This Week In Retro: Portal 2 (Patreon)

April 18, 2011: Portal 2 delivers everything but cake

by Diamond Feit

Comedy is hard. Comedy in video games, though, is exceptionally hard. Not only do all the usual difficulties apply (timing, knowing your audience, actually being clever), but video games are interactive and do not operate in a linear fashion. Ghostbusters was made 37 years ago and it will forever play out in the same way to every viewer. Yet even the simplest video game with a single joke in it will unfold differently for each player. Those circumstances make straight storytelling in video games a challenge and funny storytelling a Herculean feat.

2007's Portal was an exception to a lot of rules. It was not a standalone release, but came packaged with an assortment of other games. Portal looked like a first-person shooter, but included no combat; instead, players used their "gun" to open holes in reality to solve puzzles inside a laboratory. Portal could be completed easily in a single sitting, making it much shorter than other games of its era. Most of all, Portal delivered a compelling narrative packed with real laughs, and left an impression on the culture of video games few other creations could match.

Despite Portal's massive success, it came as no small surprise when Valve announced a sequel in 2010. The original game was lauded for its brevity; a sequel would, by definition, compromise that quality. From a gameplay standpoint, the "portal" concept could likely be revisited with new puzzles, but what about from a writer's standpoint? Portal unfolded its truth brilliantly, delivering tidbits of dread and eeriness as the game progressed, only to finally reveal the truth that the computer conducting the tests had killed everyone else in the facility. With that secret now widely known, making a Portal 2 seemed as risky as making The Usual Suspects 2 or The Sixth Sense 2.

Still, a hit is a hit, so Portal 2 arrived ten years ago this week to major hype. Whatever sleeper status the original game had was long gone by April 2011. In addition to all the usual avenues of marketing, Valve used the company's wildly popular Steam platform to generate more attention for Portal 2, creating a potato-themed alternate reality game embedded in other games. The gambit was so successful, Portal 2 actually launched a few hours early due to so many users logging on to collect virtual tubers (funny how those two words mean something totally different ten years later).

Portal 2 opens inside a cheap motel room, only for an automated voice to inform the player that they are, in fact, back inside Aperture Science where Portal 1 took place. Even though the first game ends with the apparent destruction of GLaDOS, the murderous artificial intelligence running the experiment, it seems the overall structure remained intact. The motel room is a facade where "test subjects" are kept "in suspension" until needed; a voice says they have slept for at least 999,999 days. A new, somewhat frantic, AI enters the room to evacuate the player from the facility, sending them back inside the old test chambers in order to retrieve the portal gun.

Portal 1 was a brilliant experience thanks to its exceptionally well-crafted levels and puzzles. Each test chamber introduced a concept and then iterated upon that concept to teach players how the puzzles could be solved. Portal 2 takes that idea and builds upon it, creating a narrative justification for sending players back into levels they would have already seen. It's not a simple copy & paste job though; due to the significant passage of time, Aperture Science has been reclaimed by nature, so the once-sterile white aesthetics are now overgrown with plants and half-buried under rubble.

This (potentially) post-apocalyptic twist is the biggest difference between Portal 1 and 2. The first game tightly controlled the story by restricting the player to the test chambers, only occasionally offering a glimpse behind the scenes to suggest GLaDOS might not be a safe scientific supervisor. Only the final test granted the player full "backstage" access, allowing them to use the skills they had learned playing the game to navigate the darkened crawl spaces and inner offices of the facility. Portal 2 plays its cards up front: Aperture Science, and perhaps the entire world, is in shambles. The levels are still carefully laid out to teach the player how to get around using portals, but the game keeps switching the premise from "solve this puzzle" to "escape this wreckage." In reality, however, the two are functionally identical; the bright white surfaces where portals can go really stand out against the rusted, burnt-out wreckage of the lab.

One consistent feature of the Portal games is the steady stream of feedback given to the player from disembodied voices. GLaDOS owned the spotlight in the first game, but Portal 2 cycles through several characters to direct the action. The easily-startled AI who wakes the player at the start is Wheatley, voiced by UK comedian & actor Stephen Merchant. Wheatley seems friendly if barely capable of performing his duties, making frequent references to "hacking" when he uses brute force to open doors, windows, or walls. Later, the player discovers the long-sealed remains of Aperture Science's past, and along with it recordings from the company's late founder, Cave Johnson (voiced by J.K. Simmons). Since the player character never speaks, these trio of voices deliver one-way conversations that explain what's happening and, in most cases, inject the proceedings with humor.

It is the returning GLaDOS who rises from villain in Portal 1 to deuteragonist in Portal 2. Voiced again by Ellen McLain, GLaDOS awakens in Portal 2 and initially resumes her antagonist role, only to be usurped and humbled. In her deposed state, GLaDOS learns about her past and comes to terms with her existence as an AI driven to do science at all costs. It's not quite a full face turn, but by the end of the adventure GLaDOS has grown in ways the silent protagonist cannot. To his credit, Wheatley ultimately seems apologetic for his actions in Portal 2, but that feels more like comeuppance than emotional maturity.

Portal was one of the best video games I have ever played, and it came into my life at the perfect time. I didn't have a powerful PC or any HD consoles in 2007, as I focused most of my interest on the Nintendo DS. However, Portal showed me that there were exciting, thoughtful, and outright hilarious video games being made in the high-definition market. By the time Portal 2 arrived, I had fully returned to the gaming lifestyle and owned just about every current-gen console available. I still hadn't upgraded my PC, but luckily the PlayStation 3 version of Portal 2 contained an unprecedented bonus: Steam integration. Buying a copy of the game for Sony's console granted me a copy on Steam as well, and Steam tracked my progress as well as my trophies. It's a level of cross-platform cooperation that we may never see again, sadly.

Revisiting Portal 2 for this column delighted me. I initially planned on replaying a single chapter to refresh my memory but ended up playing for hours and hours, amused by the dialogue and energized by the still-fresh puzzle-solving action. Portal 2 is an uncommon sight; a patient blockbuster, it bursts with excitement but is unconcerned with fast reflexes or violence. It is twice the length of its predecessor but never buckles under the weight of that expansion, instead keeping things fresh by varying the nature of the puzzles and the narrative.

Ten years later, I wish there was hope of Portal 3, but I also know the entire video game landscape has changed. Valve seems uninterested in developing individual experiences anymore, not when Steam generates billions of dollars for the company each year. The concept of running a player through a series of "tests" has been adopted by an uncountable number of indie game developers, so much so that there's little chance a third game would feel anything but dated.

And yet...portals are still fun. Puzzles are still rewarding to solve. Everything in this game is still funny a decade later. I'm glad that there are more opportunities than ever to encounter an unexpected delight like this today, but I also know that the success rate for games—especially "funny" games—is still quite low. I can't help but reflect on my experience returning to Portal 2 this week and yearn for one more entry. GLaDOS, I used to want you dead but now I only want you back.

Diamond Feit lives in Osaka, Japan but is forever online, sharing idle thoughts on Twitter and playing games on Twitch.