The Importance of Portal

It doesn’t take much to put together that I’m a video game addict. My copy of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 has logged a total playtime long enough that I’m too embarrassed to post it on this blog. I’ve likely completed as many games as I’ve read books, and for as long as I can remember my bank account has been regularly suffering at the hand of new Playstation releases. So it’s safe to say I have a sizeable investment in the industry, which I am truly proud of. I really think the video game is culminating into its own true medium, comparable to film or literature, and capable of real emotional response.

I don’t want to get into the debate over video games’ artistic merit. The arguments for and against have been taken to a ridiculous level and I’m far from an authority on the subject. Yet I have reigned in my horse mid-journey in the desert to watch the sun set, paling the sky over the desert in Red Dead Redemption, and I’ve stood frozen at the dais of a ruined castle after conquering a mighty foe in Shadow of the Colossus. These aren’t scripted moments in either game; Red Dead Redemption has quite a sparse environment between towns and there’s not much motivation to stay off-task. However there is a breathing, responsive natural world in New Austin, West Elizabeth and Nuevo Paraiso that left me awestruck and I felt I had to stop and take it in. Likewise, Shadow of the Colossus has very little in the way of things to do – slay the 16 colossi to save the girl – but the melancholy felt after slaying a dormant creature is enough to have given me pause before carrying on. I’d never have experienced either of these moments so vividly without control or agency. They’d have been filtered through the detachment of voyeurism in a movie or a book, but a video game provides an intimacy unique to its medium through interactivity. This is the mechanic that makes the video game a powerful tool; the best games offer agency to the player, giving freedom to affect the environment around them and directly respond to the world they interact with.

One of the best examples of a game that fully embraces the video game’s potential is a small first-person puzzle game called Portal, a free addition in a pack of games released by game developer Valve, in 2007. In Portal you wake up in a sterile glass-walled room in some kind of laboratory. As you familiarize your surroundings, a melodious digital female voice cuts in from a loudspeaker welcoming you to Aperture Science and quickly briefing you about the safety procedures of the experiment in which you’re about to participate. From there, you are released into a series of increasingly difficult and dangerous test chambers equipped with only a portal gun capable of opening a passageway in almost any surface. Using only physics and the environment around you, you must successfully reach the other side of the chamber to continue. Simple enough, however as you proceed through each stage it becomes more and more clear that GLaDOS, your AI instructor and supervisor, is quite psychotic and her promises of friendship and cake upon completing the experiment are (comically terrible) lies to hide something sinister. Eventually you find your way behind the scenes of the test chambers and attempt an escape from the tortuous facility, facing off against the sociopathic computer at the game’s climax. 

What makes Portal such a success is that it delivers its entire story through actively playing the game; every part of the story evolves out of its ludonarrative, forgoing all cinematic cutscenes and keeping the player involved at all times. You are always in control in Portal, never being prompted to put down the controller to allow for scripted sequences or boring exposition. Because of this, you are fully engaged and far more involved in participating in the story. I’ll give you an example: in the later test chambers you are introduced to a heart-decorated ‘companion cube’ and are tasked to bring it along for a period of time. Because it's the closest thing to a friend you find in Aperture and it serves as a helpful tool in completing several tests, the companion cube quickly becomes a reliable, trusty partner. Eventually GLaDOS instructs you to incinerate it, and are presented with an open furnace. You are required to destroy your companion cube to move on, but because you were directly interacting with your loving comrade and are the one actively murdering him/her/it, there is a genuine opportunity to feel something about it. Set pieces or unique game moments like this are usually relegated to the aforementioned cutscenes, but there is valuable weight given to this moment simply by putting the player in control. It’s a subtle contribution, sure, but a powerfully rewarding opportunity to project yourself into the story and participate.

It helps that Portal is tightly constructed – unlike many games Portal doesn’t pad its gameplay with repetitive tasks or tacked on goals. The simplicity of the format makes for a quick pace and each time the chamber increases in complexity or functionality it is opening the world and gameplay opportunities to the player, varying the action and preparing for the final confrontation with GLaDOS. Equally important, Portal is absolutely hilarious. The writing lends perfectly to GLaDOS’ homicidal absurdity and surprises with moments of genuine comedy. It also genially uses the environment to tell the story, delicately leaving signs of decay, or increasingly insane writings on the panels behind the walls. GLaDOS’ goading, and panicked pleadings draw a sense of satisfaction, tension and emotion as you progress through the game and at the same time manage to formulate a fully three-dimensional character out of a simple voice in the protagonist’s ear, resulting in a sincere feeling of accomplishment upon completion of the game.

Portal is likely one of the most concise and well developed games in the history of the industry. This is largely due to the quirky story and enjoyable gameplay mechanics, however its importance to the industry lies entirely on its reliance on the advantages of the medium itself, refusing to fall into the conventions of storytelling in literature or cinema. Portal 2 comes out April 19^th, and I am writhing with anticipation to get back to Aperture Labs and reunite with GlaDOS. Hopefully I’ll finally get my hands on that cake.


Addition: If you're interested in video games, and the unique position they've found as a new industry in creative media, I highly recommend the book Extra Lives by Tom Bissell. 

Dedicated to Marko Rabasovic