Talos actually is a lot closer to this than Portal 2 even though it doesn’t seem so!
Talos has a complentative feel and remains open ended until the very end. Exploration is a reward and you can go complete a few other puzzles if you get stuck.
Portal 2 is a linear AAA narrative based game with puzzles. Its puzzles never get brain-shattering in order to allow most people to progress.
Portal 2’s first person gameplay is an integral part of the game. Meanwhile, the vast majority of Talos ´s puzzles could actually function on a purely 2d plane, and reflexes are never necessary. The first person is a clever hindrance that prevents you from getting a full view of the entire field , unless you build one in your mind or on paper (pro tip: this often helps immensely)
Talos also has the best what-is-this-mysterious-island- and-how-do-i-escape narrative, and it completely fucked with my perception of the world at one point. Tbh i just expect the witness to be strictly inferior
Yes, all of that (though some of the meta puzzles and alternate solutions depend on clever uses of the Z-axis, making them legit 3d puzzles.
Talos Principle is closer to the first Portal than the second, and even then it is best described as the Myst series but with Portal-like discrete puzzle rooms. Even then, the puzzle rooms are not as discrete as they seem. (The world is essentially divided into 3 “ages” and a final endgame puzzle sequence, making it feel most similar to Myst 1, 3-5’s 3 distinct ages plus a final puzzle sequence.
The narrative of Talos Principle does certainly stand out as better than most video-game narratives ever manage. It’s probably the best instance of collecting-audio-logs style narrative and the pseudo multiplayer aspects lifted from D. Souls are charmingly implemented (you can see notes left by other players and leave notes for other players. For one of the endings, you can actually become an NPC hint-giver that will appear in the games of people on your steam friendslist)
Braid made me think about “masculinity stuff” and also “gross behavior in a relationship” and my wife really likes it so I’ll be attempting to get my little baby laptop to play The Witness probably.
Also, I would play this game if I had the PC that I wish I had. Mainly for playing SFV. For some reason the PS4 looks like an unappealing buy. (I wish I was excited for another piece of plastic to gather dust in my home)
Looking back on Braid I mostly admire the rigorous progression of the puzzle design. It’s a bit like Zelda dungeon design gradually developing puzzles outward from an ability, except that it’s seeded from a core concept over the entire scope of the game. And Braid avoids resorting to the arbitrary just to create puzzle complexity, each puzzle has “something to say” about the core mechanic – there’s never just a puzzle for puzzle’s sake. I don’t think Braid has ever been exceeded in terms of structural integrity, although some games match it (but most of those by exploring fewer mechanics). The artwork and theming is very much an afterthought.
I expect this quality of integrity most of all from The Witness, and that’s why I’m looking forward to playing it. But I don’t expect it to weave the theme elements in any more successfully than Braid did.