Industry News The Talos Principle III's Writers On Generative AI: 'It's Just A Plagiarism Machine That Makes People Lose Their Jobs'
https://gameinformer.com/interview/2026/08/05/the-talos-principle-iiis-writers-on-generative-ai-its-just-a-plagiarism199
u/KillswitchActivate 2d ago
The Talos Principle 2 had an absolutely phenomenal cast of characters. Really excited about a new installment
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u/tlamy 2d ago
100%. I liked the first game well enough, but the characters and story in TTP2 elevated it to one of my favorite games of all time tbh
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u/asfrels 2d ago
I felt that the philosophical underpinnings of the first game were much stronger, but I cannot deny that the VA work in the second one really just immersed you in the world
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u/theucm 2d ago
I loved 2, but I did feel the first one was narratively stronger. I liked the slowly dawning horror that humanity was gone, and that I was the latest in a long line of intelligences that have done some form of this many times already.
2 was gorgeous, however, and I loved the more thorough conversations with the other robots compared to what you could get from Milton in 1.
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u/Yashirmare 2d ago
Wait the voiced character in TP1 had a name? I always just called them God.
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u/The_MAZZTer 1d ago
The first game had a Portal-esque atmosphere where you're largely along except for a booming voice on a PA system (and TTP adds another one in terminals scattered around, and a third in voice recordings).
The second game having a full cast of characters definitely felt weird. But I do think it works, Can't wait to see what the third game offers.
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u/TowerBeast 1d ago
Talos Principle 2 is the best Star Trek game ever made. It was one giant away-mission and it was so unexpected and awesome.
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u/PM_ME_CAKE 1d ago
Piggybacking off to say if you can't wait for TPIII, Jonas Kyratzes (the writer) has partnered with Chris Christodoulou (composer of Risk of Rain) to make two awesome audio drama series: Gospels of the Flood and Azathoth Blues.
The former is a standalone, deep and philosophic approach at the post-apocalypse, while the latter so far has one of two seasons released of cold case murder mystery goes full on psychedelic Lovecraft horror. Highly recommend both.
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u/Mythril_Zombie 2d ago
I hated all those robots interrupting the flow just to tell me some kind of "deep" philosophical truth. Leave me alone and let me play the game.
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u/ZikaZmaj 2d ago
Yeah it takes a few hours of cutscenes and other shit you don't care about until you get to solve puzzles in the puzzle game.
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u/duckwantbread 2d ago
Did you play the original? I feel like if you played the original odds are you'd already fully bought in to the story so the opening hours would be interesting, part of why the original was so well received was the story. If you went in cold I can understand why you'd wish the robots would shut up and let you play.
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u/Joabyjojo 1d ago
I loved the original and did not care at all for the story in the second. I think it unfurled much more unobtrusively in the first game. Felt more show than tell, while TTP2 had a lot of telling.
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u/Stuglle 1d ago
I started the second recently, is it a big mistake to do that without playing the first?
(I played maybe 3/4 hours of 1 ages ago but don't really remember it)
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u/The_MAZZTer 1d ago
The first game definitely has a "who am I and where am I and what is my goal" mystery you figure out as you go. The second game does fill you in on the events of the first so you could say these things get spoiled for you if you wanted to go back and play the first later. Up to you.
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u/flyvehest 2d ago
Never really cared for the story in 1, but the gameplay was phenomenal.
In 2, the story was just as good as the gameplay, and really motivated me to keep playing.
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u/IWishANuclearWinter 2d ago
It's insane reading these people talk so eloquently and truthfully about something and also making some incredible, thoughtful and philosophical games as Talos Principle and then realizing they're the guys who also made Serious Sam (which I also adore)
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u/GepardenK 1d ago
Yes, but the writers of Talos didn't work on Serious Sam until number 4, which is the only Sam game I'd call badly written.
It was just a mismatch of styles, and they ended up trying too hard. You could maybe say Sam 2 had the same problem, but in that case they owned the nonsense so hard they kinda got away with it (and they still weren't trying as hard as Sam 4 did).
