The Talos Principle

[Reach]

Originally Posted by shenjoku

So, how 'bout that all sigils ending. That was quite something.

It was pretty dumb wth. All that work for very little reward. Oh wells, still love this game <3

Haven't had time to go and get all the stars yet

Shouldn't have checked the spoiler

But yeah, fantastic game regardless. Will probably replay it in the future for sure after my memory of the game has faded somewhat.

[shenjoku]

Good luck getting all the stars, man. I gave up on some of them and once I saw the solution I felt so cheated. Some of them are such bullshit.

Have you found many of the easter eggs? There is an insane amount of hidden content in this game, it's amazing. I only found a few on my own and looked up videos of all the others and they are really impressive. Definitely worth looking up just to see everything.

[Reach]

50% off on steam for those that were waiting for a sale!!

Amazing game, definitely worth it.

[VisD]

Just finished this, it was awesome. It's probably best to go through the eternal life ending and floor 6 (all stars and sigils) ending before going for the main one, because that's the one that's really spectacular. A great end to a great story

The puzzles themselves were good, mostly, although after awhile they stopped having anything new to say. In that sense the game isn't as lean and polished as either of the Portal games, but if you enjoy playing through puzzles for the heck of it you won't mind one bit (I certainly didn't).

Also off the top of my head some of the best puzzles were definitely the star-level ones: Cobweb, Dumb Dumb Mine (lol), Nerve-Wrecker. Floor 4 gets special credit for being the puzzle to stump me the hardest. That one cheeky level out of all 130 got me for long enough to have to walk away from it for a couple of days, lol. In comparison to it Floor 5 was ez, although looking at the walkthroughs I didn't do it the intended way oops

tl;dr 8/10 for the puzzles, 9/10 for the mood, story and philosophy stuff, 10/10 as a whole package

[Reach]

Did you use a guide?

I never ended up getting like 4 of the stars. A3 being one that I remember spending a lot of time on. I'm convinced it's something to do with the clock, but I can't see the star anywhere and I also can't find any codes or hints to help with the combination.

And I'm too damn stubborn to use a guide so I figure I'll just come back and do another playthrough in a few months and try again :P

I think I liked it more than Portal 2, mostly for length and puzzle difficulty. Portal 2 had cooler puzzles, but being a masochist, by the end of it I wanted more puzzles and more difficult puzzles.

Mind you, I had a blast with the editor in that game. Wanted to get into some Co-op puzzles but my girlfriend bailed on me and it never happened.

[VisD]

Yeah, I had to use a guide to collect some of the stars, but not for any of the actual levels themselves. When I read the solution to some of them, I was like "wtf, I would never have gotten this on my own." I admire your patience lol

For A3, if you want a hint - yeah it's to do with the clock, the hint that you really want is right there in the area, but for some reason it doesn't work the way you're used to it working in-game...

I would have liked harder puzzles, definitely. I think they were really lenient in how they used the recorder, because that could have been used for much more cruel things than what we ever needed to deal with. Even the end-game recorder levels like "The Seven Chambers of Recording" and Floor5 were trivial, the one exception being Time Flies. I had more difficulty with many of the Portal 2 puzzles, but that's probably because those are more open-ended/divergent in nature, whereas Talos puzzles tended to be more convergent in nature. They were more about figuring out how to execute perfectly a general "clearly right" path, as opposed to thinking up a whole bunch of paths and then trying to deduce which path was the right one, as in P2.

[Reach]

Oh, they definitely went easy with the recorder mechanic. They could have absolutely destroyed people. As it stood already there were one or two puzzles near the end with the recorder where I was like "That wasn't...THAT hard, but they could have mind fucked me into oblivion there if they made it any harder", so I'm guessing they probably had some harder stuff in there that ruined testers and they removed it. I could have seen it being quite frustrating if you included too many moves, at which point I think I would have had to get out pen and paper an plan the entire thing in advance.

P2 was amazing, just wish it had more content. At least it had more than P1. hah.

[VisD]

They're coming up with a DLC full of extra-hard levels, which should be out within the next couple of months. Bring on the Twenty Doors of Recording

[Reach]

The new DLC is out. Pick it up while it's on sale.

Started it this evening. So far it's tough. Finished all of the puzzles in the first world and got 1 star. Thought I had the one in the recorder level but screwed it up, so I'll go back to it.

The levels in world 2 are real hard.

Will definitely be playing more soon. So far, seems to be worth the $ if you're a fan of the game.



Edit: Yep, it's hard. Looks like there are 5 worlds, 24 puzzles, 16 star puzzles. Not a bad bang for your buck, given most of them are really hard. Just finished world 3, but only 3 stars so far (most of them are lmao). I'd say most of the main world puzzles are as hard as the star world puzzles in the original or harder. The stars themselves though are fucked up. Most of them seem as hard as the hardest star puzzles from the original or harder. I was pretty impressed with myself for figuring out the three solutions I've gotten so far.

[VisD]

A lot of the stars will start to fall once you get the common "thematic idea" behind the paths to them. They look impossible now, but once you get the idea, they'll actually become really easy. I currently have just 3 more stars (1 in world 1, 1 from Crater in world 2, and 1 in world 3) and Haircut from world 2 to solve, before I go on to play the endgame/bonus star levels.

