After I wrote that essay, I ended up replaying the sequel "The Talos Principle 2" a few years after I had experienced it the first time. I noticed a couple of things in this playthrough. Firstly, I was figuring out the puzzles a lot faster. Secondly, I was almost never able to cheat. The developers did a really good job in spacing all the puzzle rooms apart and angling them in such a way that hardly any of them could form connections with each other. I did try, though. I tried a lot. I think I only managed to figure one of them out, but only after I had solved it the correct way.
After scratching my head a bit, I realized that these two things were very important. The first point was that I had become much better at solving puzzles the correct way after doing all of that cheating. The second point told me that the developers had likely noticed all of the cheating in the first one and simply made a tighter puzzle collection in the sequel. That means that improvement occurred for both the player and the developer. We both learned and got better accordingly... all because of some creative cheating.
The fact that they pushed back on the cheating did not make the game worse. In fact, I was really impressed by the work they did put into it. Because of all the cheating I did in the first game, I was actively able to appreciate the efforts they put into preventing it in the sequel. It was like I could hear the developer saying, "I thought you might try that, but not this time!" It made me smile because I felt like I was being talked toby the developer in a different language... the language of puzzles.
You might suspect that the reason I was so good at the puzzles this time around was because I had played the game before. No. I have a bad track record of forgetting the solutions to puzzles and having to learn them all over again. This always happens when I go back to play the "Portal" games. In this case, I am pretty sure the reason I was blasting through all the puzzles was because my mind had opened up to new ideas rather than getting stuck on an endless pattern of repetitive thinking. The old way still worked, but I had to constantly relearn something to solve it in the same way. I was now solving each puzzle through a process of critical thinking processes obtained through cheating in the first game.
Another way to look at the latter point is that, in trying to cheat each puzzle, I was actually just figuring out the intended solution.
My second playthrough of "The Talos Principle 2" was even more fun than the first because I was conscious of this new ability to think with an open mind and see things in a more creative way. A few puzzles still gave me trouble towards the end, but I still made it through them. They were the hardest of the lot anyhow.
I think that's all I really have to say about this. All this has really pleased me, and I would love to see how far I can take this. Just keep in mind, this is not about doing bad things. This is about breaking out of patterns of behavior that hold you back. That's what I am doing... and it's helping me in more ways than just being good at a single video game.
This blog was written on August 27, 2026.
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