Unmarked spoilers for the first game below.
The Talos Principle 2 is the sequel to the original game, and like the first game, is a first-person puzzle game by Croteam, though this time developed using Unreal Engine 5 rather than Croteam's in-house engine.
The game is set centuries after the original game, after the original game's protagonist, a female AI named Athena, now known as the "Founder", ended the Process and escaped the system designed to develop new artificial intelligences to replace the now-extinct mankind. She and several other robots decided they would be a new, artificial version of humanity, and proceeded to build "New Jerusalem", a haven for these "Human" robots, and over time its population has steadily increased to a specific intended maximum population of a thousand. This objective itself is known as the "Goal" (yes, with a capital G) and the ultimate intent is to avoid the previous iteration of humanity's mistakes and distinctly avoid growth and overpopulation.
The player is "1K", the thousandth new Human. At the ceremony celebrating your birth, a projection of an entity called "Prometheus" appears and provides a strange message, only to be cut off as he's constrained by another entity called "Pandora". You and multiple other robot Humans are selected to investigate, sending you off to a new island which has several new areas complete with a whole bunch of new puzzles...
The game was announced on May 24, 2023 for PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S, and later its release date announced for November 2nd, 2023.
The Talos Principle 2 provides examples of the following tropes:
- All the Worlds Are a Stage: The final puzzle includes all mechanics introduced in the game plus the new gimmick.
- Ambiguously Evil: Both Pandora and Prometheus claim they want the best for humanity, but are being vague enough that 1K is reminded to not take what either of them say at face value.
- Antepiece: Each area is designed about the new item, with the first puzzle bordering on Instructive Level Design, while later puzzles often mix up mechanics from previous areas and requiring keeping track on order of actions taken.
- Anthropomorphic Personification: Prometheus, Pandora and the Sphinx are eventually revealed to be manifestations of Athena's idealism, cynicism and uncertainty respectively, made real by her subconscious interacting with the Machine.
- Arc Number: The number 5358 appears several time across glitched messages. It's the number of the Noema trial that killed Miranda due to negligence.
- Author Appeal: It's clear the developers adore cats, as the citizens of New Jerusalem will take plenty of opportunities to gush about the ones they have as pets. The notion of domesticating dogs for pets as well comes up at one point, however.
- Back from the Dead: Miranda can be brought back to life due to her data still being in the island's datastreams, if you complete all the gold puzzles.
- Bait-and-Switch: One of the Trevor audio logs starts talking about a carpenter who came to spread his great messages among the people, only to be ostracized for it. It turns out he wasn't referring to Jesus, but to John Carpenter.
- Balance Between Good and Evil: Explicitly subverted by Prometheus, whose star quote in East 1 explicitly notes that "not all things must be balanced. When weighing good against evil, tip the scales."
- Be Yourself: A secondary theme in the game is who should be making the deductions and the decisions, the authorities, some chosen one, or everyone by themselves, heavily leaning on the last one.
- Bigger on the Inside: It quickly becomes obvious that the inside of the Megastructure is somewhat larger than it should be, even just by the contrast of what you see outside compared to what you immediately see when the VTOL enters it. Especially when it appears to have the entirety of New Jerusalem inside it. Two versions of it, in fact.
- Bizarrchitecture: The inside of the Megastructure, especially as you get closer to its core, becomes increasingly impossible in terms of space. Cornelius straight up warns you about this if you finish his sidequest. And indeed, the final set of puzzles as you try to reach Athena involves exploring what looks like two entire cities that seemingly should overlap each other, among other things.
- Border Patrol: Unlike other areas, South 3 is not an island surrounded by water. Still, similarly to how Elohim would prevent you from venturing outside of inteded area, 1k inexplicably activates the Distress Mode which reloads the level.
- Broken-System Dogmatist: Mayor Hermanubis is a supporter the isolationism, believing the Founder intended for new humans to remain in New Jerusalem and cause no harm to the outside world. He discourages exploration despite it being clear that the city is running out of resources, but allows Byron's expedition to confirm if the Megastructure is a threat or not, as long as they don't pursue its technology. Near the end he admits he values everyone's safety even if he has to be the contrarian and wouldn't mind if he doesn't win the next elections.
- Cannot Spit It Out:
- Yaqut has an obvious crush on Miranda, but he's very awkward about it. He completely fumbles his attempt to ask her out on a date after she's brought back from the dead, but she accepts anyway.