Haircut is killing me, definitely the hardest main puzzle of the 17. Have you tried to get the stars from Crater? I'd say they are hands down the hardest stars in the game - I only have the first, and even that felt a lot more appropriate for an endgame final puzzle than a random star one. Really fantastic solution, but so difficult to get at.

[Reach]

I solved haircut in like 30 seconds. I thought it was ridiculously obvious and was kinda like "That's it?". Only tip would be to simply reduce the level to its elements. I worked backwards from the end point. There isn't a trick. The solution is really the only logical step.

Guess everyone's brain works differently. None of the main puzzles gave me problems beyond just thinking them through, mostly because they're 'closed' puzzles. By closed I mean, the number of objects/possibilities in the puzzle is ultimately limited and the solution is confined to exactly the number of resources presented to you. Unlike the stars, which I've come to realize.

I have 7 stars now, and can probably get a few more. Definitely going for 10 guideless so I can try the 5th world.

The only 'theme' I've noticed is getting objects out of levels or breaking the level to get on ledges. i.e. most of the stars appear to be 'open' puzzles.

The problem for me has been actually...just getting them out. World 3 for example. Three of the stars had solutions that were very obvious to me if you could remove items from a stage. What actually took me forever to do though, was getting items out of one of the levels. I thought they needed to come out of one level, spent eons trying to get the items out to no avail, only to end up getting them out of a different stage. Damn. Have all the stars in world 3 now though.

There's a star in world 4 that is a self evident 'open' puzzle where a box needs to be removed from the level. Good lord though I cannot figure out where to get a box though lmao.

Haven't tried the crater star because I've found the stars in world 2 are the worst in general. It's the only world I don't have any stars in. I think I know how to get them though because I almost got one of them by accident but then broke the level and got stuck and had to reset and decided to move on rather than resolve the puzzle. I'll try it tomorrow.

[VisD]

I haven't tried Haircut all that much - about twenty minutes of staring at it and fiddling around - but it really seems to be one of those "click" things, much like The Swapper or Open Field. Maybe I'll go stare at it some more...

About getting things out, actually you'd be surprised. I've found 13 stars so far, and of these 13 I think only about 3 or 4 of them required me to actively smuggle things into or out of levels. And I know for a fact that 1 of them didn't require any smuggling at all. Like for the three stars that I've got in W3 (the one I'm missing is the obvious one in Pendulum), I did not need to do any smuggling at all. I guess it really depends on what sort of approach we get fixated on.

For the world 4 star, you're talking about the fan outside of Air Delivery, right? You'll kick yourself when you realize where you can get the box from............

edit: just fiddled around with one of the star puzzles, solved it. Absolutely great solution!

[Reach]

Really, you got the star over the water without smuggling out a laser?

God damn.

How'd you get the one behind pendulum? I jumped from above with a box.

The one behind the gate in pendulum I also solved in an open manner (mind you I actually really liked this solution and thought it was rather genius in an evil way, but if it can be solved in a closed manner I'd like to know how it is done).

There are probably multiple ways to solve a lot of these stars then.

Yes, I'm talking about the air delivery star in world 4. lol I'll get 10 stars tonight, I swear

Haircut reminded me of bunny hop. It's a really stupidly simple solution where you mostly just have to put two and two together in a not so obvious way, though admittedly I can see how you could get lost if you got too deep into a fancy approach. You'll kick yourself when you see it.

[VisD]

The star over the water is hilarious. Just in case someone who's still playing read this, I'll put it in spoilers:

there's a yellow brick road (not literally) you haven't followed or even noticed somewhere in the world, and it ends in a way for you to get to the star without smuggling anything out

For the sneaky Pendulum star, I did it the "intended" way - if you go back and look at the level, you may notice a

chekhov's gun of sorts.

I really like the method, and you should probably go back and find it because it's quite cool.

The obvious Pendulum star I did the intended way as well, but this one requires some nonsense parkour.

Where on earth are you getting these boxes to do the Pendulum stars with? Harmony, I presume - but I didn't see a way to jump out with the boxes then.

[Reach]

Yeah, there's a way to get the boxes from there.

lol

Consider it an extra puzzle if you finish everything else. It took me forever because I was trying to get the items out of pendulum instead.

[Reincarnate]

Dang, I need to get this game -- I was going to a long while back but totally forgot.

EDIT: Purchased

[Reach]

Holy shoot, get on it Reincarnate. This game is right up your alley.

As for the water puzzle VisD, where on earth?

Here's how I solved it:

Smuggle laser out of Harmony, bounce laser off one of the levels to the laser on top of the bridge to activate the fan, fan blows you onto the star

Is there really another solution?

9 stars now. Getting close. Still nothing in world 2 though, lmao.

Edit: 10 stars. Tried crater, LOL no my idea did not work. Still have no idea how to get either of the stars there.

Edit 2: World 5 LOL

I got 3 of the sigils before getting a headache. Fan one perplexed me, since I made it to the back thinking I had it, only to have no understanding of how you could turn the second fan off.

[Hakulyte]

I feel really dumb that I beat like 90% of the game before noticing that the entrance of the levels wasn't blocking lasers.

[Reincarnate]

This game is awesome. :O (Thanks for telling me about it, Reach)

I only had enough time to do World 1 for now. Finding the star was a blast, haha. I am kinda hoping these stars become more ridiculous later (similar to the stars in Braid).

[VisD]

Reach:

from the entrance to Ray Trivia, head away from the overworld portal and up the hill. Then just follow the path...

Solved Haircut in about 1 minute today. DERP