The sequel to the marvelousThe Talos Principleis out today. All signs seem to point to it living up to the hype — both on the gameplay and the (underrated) narrative fronts — but there’s one possible issue that I feel obliged to point out.
I’ve professed my admirationfor the original game numerous times, but something about its gameplay always left me with a slight feeling of nausea after a long play session. Sadly, the sequel required a much shorter period to trigger much worse symptoms while I was playing it on my PC. I’m hoping this will only affect a relative minority of players, but the chances that it will hit you are there — and so is a possible solution — so let’s dive in.
The undesired effect
The game begins with a health warning reminding players who might suffer from seizures that it contains flashing lights that might cause some serious unwanted effects.
What I’ve experienced isn’t listed above. I’ve played countless first-person perspective games extensively, and, aside from a few VR titles, I never got this type of reaction out of any non-Talosgame. This game triggered a severe feeling of dizziness and nausea that forced me to quit playing just about 20 minutes into the game.
The fix
Many others have complained about similar effects when playing the original game, so I attempted the solutions that our wise elders who lived ten years ago had come up with, and they worked!
It looks like this problem might come from one or the combination of any of the following:
To cover most of those bases, I’d recommend you move to the aptly-titled “motion sickness” section of the options menu, and:
The last important step is to raise your framerate. That naturally depends on your computer specs. So, if you aren’t lucky enough to have a gaming PC, but you’re fortunate enough to have a machine that allows you enough leverage to pick between graphics and fluidity, I recommend you lower all graphical settings required to get to 60 FPS.The settings tradeoffmight sound unappealing, but I assure you that the game will still look great — and play much better.
you may now experienceThe Talos Principle2on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, PC, Linux, Xbox Series X|S, and MacOS.