- Trevor was clearly in love with Alexandra, but couldn't bring himself to confess — even at the end of human civilization — choosing instead to ensure both their energies were focused on the Talos project.
- Cast of Snowflakes: There are about 1000 new humans in New Jerusalem. Even if you won't see most of them, and barely interact with anyone outside of the expedition crew, they all have consistent personalities, profile pictures and slight differences in body design.
- Central Theme: How optimistic should we be about humanity and our capacity to grow and evolve? How much should we let the mistakes of our past, and the grief we feel over them, define and limit our future accomplishments? Can growth, expansion, and progress of civilization be done without disrupting the balance of nature? Are humans too fundamentally flawed to achieve utopia, or are we capable of improving ourselves and conquering our worse natures? While 1K can decide for themselves what stances they should take on this general theme, the game itself seems to at least subtly suggest that some growth is necessary for the continued survival of human civilization, especially considering the Sequel Hook.
- Character as Himself: How Miltohim is credited, curiously enough.
- Chekhov's Gunman: During the prologue, 1k can enter a museum dedicated to the Simulation that was the setting of the first game, and there meet one of Athena's first followers, a man named Cornelius, who has dedicated himself to curating the museum and keeping to himself. The ostensibly simple curator becomes more relevant when it's revealed he joined Athena in her exile on the island and contributed to the experiments being run there. When you actually go question him about it, though, he disappears (it's implied he stole a VTOL craft and is somewhere on the island). However, if you start solving the gold puzzles, he contacts 1K about his plan to revive Miranda.
- Contemplate Our Navels: Much like the first game, though the general focus seems to have shifted beyond general philosophy and into arguments of how much the robots should expand and explore beyond New Jerusalem, if at all.
- Creator Cameo: The new human playing songs from the first game on a guitar in New Jerusalem is named Damjan, after Damjan Mravunac, the composer.
- Cult of Personality: Athena, as The Founder and progenitor of every other human, is very liked in New Jerusalem. While opinions vary greatly all over the spectrum, on average she's close to being a religious figure, which is the main reason she left.
- Curse Cut Short: One of Trevor's audio logs cuts off when he was about to yell when someone tried to talk to him mid-recording.
- Cutting Off the Branches: Atal explains that Milton's Rest is named after Athena's cat she has found right after her awakening, implying that the Easter Egg ending in the original game is canon. Milton also survives as part of every single human.
- Death Is Cheap: Like in the first game, falling off the cliffs just puts the player in the last saved spot. Unlike the previous game where Elohim would rewind time, this game goes through an abrupt Loading Screen.
- Distressed Dude: When exploring the Megastructure halfway through the game, Byron gets a little too excited and traps himself in a data overload. Figuring out how to rescue him becomes a top priority for most of the remainder of the game.
- Don't Call Me "Sir": In chapter 5, if Byron was elected as mayor, Yaqut calls him "Mr. Mayor, sir". When Byron tells him not to, he replies, "Of course, Mr. Mayor, sir, I won't."
- Door to Before: Like in the previous game, solving some puzzles unlocks gates to the entrance for convenience. All solved puzzles deactivate their energy gates as well, which comes in handy for some stars.
- Dream Apocalypse: It turns out all the artificial structures in the areas surrounding the Megastructure are basically instant matter and are part of Athena's dream. In the end, all of it automatically disassembles in a spectacular montage once she wakes up and disconnects from the system, though in a much less destructive fashion than the first game's ending sequence was.
- Dual-World Gameplay: Sort of, but this example still has the general vibe of the trope. The final "dungeon" area in the Megastructure is a set of eight puzzles split into two sections - a "Utopia" that's basically themed from New Jerusalem, and a "Dystopia", which is themed after an abandoned, ruined version of New Jerusalem. You need to use the "white" nodes to change color in one version of the city to access puzzles in the other, with the main way you change between them is through a corridor that rather notably is an impossible space where both versions seem to overlap with each other.
- Due to the Dead: The end of the credits sees Athena laying flowers on Trevor's grave, as an acknowledgement of his yet unrecognized contributions to the future of humanity.
- Easter Egg: While the first game featured a truly ludicrous amount of easter eggs, this one has much fewer. However, the puzzles in the museum, as throwbacks to the first game, do feature some, including a cutout of Serious Sam.
- False Utopia: It quickly becomes evident that New Jerusalem isn't what it initially seems, and has its share of problems, which is a large part of the plot.
