There are computer monitors set up throughout the realms, which you can use to access a vast archive. Or what's left of it, as time has seemingly degraded many of its entries. Still, there's enough to tell humanity is probably long in the rearview, the victim of some disease or similar catastrophe. Within the archive is something else, another presence. It toys with you, asking you to prove you're alive, or define life or consciousness, or how meaning is derived. God occasionally cuts in with the booming, "BEGONE!" voice while you're typing, but you'll encounter "the serpent" again when you solve enough puzzles.
I guess it's possible, within the limited response options the game gives you, to have revealing conversations about the nature of your existence in this artificial world with the serpent. But I went so long between plays, and sometimes made little enough progress that it might be two or three times playing before the next conversation, so I'd forget our past discussions. My responses apparently came off as philosophically inconsistent or maybe just poorly thought out.
But the serpent also had the tendency to play tricks and then mock me, and when I pointed this out - one of the response options was essentially, 'Whatever I say, you're going to tell me is wrong' - it made a snide remark that I couldn't just avoid the question. This is the wrong thing to say to someone with my contrary nature. After that, I simply wouldn't give it anything. Whatever it said, whatever attempt at getting agreement or finding common ground, I denied, cutting the discussion short. You know, the proper way to deal with an argumentative dickhead, when punching them isn't an option.
The puzzles are all about getting various Tetris pieces, which you need to be able to open doors to access the other realms, or, if you choose, the different levels of the tower. Of course, once you've got them you also have to arrange them to unlock the doors, and that was sometimes more of a headache than the puzzles themselves.
I used Youtube for the puzzles quite a lot in the back half of the game. Sometimes I could see the outline of what I needed to do, but couldn't get things arranged properly. Sometimes I had no clue. Especially when it involved the recording device. There are several tools you unlock through the game, any or all of which may be present in a given puzzle. Some are a simple as a block, others are platforms, fans, or crystals on tripods that can angle or aim lights where you want them.
And there's a machine that, when you turn it on, records whatever you do. When you finish, you go back to the machine and hit play, and a hologram of your self repeats those movements. So for a while, there can be two of you, each carrying your own block or with your own crystal tripod. So the other you can depress a switch, or use a tripod to send a beam to unlock one door, while you do the same somewhere further on. I really hated those, which is probably why I won't play again to try a different approach with the serpent.
The version I bought also included Fire of Gehenna, which I think is a sequel, set after your character in the first game makes the ultimate ending choice. God's shutting things down, and tasks another machine/program to descend into a prison-realm it created and free earlier programs it placed there for one transgression or another. By solving more puzzles, naturally.
The puzzles are the same as before. This time, you interact with the inmates via a message board community they somehow built up over their time imprisoned. You can read the posts, which might be one of them doing a long-running pulp story when they only vaguely understand humans or the concepts involved, or just musings. Sometimes they ask you questions, or debate your presence among themselves. The ones running the message board have their own, private, threads where they plot to run a smear campaign against you as you tear their world down.
Even if the responses the game gave as options weren't limited to one sentence, I'm the wrong person to send. You want someone for a mission from God, call the Blues Brothers. Given the choice, I'd simply say, "I'm not making you go. Come if you want, stay if you don't, this place is toast either way." In fact, at the point when you've freed all the others, but "Admin" is reluctant to leave, the game finally offered that as a response and you better believe I used it.
I called it a day when I realized that, to free Admin, the game expected me to go back and get a bunch of the gold stars that were elsewhere within the puzzles I solved to free the prisoners. I got a handful in The Talos Principle, but didn't find it worth the hassle. I certainly didn't feel like bothering with it here, even if the one I'd be trying to save had asked to be saved.
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