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[unsilentwill]

I usually post my thoughts in Design, but we as game designers tend to be critics if only to sort out what techniques are effective and which aren't in popular games. So this thread is a retroactive discussion of Portal and Portal 2, so if you haven't played them, I'm going to spoil them, and you probably didn't have much to say on the topic anyway.

Without reading too much into it, Portal's story is about escape. You're trapped in a dangerous scientific research facility, run by a computer who tries to kill you after you disobey, forcing you to exist in a dehumanizing controlled environment.

Gameplay-wise however, you are given a portal gun that allows you to move freely between dimensions and are subjected to a series of challenging yet fun and wacky puzzles, while sometimes you run around a bit behind the walls before getting placed into another chamber.

Here's where things stop making sense, and Portal starts looking really bad. To keep people playing the game, the test chambers have to be fun, which means you as Chell are enjoying being a lab rat, the very thing the plot is trying to get you to escape. There is no time when players actually want to escape the game, otherwise they would just quit. The escape sequences are another puzzle by a  designer who wants to keep you in his test chamber, keep you entertained.



In Portal 2 the theme of dehumanization is a major point in giving some character to the antagonist. Caroline loses her free will in pursuit of serving science, and demands all test subjects and the player to do the same. The portal gun, a symbol of pure escape, is only part of the game and the test chambers and does nothing behind the scenes. The behind-the-scenes moments of freedom are pre-programmed into the plot and never a choice of the player.

Because, if given the choice of being subject to test after test after test, following unreasonable directions and being free, the player would choose the tests. This is bad.


The end of Portal 2 proves this, you go to the moon with your gun in a neato moment, but find yourself completely unprepared to deal with the outside world and infinite freedom, so you warp back the the test chamber. You've done what you are told and then you're allowed to leave and find yourself in the outside world, equally unprepared to live as you've spent your whole life playing GLaDOS's game. You're tossed the fanservice cube, which was an attempt to dehumanize and control you by feeling emotional towards a metal box, and judging from gamer culture, the entire fanbase was fooled.

Now what? You've escaped, and what's the first thing you want to do?

And crucially, when I’d finished the game, both single player and co-op, the first thing I wanted to do was start again. So I did.

Be a robot and endure more scientific tests, ignoring all elements of the things that make humans important. Great. QED. At least Give Up Robot is honest and makes you a robot from the beginning.

The imagery of the end of Portal 2 was similar enough to the end of Tarsem Singh's The Cell, an interesting movie about women being captured and tortured and being unable to escape, then feeling the thrill of freedom as virtual/mental technology allowed a detective to uncover the human side of the psychopath. Everything that Portal failed to portray, and The Cell by all accounts wasn't well made at all. But the punishment and dehumanization was horrible, not fun.

Portal is a brilliant example where the desire to win the game and the desire to be a character clash and clash hard. For a game that's supposed to be about escaping a dehumanizing system, Valve does little else but use the same manipulative techniques as Aperture and keep you playing while letting you pretend you have free choice.

4.5/10 ~ Jim Sterling

Joking aside, I think this is all true, the game misses its own point. Thoughts? Agree, disagree?

[Christian Knudsen]

So the game is bad because players are enjoying the gameplay?

[unsilentwill]

I know it looks like I just like to see myself type, but what you said is an oversimplification of what I said. True, but not the whole story. Dehumanizing gameplay is not good gameplay.

[deathtotheweird]

I think you're taking the story a bit too serious. The story is just a set-up/excuse to hear GladOs tell a couple of funny jokes while the player is doing puzzles. Much more interesting than just throwing the player down in a room and solving meaningless puzzles.

The game doesn't miss it's own point because it doesn't have a point. You're giving the game/writers too much credit.

[AshfordPride]

There were two moments in Portal 2 that did make me feel kind of bummed out, and both of them were fairly similar.  Early on in the game when you are first doing tests for Glados, she's counting down the number of tests you have left.  I was disappointed that Wheatly yanks you out of the test before you were done.  I know that I'm not actually missing any tests, but it feels like I was.  Same thing happens at the end of the game, where Wheatly catapults you out of a test chamber after counting down the number of tests left.  You're right, I the player am actually very upset to be taken out of these tests for a chance at escape, while Chell should probably be enthralled.  There is dissonance here, yes.

The end of Portal 2 proves this, you go to the moon with your gun in a neato moment, but find yourself completely unprepared to deal with the outside world and infinite freedom, so you warp back the the test chamber

The Moon is kind of a shitty place for an escaped lab rat to start a new life.

You're tossed the fanservice cube, which was an attempt to dehumanize and control you by feeling emotional towards a metal box, and judging from gamer culture, the entire fanbase was fooled.

