The Talos Principle

This note last modified September 1, 2024

Game that deals with religion, consciousness, AI, and what it means to be human.

My favorite work on the Talos Principle, here is a master’s thesis on the game that does a fantastic job breaking down its philosophy

Analyzing the Philosophy of The Talos Principle (A game that touches on a lot of AI philosophy questions):

Here’s a dump of a lot of the game’s resources, e.g. texts in the terminal and audio logs. I recommend listening to all the audio logs as a way to speedrun the story of the game without needing to play it through

Here’s another dump of audio logs from the Talos Principle, this time hosted on Youtube

what makes a game philosophical
- There are games that bring up explicit philosophy texts and play with formal concepts (The Talos Principle)
philosophy - games
- The Talos Principle
- The Talos Principle
philosophy - game recommendations
- The Talos Principle (20-30 hours)
- This game taught me more philosophy than any textbook ever could. Beautiful story, beautiful message, and tons of neat puzzles. The actual philosophy of the game is varied, but touches on what it means to be human, religion, consciousness, AI, and meaning of life. Click here for some video essays that summarize the game without you having to play the whole long thing
education
- In High School, I sat through lectures and then went home and played games, and I learned from both. The way I learned from The Talos Principle was very different than how I learned from chemistry lectures, and this got me obsessed with informal learning
anything can be art
- And that makes me sad, not because I think they’re wrong necessarily, but because that type of dismissal means that you implicitly lock yourself away from so much beauty. If you dismiss video games as silly, you’ll never stumble upon the beauty of Before Your Eyes, the challenges of The Talos Principle, or the simple wholesomeness of A Short Hike
Who am I - professionally
- These interests arose from a course I taught in undergraduate where I used games like The Stanley Parable, The Talos Principle, and The Witness to teach philosophy. Why read about the trolley problem, when you can instead play through it yourself?
Talos Principle Post Mortem
- The Talos Principle
Definition Of Philosophical Game-Gualeni
- I think the list of common areas addressed by philosophical games is incomplete, though what deserves placement on the list is of course, subjective. That said, I do think consciousness + the self (especially AI consciousness) could make a nice addition. Games like The Talos Principle, SOMA, Detroit - Become Human, and Event0 are all great examples in this space. My list philosophy - games has even more category breakdowns.