- Fictional Social Network: Similarly to Gehenna, new humans utilize a forum to share their thoughts on current events, and the expedition team uses a livestream system to broadcast their progress.
- Foreshadowing:
- The labs often feature a miniature version of the puzzle element introduced on the future islands.
- You can tell Byron won't be doing okay when he gets annoyed the crew chose safety over investigating the Megastructure deeper. Later he reminds everyone that the expedition's priority is finding Athena, which is not what he's said previously. Sure enough, the next time the crew goes inside the pyramid, he attempts Leeroy Jenkins and gets himself completely trapped.
- Melville reads that Megastructure's energy output is enough to power two New Jerusalems. Which is literally what's underneath it.
- Four-Temperament Ensemble: The expedition crew who explores the island: Byron, optimistic and confident, is sanguine; Alcatraz, cautious and reserved, is melancholic; Melville, sardonic and beleaguered, is choleric; and Yaqut, awkward and passive, is phlegmatic. 1k is by default leukine, but the player can express their personality to reflect any of the other temperaments.
- Hint System: Takes a very different approach compared to the original game — there are digital "Prometheus Sparks" scattered around the various zones that allow you to bypass puzzles entirely (though they don't show you the solution), and they are much easier to find and acquire than the three Messengers in the original game, instead requiring either exploration and/or a bit of platforming. However, there's still only a limited supply of them, and while you can get back used sparks, the only way to actually do so is by actually solving the puzzle properly, encouraging the player to go back and try to solve previous puzzles they've bypassed if they run out of sparks. If you were thinking skipping all the gold door puzzles, though, you can't - they cost 3 sparks each, there's only a maximum of 2 sparks to be found per area, and there's 12 gold puzzles, so you need to solve at least four of them.
- Infodump: If you opt to, in the prologue Neith recaps everything that the player would discover about Elohim, Milton and Alexandra Drennan in the first game. The option for this is basically "please explain everything to me in excruciating detail".
- In Your Nature to Destroy Yourselves: The cast heavily emphasizes the human civilization is at fault for getting destroyed the virus. What actually happened isn't clear, but it's implied general lack of security measures and disinterest of people of influence, even when the population was radically declining the Institute for Applied Noematics still got threats by protestors, against the only thing that did manage to keep the history going.
- I Will Find You: Byron has very high regard for his mentor Athena. Once a possibility appears that she may still be alive, he gets convinced that she's waiting for him inside the Megastructure and makes some irrational decisions.
- Killed Offscreen: Miranda, due to a careless accident - you only hear about the incident and see the site of the disaster. This thankfully doesn't need to stick, however.
- Kindhearted Cat Lover: Some citizens have pet cats they treat with respect and the New Jerusalem has a dedicated mausoleum for them.
- Kudzu Plot: The game is kicked off with the questions of "who are Prometheus and Pandora?" and "what is hidden on the island?" The pursuit of answers to these questions reveals more and more factors and mysteries connected to them, * with any real answers coming only late into the game.
- Leap of Faith: One of the Prometheus' sprites in the late game decies to hang above the death cliff. There's an invisible fan below it to get you back up.
- The Main Characters Do Everything: As the "last human", the residents of the New Jerusalem trust 1K with anything despite them being "5 minutes old", and out of the exploration team they are the only one to do any puzzle-solving. At a certain point 1K is literally the only person who can access the island's systems, so they need to do everything by necessity anyway.
- Mechanical Lifeforms: The new society have embraced themselves as new humans, even if they have no biological needs and their personalities are derived from an adjustable software.
- Messianic Archetype: Athena created New Jerusalem with the help of twelve followers, and is revered as the Founder. In her absence some citizens have embraced her guiding principles as a sacred dogma called the Goal, with many believing she will return to the city and right the wrongs that have occurred in her absence. This ends up being a deconstructed trope, as Athena didn't want to be a messianic figure, and even tried to fix that issue, but she ended up leaving because of it.
- Metapuzzle: Like the previous game, there are collectible Stars scattered in the overworld areas that unlock bonus content. Less subtly in this game, each area has two statues that grant a Star on the solution. Prometheus statues require finding then chasing his sprite, Sphinx statues show a picture with a clue to the lever's location, and Pandora statues have a beam Receiver on them that requires using items from puzzle rooms.
