Take The Road To Gehenna With Talos Principle Expansion

Listen up, fans of robot philosophy puzzlers: The Talos Principle [official site] is getting an expansion called Road To Gehenna.

Or, as Alice's first draft for this news story put it, "Talos Principle, that game about lasers and jumping, is getting more lasers and jumping."

The four-episode expansion is set in the same world as The Talos Principle but...

[SPOILERS WARNING FOR THE ORIGINAL GAME - TURN BACK ALL YE WHO HAVE NOT COMPLETED IT]

...it's in a different part of the simulation. The narrative follows Elohim's messenger, Uriel, as goes on what the publisher Devolver describes as "a mission of mercy and redemption in an attempt to free the souls of the damned at all costs."

I wonder if that's linked to any ideas of freeing any of your Talos Principle character's predecessors who didn't ascend the tower?

In case you were curious about the title, Gehenna is a reference to a valley near Jerusalem where, according to the Old Testament, children were sacrificed by fire. If memory serves, it became a kind of burning waste dump after that and translations of 'Gehenna' in the New Testament use that word to refer to hell. So maybe "Road to Gehenna" will turn out to be Croteam's rendition of Highway to Hell?

According to co-writer Tom Jubert you can expect "new characters and a new world with its own history and philosophy". Staring at the text and images on the blog doesn't give any insight into what you can expect on the puzzle-solving front; whether there will be any new tools in your kit or whether this new world functions any differently when it comes to laser and block exploration. That's why I've sent an email.

In the meantime the images imply that Gehenna will offer a similar-looking experience with what looks like a ruined aqueduct and a pretty big greenhouse.

Road to Gehenna is coming to Steam in spring which is kinda unspecific, but given how I divide up my personal year calendar I'm going to assume that means before the end of May.