The Talos Principle 2 (Nov 2nd '23)

[Seanspeed]

Looks amazing. First game was fantastic. Croteam are also known for going heavy on PC options and whatnot. This is a UE5 game though, so demands are obviously not expected to be light.

Also shocking is the price. It's only a $30 game! Cheaper than the first was. Even a pre-order discount, to where it's just £22.49 on Steam. Seems like they're making a big gamble to get sales and attention in a crowded time window through pricing. Hope it pays off for em.

 

[Globalisateur]

I hope it will work out for them. The first game is one of my favorite game. Everybody should at least try that game.

 

[cheapchips]

This is a UE5 game though, so demands are obviously not expected to be light.

Have they confirmed that? I was hoping for Serious Engine 5.

 

[Remij]

Yes! It looks awesome! Can't wait!

 

[Seanspeed]

Have they confirmed that? I was hoping for Serious Engine 5.

Seems like 99% confirmed.

The Talos Principle 2 Launches November 2

Hi everyone. Croteam is very happy today to announce The Talos Principle 2 is launching on November 2. This is a very special project for us. For one, it allowed us to continue the story of The Talos Principle, a game that shaped us just as much as Serious Sam did. But also, The Talos Principle...

www.techpowerup.com

This only says Unreal, so not specifically UE5, but the composer(who has worked there for a while, not just hired gun for this one game) did claim UE5 by name.

 

[cheapchips]

Bah. I'd love it if they'd rolled their own cluster and realtime gi solutions, for some reason.

 

[trinibwoy]

Wow was not expecting that. I never finished the first one but it’s a great game. The sequel looks fantastic.

 

[techuse]

Steam demo is out. The screens I have seen posted look amazing. Apparently it doesn't run well though.

https://imgur.com/4WoEiPC

https://imgur.com/4VBekLE

https://abload.de/img/talos2screenshot2023.3wc8l.jpg

https://abload.de/img/talos2screenshot2023.q0i6q.jpg

https://abload.de/img/talos2screenshot2023.khcbl.jpg

https://abload.de/img/talos2screenshot2023.cmf2u.jpg

Geo and materials are top notch.

 

[cheapchips]

Apparently it doesn't run well though.

We'll see about that!

<Boots up Steamdeck>

Edit: Not available until 23rd?

 

[techuse]

We'll see about that!

<Boots up Steamdeck>

Edit: Not available until 23rd?

Oops, forgot ot mention you need this command until it's listed.

steam://install/2312690

 

[Arnage]

It's available regularly now.

Initial impressions are very good. Stylistically it's very similar to part one, but at larger scale with way more detail. Nanite shines here, with every hieroglyph on ancient Egyptian temples modeled and some huge pop-in free environments. The indirect lighting also looks great in most natural environments, but can cause annoying splotchy artifacts with smaller bright artificial sources and emissives. There seems to be no option to use HWRT.

Performance is good overall, but there were regular hitches throughout, which will hopefully be fixed as they were severe enough to be quite distracting.

Another minor negative: while the world is beautiful and vast, it's very static. Maybe Nanite's WPO support came in too late in their dev cycle to be used or wasn't deemed performant enough, but a little more life and movement in the environments would have been nice. Also, I was a bit disappointed that the water (which there is quite a bit of) is completely non-interactive, with zero particles or surface deformation when you enter it.

Gameplay/story: Loved the first one and based on this demo, this one could be quite special as well.

 

[Globalisateur]

I really like the new puzzles mechanics and the fact that like the first one there are different kind of puzzles. Some restreined to a limited area, others confined to the whole map.

Here again exploration is key to find secrets, solutions or hidden puzzles. Thank god there isn't an AI that tells you what to do to solve the puzzles! That would have being terrible.

I think the switch to UE5.2 was perfect so they could quickly create incredibly big and detailed environments that run usually pretty well on modest hardware (like a console using the performance mode, fidelity mode runs not well and fps is uncapped). Apart from the obvious shimmering on foliage my biggest complaint is the flickering and shimmering on any vegetation reflecting on water. They really kill the immersion sometimes when you watch the beautiful and big scenery but the whole thing is spoiled by the flickering reflections. Also FSR (I assume) is broken when there is transparency. Anything (mostly vegetation again) behind transparent stuff shimmers like crazy. Hopefully they could patch it in the future.

I am only at level 3 and for now it's a 10/10 for me. So good.