The Talos Principle 2 Ending Guide

Though The Talos Principle 2 is an excellent puzzle game, it also has a pretty extensive and branching story. As you explore its world, you’ll have plenty of opportunities to interact with other characters, offer them your opinions, and even post on social media. The whole game concerns some philosophical debates about the future of humanity and its place in the world, and your conversation choices about those debates will shape parts of the narrative as you advance.

There are three main endings for The Talos Principle 2, as well as several additions and variations you can trigger under the right circumstances. Here’s a complete guide for how to get each of the endings and the optional scenes, with as few spoilers as we can manage.

Main Endings – The Final Choice

Completing the main story requires finishing eight puzzles in each of The Talos Principle’s 12 areas, allowing you to enter the megastructure a total of four times. Throughout the game, you’ll talk to Prometheus, Pandora, and the Sphinx, who all represent a different philosophical approach to what New Jerusalem’s future should look like.

When you enter the megastructure one final time, you’ll make a choice about what to do with the machine. There are three options, each corresponding to one of the three figures, and each unlocks one of the main endings. There are several small variations based on what you’ve done along the way, but these three endings are the main pieces of the epilogue.

• Leap of Faith – Choose to use the machine for the betterment of New Jerusalem (Prometheus ending)
• Momentum Deferred – Choose to shut the machine down because humanity isn’t ready (Sphinx ending)
• Certain Fathoms in the Earth – Choose to destroy the machine (Pandora ending)

Variations

In addition to the main ending choices, how you deal with different elements of the story will change the outcomes for various characters.

The Mayor

After completing your fourth journey into the megastructure, you’ll awaken to find out that an election has taken place while you were shut down. There are several outcomes that election can have, and they’ll affect some aspects of the ending cutscenes as well.

There are a lot of choices to make throughout the course of The Talos Principle 2, and it’s a bit tough to narrow down exactly which ones are important to changing the outcome of the election. Generally, though, you can shape the attitudes of New Jerusalem through your social media responses and conversations. Like the main endings, there are three main variations.

• Hermanubis stays mayor – Make generally conservative choices in conversations and social media posts. Choose options that see the Goal in a positive light and that are anti-growth for New Jerusalem. Choose to share the information from the Somnodrome with the people. Hold back the information from the Somnodrome from the rest of New Jerusalem.
• Byron is elected mayor – Make generally progressive choices in conversations and social media posts. Choose options that promote growth and see the Goal as negative and stagnating for New Jerusalem. When you talk to Hermanubis before boarding the VTOL, tell him you thought the Goal was a myth that hurt humanity. Share the information from the Somnodrome with the people.
• Rand is elected mayor – Make more cautious, middle-of-the-road choices in conversations and social media posts. Hermanubis before boarding the VTOL, tell him you thought the Goal was a myth that hurt humanity. Cautiously share the information from the Somnodrome with the people.

The mayor will appear in the different epilogues and you’ll sometimes get different dialogue depending on who is in charge and what final choice you make.

Golden Gate Puzzles

There are 12 additional, high-level puzzles that can only be unlocked by completing every other main puzzle in each of The Talos Principle 2’s areas–not just the eight you need to access the tower, but the unconnected “bonus” puzzles in each area as well.

Completing all 120 normal puzzles unlocks one Golden Gate puzzle in each area. They’re tougher to solve than anything else in the game. If you complete all 12, a final Golden Gate unlocks back at the megastructure location. If you head in there, you’ll have an opportunity to complete another activity and complete some dialogue. We won’t spoil what it unlocks, but it significantly changes all three endings, and will even add some extra scenes.

Yaqut’s Epilogue

If you complete the Golden Gate puzzles, you can unlock an additional epilogue scene for Yaqut as well. We’re not entirely sure what is required to unlock it because of a bug in our playthrough, but we have a pretty good idea.

After your fourth venture into the megastructure, you’ll return to New Jerusalem before making a final venture back to the island for The Talos Principle 2’s endgame. At that point, you’ll talk to the other members of your expedition to see if they want to accompany you on the final trip.

You want Yaqut to come with you for this final bit. It seems that to get him to do so, you’ll need to be reassuring throughout the game about the dangers of the megastructure and make him feel like he’s not alone in his worries. If he comes with you, you should get an additional scene related to the Golden Gate puzzle scenes.

Additional Scenes

Star puzzles

Another set of extra puzzles are those related to the statues of Prometheus, Pandora, and the Sphinx that you can find in each of the areas. Each of the 12 areas has two statues, and completing one will reward you with a Star item. If you collect all 24 Stars, you can take them to another gate at the megastructure location, the one hidden within what the other characters call an Astronomy temple. You can add the Stars to the gate and eventually unlock it.

Behind the gate is one more puzzle. Solve that and you’ll unlock another cutscene that might imply some story possibilities for The Talos Principle 3. It’s not technically part of the ending–you’ll get this cutscene whenever you complete the final Star puzzle–but it is an addendum to the rest of the game’s story.

Check out our guides for completing the Pandora statue puzzles and Sphinx statue puzzles to help you get through.

Trevor’s audio logs

Scattered throughout the terminals you can find in each area are audio logs from Trevor, one of the coworkers of Alexandra Drennan, the scientist who dreamed up the simulation that gave rise to these new robotic humans. Finding all 12 of Trevor’s logs completes his story and unlocks an extra scene during the credits.

These aren’t too hard to come by if you’re diligent about searching for everything in each area. Use the compass at the top of the screen, which will show question mark icons to indicate something nearby that you haven’t found yet. Once you have Trevor’s complete story, stick around through the credits to see its culmination.