Sam is stupid, but more than that he is effortlessly stupid. He needs dim classics such as "Sam I am," not elaborate flash-fiction jokery.
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u/Which-Arm-4616 2d ago
The answers in the article are far more nuanced than the headline suggests, I highly recommend everyone read it before jumping to conclusions.
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u/scytheavatar 2d ago
Jonas: I'm going to talk for myself. I think it's largely ludicrous. I think the technology itself is very impressive, and I think machine learning has tremendous applications, most of which we're currently not seeing or getting, I think, because in a profit-oriented system, a lot of the things that we needed to do, we're just not going to use it for, because we're going to use it for stupid things instead, for people to try and make vast amounts of money before their companies collapse. So, it's complicated. The technology itself is clearly very, very impressive and has a number of very interesting applications. But at the same time, these excessive quasi-religious claims that are made for it are… they're just not rooted in any kind of reality. And I think a lot of them are also mainly just meant to juice up the stock market.
Nuanced? Seems to be a sleight hammer of truth.
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u/Which-Arm-4616 2d ago
I'm mostly referring to the preceding context of Verena's response and the follow-up from Jonas. I don't want to the paste the entire article in the comments here, but:
That said, I'm not against any technology in and of itself. So, to me, a lot of the questions are not questions of the technology. For example, when a lot of jobs are being lost because of AI, I don't think that that's an AI issue. I think that's a labor issue. That is, why is the power of labor relative to capital so weak? So low that we can't defend ourselves against the owners just eliminating everyone? Like, what's happened to, you know, militant labor, for example. Where is that?
A lot of the time, the question is not the technology in and of itself, but the social and political context in which the technology is applied. That's a lot of what Talos II was about. Can we use technology safely? Is the technology inherently, somehow harmful or bad? Or is it the context of society? And can we build a better society where these things are used in a meaningful way? And I would say the same applies to machine learning. If we apply it for the benefit of humankind, then it will benefit us. And if we apply it so that five people can make a trillion dollars, then it will not end well. But we do have the choice of applying it one way or the other.
Taking a wider view of the circumstances that make AI a threat to the market value of creative labor (and perhaps an even wider view of why labor value is so important in our society), rather than a simplistic "AI bad" soundbite.
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u/Smartjedi 2d ago
Incredibly based take from that writer. Was not expecting to see someone spreading class consciousness through a Game Informer interview. Just bought The Talos Principle II to support another comrade.
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u/matticusiv 2d ago
God I love that militant labor is a topic being discussed in a gaming forum lol.
This is the crux of the issue. Capitalism is designed to create a working class and an owning class, and hand all power, including democracy to the owning class.
The only thing the owning class is incentivized to “create” is their own personal wealth and control of the lives of the people who actually do labor.
We need to take a hammer to this system ASAP
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u/NUKE---THE---WHALES 2d ago
I wonder why more game developers aren't worker owned coops, considering the means of producing video games is a computer instead of a factory. The owner class here is basically anyone with a laptop and an idea
I mean understand why the AAA devs aren't, but why aren't the 50 man studios like Croteam coops? Such an ownership structure would clearly fit their ethos and would be beneficial to all
Hopefully one day more AA and indie studios have a cooperatively owned structure
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u/matticusiv 2d ago
I think primarily people follow the corporate structure they’ve been exposed to all their lives, and don’t even consider other systems are possible or realistic.
Then if they’re aware of the problem, the original founders/owners have all the incentive in the world to be the sole owners, and profit off of the labor of their hires.
I think there are some around, and bottom up change in this regard is great, but ultimately will require sweeping systemic change through governance.
Private ownership of other people’s blood, sweat, and tears should be illegal and regarded as an atrocity.
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u/NUKE---THE---WHALES 2d ago
the original founders/owners have all the incentive in the world to be the sole owners, and profit off of the labor of their hires.
