Not (at all) a review of the game “The Talos Principle: Road to Gehenna”
You find yourself in the middle of a huge open field. Surrounded by green hills below and blue skies above, you slowly, step by step, walk forward along the well-trodden road. Turning back, you can’t see where it started. Looking ahead, you don’t see the end. The road seems endless to you, but it cannot be so.
All your thoughts are focused on this road. It is not level, not paved, has no clear boundaries and is more likely to represent an approximate direction rather than a clear trajectory.
Looking closely at the road, you realize that it is woven from millions of paths. Some of them were walked more often, others less often, together they merge into a single road, a “blurred line” trampled in the middle of a field by the feet of billions of people.
You want to know who you are, where you are, where you are going, why you ultimately want to know it. Questions keep popping up one after another. One gives birth to a second, the second to a third. But you don’t find any answers.
Of all the questions that swarm in your head, you stop at only one:
What kind of road is this?
But you can never answer that question. You don’t even know which side to approach it from. Don’t know which direction to look for the answer. Your feet freeze in place and your hands drop. You didn’t even try. There’s no point in fighting a battle that can’t be won. With this thought, your heart is filled with bitterness and self-pity.
You wake up. Your soul is empty, but you can’t remember what caused your depressed state.
And the last dream disappears forever into oblivion.
The first thing that attracts your attention is the visual and musical components of the game. Beautiful landscapes of ancient Egypt and Greece, medieval Europe and a fantastic crossroads make you admire, and wonderful deep music greatly enhances the effect of admiration.
It seems to you that you have already seen it all once, it seems to you that you have heard it all once already. And for good reason. That the design and graphics, music and voice acting were successfully adopted by the addition from the original game, without introducing almost anything new. Neither the giant bridge nor the castles in the air seem like something previously unseen; they fit too organically into the environment. The same applies to new musical compositions, you cannot call them completely original.
From the point of view of the logic of the world, you have no opportunity to find fault with the absence of a new time period with its distinctive features, cultural monuments and characteristic music. After all, the virtual space was created this way many years ago, and there is no one else to supplement its lands with fresh unique content. But you can’t shake the desire to see and hear something fundamentally new. After all, the lands created by the outcasts might look more insane and illogical in their design.
Remembering the voice acting, you note that there is only one voice left in the game, and there is very little of it. Elohim still sounds majestic and inspiring. The actor does not cheat on himself. Just like in the original game, his voice correctly conveys all the necessary emotions, be it remorse or concern.
External stimuli are converted into information, information is comprehended and becomes knowledge, but this knowledge does not give you the answer to the question. You still cannot understand what kind of road is under your feet.
You wanted, you tried, you were open, https://lopebetcasino.co.uk/bonus/ but the world around you is too complex to understand. Or perhaps he cannot be understood at all. With this thought you give up, and your heart is filled with bitterness and self-pity.
You wake up. Your soul is empty, but you can’t remember what caused your depressed state.
And the last dream disappears forever into oblivion.
Now your gaze focuses on deeper aspects, abstracting from the outer shell. He rushes to the mechanics of the game itself, which is represented by three different gameplay directions:
exploring locations, collecting things and reading notes;
communicating with the inhabitants of Gehenna and completing text quests through the terminal;
solving all kinds of puzzles.
You don’t want to deceive yourself, you don’t want to lie. But you can’t ignore the feeling that you’ve dealt with something similar before. Taking this feeling into account, you decide to look at each direction separately.
Exploration of levels is based on searching for Easter eggs (of which there are still many), unusual places, hidden paths and notes in the form of QR codes. And if in the original game this might require an additional item, for example an ax, to cut your way to a closed area, then in the add-on only Uriel’s mechanical hands are enough.
Communication, as before, occurs through terminals. From the few answer options, you should choose the one to which your heart lies closest, which coincides with your worldview. But, as in the original game, each answer is subject to evaluation. And although the answers have resonance, they remain entirely on the conscience of the player. Like the decisions made during text adventures. These little games are a great innovation, although they don’t change the way you interact with terminals.
