretty quick like yeah And the lot of say I was just gonna say like that's pretty much all it is except for
00:49:25
Speaker
There's one level where it has like a castle theme and you have to do your playback, but you have to put a box on your ghost with the platform. Yes. It walks around to the other side. You have to come up a ladder quick and it jumps and you have to like grab the box from it so you can get it to like a higher area to put on a pressure plate.
00:49:47
Speaker
Huh, okay. I actually did the sequencing different for that puzzle. I know which one you're talking about. What did you do? I'm trying to recall exactly what it was, but I basically ended up I had all of the pieces there. So what I did is there's a ledge. You have to stand on the platform that your ghost is holding and then like jump up to a ledge.
00:50:09
Speaker
And you have to get a box also up to that ledge is basically the goal. If you get that, then you have your wind condition. But what I did is I went over there and I put the box next to the ledge.
00:50:26
Speaker
then so I had my ghost pick me up or like I jumped on my ghost went over had him jump up and then I Grabbed the box. Oh, no before I jumped up I grabbed the box off the ground put it up and then I like jumped up basically I had everything there and my ghost did very little other than stand there and Take care of things for me. It's I also realized I can't imagine everybody's listening has any idea what the fuck we're talking. I actually realized that like
00:50:52
Speaker
Like a while ago, I was like, I don't know why I'm trying to decide any of these or describe any of these puzzles. All right, now picture spatially exactly what we're talking about. Yeah, it's like we know about the puzzle and I can't even describe exactly what I did. You're triggering for me, like people with memories, other people like, is this a good game? Are they literally trying to spatially describe puzzles for mechanics that we don't comprehend?
00:51:15
Speaker
Maybe a bad call on her, but might be. Yeah. So anyways, it's a game. So between not that great and pretty good, how do you feel about Talos principle? The principle itself, not the game.
00:51:33
Speaker
I really like the game. There's certainly one or two minor complaints I could come up with if forced, but I really have enjoyed the pacing of it. I really enjoy the world building and theming.
00:51:51
Speaker
There's a third area, which just kind of has all the things, kind of an amalgamation, called Area C, but the hub world for that is like a gothic cathedral. And one of the reasons you know is because the lighting is using your eyes. The other way is the fucking music they have for it, which we play at the beginning, which me saying that now makes sure that we will actually put it as part of the intro. Right, do we want that at the intro?
00:52:20
Speaker
Fucking do okay. All right. It's so high. It's just it's really good That is pretty good. Did you like that word that choice of verbiage? Yeah, I mean like it's not it's not super descriptive But you know we can work with good. I think I think It's like it's a fucking puzzle game like that music makes you feel like it's an otherworldly experience
00:52:44
Speaker
It is a very atmospheric puzzle game. Yeah. Usually puzzle games focus a lot on the mechanics because they have to because if they don't have mechanics, then they're not puzzle games. But that's usually a lot of times that's where they stop. Talos Principle also has some like a lot of theology philosophy.
00:53:02
Speaker
and atmosphere out the wazoo. Yeah. And I don't even know whether this guy has a wazoo, basically a robot, but there's atmosphere coming out of that. But things are definitely out of that wazoo. You don't say it.
00:53:19
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, I have my list of gripes for the game, but overall, if you like puzzle games and you like take breaks, I think is pretty key for this. Yeah, definitely. It helps fatigue you less. The thing that got me like the first time I played was I really, really, really did not want to look up solutions to puzzles. Can I share a story?
00:53:41
Speaker
Do you want to share the story for what happened the first time I played? I'll make corrections and addendums at the end. Back in the day, when we played around like the same time. Jake and I were still working together and like typically people go out for lunches together. So long ago, yeah.
00:53:59
Speaker
Anyway, as we went to saladworks and we were just like chatting, but he was stuck on this puzzle as I was also stuck on this puzzle. And for the whole lunch, we talked about how the fuck we would solve this one puzzle. And it was really cool to be like, I'm stumped by this, but I want to figure it out.
00:54:17
Speaker
Did you ever actually look up solutions or? I solved that one. So this is, this is what did me in is I spent like an hour, I think trying that one came out, talked about it. We like, we literally were like diagramming solutions, I think at work on a notepad at some point. And I was like, all right, I actually, I think like we can solve this. Came back with a fresh perspective, solved the puzzle. And I was like, this is hype. This is like the height of it.
