I already talked at length in a previous post about what makes the first Portal such an important landmark in the video game industry so I’m going to try not to backtrack too much into the same arguments here. Portal was a fantastic game and a huge surprise to players everywhere, but it was a small treasure, far from a full game experience and its praise and acclaim quickly turned into a clamouring for more. Four years later, Portal 2 is the fully realized sequel to the original adventure into Aperture Science, and it attempts to expand both on Chell’s journey and on the success of its predecessor.
At Portal’s end, the player-controlled Chell destroyed the evil Enrichment Centre’s AI, GLaDOS, blowing a hole in the lab’s roof and escaping to the surface. However when she loses consciousness after her triumphant escape, we are treated to the revelations that a) there was indeed a cake being saved for you somewhere in the bowels of Aperture Science and b) GLaDOS is actually still alive, a declaration the AI feels is best suited to musical form on Chell’s final test assessment. Between Portal and the release of the Portal 2, a comic book subtitled Lab Rat bridged the story between the games, uncovering a lot of detail about the underlying story of the games and, most importantly, revealing that Chell was actually dragged back into Aperture by a Party Escort Bot after her escape and subsequent blackout.
Portal 2 opens with the player, once again controlling Chell, waking in the Aperture Science Extended Relaxation Centre. A digitized voice welcomes Chell, informing her that she has been in suspension for 50 days. After a quick gymnastics test (effectively the game’s basic tutorial) you are placed back into suspension. Waking a second time, you are informed you’ve been in suspension for 9,999,999 days (Whether this is the computer’s maximum recorded date or a malfunction over time is unclear, however the Relaxation Centre’s appearance indicates it has definitely been untouched for many years). At this point you are introduced to Wheatley, a stuttering, panicky personality core in charge of the test subjects in suspension. Amazed by your survival and clearly having failed to perform up to standards, he breaks you out, dropping you back into the (now decrepit) testing track in order to find a portal gun and escape the facility with him. Along the way Wheatley accidently reactivates GLaDOS’s system functions and from there you are once again tasked with overcoming the obstacles of dozens of test chambers before making it out of the testing track and successfully breaking out of Aperture’s laboratory. However this time, along the way, you go much deeper into Aperture’s facility and its history, learning of its foundation and the origins of GLaDOS herself as well as mastering new experimental elements to manipulate the physics around you before your final confrontation and escape at the end of the story.
Like in the first game, Portal 2 is all about physics. You are subjected to an onslaught of progressively challenging rooms escapable only through the use of your dual portal device and a familiar array of tools, namely lasers and various cubes. A new addition to Portal 2 are the several gels that allow you to bounce, slide exponentially faster, and open portals on any surface, which helpfully change up the gameplay and create loads of fun new ways to affect your surroundings. Portal 2 can be equal parts madly frustrating and addictively rewarding, depending on your ability to master the instruments at your disposal, though the designers have evidently spent an amazing amount of dedication to guiding the player organically through the increasingly challenging rooms. The difficulty curve may be headache inducing, but it is in no way imprecise. If you play any similar physics-based games you won’t find anything as carefully organized and intelligently designed than this (Try to play Angry Birds after Portal 2 and see if you don’t think they’re all idiots).
Many video games have a pretty large disconnect between story and gameplay – the player normally will have, say, forty minutes of interactive play at a time before a cinematic sequence begins to move the story forward. This back and forth leads to a constant juggling of active and passive interaction with the game. It’s a clash of media that works because as an audience we’ve learned to expect it, but it’s a clumsy narrative format that butchers pacing, and actually feels a little patronizing; the game is waiting for you to walk to the right room or press a button so it can move on without any actual regard for you, the one supposedly in control of the protagonist. Beyond the major fact that your impact on the story is effectively reduced to a shopping list of redundant task work, the custcenes more subtly remove the player from the experience by creating a glaring contrast in character behaviour. The nature of animating a video game character mainly comes down to function. If your character never has a reason to jump during gameplay, for example, you likely won’t have the option to do so at all. However in most cases, cinematic sequences allow more freedom for animation and this is where you’ll see the Master Chief tuck and roll through a closing door. It’s a fun scene to watch, but it’s a subconscious reminder that your Chief and this one are not the same. Even the shift from first- to third-person perspective is a huge factor in tearing the audience out of the experience, and it’s a rampant feature across all games. The Portal franchise eschews all of this by integrating its entire story into the gameplay. Exposition, character interaction and plot development all draw from the simple mechanics you control and employ throughout the game’s puzzles. It’s a singular decision that accounts for most of Portal’s success. The audience feels a much stronger attachment to Chell, because we are always looking through her eyes; when GLaDOS insults her, she’s insulting us; when Chell triggers a plot twist, it’s because of our actions, and most satisfying to me, your own dedication to exploration and discovery is what determines what you get out of the story. If you are committed to searching Aperture Science, you can find dozens of clues and easter eggs bearing all sorts of detail as long as you’re attentive enough to decipher them.
The story in Portal 2 is brilliantly designed, because the fact that it revolves around the progression through puzzle-solving and environment manipulation means it lends perfectly to a video game. For the most part every video game is designed to hide the fact that it is, essentially, a series of pragmatic pattern-based challenges. They do this by creating the illusion of open environments and total control – this is why sandbox games and huge RPG’s feature dozens of game types and distractions. Grand Theft Auto IV created an entire mini-game devoted to hanging out with Niko’s friends so they’d feel less like a gameplay device and more like real people. In Fallout 3 most of the game world is optional to explore. Portal 2 doesn’t have this problem because the developers don’t have to hide behind smoke and mirrors. Since the story is made up of explicitly designed test chambers, the audience never faces the risk of peeking behind the curtain and breaking the illusion. In fact, blatantly exploiting this concept is what makes Portal so intuitive and enjoyable.
Now, all of these points so far have been shared between both episodes in the Portal franchise. However what separates Portal 2 from its precursor is its scope. The original Portal was perhaps tighter and all its parts may have better benefited from its succinct play time but the sequel is a far deeper and more involving story. In Portal 2 you learn a boatload about the facility and its history, all of which seems to come almost subliminally through just making through the testing tracks. Once again, the story distracts from the reality that you are actually just moving from drab grey room to similar drab grey room (with the occasional open environment break) by giving you in contrast an incredibly vivid, tangible world to access through the sounds over your PA and the hidden Ratman dens scattered throughout the environment. The amount of information and subtext you gather along the way seems almost like witchcraft in retrospect and it’s amazing to think that it was all transmitted through scratchings on the wall and aural cues.
All in all, I am unaware of a video game experience that so perfectly models itself around its medium. I don’t think Portal 2 is the Citizen Kane of video games that fans and gamers are seeking but I think it might be the best example of ludonarrative storytelling to date. There were many sceptics regarding Valve’s ability to mirror Portal’s success in a full-length sequel. I think they shot for the moon on this one, and hit it.
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