The puzzles have definitely become more difficult. No new instruments or tools have appeared, some of the old ones are used extremely rarely, while others have completely disappeared. But the complexity has increased due to the fact that many habitual actions for using objects have to be rethought, and with a certain object – act strictly opposite to its purpose. And this is not the only factor that influenced the increase in complexity.
Most puzzles have several stages of solving: a stage of collecting all the objects, a stage of half-solving or moving, and a final stage. Each of them requires the use of all available objects in its own specific order.
But there are no unsolvable puzzles, you have proven this from your own experience. However, you would like to note that we were never able to get one star without a guide, because the game violates its own rules regarding smooth and rounded surfaces. Where it would seem impossible to stand on the head of a gargoyle, it is quite possible to do this, which allows you to get the coveted star in a few seconds.
Thus, having considered each direction separately, you conclude that nothing new has been introduced into the game mechanics. All three directions remained untouched, not changed and remained fully operational.
You carefully analyzed the mechanics that the game is full of, realized each component separately and made the appropriate conclusion. Your opinion about them is formed, but knowing them does not give you the answer to the question. You still cannot understand what kind of road is under your feet.
You rejected the external component and even cognized the physical nature of the world, but everything was in vain. You are such a narrow-minded creature that you are not even able to understand distant ideas. With this thought you give up, and your heart is filled with bitterness and self-pity.
You wake up. Your soul is empty, but you can’t remember what caused your depressed state.
And the last dream disappears forever into oblivion.
You close your eyes and direct your inner gaze even deeper, beyond the questions of “how” and “what”. Now the very essence and reasons are revealed to you. The main idea is presented to you.
The premise of the game is quite simple: the local end of the world is coming, the world will be erased, and all the information contained in it will be deleted, at this time Elohim awakens Uriel and sends him to save a group of outcasts – individuals whom Elohim once rejected and sent away outside of his paradise gardens.
Having acquired a goal, Uriel ends up in a place called Gehenna and joins a society of outcasts. Gradually getting to know them and their creativity, simultaneously rescuing each outcast from captivity, Uriel gathers them all together for subsequent salvation, called “ascension,” which will put an end to the whole story, filled with questions of personality, freedom, values, life and death.
You chuckle a little because you feel déjà vu. As if you’ve already tasted a similar plot and theme. And indeed, the main game was about the same problem, but from a different angle. And she even did this in two parallel lines: a line of present events and long-past ones, in contrast to the addition, which only tells about what is happening in real time.
The grin, however, quickly disappears from your face, the original revealed the idea and carried the story better than the addition. It was longer and more dramatic. The original was deeper and more serious. The addition against his background seems only a shadow, or, more correctly, a small, smart child of his big, respected by all, parent.
Shell, matter, idea. Visuals and sound, gameplay, story. Everything is the same, only worse and smaller. The problem with the add-on is not that it is bad in itself. No you can’t say that. It’s good for you, you could easily recommend it to lovers of puzzles, lovers of interesting plots, lovers of philosophical reflections and simply lovers of quality games. Would and will definitely recommend. It just doesn’t compare to the original game. "The Talos Principle" is hard to beat, and "Road to Gehenna" doesn’t do it. But the thing is that the add-on didn’t even try.
The addition is a nice add-on for everyone who would like to solve a little more puzzles and think about life and the principle of Talos. It is an inexpensive ticket for all those who would like to spend a little more time in the world created by Croteam.
You open your eyes.
The dream slowly dissolves from your memory, leaving behind blurry outlines. Thanks to them, you still remember that the dream was pleasant, warm, unusually intimate and so valuable. Sometimes he gave you a smile, sometimes, on the contrary, he made you sad. In blurry outlines you see all the main moments of the dream, which sparkle brightly before your eyes, but soon they will be forgotten, lost among other thoughts and memories and, perhaps, will never be found by you.
But the only thing that you definitely won’t forget is the answer to the question that tormented you so much in your sleep. Question about the road you’ve been on.
The answer is not hidden, complex or far away. It’s right under your feet. Crystal clear answer to the question:
