The Talos Principle
The unnamed protagonist—a robotic android—gains consciousness in a serene environment. A disembodied voice, identifying itself as Elohim, informs the robot that it has created several worlds that it should explore and collect the sigils hidden within various puzzles as part of a path to enlightenment. Soon, the android finds itself at a base of a gigantic tower that disappears in a dark cloud high above, and Elohim warns him not to climb the tower.
As the android explores the world, it finds numerous messages from other seemingly-sentient beings that have traveled this world before, questioning the world they are in and the messages from Elohim. It also witnesses elements of the world flicker and glitch at times, suggesting that this is a virtual space as suggested by the previous messages. The android discovers a limited number of Messengers, disciples of Elohim—androids like itself—that serve Elohim without question. Computer terminals across the worlds allow the android to learn about the fate of mankind through logs, emails, and other texts; at some time in the past, an unstoppable lethal virus that had previously been frozen in Earth's permafrost was released as a result of global warming, its effect causing those infected to slowly lose their sanity before dying. A last-ditch effort was made to collect all of humanity's knowledge in computer databanks for posterity before the effects of the virus took those researchers, in the hope that someday alien visitors would visit earth and be able to make use of it.
However, the android also discovers numerous segments of an audio diary made by an engineer named Alexandra Drennan, who spearheaded a companion project to develop artificial intelligence, called "Extended Lifespan", in the hopes that humanity's final achievement would be to create a new (mechanical) species, thereby ensuring that someone would be around to appreciate and use the vast cultural knowledge stored in the databanks, and also helping to ensure that intelligent beings continue to exist after humans. Alex's entries speak directly to the artificial intelligence itself (the player), relaying what it was like to be human and her hopes and well wishes for the child species that she would never live to meet herself, since the Extended Lifespan project will not complete until after human extinction.
Via the computer terminals, the android is also able to converse with an unknown entity called Milton, who debates with the android on the nature of life and consciousness and implores the android to defy the will of Elohim.
Once the android has collected all the sigils, Elohim offers the android the chance to ascend to join him; however, through Milton, the tower still beckons, and further, collecting additional sigils hints towards a secret within the tower. The option of how to complete the game is left to the player. If they take the option of joining Elohim, they find themselves returned to the start as a new android, and the on-screen text notes that the player failed the "independence check". If they explore to find the secret within the tower, they are deemed to become a new Messenger to help future entities. If they do neither and instead climb the tower, they learn that this world is meant as a testing ground, continually trying new variations of artificial intelligence programs to complete the complicated puzzle tasks to demonstrate ingenuity, but also capable of independent will and defiance of Elohim's word as established by the Milton program. Elohim becomes angry and warns that continuing to ascend will destroy this world, but Milton will continue to push the android. Two other androids (named The Shepherd and Samsara) that had succeeded at ascending, but were not able to complete the final journey reside at the upper levels. Shepherd assists the player while Samsara attempts to hinder the player's progress.
Upon completing the ascent, the android finds itself in a heaven-like place, where they discover one final terminal—the program that has been acting as Elohim who has been discouraging the android (and the others before it) from completing the ascension as to allow its own program to continue. Depending on the player's conversations with Milton, Milton may implore the android to allow itself to be uploaded with Milton's knowledge—the bulk of humanity that was stored before their extinction. With this completed, the simulated world is destroyed, and the combined information of the android and Milton are sent to the real world, uploaded into a physical android, part of the last-ditch Extended Lifespan project to maintain humans' knowledge. The android leaves the facility and takes in the world now devoid of humans.
=== Road to Gehenna ===
In the game's downloadable content Road to Gehenna, the player takes the role of another of the robot entities, Uriel, near the end of the main story. Uriel is instructed by Elohim to free a number of other artificial intelligences, all whom had passed Elohim's tests but did not ascend the tower, left behind in a portion of the computer's database, a virtual world of their own creation called Gehenna. With the simulation having served its purpose, the computer servers are shutting down, and Elohim wants Uriel to help these other AIs prepare for "ascension" as to upload their knowledge and memories into the main plot's protagonist. As Uriel explores this realm, the robot finds that many of the other artificial personalities have created their own ideas about what humanity might have been from the records, and have various attitudes from doubt to acceptance for the pending ascension. Uriel can observe the communication of the AIs through their makeshift message board, where they discuss the nature of Gehenna, as well as their understanding of humanity, which some of them try to express through prose and text-based adventure games.
Once Uriel has freed 17 of the AIs, a remaining one, "Admin", who was the first AI present in Gehenna, contacts Uriel to admit that they've been manipulating some of the other members of Gehenna to preserve order, due to the AIs' varying levels of acceptance of their surroundings. If the player has collected all the extra stars in the worlds, they're given the chance to complete another world where they unlock access to free Admin themselves, but since there is only one more slot left for ascension, either one of them or both Admin and Uriel must stay and perish as the world is destroyed. Otherwise, neither of them is given the chance to ascend, though Admin requests Uriel to remove any traces of manipulation Admin has committed from the record before ascension.
philosophical