The Talos Principle writer talks up "ambitious" expansion

Tom Jubert, one-half of the writing team behind the outstanding first-person puzzle game The Talos Principle, has provided a little bit of insight into what's coming in the Road to Gehenna expansion. He wasn't interested in repeating what had already been done, he wrote in a recent blog post, so he and writing partner Jonas Kyratzes kicked around some ideas that would "expand on the original world without simply following in its footsteps."

Among the ideas pitched and discarded were setting the expansion in the distant past, when the Elohim system was still in development, or in the distant future, after it's been discovered by other beings; or putting it on a separate server with the same rules but different archive information, resulting in completely different versions of Elohim and Milton, the game's nagging voice of doubt and cynicism.

Jubert didn't offer any hints about what they and Croteam eventually settled on, but said it "provides us huge flexibility in terms of the sort and tone of material we deliver. It gives us a world that fits within the original game's religious and science fiction mythology, but which resolutely has its own identity. Most importantly for me, it lets us explore completely new ideas about how to interact with the game." He also described it as "ambitious," adding that the script is comparable in size to that of The Talos Principle itself.

"We have consciously designed [Road to Gehenna] to be experimental," he wrote. "We wanted to explore new ideas in a safe environment so that when we inevitably come to Talos 2 we will be able to raise our audience's expectations once again."

Jubert said the expansion is now undergoing "final bug-hunting," and will be out in the next month or so.

Andy has been gaming on PCs from the very beginning, starting as a youngster with text adventures and primitive action games on a cassette-based TRS80. From there he graduated to the glory days of Sierra Online adventures and Microprose sims, ran a local BBS, learned how to build PCs, and developed a longstanding love of RPGs, immersive sims, and shooters. He began writing videogame news in 2007 for The Escapist and somehow managed to avoid getting fired until 2014, when he joined the storied ranks of PC Gamer. He covers all aspects of the industry, from new game announcements and patch notes to legal disputes, Twitch beefs, esports, and Henry Cavill. Lots of Henry Cavill.