The Talos Principle: Reawakened hits very different in our new AI future

At face value, The Talos Principle: Reawakened has everything that a good remake needs. Updated graphics, quality of life improvements, and an entirely new companion story should breathe new life into the original 2014 title, widely considered one of the best puzzle games ever made. And yet Reawakened suffers solely due to the context playing The Talos Principle in 2025 brings.

While its puzzles remain just as expertly designed and delightfully challenging as they did 11 years ago, the same cannot be said of its techie narrative. A story about humanity on the brink of environmental disaster, and how artificial intelligence is its saving grace, rings hollow in an age where AI’s moral, ethical, and environmental harms are on constant display.

That isn’t the fault of developer Croteam, responsible for the original Talos Principle and Reawakened, but a reminder how a story’s power is a fragile thing constantly in flux. There is something fitting in how the game’s themes of legacy apply to this remake, though not always in flattering ways. Still, as a puzzle game The Talos Principle: Reawakened delivers some truly inventive challenges worth experiencing.

Going through the remake checklist

Let’s begin with what is new in Reawakened. Rebuilt entirely in Unreal Engine 5, this remake boasts “better” graphics that bring the original visuals more in line with what a modern audience might expect. That mostly means lots of foliage, detailed stonework, very reflective water, and so much light throughout the gorgeous landscapes of the Talos Principle. While these are all nice it feels somewhat unnecessary, though graphics aficionados might balk at this sentiment.

11 years might sound like a longtime but when putting the 2014 version of The Talos Principle against Reawakened, I’m reminded just how little graphics have really improved in that time. The extra detail is nice but it comes across more like Croteam checking a box on the obligatory features of a video game remake to-do list. None of the graphical fidelity or set dressing adds to my understanding of the setting.

Reawakened also brings tweaks to gameplay intended to smooth out rough edges of the 2014 release. These are found in a rewind button, the connectors, and a time record mechanic. Each change or addition is meant to make the puzzle solving more incremental and forgiving of mistakes. For example, I can now rewind a few seconds at will, making it so I can’t soft lock myself and have to restart a puzzle from scratch (as is the case in the original).

The time recorder, which lets me record my actions for a set period of time and then replay them, has a new checkpoint system that makes the once tedious mechanic more forgiving. Connectors, posts that can redirect light beams in puzzles, also get a quality of life boost by taking a page out of The Talos Principle 2 and making each node easier to connect and disconnect individually. Together, the changes make The Talos Principle much more forgiving of the player experimentation required to progress through its many challenges.

I get older, The Talos Principle stays the same

The puzzles themselves remain unchanged and are just as enticing as in 2014. That’s because good puzzles are timeless. They rely on a strict internal logic to be solved, equalizing the field between every potential solver regardless of when they are attempting to crack it. The way The Talos Principle sets up its puzzles, slowly introducing mechanics and logic problems to the player and then throwing twists and combinations as time goes on, is nothing short of brilliant. It’s a case study in exceptional puzzle design to this day, and the physics based nature of it reminds one of the Portal series.

Moving blocks, redirecting beams of light, learning how to properly take advantage of the time recorder, and other small epiphanies never feel short of revelatory. The Talos Principle often left me sitting for stretches of time unsure of what to do, mulling it over in my mind, only to come to a solution and feel that delicious sense of accomplishment.

The narrative, however, has not stood the test of time as well as the mechanical side. Reawakened does not change the story of the 2014 original, but playing it today brings so much more baggage. Perhaps it’s the pessimist in me but I find it so much harder to swallow the grand philosophizing about AI and human sentience in the background of an environmental crisis given our current world. AI will not be our savior, nor is it our equal, but rather the latest scam from tech executives looking to cut corners and steal labor. On top of that, AI tools such as ChatGPT are harmful to the environment due to their large use of energy and high output of emissions.

I can at times separate myself from the current climate and respect the craft of The Talos Principle’s narrative. The writing is excellent, and the way the larger story is slowly revealed to me through natural exploration and curiosity does feed back into themes of questioning what it means to be conscious. But every time I come back to the game’s constant uplifting of an imagined ideal of AI I can’t help but scoff at how foolish it all is.

There is a parallel to be drawn between the mechanical beauty of The Talos Principle and the prevalent need in some circles to give more meaning to AI than it deserves. These puzzles I am solving in The Talos Principle make me feel smart, but at the end of the day they are designed to be solvable. Croteam does not want me, or any player, to be too challenged. This is about player gratification, even if it is a well executed example of it. Similarly, there is a constant desire to say AI is more intelligent and human-like than it actually is. This bias, wanting to see intelligent AI, covers up the snake oil salesman reality behind the technology. None of this is as smart as they want you to believe.

In search of perspective

The most significant feature of Reawakened is In the Beginning, an entirely new story that serves as a sort of prologue to the base game. This comes packaged alongside the base game and the “Road To Gehenna” DLC, all of which can be selected from the title screen with no need to play the others first — a move that lets returning players dive right into the new content. Without going into the details of this new chapter, as it does give insight into a much talked about era of The Talos Principle’s world lore hounds will delight in, there is something missing.

It’s not that In the Beginning isn’t well made. The puzzles feel fresh and exciting, more difficult than the base game or Road To Gehenna, it’s a true challenge meant for experts. The narrative is equally well constructed, with the same attention to detail in the prose that the rest of the series displays. Yet the story itself doesn’t bring much new to light, instead giving a different perspective on information learned in the base game.

That isn’t a bad thing in itself, as it is an opportunity to say something fresh, perhaps even address how time has changed the impact of the game’s themes and narrative. Instead, In the Beginning doubles down on what reads as a misplaced optimism. It’s a story about finding hope even in the most depressing of circumstances. That might sound topical but it’s too broad, and the five to six hour runtime of the expansion doesn’t give it time to come to a point.

More insight into The Talos Principle is given through the developer commentary included in Reawakened. These audio logs that feel right at home next to the in-game logs that dole out the story, offer an exciting look into how a game like this gets made. Croteam is also looking back on The Talos Principle in these logs, meaning we do get some of that reflection that I was itching for in the rest of Reawakened.

Players who are just interested in the mechanical aspects of The Talos Principle will find more enjoyment in the new chapter, as well as a new puzzle creator. This includes the ability to upload designs to the community and play people’s takes on the physics based brain teasers. It’s expansive and clearly another feature meant to make Reawakened a definitive version of The Talos Principle that offers plenty of replay value. And Reawakened largely is “definitive” in that it offers the most complete package but it cannot account for the changes that time brings. Let’s all see how it fairs in 11 more years.

The Talos Principle: Reawakened was tested on PC.