Prometheus was punished by the gods for giving the gift of knowledge to man

[shichahn]

So I finished Portal 2 last night. Well, the single player anyway.

So very, very much love for this game and this series. Portal was great, and Portal 2 manages to be even better in some truly spectacular ways. And while I feel like the ending is pretty conclusive... I didn't see how they could make a sequel after the first one, either. So we'll see. I would be satisfied if it ended here, but how can I not want more?

Favorite random trivia bit from the Half-Life wiki: apparently Valve originally intended for Wheatley to be voiced by Richard Ayoade, but decided Stephen Merchant fit better. And while I think I agree... just the very thought of Richard Ayoade in a Portal game is so freaking amazing that I hope they find a role for him somewhere one of these days.

As a heads-up to all of you who don't already know, I will be doing my usual summer disappearing trick as of this coming Sunday, and will be between various isolated places in Oregon while I train new banding interns. And so as always, I will be semi-difficult to reach until sometime in August, but I will do my best to check my phone and email when I have service.

(This probably goes without saying, but spoilers are in the comments.)

Comments

[shadowesque13.livejournal.com]

Infinitely better than this Wheatley, anyway. He gets into my head, gdi. TINY LITTLE WHEATLEY, STOP NARRATING MY THOUGHTS.

[shichahn.livejournal.com]

Aww, but Cockney Wheatley was adorable! Just, yeah... not right, haha.

[flameraven.livejournal.com]

Portal 2 was fantastic. THE MOON. WHAT.

By far my favorite levels though were all the retro science levels. The history was fascinating and horrifying at the same time. Cave Johnson was insane.

Mostly I'm impressed with this game for making me not hate GLaDOS anymore. I just can't do it. She's still evil, but I've got a weird kind of respect and sympathy for her. If someone shoved my brain into a faulty OS, I'd be rather pissed off too.

I'm actually working my way through Portal now; never did get a chance to go through it before. Which... probably made a lot of Portal 2 harder than it needed to be, because they don't actually explain anything.

[shichahn.livejournal.com]

I agree! I loved the old Aperture Science facilities, and seeing how they (and Johnson) changed throughout the years. It was such a cool way to expand on the little bit of backstory we already had. Which... if you hadn't played Portal and then read up on the background, you may not have had. They don't mention it in the game, but Johnson went insane and died as a result of mercury poisoning from the shower curtain development (no, not moon rocks, he was already crazy by then, haha). Also, the scale of the place! The only time you really get a feel for that in Portal is when you're approaching GLaDOS' chamber but here in Portal 2, the spaces outside the test chambers are just so vast.

And aww, you hated GLaDOS? I've always loved GLaDOS. Yes, she's evil, but she's also hilarious and amazing and wonderful. ♥ But they really did do an incredible job of character development for her in this game. Because yes, while I adored (and feared) her before, sympathy wasn't really part of the mix. And seeing her develop something of a begrudging respect toward Chell is kind of awesome.

Portal 2 was pretty easy for me and I would have finished it a lot sooner if I'd actually had time to play it, haha. But not easy in a disappointing way as there were still some challenging and frustrating bits, just nothing like the first one. Playing the first game first would definitely have been the right idea, I think, haha. It does a very good job of teaching you to think with portals. ;) Also some of the first Portal 2 test chambers are ruined versions of the first few Portal rooms, which is really cool to see.

[flameraven.livejournal.com]

Don't worry, I'm familiar with the story of the first game as I've seen my roommate play it many times, I just never played through it myself so it was sometimes difficult to visualize what I needed to do to solve the puzzles. I did find the Aperture Science history online after I beat Portal 2, although my impression was that it was pretty much 100% fabrication on the part of the company to appear more legit.

After all, they could hardly have been only making shower curtains if the vault was sealed in 1961 and inside it is all kinds of tests that require a portal gun (and a sign reminding test subjects not to forget their 'quantum tunneling device.') Apparently moon rock really IS poisonous so I don't doubt that Cave Johnson would have died from that (and I think we see a portrait of him in the clearly 1980's section of the old vaults.)

I don't know if I hated GLaDOS, but she certainly was terrifying. When I watched my roommate play through the first part of P2, we were both REALLY nervous about going into her chamber the first time. This game definitely does cast her in a more sympathetic light, though. She's still crazy, but...that facility is all she's got. Although I really worry for the fate of all those other test subjects in cryo...

[shichahn.livejournal.com]

You know, that's a good point. I actually haven't read the Aperture Science backstory very closely in a while. So yeah, the dates in Portal 2 pretty clearly show they were developing the ASHPD and related things for a lot longer than claimed. Moon dust causes respiratory problems... Which is what it sounded like his problem was, admittedly, moreso than insanity... hmm. But yes, it has been known that he died in 1986.

