This game is bad (for now)

[DeusCrusader]

I'm a big fan of the first game and DLC and still don't understand why the second game isn't a direct sequel.
This is reminiscent of the situation with NieR Replicant and Nier: Automata, one universe, but not connected games AT ALL.
Why do we need to jump hundreds of years into the future? Why do robots differ by gender? They decided to follow the example of people? Then I don't see any conflict between them.

In the scene after the elevator, the lighting broken. And this is not an engine problem, it’s your crooked hands that were unable to correctly distribute one light into two scenes on ONE PLACE. (RE3 Remake says hello)
Why Unreal Engine? Do you no longer need your wonderful engine? Your engine has already produced a beautiful picture.

Where does this impossible architecture and meaningless buildings come from? Did you forget that in the game the character wakes up in the real world (lmao)?
Why puzzles for the sake of puzzles? This is no longer a simulator, and any of these puzzles can be solved using a jetpack. Since robots can create teleports, they must have a jetpacks. If there are no jetpacks, robots have all the tools in the world. The HELICOPTER they arrived on, after all.

Why couldn't puzzles be built into the story? Insert a plug into the socket to supply power to the elevator, and solve several other similar problems? There are many such examples.
Because of this absurdity, you lose the feeling that the game is taking place in the REAL WORLD, and not in the SIMULATION from the first game.

Sorry, I'm canceling my pre-order :(

[[ᵘʷᵘ] I FEEL HEAL U]

>Why do we need to jump hundreds of years into the future?
>Where does this impossible architecture and meaningless buildings come from? Did you forget that in the game the character wakes up in the real world (lmao)?
Oh man imagine you can't connect a two simple things as these into one, but the new light mixer can

[Jonas Kyratzes]

The story was never meant to continue directly from the moment where you wake up, and if we end up doing Talos 3, that story also won't continue directly from the end of Talos 2. These are individual chapters in the much bigger story of humanity, and it makes sense to tell stories that are 1) compatible with a puzzle game 2) about specific turning points in that history.

In fact, if you pay close attention to Talos 1 and Gehenna, you will find that much of this was already foreshadowed there.

Every element of the world you find in Talos 2 has a logic and an explanation, exactly like it did in Talos 1. Discovering what is going on, why there is an island full of puzzles and advanced technology - and deciding what to do about it - is what the expedition will be about. However, as others have pointed out, most of that content was cut from the demo to avoid spoiling the journey.

As for gender, the robots consider themselves human, as per the ideas of the original game. They have gender... sort of, as a leftover linguistic element. They're not that consistent about it because it doesn't matter much to them. But they are very human in most ways, because that was the point of what Alexandra Drennan was trying to achieve.

[Juandisimo]

This is one of the dumbest posts I’ve had the displeasure of reading. It is a direct sequel as the plot of the original game directly affects this one. If you paid any attention to the dialogue options you learn a lot about New Jerusalem. Not only that but the terminals offer a lot of lore that contextualizes the Talos 1.

It seems like you wanted the same game as the first with new puzzles. This game is very clearly trying to stay true to the original game while expanding how the narrative is presented and I for one could not be more happy

[Echo127]

Why are we talking about jet packs when a *ladder* or two would be sufficient help for most puzzles, lol. I'm OK with suspension of disbelief.

[Fartington]

How would you even continue it right from the moment after waking up? There's no puzzles in the real world. It would have to turn into some sort of survival game and building simulator where you're gathering wood and different materials in order to activate the other robots and construct an entire New Jerusalem.

I think the story is perfectly executed - it's both far enough into the future to allow the construction of these puzzle megastructures, and at the same time retains the element of exploring the unknown because the city inhabitants have been living in a bubble the whole time.

Not only this, but by setting things over a thousand years in the future you get to retain the same alluring atmosphere and tone from the first game of exploring places which were abandoned a long time ago and contain hidden secrets and mysteries waiting to be discovered.

[surv lives matter my ass]

I disagree with the author.
As a fan of Sam and Talos 1, I was pleased with the new story with the development of the game's ending. a new beautiful big world and new riddles.
p.s I hope I can find a cat in this game)

[Alabeo]

Originally posted by Eagleshadow:

Hi DeusCrusader, I can answer some of your questions.

> why the second game isn't a direct sequel. Why do we need to jump hundreds of years into the future?

We considered making it a direct sequel as well, but for it to be a Talos game, and not a completely different game that just shares the story, we had to have puzzles that can be accessed in a non-linear fashion, as that's the core of what Talos gameplay structure is. Since the player at the end of Talos 1 entered a real world, there's simply no justification for there already being Talos like puzzles in the real world, so our only option in this scenario was returning back to simulation in some manner.

We considered this, but didn't want to simply do a rehash of the first game, we didn't want to repeat what's already been said, we didn't want to set back the player and take away all the the player worked for so hard in the first game. There should be a payoff for all that hard work, and we wanted Talos 2 to be that payoff. For the teaser at the end of Talos 1 to be true and meaningful, we wanted to set the game in the real world, and engage a new set of narrative themes, not just repeat the old ones.

