What is society? Is it a form of stewardship, to protect ourselves and the planet on which we were born? Is it a vehicle for us to expand our consciousness as far as possible? Or is human progress inherently doomed? Such questions are part and parcel of playing The Talos Principle 2. Its philosophical conundrums tug constantly between realism and optimism, myth and history, curiosity and punishment, as an android society grapples with the legacy of its self-destructive human past – all while trying to determine its post-human future.
In the 2014 original you were placed within abuilds on that philosophical foundation, seeing you ‘born’ into the 1,000th android body of New Jerusalem, a city founded by the entity that completed the trials of the first game many centuries ago. Now that you androids are out of the simulation, and have proved your autonomy, you have the significantly more challenging job of figuring out what comes next – a hard limit on your society’s growth, continued expansion, or something in between. The seemingly serene city is full of disagreement under the surface, which is intensifying as the population grows.