I regarded that as a sort of break up type action.  It's like Glados was tossing my clothing off a fire escape, like that.

But you want to talk dissonance in Portal?  Let's talk the Companion Cube.

The joke here is that Glados, having no understand of actual human interaction, has given you a cube with a heart painted on it and simply told you to be invested in it.  You love the cube, everyone loves the cube, the cube is the most important friend you'll ever have.  Now, obviously, any sane person would just roll their eyes and lug this thing around for the sake of the puzzle.  The humor of the Companion Cube culminates where Glados asks you to destroy it, hyping up how it must be so difficult to do so.  The player and Chell shouldn't care at all, it's funny!  It's funny that a dumb robot is amazed that a human wouldn't destroy a tool just because they were told it was their friend.  That's the joke, the fact that Glados is so misunderstanding of human emotions.  The joke isn't LOL COMPANION CUBE, GET IT?  

Also, LOL LE CAKE IS A LIE, GET IT?

Portal is a brilliant example where the desire to win the game and the desire to be a character clash and clash hard.

I don't think Valve ever wants us to be Chell, or even really care about Chell.  It isn't her story, it isn't our story.  It's the story of one company's bizarre rise, fall, and the terrible aftermath they've created in their foolish pursuit of science for the sake of science.  I don't know how much of a story there is there, or if exploring it would really be a worthwhile venture.  We know that she had a science project during the Aperture Science Bring Your Daughter to Work Day, and we know that she never gives up.  That's all the hard evidence we have to go on.

4.5/10 ~ Jim Sterling

Well, thank ghaaaaaaawd for you.

[SirNiko]

Might want to put a Portal 2 spoiler mention in the thread title, just to be safe.

It's an interesting perspective, but I'm not sure what he expects the game to do to score a 10/10. I'm interpreting his score is based heavily on Portal's perceived player/avatar dissonance. Maybe his score reflects things not in this review.

The problem with making a game that makes the player uncomfortable in a way that they want to escape is that the player, unlike their avatar, can escape by simply closing the game. Unless Jigsaw starts making video games that fit over your head with a beartrap, creating a game that repulses the player but doesn't drive them away through the "Quit" button is an impossibility.

It's an interesting perspective, but it seems like he's faulting the game for not living up to an unrealistic ideal.

[AshfordPride]

Unless Jigsaw starts making video games that fit over your head with a beartrap, creating a game that repulses the player but doesn't drive them away through the "Quit" button is an impossibility.

HELLO NIKO

I WANT TO PLAY

A GAME

[squeakyReaper]

4.5/10 ~ Jim Sterling

What is this number rating? The story? Game play? Immersion?

Edit: See below post for reason to disregard this one.

[unsilentwill]

Now, obviously, any sane person would just roll their eyes and hug this thing around for the sake of the puzzle.

4.5/10 - Well, thank ghaaaaaaawd for you.

I was just joking, because criticizing a game that everyone loves could come off as Sterling-esque "trolling". I'm not scoring the game.

And it's a weird argument to say that Portal doesn't have a story, since it's universally lauded for combining story and gameplay like other games haven't done. Also they spent a lot of money to make their gameplay playable with clever british attitude. Again, see Give Up Robot, Meat Boy, etc. people play punishing, uncomfortable levels on their own and that's half the point. I don't think Portal or Portal 2 needed the story, the robots prove that, and having the story just hurts the games in general.

[Zaphos]

I enjoyed the puzzles in portal but I also empathized with Chell's desire to escape.  The player and character are separate entities.

Also, Chell may enjoy the puzzles on a moment-to-moment basis and still want to escape, because otherwise Glados will eventually kill her.

As a player controlling Chell I would escape given the chance.  The robot story was totally separate.  The moon was not a valid place to escape to (probably not survivable) so is not relevant.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

i think it has a story but the story is simplistic and like allen said it's just there to have an excuse to shuffle the player from puzzle to puzzle. it's hard to make a pure puzzle game with a story where you aren't a lab rat of some sort (although spacechem and opera omnia handled it well; they both have superior stories to portal)

i haven't played portal 2 note, just portal 1, perhaps portal 2 works differently

[AshfordPride]

I was just joking, because criticizing a game that everyone loves could come off as Sterling-esque "trolling". I'm not scoring the game.

I know, I thought that that was just his catch phrase.

And it's a weird argument to say that Portal doesn't have a story, since it's universally lauded for combining story and gameplay like other games haven't done.

I actually think that Portal presents it's story a lot like a theme park ride.  

 Lots of things flying in your face, the constant menace of danger being subverted by the last minute by Spiderman or Wheatly.  There's also the problem that Portal 2 probably only has enough story for a short story, but has to stretch it out for several hours.

