The Talos Principle 3 creators are doing their best to stay hopeful in the tech apocalypse

In 2012, Critical Sam developer Croteam made its mark on the puzzle recreation style with a riff on Portal that traded in bodily comedy for philosophical musing. As if its distinctive puzzles weren’t brain-bending sufficient on their very own, The Talos Precept appeared for larger goal in a tough sci-fi story that looked for indicators of humanity in a world populated by chilly androids. It kicked gaming’s dystopian instincts to the curb to ship an optimistic exploration of synthetic intelligence.

You may see the place that is going. Fourteen years later, the group is difficult at work on the collection’ grand finale, The Talos Precept 3. It is being created in a really totally different context than both of its predecessors; what as soon as was pure sci-fi has now grow to be an inescapable nervousness, due to the very actual rise of generative AI. That’s left Croteam pissed off as its thematic intent has regularly been muddied by LLMs, however the studio isn’t altering course due to a couple of chatbots. It’s going to complete The Talos Precept story the best way it at all times meant to.

“It really spawned into this world extra like an accident,” Croteam CCO Davor Hunski instructed me once I spoke to members of the group in a video interview. The story goes that Croteam was onerous at work on a brand new Critical Sam recreation, and Hunski was attempting to resolve a hyper-specific drawback: What can be a enjoyable solution to have gamers unlock doorways that didn’t contain key playing cards? Hunski began taking part in with a tool that permit gamers jam doorways, and that opened the artistic floodgates at Croteam. Quickly, video games like Movement grew to become some extent of inspiration for a bombastic shooter. The experimentation took on a lifetime of its personal, so Croteam spun it off into its personal recreation and pitched it to Devolver Digital. Regardless of anticipating to see Critical Sam 4, Devolver enthusiastically authorised the concept.

The Talos Precept launched in 2012 to instant vital acclaim. It was praised for its brainy puzzles, which had gamers juggling devices, and for its considerate story about transhumanism. It was adopted by The Talos Precept 2 in 2023, and a remake of the primary recreation dubbed The Talos Precept: Reawakened in 2025. Earlier this 12 months, Croteam introduced that it could finish the collection with The Talos Precept 3, although it has solely gotten a small teaser trailer to this point. Whereas particulars are sparse for now, Croteam gave Polygon an thought of what to anticipate from the ending.

“The primary recreation is about delivery. The second recreation is about life. And the final recreation was about, , what comes after,” author Verena Kyratzes instructed Polygon.

The story takes place in The Anomaly, a mysterious area the place the legal guidelines of physics don’t apply. Androids are drawn to it, with some believing they may discover God there. You play as a member of an expedition gone unsuitable, who winds up caught in The Anomaly watching their previous experiences recreated by the place. Croteam stated that the concept was conceived throughout growth of the primary recreation, with the intent being that every recreation would discover a chunk of a life cycle: delivery, life, and loss of life.

“What drew me to the story is that this dialogue of: Do you imagine in life after loss of life, or do not you? Is it one thing to be afraid of, or can you discover hope in that? Is there a continuity of the soul?” Verena Kyratzes stated. “I am not essentially saying that I imagine in that, however I believe it is a very attention-grabbing dialogue to have. Possibly for those who’ve lived a superb life, then the subsequent step is not so scary anymore.”

In the event you’ve performed a Talos Precept recreation earlier than, then it’s seemingly no shock to listen to that my dialog with the group delved much less into recreation particulars and extra into philosophical debate. As author Jonas Kyratzes mentioned how the venture offers with immortality as an idea, asking its gamers if they might select to take that choice if humanity cracked the code, I joked that I wouldn’t wish to reside longer than I’ve to.

“You’ll get older,” Hunski stated, piercing my ironic veil by means of the display screen. “You’ll change your opinion.”

“In the event you had been 100 years outdated, however your physique was 24?” Jonas Kyratzes adopted up. “Lots of the time it is like individuals are like, ‘Oh, I do not wish to reside a thousand years as a result of I must work for a thousand years.’ Your drawback is your job! The issue is you are extraordinarily alienated out of your labor! The issue will not be that you do not wish to reside a thousand years!”

Honest play, however you’ll be able to’t blame me for being exhausted by the present state of the world. Excessive amongst my very own listing of issues at current is the tech business’s generative AI craze, which threatens to upend that labor drawback by forcibly ejecting these alienated staff from their jobs. It’s onerous to be optimistic about the place that would lead if left unchecked.

