“I have always felt that a human being could only be saved by another human being.” James Baldwin’s quote is the first line we read when starting a new file in The Talos Principle 2. Written on a black background, it’s the perfect presentation of one of the biggest changes that we will find in the sequel to Croteam’s sublime puzzle game: we are not alone in this world.

Things start in a familiar way. Our character wakes up in a place that resembles the original introductory scenario from the first game, but with an Egyptian setting. We quickly hear Elohim’s voice, the omnipresent being that directed our steps through the previous outing. After a few welcome words, it’s time to do what we are here for: solve puzzles that involve spatial reasoning.

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There are no surprises in these first moments. We walk around finding rooms that will reward us with a Tetris piece when we solve the riddle, which usually requires moving objects like boxes and devices that direct lasers around the closed room. The design of these initial puzzles is perfect, because they present simple problems with easy solutions while explaining how the physics, logic, and devices we will use through the adventure will work. As any good puzzle-solving experience should do, obviously.

After gathering enough pieces and arranging them on different boards, the real game begins. We wake up again, this time in front of a ‘robot’, and we find out that what we have been doing until now was a simulation. But who was the simulation created by? And with what purpose? What are we? What are we supposed to do now? These are all questions that we can ask our new friend, leading to some heavy and fascinating exposition that will submerge you in a new world with riveting mysteries waiting for our questions.

The original The Talos Principle is a video game about solving puzzles on the surface, but it’s actually an outstanding statement on how we can create our own identity and discover the world through riddles, with some of humanity's greatest questions working as the foundation of every step we take. Lore about unknown figures helps us start to fill in the gaps as we discover more about that godly voice that leads our way, but this was mainly a lonely journey in the pursuit of knowledge.

The sequel, on the other hand, feels like the previous work was indeed a simulation. We are a citizen in the city of New Jerusalem (the citizen number one thousand in fact), among many other individuals: Our character feels like a small tree in an endless forest. However, as our ‘birth’ marks the end of our ‘species’ of robots that seem to behave and act like human beings, there’s also something special about our numbered protagonist that will be discovered while we play.

After a celebration of an important event, an unknown entity interrupts the festivities and we are asked to join a crew and investigate an island far from New Jerusalem. Before jumping into the adventure, we can explore part of the city, interact with multiple NPCs, and learn a lot about why the metropolis was built, what happened to humans, and what seems to be our purpose in life. A particular exchange with a fortune teller was delicious and mixed some light-hearted humor with the deep topics we expect to find in The Talos Principle.

From the get-go, I felt like a true citizen of this new place, speaking with its people, receiving messages on social media forums, and being part of virtual calls with the rest of the crew. While you will still solve puzzles on your own — at least that’s the case in the first three areas of the apparent twelve available in the final game — the other characters, with fully fleshed-out and interesting personalities, will accompany you on the different scenarios you explore, discussing themes, making their own discoveries, and informing you about their findings.

Add the frequent exchanges in the social media platforms and the files you find in the areas, and you’ll be constantly learning and asking about a wild variety of topics, like the differences between art and engineering, the problems of being born as babies, and the ethics of extinction, just to name a few. You are not alone in your thoughts anymore.

This might sound like a loss of the intimacy and potential of self-reflection that the original The Talos Principle offered, but what we gain feels much more fulfilling and interesting: the knowledge that the harsh questions that lead our life can be better answered when we ask them with other people. The possibility to hear different perspectives, understand other lines of thought, and think about arguments that we couldn’t have thought of by ourselves are some of the true foundations of how we build knowledge.

All of this would fall into pieces if the puzzles that we needed to solve were lackluster, but fortunately, that’s not the case.

When I recall my first playthrough of the original game, I remember running over a good chunk of the riddles without having second thoughts, usually finding the solutions in a couple of minutes. During one chamber in the first big area in the preview, I unlocked the “Persistent” achievement, which pop-ups when you take more than 20 minutes in a single puzzle.

I’m impressed with how many new tools the game throws at you much more frequently than before, and the ways of thinking outside the box that it’s expecting you to experience. You get the classic jammers, boxes, and devices that let you interact with electric objects and connect lasers, but quickly you’ll receive other tools like drills that can create holes á la Portal in specific walls, or inverters that, well, invert the color of the light beam it receives. Everything is presented in a logical learning curve, not feeling unfair at any moment and explicitly and implicitly teaching you anything you need to know.

The level design in the available puzzles, including the optional ones (some of which I couldn’t decipher yet), feels like a big step forward in the series, asking more from you than ever, but without rushing. Couldn’t solve an optional puzzle? Don’t worry, you don’t need them to make progress through the story. Had issues with one of the main ones? Take a chance with an optional one or consume an item that will solve it for you. I was also pleasantly surprised by the lack of hazardous objects in these initial levels, such as the moving spheres and the turret guns from the original, letting you take your time and test your solutions to the puzzle without the danger of being destroyed by a misstep.

I haven’t been this compelled by a puzzle game since Portal 2. After seven hours, it moved from being “probably a cool game to have on the radar” to one of my most anticipated releases in the last quarter of a year that still has ridiculously exciting games on the way. I’m ready to solve every single puzzle and learn more about New Jerusalem and why we do what we do. In video games and in real life.

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