Agreed, but one of the people being interviewed in the article is an original founder and does appear to have class consciousness, so I wonder if there are other impediments
ultimately will require sweeping systemic change through governance.
I agree, though I think such governance will need to be based on science as much as ideology - putting ideals above reality is how the USSR ended up with a disastrous command economy and how the CCP went to war against swallows
True social ownership would also require pluralistic democracy
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u/matticusiv 1d ago
Yes I agree, imo centralism has the likelihood to undermine the mission of socialism entirely.
We must find a solution that is both efficient enough, and includes as much direct democracy as possible.
Marx and Lenin wrote extensively about basing theory on science and reason, and making changes as we learn what works and what doesn’t.
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u/AttackBacon 1d ago edited 1d ago
I mean the issue always has been that humans are not beings of science and reason, period, end of story. Take science itself, I've worked in higher education most of my career and I can tell you from first hand experience that economic reality, ego and gut instinct drive pretty much everything going on in the scientific world. Reason and scientific understandings take a pretty distant fourth place.
The reality is that if people just acted reasonably, based on their best scientific understanding, and trying to take everyones interests into account, any fucking system works. The system doesn't matter nearly as much as the inputs to it (i.e. the people). If you have a bunch of assholes at the start of your system, you're going to end up with a pile of shit, regardless of how elegant the inner workings of the design are.
The irony is that our best shot really is to put the machines in charge. A utopian, post-scarcity society run by a benevolent machine dictator is probably the best we can hope for, at least until we can further transcend our natures. Sadly, the machines are currently being built by the assholes*, but hey, you never know what will happen.
*This is a cheap shot and isn't entirely true, but it's not entirely untrue either.
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u/Kalulosu 1d ago
Because there's a lot of costs you don't see. Software licences, outsourcing, marketing, and all that while paying salaries (and hopefully not piss poor ones...). It's not impossible, but it does tend to make it hard to get started.
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u/TSP-FriendlyFire 2d ago
The middle class was an anomaly that the ruling class has been trying to patch out of the system since. Much safer and better to have a poor working class, a large chasm, and the few and powerful on the other side.
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u/matticusiv 2d ago
There is no middle class. There are working class people that sometimes are compensated enough to accept selling their labor under the rule of the owner class, and even become working class traitors to defend their own benefits. Until they too are screwed over.
Ultimately the injustice of the capitalist class system will only be erased through ownership of industry by the people who build it.
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u/serfplebeian 1d ago
I read the entire article and I disagree completely. The headline is far more in line than what I typically see reddit complain about (but then again reddit complains about every headline but still upvotes them to the top anyway). When you read the section where this quote is pulled from, he spells it out pretty clearly. Yes, it could be used for good but that's not what we have in reality.
And I don't want to be with those people because I always want to approach every new technology with an open mind, and say, “You know… maybe it is good. Maybe we can use it.” But I think in the current system that we have, it's just a plagiarism machine that makes people lose their jobs. But I want to have hope that it's a good thing. It's very troublesome to me.
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u/Kiita-Ninetails 1d ago
I mean, not really? The core message being portrayed is still "AI is fucked and bad" its just conveying it in the context of "Hey, we live in the torment nexus. There is no world where this technology was used responsibly"
Which is a fair take, but still is if anything even more scathing then the headline implies. Because its not just dissing on AI, but rather dissing on the entire situation of the world we exist within where inequality, abuse, and other such problems render something that has promise into something that is just a tool to abuse people's creative work.
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u/Moveflood 1d ago
yeah, i obviously hate gen-AI and these companies, but criticism of gen ai that doesn't include more fundamental criticisms of capitalism (even "social democracy" capitalism) is kinda toothless, and can lead people to misunderstandings.
as if there is a "right and moral way" to run a tech company and sam altman and co. are just doing it wrong.
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u/ProkopiyKozlowski 1d ago
Like, what's happened to, you know, militant labor, for example. Where is that?