- Mistaken for Aliens: As 1k is sharing their discoveries with the rest of New Jerusalem, one citizen, Jacques, insists that all the strange technologies and happenings must be the work of aliens, despite no evidence to that effect. When the stars are collected and 1k sees a vision telling of a deep-space anomaly, Jacques is over the moon that something alien is finally shown to be involved.
- Multiple Endings: Mainly derived from whether the player decides to embrace the Theory of Everything, shut down the Megastructure, or destroy it entirely.
- Museum Level: The Museum of the Simulation carried over items and messages from the original game as art pieces.
- Named in the Sequel: The protagonist of the first game (not the DLC) is established as being a female robot named Athena, named after "Athena Reborn" novel, instead of In-Universe explanation of coincidentally taking the player's Steam/Epic username or the default designation SOMA/TALOS.
- Nature vs. Technology: One of the main themes everyone asks 1K about is if sacrificing nature for the sake of progress is necessary or should be avoided. The digital entities correspond to these alignments as well, Prometheus encourages growth without going into details, while Pandora discourages it without going into details.
- Nostalgia Level:
- The very first playable area is a deliberate throwback to the first game's introduction area, except with an Ancient Egyptian theme instead of an Ancient Greek theme, complete with Elohim running the show. Though in this case, Elohim is now a sub-intelligence in every single robot, and he is entirely up-front about the starting area being a dream simulation preparing 1K for their awakening in the real world.
- The Museum has full replicas of three puzzles from the original game, one from each area, as well as several sigil puzzles.
- The various dreams and data overloads are throwbacks to the same Egyptian theme. This includes the sequence where 1K ventures into the datastream to bring Miranda back from the dead if they finish all the gold door puzzles, where 1K has to avoid the exploding mines from the first game, which have been otherwise absent entirely.
- Not the Intended Use: Through the abuse of level geometry, it's sometimes possible to jump over walls where you shouldn't or to smuggle items out and in of their puzzle areas like in the previous game. Even if Star riddles don't require it, this can be used as alternative solutions for Pandora Monuments or other puzzles. The puzzles behind golden gates are not functional though even if you sneak to its Progress Wheel.
- Order Versus Chaos: One of the moral issues the new humanity faces is the interpretation of the Goal. Many believe that it's a hard rule set by Athena to avoid mistakes of the past, and New Jerusalem should have a hard cap of 1000 for the population and close itself off. Others believe such society is unsustainable, considering it's suffering energy crisis already, and promote exploration and innovation, even if it's unsafe. Complicating things further is the fact that Athena never actually intended for the Goal to be so important and a hard cap to begin with - it was just a simple achievable goal to aim for with a nice big round number, but the people who saw her as a messianic figure turned it into what is basically a holy commandment, and later this was deliberately encouraged by a few people, including the Mayor, as a means of establishing strict control over the city's growth.
- Outside-Context Problem: Discussed by Melville as the Expedition heads into the Megalith.Melville: Have any of you read an ancient writer called Iain Banks? I guess not. He postulated the concept of the Outside Context Problem. That's when a society encounters something so advanced, so different, that they simply could not conceive of it. That's what this is. This whole place is one giant Outside Context Problem… and we're headed right into it.
- Photo Mode: The Photo Mode is available by a hotkey or the pause menu, with some camera control and filters.
- Reality Warper: Athena discovering the Theory of Everything allows her to manipulate physics itself. The island's structures and the strange beings that inhabit them are being physically manifested by her subconscious as she dreams while connected to the Machine; when she wakes up and disconnects, the structures are dissolved. If 1k chooses to embrace the Theory of Everything, it's implied they can become one as well.
- Ridiculous Future Sequelisation: A hidden arcade cabinet you can find in the coastal area, which is a cabinet for theoretical future entry in the Serious Sam series — Serious Sam 9. As of the game's release date, the series has only four numbered entries!
- Ridiculously Human Robots: The first game's AI program, for better or worse, succeeded in creating robots that don't just look human - they are humans with emotions, hopes, dreams, vices, and superstitions. Athena's logs mentioned that she had to choose a name for their species, and decided to keep it just "human".
- Rule of Three:
- There are three areas in each cardinal direction and each time you want to enter the Megastructure, you need to light up three towers.
- Flashbacks revolve around three people: Athena, Cornelius, and Miranda.
- Laser puzzles involve the classic colors red and blue, and the brand new green. Two of these can produce the third.
- The game's final choice is between three options (embrace the Theory of Everything, shut down the Machine, or destroy the Machine).
