( Also see: The Talos Principle and the Philosophy of Gaming)

The exchanges between the characters were something we looked forward to more than the puzzles themselves. Thanks to the voice acting via audio logs and a soundtrack that is mostly sombre, the game is also able to make you connect with characters that never make an appearance and build an atmosphere of uneasy tension. All of this is greatly helped by the fantastic quality of voice actors, especially for the AI, which varies from sounding like a friend to being authoritative, downright hostile, and - mini-spoiler alert - slightly fearful towards the end. This conversation is at the heart of The Turing Test, with Ava and the machine trading thoughts and ideas at the start of new puzzles.

The concept of creativity - which he also terms 'divergent thinking' - along with free will and individuality - calling it an illusion, and sounding a bit reminiscent of The Matrix - are relics of the past, according to how T.O.M. 'In mathematical terms,' something robots completely believe in, he implies, 'creativity is just constrained chaos.' The machine has been built on a binary principle, with one right way for every situation it comes across. himself will tell you repeatedly during your playtime. In the latter sense, the game's constrained optimism - that we will have a manned base of operations more than a year away but be unable to craft an AI that pass for human, two hundred years from now - is comical to say the least.īut that's beside the point, as T.O.M. The initial plot goes like this: Turing is woken from cryosleep because the ground crew on Europa have mysteriously gone missing, and left behind a series of puzzles that need creative solutions, something only a human is capable of. And not satisfied with the reference to the test for artificial intelligence entities, the game places you into the role of an engineer named Ava Turing. He is the eyes, and brains, of a manned space mission to Jupiter's moon Europa in the 23rd century, and a constant presence for your time in the game. It's a bit poetic that the first face you see in The Turing Test, a new first-person puzzle game from British game developer Bulkhead Interactive, is that of a robot named T.O.M.

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