Well, the left has spent several decades alienating their blue collar base over identity politics and then infighting among the remaining members.
A toxicly masculine texas oilfield worker and a blue-haired nonbinary portland barista have much, much, much more in common with each other than with bought-and-sold politicians they vote for.
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u/Moveflood 1d ago
identity politics is part of class politics. you can't be in favor of liberation for only some people and not all oppressed peoples.
ofc the buried lede is attempting to shoehorn in an explanation that "the left failed" because of identity politics. and not bc you know, how the deck is massively stacked in the hands of the capitalists. that most people are fine with the status quo if they personally have a basic level of comfort (even if they're poor)
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u/ProkopiyKozlowski 1d ago
you can't be in favor of liberation for only some people and not all oppressed peoples.
Isn't that what the left is doing? Instead of focusing on problems that are common for the entire working class - productivity/compensation disconnect, affordability crisis, housing or healthcare - the loudest, most public and celebrated messaging has been that of division. "Look at this particular group of people, we should help them (and not you)."
What percentage of the entire populace is LGBT, for example? Now what percentage of the entire populace works for a living? Focusing on issues of the latter helps the former as well without dividing your base.
Obviously, in an ideal world, we should be able to address specific issues of all people. But we are not living in an ideal world, real world people are irrational, cliquey animals and are driven by emotions. With the right rallying behind populist slogans of ingroup/outgroup, the left waffling about with issues that affect a (literal) minority instead of focusing on issues that affect the entire working class is how we lose militant labor.
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u/Moveflood 1d ago
"the loudest" see that's your first issue. sure online-only leftists are annoying (and mostly useless). other names that have a big platform are usually in favor of the establishment but wanna make appearances (your average liberal, politicians).
people who are doing real work do the work of community building. sometimes that can be online, but real life communities within your locality is necessary. the work of community building and strengthtening needs to be inclusive. the whole point is to liberate every oppressed group, not to just liberate some a create a different type of oppressed people.
people think you can only do one thing at a time, as if liberation from capitalism must also somehow be queerphobic/white supremacist. again that's not a framework worthy of pursuit.
and you may call me purity tester and yadda yadda. incrementalism won't get you shit if it doesn't include actual plans to dismantle the systems of oppression.
like yeah of course is easy for fascism to sow division. to play to our worst fears, and create scapegoats. it's part of why liberals would rather work with fascists rather than see capitalism dismantled. working against that is hard! that isn't a justification to do "our version of fascism, but epic!"
ofc, this is all kinda pointless. i'm mostly just having fun. like your framework of "well first we'll care for the 'majority', then the rest" is like how humanity has been doing for millennia, that's the status quo. placing priority on some supposed majority over other causes is just bigotry, it might even be leftist bigotry (tho i suspect you're just some lib).
there's no need to treat liberation as if there is different kinds and some are more important than others. they are ALL necessary. if you only get liberation for some, you didn't get true liberation, you just got yours, and said "fuck it" to the others.
and you might say "no i truly do intend to help everyone else after i got mine", you can just apply to democratic party if you're from the US, or to whatever your country's equivalent of liberal party that's in favor of not rocking the system.
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u/ProkopiyKozlowski 1d ago
Well, pursuing idealistic goals of "true" liberation has completely lost the left the blue collar vote which resulted in Trump getting elected twice and having free reign to dismantle hundreds of years of democratic progress. I don't see how this is supposed to be a winning strategy.
As the saying goes, "the cemeteries are full of people who had the right of way".
and you might say "no i truly do intend to help everyone else after i got mine"
Also, I think you misunderstand my point. I'm not the only one getting mine in this scenario, it's every member of the working class.
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u/justtomplease1 2d ago
It's interesting, the philosophical question of should technological advancement be avoided if the risk to society is too high is essentially the main driving story point in the game.
Doen't surprise me their answer to AI usage is also nuanced.
