Document
A document is a digital file typically found on terminals. They are found throughout both The Talos Principle and its sequel, where they usually serve to provide background information, story details, and thematic points. They can also be necessary for story progression, especially in The Talos Principle 2.
Description
Documents are digital files located on terminals, with most being textual works, but occasionally including images or serving other purposes. The source and types of documents can greatly vary, from emails, to ancient/pre-extinction works, to webpages, etc. Some provide background details for the lore and stories of the games, while others serve to compliment or add to the themes.
Non-Text Documents
While a majority of documents found in the games are text files, others do more. The most notable instances of these are the text-based adventures, found mostly within Road to Gehenna, but also making an appearance in the sequel; And schemata, found only in the second game, which largely act as blueprints and technology materials. Occasionally though, when interacted with, they will overload 1k's brain, displaying a vision of the past.
Encrypted Text
Many documents, when read straight, appear to have glitches or corruptions displaying a seemingly random string of text consisting of numbers and letters. While some instances are purely nonsense, they can often hold a message, word, or quote. In both games, this text is typically written in hexadecimal, which can then be decoded through translators into normal text. These usually consist of a quote from a work or a phrase related to the contents of the document, but they can also hide certain jokes or easter eggs (For instance, the document the_human_machine.html contains garbled text that links to Croteam's Facebook page).
The Talos Principle
Documents within The Talos Principle are essential to the story. Next to interactions with Elohim and Milton, and Alexandra Drennan's audio logs, they are the primary source of information about the world, and where Athena begins to learn about the true nature of the Simulation.
Details
There are 121 documents found within the main game. Most documents found are text documents, sourced from the Archive, a vast collection of art, books, and other materials of human knowledge and culture, as well as a record of the internet up until its end. It also contains a number of emails from members of IAN.
According to MLA, the archive contains 5.4212750 petabytes of this material (Equivalent to "the entire internet in 2003"). However, due to corruption of these files or other issues within the system, only 10.6954751 gigabytes of these files are indexed and ready to read (Or just over the amount of space that can be stored on two standard DVDs, for comparison). As a result, only a small portion of information can be accessed from individual terminals, many of which are corrupted or only contain a portion of the works or pages they come from.
Each document name contains an extension indicating what type of file it is, including .eml (Email files), .txt (Text files), and .html (Typically web pages).
Sources
Each file is denoted to originate from a specific server or location within the Archives or overall system. These indicate what their placement within the system. Source locations include:
| Source Name | Abbreviation Meaning | Contents |
|---|---|---|
| loc | Likely short for "local", as in local storage. | Primarily .eml or .txt files from users, those being the creators of the Extended Lifespan projects. |
| webcrawl | Meaning specific sources taken from the web. | .html and .wiki files from the archives of the internet. Types of pages include blog posts, articles, online lyrics, forums, etc. |
| temp | Short for "temporary". | Referring to temporary storage for files likely to be deleted, such as error or .dat files. |
| EP_arch | Possibly standing for "external posts archive", though it's not too clear. | Contains archives of emails not sourced internally from IAN. |
| lit_arch | Likely meaning "literature archive." | Contains primarily .txt files of pre-extinction literature, especially from the modern era. |
| CL_arch | Likely standing for "classical literature archives." | Contains written works from the classical era. |
| eg_src | Possibly standing for "Egyptian sources". "src" may also be an accidental misspelling or corruption of "arc", which means "archives" elsewhere. | Contains works from Ancient Egypt. |
| phil_arc | Likely meaning "philosophy archives." | Contains philosophical works . |
| mdv_th | Likely standing for "Medieval theology." | Contains works of theology and god from the Medieval age. |
| med_arc | Likely standing for "medical archives." | Contains works on ancient human medicine and knowledge. |
| poet_arc | Likely standing for "poetry archives." | Contains poems and poetic works. |
| acdm_arc | Likely standing for "academic archives." | Contains academic works and essays of analysis and critique. |
| LZ19col | Uncertain what "lz19" means, although "col" likely means "collection." | Uncertain, except that the compression algorithm for the files only originates in the EL-1 system. |
The Talos Principle 2
The sequel game also contains many terminals text files and some non-text files. Additionally, some terminal files overload 1k's brain and give him a vision instead of displaying any document. These are often necessary interactions to progress the main story.