- The entities that you find inside the towers and give you messages are three: Pandora, the Sphinx, and Prometheus.
- Scenery Porn: To a degree the previous game could only dream of, the levels use a massive open world for the richly decorated ruins. The New Jerusalem is also an explorable utopia town, and the game makes sure to utilize scenery shots when using vehicles.
- Science Is Bad: Pandora's arguments can be summarized as anything the humanity creates can potentially destory more than it can protect, so it's sinful to strive for more than you have naturally.
- Science Is Good: Prometheus' arguments can be summarized that Nature as it stands merely exists and it takes humanity to give Nature meaning—to wit human endeavor actively improves Nature by, at the very least, opening up more Nature for humans to appreciate. This is even suggested as a reason for interstellar expansionism: humanity should go to the stars just to see what's there and, simply by perceiving it as beautiful, make it beautiful.
- Sensory Overload: Some of the downloadable files may trigger a "datastream overload". If the transmission doesn't end on its own, the user may be effectively paralyzed until someone else pulls them from the terminal, which is what happens to Byron for almost half the story.
- Sequel Hook: If you collect all the gold stars and assemble all of them in the star temple, you'll see a brief cutscene where Athena reveals that she's discovered an anomaly outside of the galaxy that's been around since before the Big Bang, and it's waiting for humanity.
- Shout-Out:
- At the Museum of the Simulation, one of the displays containing a gargoyle statue has a plaque describing its nature and purpose along with referring to “the most famous gargoyle” with two words: Keith David and Goliath.
- The structure of the game, where each area has puzzles that need to be solved to access a machine that fires a laser at a central mountainous structure, is identical to The Witness.
- At South 3 (the desert level) Yaqut responds to sand by saying something rather familiar.Yaqut: I don't like sand. It's coarse and rought and irritating and it gets in my ball bearings.
- Sore Loser: When you finally free Byron, Pandora tries to stop you by electrocuting you just to have the last word, which fails to kill you but stops the progress for a few weeks. Not even Thecla, who is openly hostile, does anything to 1k aside cursing him.
- So Unfunny, It's Funny: When Miranda says how excited she is about the Noema upgrade, Cornelius says "Nice to meet you, So Excited, I'm Cornelius." He feels rather proud of this one while Miranda feels disappointed.
- The Stinger: The end of the credits shows a brief scene where Athena leaves flowers on a grave for Trevor.
- Super Drowning Skills: Justified early on by 1K being warned not to submerge themselves fully for too long, since they haven't been properly waterproofed due to a lack of waterproofing materials in supply to build them. This results in water being a natural barrier if it's any deeper than shoulder-height.
- Title Drop: The island's designated codename is TTP-2. The Talos Principle 2?
- Uncertain Doom: Some residents of the New Jerusalem bring up Milton's fate, or specifically that nobody knows what Athena ended up doing with him, and speculations reference multiple endings in the original game. Turns out he was uploaded, and you do meet him again if you use the Somnidrome, but he actually ended up at least partially merged with Elohim, meaning he's a lot more chill this time around. He's still something of The Gadfly, though.
- Unwanted False Faith: It's the main reason why Athena abandoned the colony.
- Vitriolic Best Buds: Byron and Alcatraz are two of these. Byron will comment that he likes Alcatraz precisely for being a Honest Advisor who isn't afraid to contradict Byron because he's one of the first followers.
- We Have Become Complacent: A few express that New Jerusalem leaning on isolation instead of expansion, doesn't address limited resources, limits growth of personality, and makes them unprepared for events like Prometheus's invitation. Byron later reveals that accidents in New Jerusalem were not unheard of due to poor maintenance, but only the problems happening when venturing outside get a lot of attention. Both Byron and Melville note that the limited to nonexistent resource extraction has caused more problems than it ultimately solves, despite the best intentions of those who want to avoid destroying the natural world.
- We Named the Monkey "Jack": The first cat Athena adopted in the real world was given the name Milton, after the snarky and antagonistic library assistant from the first game.
- Wham Episode: The Lab at Circular Oasis answers several old questions at once: Miranda died in an accident, Athena became tired of being treated like mythological figure and left, and also partially solved The Theory of Everything that allows creating law-bending matter from pure energy.
- With Friends Like These...: At one point Melville takes a photo of her hand (or rather a structure with her hand in the way). The crew praises her unexpectedly artistic work before Byron reminds everyone that she's very talented despite her awful photography skills. She's not amused.
