Portal 2: A labor of love

(Warning: This article contains spoilers for Portal and Portal 2. Read at your own risk!)

Every now and then a video game comes along that is able to tug at my heart strings and force out a tear or two. These games are uncommon in a world where fun matters most and shooting dudes is what consumers seem to care about most. Nothing wrong with having fun, but sometimes engaging the player in the experience can be worthwhile. Not only was the game fun, but storytelling and artistic elements that went into the game were top notch. I’m talking about Portal 2 here.

Portal 2 made me care. Not only did it flesh out every single cast member, but it didn’t try to carry a heavy load. There are very few characters in the lime light, but the few under it shine ever so brightly. Every one of its characters is given depth and have their ups and downs throughout the story. The dialogue contributes to that with masterful performances from the voice actors behind them.You don’t have to sit through long, drawn out cut scenes to enjoy these characters: they simply speak before you without interrupting what you’re doing. Aside from a couple rare situations, you have complete control over Chell’s movements during Portal 2, so you can enjoy these characters without the expense of the control being stripped away from you. That narrative style mixed with the wit of these wonderful characters made me care about Portal 2.

Even after what she put me through, I could not help but feel for GLaDOS when she was stripped of her power and restricted to the form of a potato. I loved Wheatley even after he went mad with power, I pitied him when he was banished to space. Then there was Cave.  Oh, Cave Johnson. The man represents the rise and fall of the ‘American Dream’. He lived for the cause of advancing science, only for that very thing to be his demise. Don’t even get me started on the damned turrets and the ill-fated Companion Cube.

The writing is the string that ties all of this together, and it’s tighter than the original Portal. Portal wasn’t a bad game, but the majority of it felt like a prerequisite for things to come. I didn’t start to love Portal until the tests were over and I had to use what I learned.

The tests ended and GLaDOS was done with you, thus you’re forced to use the skills you honed through the various tests to escape Aperture and defeat GLaDOS. That is when the game truly impressed me, but it took so long for the game to gain a sense of depth. Up until then all I had to engage me were senseless tests and GLaDOS’ dry wit. There is nothing wrong with either of those, but they don’t compare to the revelation that in reality Aperture was an empty relic of the past, now run only by a rogue AI. That is when I saw Portal’s heart. That’s when I started to feel the game and love GLaDOS. You’re even given a look into the fall of Aperture with the Ratman dens later in the game. Through them the player can take a peek into the dark, horrifying past of Aperture and you can only wonder how things were before you started playing.

Portal 2 fixes the issue of interest from the get go. The opening scene of the game in which Chell wakes up and meets Wheatley, who proceeds to perform a “manual override” on Chell’s room, immediately grab the player’s attention. Then you land in the same nostalgic room you found yourself in at the beginning of Portal, but with everything in ruins: the white panels have peeled away, plant growth entangles the area, and practically everything is in shambles. Everything I loved about the end of Portal is here right away in Portal 2. I go further and find out that there is more than that, so much more that makes me want to hug Portal until the blood stops flowing in my arms. This time around GLaDOS isn’t just some witty machine with an insane need to test: this time she feels human. In a way, GLaDOS is a symbol of my feelings for Portal and Portal 2.

In the first game she was cold and ruthless, and testing was all that mattered to her. There was no goal, no moronic core trying to steal her position, no evil birds, no crazy lemon man. She was just doing her job, it was business as usual. That is, until I murdered her. That’s when things get chaotic. Portal 2 embraces that chaos with events constantly happening, environments to constantly marvel at, characters always doing something. Chaos isn’t meat to be seen as something negative though.  It just means things are happening. Chaos is action. Chaos is emotion. Chaos is movement. Chaos is progress. GLaDOS embodies that here with her damnation at the end of Chapter 4, which I believe to be one of the best moments in the game.

When GLaDOS undergoes the core transfer with Wheatley she screams in agony and for the first time I felt sorry for her, and it filled me with terror. To think, I’m feeling sorry for villain who put me through so much in Portal. How is this possible? Even now I’m unsure why I felt that way during that moment, but later on I started to care and I knew why. After escaping the bowels of Aperture I learned that GLaDOS was a person.

Before GLaDOS there was Caroline, Cave Johnson’s assistant. After contracting a deadly disease, ironically due to the moon rocks used to create portal surfaces, he demanded his scientist invent a way to upload his mind onto a digital mainframe. If he didn’t last that long then Caroline would be uploaded in his place, and so she was. Thus Caroline became GLaDOS’s human conscious. Every human personality quirk that GLaDOS has originates from Caroline.  She is what makes GLaDOS human. When this human component awakened in her she became a character I felt for. I gained a connection with her. And GLaDOS shared with you the common interest of taking down Whealtey. With that a bond is forged, and GLaDOS no longer plays the role of the antagonist. She is a friend who you learn to love, to laugh and cry with during good times and bad.

Wheatley shares the same role as GLaDOS in that he’s a character that can almost be seen as human despite being a mere AI. He starts the game as a companion, but eventually switches roles with GLaDOS and becomes the antagonist. He’s honestly the perfect foil for GLaDOS as a villain in that he’s unorganized and idiotic compared to her cold and calculating way of doing things. Switching their positions of power brings out elements of their personalities you otherwise wouldn’t see if they stayed in their comfort zones.

Portal 2 just does so much right along the way and still manages to be an absolute blast. The writing, characters, dialogue, environment, music, gameplay, physics, and gameplay just feel perfect. Not only that, Portal 2 has so much depth to its world. Portal 2 just has so much lore, so much passion, so much love. To be honest, I’m sad that Portal 3 seems very unlikely at this point. Portal 2 wraps things up wonderfully, but I’d love it if a sequel came and perfected on an already perfect product. I know it won’t happen though. That’s already though because Portal 2 is a game that will be thought of and discussed for the next decade, perhaps more than any game from 2011. Portal 2 will not be forgotten. With all of the love and care put into it that fact is hard to deny.