Man, all these years I figured that written history of Aperture Science was true, but it blatantly contradicts what we see in-game. You have blown my mind. :) I'm not sure why the wiki hasn't been updated to reflect this... Now I'm just all confused.

I think GLaDOS' intent is to test with the robots, at least for a while...? I haven't finished the co-op mode so I don't know if there's more to that but that will at least partially be what happens, especially because they can be rebuilt and are generally much better test subjects than humans. But the human test subjects, those that survived the whole ordeal anyway, well, she'll probably come up with a use for them, too. It would be a shame to just have them sit there when they could be doing science!, after all.

[flameraven.livejournal.com]

Read the TVTropes page for Portal; it's been updated for Portal 2 and there's a lot of stuff in there I didn't notice (like the fact that one of the potato batteries from Bring-Your-Daughter-to-Work-Day is Chell's) which have really interesting implications.

They wrote the history after Portal, so it's possible they just changed their minds about the timeline once they were developing for Portal 2, and just let it stand as the company's "official" history. It's pretty clear from the recordings that Johnson is batshit insane from the get-go, anyway. Who else would do experiments that create mantis men, turn people's blood to gasoline, and purposely create tumors in test subjects so they could cut them out later? And THEN stick his assistant's brain in a computer to run the place? He was totally not all there.

I figure she'd test with the robots for awhile, but you just know she's going to get bored eventually... ):

[shichahn.livejournal.com]

Haha, I will do that. Yeah, Chell's potato project is the freak mutant potato, and one of the materials was "something from daddy's work" or something like that, so she's almost certainly the daughter of one of the staff. Apparently there is a little girl in the Portrait of a Lady, too, who can only be seen if you turn up the brightness in the image - I found the painting on my first go-through but didn't even think to mess with the monitor brightness when I saw it, of course. So I have yet to look at that. But I'll see what else they have on the TVTropes page.

Also I was reading today about the original concept for Portal 2, which apparently was actually a prequel set in the 50s and didn't involve portals as a gameplay element at all. The full story is apparently only viewable if you buy an iPad app, frustratingly enough, so I'm waiting for someone to crack that, but as much as I do love Portal 2 I wish they hadn't entirely scrapped the prequel idea. They just got too much negative feedback from play testers, I guess, who all wanted Chell and GLaDOS and portals in their Portal games.

[flameraven.livejournal.com]

Yeah.... I understand that. Like, why call it Portal if it doesn't involve the Portal gun? That's the entire point. Honestly, I'm still confused as to why the robots are on the cover of the game. I am not all that enchanted by the robot designs (Atlas is okay, P-body is....weird.)

I think they did a good mix with allowing us to see the old 60's-80's facilities and learn all the backstory while still tying in to the main story. And I think Chell waking up hundreds of years later is pretty unsettling in itself.

[shichahn.livejournal.com]

I haven't even seen the cover, haha, I've just seen all the concept art for the covers. Got mine on Steam. :p I guess they really wanted to sell the multiplayer aspect?

I'd still like to see all that even older backstory, though. I find the whole thing a lot of fun. There was something about being a scientist/staff member/test subject of some sort in the facility, and something about Johnson having an army of robots to try and stop you with. Obviously a lot of crazy chaos went on behind the scenes.

Also I really want to see what happens to Chell. Because Valve keep hinting at how she and the Portal storyline will tie into the Half-Life storyline, so I hope they actually manage to unite the two in a game sometime in the future.

[flameraven.livejournal.com]

Ah. We have the Xbox version. For some reason I can't keep my attention on computer games (and my computer is not awesome enough to handle the graphics anyway). The cover shows P-body jumping between portals. Which is... just not nearly as epic as GLaDOS glaring at you in the ruins of her room, for example.

The older backstory would be fun, and would be something I could sort of see them exploring in Portal 3? I think people really wanted to see Chell make it out of that place, though, and I can't say I blame them. Poor Chell.

[flameraven.livejournal.com]

I also have to say: I do want to play Half-Life now. All I know about it is that apparently Black Mesa tried to create a portal gun and instead got headcrabs. But I might have to just watch my roommate play it, because I fail so badly at FPS's. Like, not only do I fail at playing them, they actually give me motion sickness and headaches. I got about half an hour into the story mode of Halo 3 and had to quit. It was pretty upsetting. :/ But I need to know about the aliens, and I do hope they'll tie Portal 2 and Chell into the story somewhere.