The Talos Principle--Puzzles and Philosophy

My Steam sale purchases have sat unplayed in my library for longer than I would like.  I finally decided it was time to dive into them and see whether I had made some good purchases or was duped into purchasing some duds.  The first choice for investigation is The Talos Principle.

I first saw The Talos Principle on it's initial release.  It looked to be an interesting spin on puzzle games but the $40 price tag seemed steep.  So far, I like what I have seen.  You play as an android/robot/artificial intelligence who appears in a strange world.  There isn't much of a backstory...you just sort of appear and then a voice calling itself "elohim" directs you to solve some puzzles to unlock "sigils."  These sigils remind me of tangrams....you know, those math toys where you have to create a specific design using different shapes (I was always horrible at them).  The world has a very ancient Greek/Roman feel and you navigate ruins that seem real and artificial.

The puzzles have been fairly straightforward through the first three or so "worlds."  The first world involved using devices called jammers to avoid roving robots and turrets who seem to be tasked with eliminating you.  The jammers stop them in their tracks allowing you to creep by.  Properly locating and moving the jammers can be a little challenging, but eventually you will figure it out.  Each world also contains data terminals that give you some sort of insight into the story behind the puzzles.  As you interact with the terminals you read old data entries about the project that seems to have created your robot self and the series of puzzles.  You also read many entries about philosophy and have to answer a short set of questions that seems to be a sort of psychological profile.  Much of it seems to circulate around deep questions about whether artificial intelligence represents real life.

This sums it up pretty well.

As you explore the world you discover that it is fairly vast.  One of the central features is a very large tower.  Elohim, your guide/mentor, warns you that you should not venture to the top of the tower or else you will curse your offspring for generations to come.  Ummm saying not to go somewhere means that you have to go there!  Can a robot have offspring?  What's at the top of the tower?  I'm positive that I will end up at the top of the tower eventually.

I am anticipating the puzzles getting much harder and the story behind the strange tests and location becoming clearer.  Solving the puzzles has been satisfying and the added philosophical reflection makes The Talos Principle deeper than the traditional puzzle game.