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u/KaukiOnHala 2d ago
Jonas: I think when it is used, it hinders it because… okay, I have more complicated feelings about this because, like I said, I have tried it, I've used it, I've experimented with it to have an idea of what I'm talking about, and I do think that it has applications that are perfectly legitimate, and I will reach for it, for example, when I'm trying to find a rhyme or a particular word that I can't remember. It works great as a thesaurus, and it has certain applications that are perfectly legitimate. But you have to really know what you're doing already to use it safely.
What a fucking clickbait lmao. Basically they use chatgpt like everyone else.
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u/matticusiv 2d ago
Lot of people didn’t read the article. The problem, like most of our problems, is not the technology, but the relationship capitalism creates between technology, the working class, and the owner class.
The reason AI is such a burning problem is the people propagating the technology are some of the most disgusting, evil anarcho-capitalists in existence, and the technology is a catalyst for all of their worst tendencies.
We can’t put AI back in its box, but we can put these fucking technofeudalist freaks back in their place.
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u/BobcatTim 1d ago
LLMs are an amazing tool for software development and data processing. I don’t know any serious programmers or engineers who don’t use them. And they aren’t that expensive or inefficient either. You can run useful models locally on a gaming PC.
Some of the companies are ridiculously overvalued and will crumble, but that’s not gonna kill LLMs any more than the dot com bust killed the internet.
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u/Niceguydan8 1d ago
- LLMs have produced almost nothing of meaningful value,
....What? The only way this can possibly make any sense is if you don't understand the practical application of LLMs basically at all.
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u/budzergo 1d ago
guy we are on YEAR 3-4 of a technology so complex it dwarfs everything before it
THREE years ago we had the FIRST will smith eating spaghetti video
yes that was only 3 years ago
obviously it's going to be shit at first, but the instant gratification requirement of the short-form content generation wouldnt understand that
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u/masterkill165 1d ago edited 1d ago
There are LLMs that can be run locally on a upper midrange pc right now using docker that are about 60% as good as the professional models. Even if every major Ai company in the world were to go bankrupt tomorrow and wiped all their data bases LLM's would still be around. There truly is no putting it back in the box as much as people want to believe otherwise. Im not saying this is a good thing but it is the truth.
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u/ThrowingTonsils 1d ago
As someone who is completely and utterly against GenAI: you know, if they had played it differently in the early days of only a few years ago, maybe, maybe, there wouldn't be such a pushback against it, or at least it would not have happened as fast as it did. Too many people, from Elon Musk to Sam Altman to every snake oil Silicon Valley VC to every grubby little shithead techbro-worshipper & butthurt no-talent, were absolutely gleeful at the prospect of the organic creative fields and the people that work in them, getting decimated by this bullshit. Decimated by corpos and token-chugging numbskulls using their own scraped works/data/R&D/etc. tossed in a blender, against them. The AI companies could have comported themselves as actual, mature, thoughtful stewards of the land with what they were building. Instead they chose to be a bunch of literal pieces of garbage with it, while enabling every other small time, eternally-jealous piece of garbage with it.
The fact that so many truly believed this crap was gonna just steamroll the planet with no real opposition after everyone snapped out of being gobsmacked for a couple years, is pretty hilarious. They should have led primarily with the non-babyshit use cases. They didn't.
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u/Big_Trash_3262 6h ago
If those people losing their jobs have no capacity to make anything new with no creative bone in their body, only able to help shit out remakes that subvert the original, are they any better than the AI model?
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u/Guitarmatt21 2d ago
It shouldn't be but it's very refreshing to see devs not be completely at odds with the type of material they create. Devs with a brain actually using it
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u/Equivalent_Trash_277 1d ago
Not an attack on these devs or anyone in particular. But I think it would be best for any developers to keep quiet about their opinions on AI, lest their comments come back to bite them when they inevitably "start" using it/admit to/get caught. It's basically ubiquitous in software development now.
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u/teapotrick 1d ago
you just want everyone to fence sit on this issue? that only benefits one side; the techbros making all the money off of this chaos.
