Characters / The Talos Principle 2

Characters for the videogame The Talos Principle 2.

The expedition

1k (1000)

1k is the player character of The Talos Principle 2.

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Tropes associated with 1k:

• The Chosen One: Aside from being the legendary 1000th human and the symbol of the Goal, 1K becomes the only one authorized to use the Noema system.
• You Are Number 6: Since the player character hasn't decided a name yet, everyone just uses the serial number.

Alcatraz (264)

Alcatraz is the First Officer of the expedition team tasked with investigating the Megastructure. He serves as the voice of caution. Mayor Hermanubis appointed him to be a counter to Byron’s impulsive nature. Despite being intellectual opposites, Alcatraz considers Byron his best friend. Alcatraz was present when New Alexandria was destroyed. He lost his legs in the destruction, and was rescued by Eustathius.

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Tropes associated with Alcatraz:

• My Greatest Failure: Alcatraz uses the explosion of New Alexandria, which he feels partially responsible for, as the prime example why the team needs to be less optimistic about the island's technologies.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: Al considers Byron his best friend while at the same time thinking that he's wrong about everything and extremely annoying.

Melville (142)

Melville (142) is the engineer in the expedition tasked with investigating the Megastructure. She is one of New Jerusalem’s chief engineers in charge of city maintenance and power management. Her work keeps her too busy for hobbies, and she describes herself as “old, grumpy, and keeps stuff running”. Yaqut’s cat, Bruce, has a fondness for peeing in her workshop for which he has been banned from entering, and she considers the cat the biggest threat to the city’s security.

Melville has an affinity toward the old language libraries, but has a hard time taking photographs. She is often made fun of by the rest of the group because of this. However, she claims her particular out-of-focus pictures have an artistic intent. The first time 1k solves a tetromino bridge she remembers that she was terrible at the tetromino arrangers during her boot sequence.

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Tropes associated with Melville:

• The Engineer: Melville's main role is to repair the transport system and to analyze the island's technology.
• Epic Fail: Melville's utter inability to take a picture properly is rather mind-boggling, especially when you take into account that her eyes are the camera.

Yaqut (764)

Yaqut is the team’s Lead Scavenger tasked with investigating the Megastructure. Since he was born, he’s always enjoyed exploring new places. As the youngest member of the team, he is often unsure of himself. He collects antique bottles and likes old music. He has a five-year old cat named Bruce who he describes as half-psychopath, half-goofball. Bruce enjoys peeing on electrical equipment, a behavior that Yaqut finds endearing. He admits that he’s terrible at solving puzzles to the point where ELOHIM thought he was defective during his Booting Process. Ironically, he had no problem with the tetromino interfaces.

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Tropes associated with Yaqut:

• Pet's Homage Name: Yaqut named his cat Bruce after Bruce Dickinson, partly because Yaqut is a metalhead and partly because Bruce the cat meows so loud he sounds like an air raid siren (a nickname of Dickinson's).

Other residents of New Jerusalem

Athena (1)

Athena (also referred to as The Founder) is the first new human to have been created. While she existed as a non-corporeal program in the Simulation (during the first game), she was referred to as The Child by Elohim.

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Tropes associated with Athena:

• Legendary in the Sequel: The protagonist AI of the first game, retroactively named Athena, went on to use the technology left behind by IAN to birth more synthetic humans and establish a new society. By the time the new player character is born, Athena has gained a messianic reputation as the Founder, and what will become of her legacy is a focus of the plot.
• Previous Player-Character Cameo: The previous game's protagonist, first "new human" activated in a robotic body, took on the name Athena and founded the city of New Jerusalem.
• Significant Double Casting: Athena is voiced by Erin Fitzgerald, who voiced Alexandra Drennan in the first game. It's made explicit that Athena chose to use Drennan's voice; the implication is that she respected Drennan and aimed to fulfill her vision of a human society that overcame the mistakes of its ancestors.

