It’s been over a decade since the original release of The Talos Principle, Croteam’s massively successful and critically acclaimed first person puzzle game. While the gameplay of the original and the philosophical narrative woven around it still holds up, the game is definitely looking its age compared to current releases, including its sequel. To remedy this, Croteam have reworked the original into a gorgeous Unreal 5 showcase, and added some new content for longterm fans.
Alongside the original game, Reawakened also includes the expansion Road to Gehenna and a brand new chapter called In the Beginning which serves as a prologue to the events of the main game and takes you back to the very first test of the Simulation (the world in which the game takes place). With 15 hours of content in the main game, 7 for the Road to Gehenna, and 5 or 6 for the new content there is plenty of puzzling goodness to be found here, with even more playtime for completionists.
Newcomers to the series might well be asking, ‘Ok, but what is The Talos Principle?’ Well, what you have here is one of the most thought-provoking and philosophical gaming narratives ever written. Tom Jubert and Jonas Kyratzes took all the best aspects of serious science fiction writing and combined them with a wide range of philosophy to produce an interrogation of being and meaning that perfectly complements the immersive puzzling. You begin by waking up in a weird and paradoxical world made up of classical architectural ruins and futuristic technology. A booming voice from a being who calls themselves Elohim sends you forth to explore and discover your true purpose.
This narrative pushes you through more than 120 individual puzzles and is effortlessly conveyed through a combination of voiced cutscenes and datalogs found in the many computer terminals scattered around the landscape. The questioning of technological breakthroughs and their effects on the meaning of humanity feel even more topical now than they did ten years ago – as is the case with all great science fiction.
Graphically, Reawakened is fantastic. The sacrifice here is that it will require a far more powerful system, but still one that is in keeping with ten years of hardware progression. Unreal 5 can be a tricky engine to master, but Croteam have done a fantastic job here with no real bugs or graphical issues in my time with the game. The extra complexity in lighting and atmosphere really adds to the game’s overall effect, especially given the importance of the former to many of the puzzles.
The open-ended structure from the original game is maintained as you can freely choose the order in which you tackle puzzles, with progression between the main stages requiring a specific set of shapes to be collected but not necessarily all of those available. This means that getting stuck on a puzzle is rarely a game-breaking obstacle as you can go and do other ones and come back to it if necessary. This ease of progression is a real benefit and prevents the frustration that many puzzle games suffer from when you get stuck.
Early puzzles are very simple and revolve around you using a signal jammer to force open gateways or turn off security turrets in order to collect the Tetris-like shapes in each level. As the game progresses, however, more complex combinations of jammers, light reflectors, blocks, and more come into play. While some puzzles seem unfathomably difficult at first, the nature of the level design means that you can break them down section by section and fine-tune your ideas until you solve them. They can require a degree of timing due to moving obstacles and robotic enemies, but even these reward thought over dexterity.
There are some quality of life improvements bundled in, a new rewind mechanic letting you revert the last few seconds if you’ve made a small mistake, and the time recorder now having checkpoints to help with sequencing actions together.
Perhaps the most exciting new addition to the Reawakened package is a fully functional puzzle editor which will enable the modding community to create new worlds and puzzles, effectively ensuring that The Talos Principle becomes endless. While I’ve never been one for level design myself, I look forward to seeing what comes out of this community and it looks like Croteam are excited to see what happens too.