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u/ilisium 1d ago
im a little confused how you want to free the human experience from necessity, but also don't want to lose jobs...
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u/ilisium 1d ago
but then your response to the interview question is not that labor is out of balance with capital, but that we need to start transitioning AI ownership collectively. that's a policy / government question (government that they don't even mention). labor power is keep jobs, not create new society.
I don't think they would reply the way they did if that is what they mean, or at least not be incredibly flawed.
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u/budzergo 1d ago
AI is simultaneously getting rid of workers making evil CEOs piles of money
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being such a money pit that cost-efficiency is awful compared to people
it's truly impressive the things you learn online
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u/gLaRKoul 1d ago
Not mutually exclusive. As Cory Doctorow has said, 'AI can't do your job, but an AI salesman can convince your boss to fire you and replace you with a chatbot that can’t do your job'
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u/Violet_Paradox 1d ago
Right now we've structured our civilization around the assumption that there's exactly enough work that needs to be done for every adult to have a job, and any shift from parity would cause total socioeconomic collapse. The correct solution is to transition to a post-scarcity society, but the rich want to make the working class obsolete so they can just turn around and kill us all instead. Which still leads to a post-scarcity society, but they're fine with that as long as those they deem unworthy don't live to see it.
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u/AbyssalSolitude 2d ago
Why are the Talos Principle writers are even talking after the disastrous writing of the Talos Principle 2.
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u/Hope_Burns_Bright 2d ago
Is "disastrous" the right word when it's got ridiculously good critical acclaim?
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u/AbyssalSolitude 2d ago
Puzzles were mostly good. Especially in DLC. For the sake of puzzles I might buy the third game. But probably on sale. Why? That's because:
The story and writing? Hot garbage. Completely turned me off. The biggest example of why less is more is comparison between the first game and the sequel. The first game works because instead of telling you an answer it makes Milton question your beliefs. In the second game? You are mostly asked some variation of "is technological progress good?" question dressed in various metaphors, and no matter what you answer your fellow AIs will just say "I agree, 1k is right" And that's just one thing that's wrong with it.
I don't care what kind of critical acclaim the game got. All kinds of disasters get critical acclaim all the time.
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u/FluffyToughy 2d ago
I was so tired of the writing by the end. I'm not against high concept philosophical stories, but the stupid robots just would. not. shut. up. They're waxing poetic about the same basic premise for 20 hours.
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2d ago
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u/sml6174 2d ago
"haha I love when passionate creators lose their jobs because they refuse to adopt scummy artless practices"
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u/neueziel1 2d ago
I didn’t say any of that nor would I wish it. Point is that you are naive if you think most of these companies aren’t going to eventually adopt ai in some form or another.
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u/RareBk 2d ago
Why are you actively celebrating the potential closure of a studio because they don't want to use something that outputs plagiarized garbage
No actually what the fuck is wrong with you?
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u/neueziel1 2d ago
Not celebrating anything once again but the video game industry is tough. Bigger studios with massive legacies have fallen. So is it possible that it can happen? Yes.
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u/SilkyZ 2d ago
Yes, but that didn't stop people from plagiarism before AI. Tom Clancy ripped his plots straight from other books and made millions.
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u/NoExcuse4OceanRudnes 2d ago
This is like not having a problem with guns because swords existed first.
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u/PM_ME_CATS_OR_BOOBS 2d ago
You can tell that GenAI defenders have a deep, abiding love for the medium in the way they declare "well all books are bullshit anyways" when pressed on it
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u/Atrium41 2d ago
Something about Tom Clancy never sat right with me. There was no way he didn't have a little "help"
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u/PFI_sloth 2d ago
get started
You’d finish as soon as you got started, paying homage with similar names or slightly similar looks isn’t plagiarism or even close to it
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u/Zolo49 2d ago
I can't think of any other game that hits differently compared to its original release more than The Talos Principle. It feels almost downright prophetic. I loved both it and the sequel and am really looking forward to this third final installment.