00:54:44
Speaker
like i finally freaking solved this thing then i went and went back to the the outside area outside the puzzle went to the next puzzle immediately got stumped and all of my interest in the game just drained a zero because i didn't get to experience that that like
00:55:03
Speaker
High of accomplishment for that long before the game was just like you still have no idea what's going on Like sure you're very laughing
Pacing and Player Experience
00:55:11
Speaker
at trips you yeah, it's basically They just gun you down on the victory lap I like to have the academy circuit off the stage Okay
00:55:20
Speaker
But the thing is, if you're playing this game at a less aggressive pace, or you're more casual about the puzzles, or you're playing for the puzzles themselves, as opposed to trying to just get through all of it, then you'll have a much healthier mindset, I think, for approaching the game.
00:55:41
Speaker
Um, the pacing was, was my downside, but that's also like the way I was approaching the game. That's not necessarily a fault against the game itself. I'm not going to fault the Talos principle for having puzzles in its puzzle game. Nobody told me. And the game, I think, I don't know how expensive it is now at launch. It was slightly pricey for a puzzle game is like 30 or 40 or something. I think it's 30. Yeah. I've not seen it recently for more than 15.
00:56:11
Speaker
Mm-hmm. You said 15, right? Yeah, okay has more than 50. They've raised the price I mean they do now have a DLC also which came out shortly after called Road to Gehenna, right with some other additional challenges It's harder and that's all I remember yeah, I don't think I'd beat that one I have no comment for the deal. I might go back and check it out But I will say also
00:56:38
Speaker
Whenever you leave, way tangential back, whenever you leave one of the hub worlds, like you, let's say cleared area A or you have enough stars to like go access the elevator, you go up and then you're in like another hub where you can go between A, B and C and then you see a tower and Elohim's like, Hey, don't go up the tower.
00:56:59
Speaker
Yeah, this is this is the forbidden fruit. Yeah, it's literally that allegory. He's like I hate fruits. I hate this tower but you look up and It goes into the sky. It's you can't see the top of it and The higher up it goes the more like dark and stormy and fucking crazy. It looks you're like, oh shit Yeah, cuz it's kind of just made of rock but there's like different platforms jutting out and stuff you make I
00:57:24
Speaker
Are those puzzles? They look like they could be puzzles. Um, but it's really cool if you decide to go up it, which I mean, you should, it's pretty good game content. You're doing some of these out of the ordinary. Like you're not in a, like I said, you're on a themed area. Right. You're just doing these things kind of make you think outside of the box a little bit, but also bring maximal mechanics then in between each thing. Um,
00:57:53
Speaker
Cause he can't track you when you're on the elevator, but when you're in between, he's like, Hey, uh, what's going on? Thought we had this thing. Yeah. And then after you get at the top of the elevator, you have this sequence of things.
00:58:08
Speaker
which really makes you think that's out of the box. There's another robot there that's actively trying to help you. And then there's another one that's actively trying to be a douche. Really? Yeah. So like, let's say there's a laser that you set up. You're going to connect these two things. He'll go and step on a panel that like brings up a wall that blocks it. And then he gives you the double burn. He's like verbatim exactly what happens. Um,
00:58:35
Speaker
But there was a point where I was stuck actually there. But the storm that you see when you look up from the bottom of the tower is actually rising. So if you take too long, everything gets much more chaotic and crazy and dark, and it's harder to see. It's not that bright, sunny day. And pieces of platforms will start to go missing.
00:58:57
Speaker
And I
Conclusion and Listener Engagement
00:58:59
Speaker
was like, does that thing just fuck? And I just fell through and died. And I was like, Oh shit. So it is timed. You have plenty of time when you, but I did not realize that there was actually a time component until I got fucked. So when they, uh, when you, when you die in any of the puzzles, they like do a quick re rewind to the start of it. If you rewind in this section, does it like undo the storm and the damage to the room? It brings you back to the very beginning of where you started that quotes room. Right.
00:59:27
Speaker
This is kind of like this unofficial time sequence sort of. It's like a three or four part.
00:59:36
Speaker
thing as you are going up the tower. It's like a series of puzzles. It was all one final challenge, which is pretty hype. I did a good job with that. It was pretty cool. Yeah. I'm not familiar with that and probably won't be for a while, but, uh, Tao's principle, pretty solid game. Play it. If you like puzzle games, play it. If you like games with principle in the name.
01:00:01
Speaker
Thank you, everybody, for listening to this episode of Soapstone. As always, you can reach out to us at our Gmail Soapstone podcast at gmail.com or like us on Facebook if you like us on Facebook. Facebook.com slash Soapstone podcast. Always happy to interact with fans there. And until next time, we'll see you in the next one. Bye.