[unsilentwill]

The moon is just part of the story, I'm not saying she should have escaped on the moon, it was the only example of when you use the portal gun to escape the facility.

And I agree Sam/Allen, but I think Portal's got their high scores partially because Portal 2 is an escape from the themepark style story. Maybe I'm the only one who's heard this.

The player and the character should not be separate entities! Or at least not so fundamentally opposite. You should play because you are personally motivated, not because a computer tells you to, right?

[SirNiko]

The whole game is about using the portal gun to escape the facility.

[unsilentwill]

As a tool maybe, but never as direct result of going through a portal and being outside. Something else, other than you and your abilities, let you physically escape.

[Dragonmaw]

I would say Spacechem has a better dramatic story, whereas Portal has a better comical one.

[noah!]

MONDO DISCLAIMER: I've only played the first Portal, and have not played Portal 2's single-player mode. So I won't even attempt to remark on that. However, me and my friend got together and slam-dunked the co-op levels like a box of Craisins, but since I don't know how tightly that ties in with the rest of the storyline (iirc isn't it like a kind of gaiden thing?), I won't try to use it to support any points. It'll just be used like decoration; the parsley on the Christmas Spam.

Anyway, I think the problem with your argument is [ WARNING•THE•BIG•SEMANTICS•IS•APPROACHING•FAST ] that you seem to confuse "escaping within the game" and "escaping the game itself." Now, escaping within the game's context is fine, and okay, cool, radical even. We can ignore this sauce, at least for the time being. But escaping the game itself solves nothing. For one thing, yeah, you're out of the game, but Chell isn't. For all you know, she'll be stuck there forever. Tropers (and to a lesser extent, real people) call this the Tethercat Principle, and I think this is a powerful force because otherwise Mom wouldn't be calling me up every time one of her shows ends on a cliffhanger.

Now, for the intermission, please turn to where you said "run by a computer who tries to kill you after you disobey." So you kinda have to do the puzzles. At least, until you make your escape. Are the puzzles fun? (hmph!) Yeah, for you, because you have quicksave and a comfy chair. Chell is flinging herself over toxic waste and stuff, with only inertia deciding her fate. In contrast, I have a hard time jumping over puddles because, like, what if I miss. My feet will get all wet!

At this point Samtagonist ninja'd me and made good points. Crap.

Oh and now everyone else and I'm on the second page too. Double crap.

As for the escape sequence feeling like a puzzle itself, I'm afraid you've forced me to use the debate technique known as Like That's Just Your Opinion Man. Okay, yeah, it was excessively linear, but it had enough stuff in it to make it feel sufficiently non-test-room-like. The dissonance between those areas and the clean, sanitary test rooms was enough to make a palpable impact; not the most subtle technique in the world, but it worked.

Plus, remember that this is Aperture Science we're talking about. The company that, when told to make a better shower curtain, ended up rending the fabric of space. For all we know the emergency exit probably routes you through Purgatory.

In conclusion, dear lord coming up with a coherent argument is hard. For every one decent point I make, there's about six others where I try to do something like evaluate the artistic merits of Freeze Tag or something, and have to cut it out in retrospect. How you guys can consistently do this for pages?

[Zaphos]

The moon is just part of the story, I'm not saying she should have escaped on the moon, it was the only example of when you use the portal gun to escape the facility.

"Escape" to a fatal environment is not really escape.

The player and the character should not be separate entities! Or at least not so fundamentally opposite. You should play because you are personally motivated, not because a computer tells you to, right?

Why not?  & I am personally motivated to play anyway, or I wouldn't play.

[Manuel Magalhães]

I was just joking, because criticizing a game that everyone loves could come off as Sterling-esque "trolling". I'm not scoring the game.

I don't see how Sterling is a troll, I actually like how he uses the 0-10 scale in instead of not giving any score below 7 or something. Regardless of having shitty taste for giving controversial scores to certain games or not (which he has, in my opinion) he doesn't do it dishonestly. Besides that I like him for his opinions on the state of the gaming industry regarding marketing BS and his humor.

[unsilentwill]

@Manuel, in quotations, man. Sorry for the confusion. I wouldn't call him a troll, he just knows how to use bad press to his advantage if anything, but I don't want to debate that in this thread.

@Noah The facility is the game, is it not? You, as Chell, are trying to escape the facility. But she wants to, and you don't. That seems like a bad design choice.

@Zaphos What is your motivation?

To the rest of you, I said at the beginning, if you didn't play Portal 2, you don't have nearly as much to say about this, since it too was glorified for combining story and gameplay in a holy grail sort of way.