I want to rave a bit about The Talos Principle.
Steam tells me I've played 5 hours and I feel like I'm
barely scratching the surface (although I play quite slowly and methodically).
It's probably been reviewed properly enough times by now, so I won't, but I
will summarise by saying that in my opinion it offers the rarely-seen
combination of excellently designed puzzles; rich, beautiful artwork, and an immersive
story and universe.
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| Confusing, weird, and very pretty. |
Last night I was stuck for around 40 minutes on one of the
star puzzles. I had searched everything on this island twice and was feeling
utterly, utterly defeated at the hands of this (as it turned out not too
difficult) puzzle. My attempts: initially systematic, then frantic, had become
completely random and I was close to losing all hope. Just then, at what felt
like the last second, I spotted the trick I was looking for and within 20
seconds had the puzzle complete.
My head fell into my hands and I spent a good 30 seconds
just breathing and clearing my thoughts. A real sense of desperation, and genuine
stress had crept into me attempting this not-roadblocking, not-time-pressured,
not-mentally intensive puzzle. I needed to calm down. I needed to recover. It
was a very unusual, but deeply satisfying experience.
There are two points about this anecdote I want to
emphasise.
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| Pretty pretty pretty. |
First is that The Talos Principle featues excellently
designed puzzles. Although IMO the difficulty skews a little toward too easy
throughout the game overall (caveat: I'm only about 20% of the way through),
there are difficult ones out there (generally the stars, which don't seem essential for progress at my stage
in the game), and all of the puzzles are incredibly elegant. It is actually
very hard, and requires a lot of time and energy, to get stuck in the Talos
Principle, because even if you can't see what works, you can usually see a few
things that might work, and
experimentation has a lovely tendency to reveal something you didn't think of
yet.
Second is that I experienced a well known puzzle-feeling,
the: I have exhausted everything I could
try, I have no hope of proceeding, I may
as well consult a walkthrough now manner. But I didn't, and I didn't ever
feel close to doing so, not because I was worried about spoiling the puzzle,
but because TTP had me so thoroughly
wrapped up in its world that I didn't want to break out of character by
minimising the game. It would have
felt **awful** to do so. So I think this is a key lesson about the interaction
between game and story and puzzle: very often a quality of story can tide over
a temporary dissatisfaction due to a stuck puzzle.