The only option at that point, was to set the stage with Talos 2 puzzles somehow existing in the real world, and it's up to you to figure out how and why this happened, as it's obviously a consequence of something that happened in the time between the end of the first game, and the beginning of the second game.

> but not connected games AT ALL.

I loved Nier Automata, but Replicant is still on my backlog, so I can't talk to how connected they are. But I can say that Talos 1 and 2 are connected in various ways. Infact, most characters from Talos 1 will be making some kind of return in Talos 2. You already heard some of Elohim even in the demo, and there's more to come in the full game.

> Why do robots differ by gender?

Robots consider themselves non-biological humans, the continuation of humanity. So they take upon themselves the characteristics that humans had, gender being one of them.

> In the scene after the elevator, the lighting broken.

I'm not sure if you're talking about exposure, or placement of light sources. If you can provide screenshots or video of this area that caught your attention and more precisely point where the issue lies, I'm sure we'll be able iron it out in time for release. Such reports are very appreciated.

> Why Unreal Engine? Do you no longer need your wonderful engine? Your engine has already produced a beautiful picture.

Thank you! We do love our engine, and it's in many ways faster to work with it than with Unreal. However, Unreal has an army of programmers behind it, so the gap in visual capabilities just kept growing larger and larger. It's impossible for our small team to catch up to a team that's more than 10 times larger. We had a choice of making Talos 2 look not that much different from Serious Sam 4, or decide to move to unreal, refocus our efforts from programing the engine into programming the gameplay and making content, and have the result that looks twice as good. I think we made the right choice, and that Talos 2 looks much better than it would have otherwise.

> Where does this impossible architecture and meaningless buildings come from?

Demo only covers the very beginning of the story, and then skips over a lot of it to show you some puzzles. In the full game, you'll hear robots being surprised as they discover actual real world puzzles and the impossible architecture, you'll hear them commenting on those very things, and you'll get to see them make progress in discovering what's behind this, why are there real life puzzles there, why is the architecture like that? While that may look like good old concrete, you'll soon find out that some things aren't what they appear to be.

> This is no longer a simulator, and any of these puzzles can be solved using a jetpack.

Robot society is just slightly technologically more advanced than humans and they actually have trouble with limited resources, which in the story you'll find out why.
So they don't happen to have jetpacks. And while they do have that VTOL helicopter, it's easier and more fuel efficient to simply solve the puzzle than to fly to each location and take time to drop you in. Your robot colleagues are busy with their own work while you're taking care of puzzles.

> Since robots can create teleports, they must have a jetpacks.

Infact, they don't have teleports, not even close. The expedition that you are a part of arrives there and discovers these advanced technologies that they have no idea how they work, who made them, and why they have been left there, and it's a kind of a big deal in the story, as you team discovers this for the first time, and then continues to try to reverse engineer and understand it.

> Why couldn't puzzles be built into the story?

They absolutely are. It was extremely important for us to have puzzles and story integrated together. It's just that the demo skips ahead, so we cut out the story that normally happens in those areas to reduce spoilers.

> Insert a plug into the socket to supply power to the elevator, and solve several other similar problems?

We considered this at the beginning when we were considering a direct sequel, but if we can't have returning mechanics from Talos 1 such as laser connectors, then it just didn't feel like Talos game, but something else entirely. We wanted to keep the best aspects of what made Talos great, and then build on top of that to make it even better. Valve actually had a similar experience when they tried to make Portal 2 without portals, and they ended up scraping the entire project and making the sequel with portals instead after all.

Only one question.

Are you still going to use Serious Engine for future games or you fully commited to Unreal at this point?

[Jonas Kyratzes]

I don't think we'll be going back to the Serious Engine at any point.

[WolfKnight179]

Originally posted by Jonas Kyratzes:

I don't think we'll be going back to the Serious Engine at any point.

Whilst I understand this, it is saddening. I loved the way Serious Engine games ran as well as the plethora of settings in the options menu.

[Alabeo]

Originally posted by Jonas Kyratzes:

I don't think we'll be going back to the Serious Engine at any point.

That means Serious Sam on Unreal Engine.

...very good ;)

[аnŌn]

Originally posted by JellySnek:

Originally posted by Jonas Kyratzes:

I don't think we'll be going back to the Serious Engine at any point.

That means Serious Sam on Unreal Engine.

...very good ;)

Very bad. It's not going to be optimized at all, just like SS4.

[KoweK]

I see devs in the topic so I want to know if it's normal? This ghosting and grainny reflections looks really bad. I thought that's DLSS problem but it's native resolution (1440p, max settings). https://streamable.com/pyvfzw

[Milansta]

No Serious Sam or Jeff Goldblum reference the moment the game launched
4/10 xd

[,,VolcanoQuake,,]

Game takes designs from most of the myst games. Southern coast is pretty much Riven.

[SERBoB]

Originally posted by Milansta:

No Serious Sam or Jeff Goldblum reference the moment the game launched
4/10 xd

There is a Serious Sam reference in the demo, keep looking for it!