Cornelius (3)

Cornelius is one of the First Companions. Along with Eustathius, he was activated by Athena shortly after she awakened from the Simulation. Together the three of them constructed the other First Companions.

Lifthrasir (13)

Lifthrasir is one of the First Companions. He is described as a mystic in the terminal entry L 1 C Lifthrasir. His recorded thoughts can be heard in the terminals of the twelve locations that surround the Megastructure.

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Tropes associated with Lifthrasir:

• Expy: Lifthrasir is more or less one of Werner Herzog: talking about philosophy, the value of civilization and the brutality of nature in a strong German accent.
• Walking the Earth: Lifthrasir has long departed New Jerusalem, along with his students, with the goal of traveling the Earth. In his audio logs he explains that he did this because he believes people can only truly appreciate the security and certainty of civilization in juxtaposition with the banality and indifference of nature, and he hopes that if he and his pupils make it back, they will have a wiser perspective on the city.

Jacques (420)

Jacques is a citizen of New Jerusalem. His social media posts display an obsession with aliens.

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• Conspiracy Theorist: Every time he gives his opinion on something, it's always "aliens did it," regardless of whatever other evidence or options are presented.
• The Cuckoo Lander Was Right: For a broad definition of "right," since aliens have nothing to do with almost everything that he attributes to them. But then you can discover the deep space anomaly after collecting all of the stars.
• 420, Blaze It: His designation number is 420. While he is physically incapable of being a stoner, his obsession with aliens puts him in a similar role.

Doge (666)

Doge is a citizen of New Jerusalem. Her voice sounds feminine but harsh and slightly distorted, which is rare, even for New Humans.

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Tropes associated with Doge:

• Number of the Beast: One of the prominent characters, Doge, has a designation number 666 and is colored in an eerily red motif. They're not actually evil, just member of the local secret society, who are actually pretty friendly.
• Suspiciously Similar Substitute: To Milton of the first game, who was a downplayed Satanic Archetype for that game. Doge has a red-colored chassis, was the 666th New Human born in New Jerusalem, and when talked to, can trigger dialogue trees which question and challenge the player's morality.

Thecla (862)

Thecla (862) is a citizen of New Jerusalem. 1k can converse with Thecla after returning to the city (after the first trip to the Megastructure). She can be found in the Tablets of the Founder area.

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Tropes associated with Thecla:

• The Fundamentalist: Thecla is the most fanatically devoted worshiper of the Founder. Even when it's been revealed that Athena never wanted to be seen as a messianic figure and is not remotely any kind of messiah or prophet, Thecla still sticks firmly to her beliefs. It's telling that she's the only person who you can get an achievement for having a heated argument with, and the only person who is openly hostile to you if you openly reject the myth of the Founder and the Goal.

Purple (998)

Purple is a citizen of New Jerusalem. He calls everyone "dude", which he says means "excellent person".

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Tropes associated with Purple:

• Surfer Dude

Others

Miranda (α) * UNMARKED SPOILERS *

Miranda (α) is the child of Athena (1) and Cornelius (3), and the first Human to be created outside of New Jerusalem.

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• Posthumous Character: Died in a lab accident before the events of the game. All that's left of her are messages she left behind and the memories of those who knew her.
• The World Is Just Awesome: From the moment she was activated, Miranda took this view and held onto it as she learned more and more about the workings of the universe.

Trevor

A hardware engineer from Staten Island who helped Alexandra Drennan and Arkady Chernyshevsky with their designs to create humanity's successors.

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• Cannot Spit It Out: Developed an obvious attraction toward Alexandra, but couldn't bring himself to act on it while they were busy with the project.
• Fan Boy: He loved John Carpenter movies, and lamented that they were never appreciated in their time.
• Ridiculously Average Guy: Saw himself as such, and his recordings provide the viewpoint of one of the many unknown workers and engineers who helped make the Talos project a reality.

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