That places The Talos Precept in a wierd place because it gears up for its last act. The collection was rooted in sci-fi custom, following a protracted historical past of works about AI that predated at the moment’s tech panorama. Philip Okay. Dick wasn’t writing commentaries about ChatGPT within the Nineteen Sixties, but it surely’s inevitable that his work is perhaps interpreted by means of that lens at the moment. The identical goes for The Talos Precept, particularly since Reawakened revived the primary recreation’s AI optimism in the course of a heated second. I requested Jonas Kyratzes if it bugs him that The Talos Precept 3 could possibly be interpreted as a contemporary commentary on generative AI.

“I really suppose that the difficulty is that folks have been annoying me with that because the first recreation,” he stated.

For Jonas, The Talos Precept isn’t focused on determining how the tech may or ought to work, however slightly utilizing it to ask questions on humanity. He’s extra focused on discussing materialism, and asking if consciousness is one thing that may be created by human beings by arranging matter within the right order. Even when these questions did intersect with at the moment’s tangible discussions, the tech we’re interacting with at the moment isn’t the AI he’s speaking about.

“We’ve this bizarre phenomenon the place we name issues synthetic intelligence that are not synthetic intelligence, and now we’re all speaking as if we had synthetic intelligence,” he stated. “That creates a really bizarre factor the place we have been given a linguistic model of the long run, however we’ve not been given an precise future. We’ve the signifier, however not the signified. It’s kind of like for those who instructed me we had warp journey, but it surely was only a tunnel. We’ve one thing very attention-grabbing in LLMs and in machine studying, but in addition we’ve a bunch of dumb firms randomly spending tons of cash that they do not know the best way to make again.”

There are nonetheless locations the place The Talos Precept 3 intersects with generative AI debates, although not directly. Jonas stated that, like The Talos Precept 2, the third installment is about “imagining a greater world and imagining higher purposes of expertise.”

“We see the lives that these beings reside. And a theme that recurs within the recreation is that they reside comparatively peculiar lives,” he stated. “A few of them go to nice extremes — considered one of them turns into a planet — however loads of others reside an peculiar life as a result of an peculiar human life, for those who strip away the issues that we’ve in our society, is an excellent factor. The concept that a synthetic intelligence can be one thing very alien to us is one thing that the video games oppose… There is a recurring idea within the video games that what they’re attempting to do is to not be greater than human, however to be extra human.”

That’s the place Croteam’s optimism is available in. Hunski famous that the collection was initially impressed by Star Trek and astronomer Carl Sagan. It’s not cynical, nor does it current its robotic civilization as a dystopia. It’s extra nuanced than that, and that flows from the compassion that the group has for human beings.

“We do lovely issues on a regular basis and individuals are nonetheless able to goodness all the time … excluding a handful of people who find themselves broken by this world,” Jonas stated. “That’s one thing that comes up in 3 as nicely. After we see fictional different worlds and their histories, one thing to think about is: Are people guilty for this? Can we go like, ‘Oh, it is Elon Musk, it is Donald Trump, it is Kier Starmer?’ There is a form of compassion in understanding that techniques produce these people and put them in positions of energy. It is not that this or that individual is uniquely evil or uniquely corrupt; it is that one thing historic is occurring. Whereas that is very scary, it is also hopeful, as a result of it implies that it is not the person people who find themselves guilty. It is simply that we’re all trapped on this equipment.”

Verena Kyratzes recalled a dialog that she had along with her father about AI. He stated that he did not need it to exist as a result of he was certain it could be evil. His reasoning? “As a result of the individuals who program it could be evil.” Verena admitted it was a good level, however countered with one other hypothetical: “However what in the event that they weren’t?” Name it optimism or naivety, however that query is what powers the collection. Croteam refuses to confess defeat, which is why it isn’t backtracking on its philosophy with The Talos Precept 3. If something, the grim state of the world has solely given the group extra motive to say what it desires to say.

“We inform this story as a result of we expect that lots of people haven’t got hope, as a result of they do not see the hope,” Verena stated. “Lots of the narrative on the market — not simply in video games, however motion pictures, books, et cetera — is dystopian. If we do not inform these tales, then individuals won’t imagine that there’s nonetheless hope. I look on the market, and I additionally suppose, okay, we’re screwed. However what if we weren’t? What if sufficient individuals may hope once more in order that one thing may change?”

“I do know that Talos Precept is only one recreation towards this big flood of dystopian narratives, however we’ve to start out someplace.”