In The Talos Principle you awake finding yourself in ruins. You can not recognize the place, nor, in truth, who or what you are. The ruins resemble a Greek mythology setting, but are crowded of lasers, turrets, robotic devices and technological items such as fans. The place is a mixture of past and future. You yourself might be a human, or a robot, or half of both. The goal of each area is reaching where a Tetris-like piece lies and collect it, being allowed to advance. You exploit your abilities and the environment to do so, reflecting lasers, activating or deactivating fans, moving or stacking blocks. It is possible to go backwards in time, undoing game play, like in Braid.

While solving puzzles, an unidentifiable beholder, introducing itself as a god, and behaving like an artificial intelligence, talks, opening philosophical questions before you. You can choose your behaviour, from more faithful to more doubtful. The purpose of yours will be to overcome the puzzles as well as find the real answer to the dilemmas, which include your identity and the general meaning of things, if this is possible.