The fantasy fiction of my childhood was full of portals into the unknown. There were all the books that leaned into faerie myths, of gaps between trees and stones which led into unreal places. C.S. Lewis’s The Magician’s Nephew with its pools and colour-coded rings as passageways into different worlds. Philip Pullman’s flat doorways cut between realities. Doctor Who and its bigger-on-the-inside TARDIS and circular vortexes between dimensions. Alice (and Dizzy) through the looking glass.
Portal’s portals maintain much of the same sense of the magical. Lights glow enticingly around the edges of its orange and blue circles, and inside they present impossible views, flat surfaces opening up to vistas. In its core development team’s initial proof of concept game Narbacular Drop, the portals were gaping mouths of a demon with glowing eyes, the fantasy forefronted. They don’t open up into strange other worlds, though, but merely to other locations you can see, the better to solve puzzles with. In Portal magic and logistics co-exist in one mechanic, and that’s a very good starting point for any puzzle game.
The concept of a puzzle game sitting at the top of the video game charts was an unfamiliar one by this point. Portal designer Kim Swift talked in a 2009 Eurogamer interview about being inspired by playing games with her dad, and wanting to create accessible games: “games seem to be split into two categories, either they’re kids’ games and have a low production bar and don’t have a lot there for adults to have fun with. Or they’re a big budget game with a lot of substance but a lot of violence that isn’t appropriate for kids.” (a statement which makes some sense when narrowly focused on mainstream console games developed in the West). A first person game in which you wield a gun but it opens portals, rather than blowing off heads, is its own middle path. Even if the sections where you get gunned down by turrets keep Portal from being non-violent.
I was in my twenties when the original Portal came out, but it was an echo of my own childhood playing games with my mum which drew me to it. Specifically, it was how much it resembled Lemmings, with its clearly delineated puzzles, its tests based on finding loopholes in apparent rules, and its synergy between puzzle-solving and the technical mastery required to execute solutions. Word-of-mouth and an explanation of the concept was enough to expect that much, and it lived up to those expectations. Portal was a short game released as but one element of The Orange Box compilation led by Half-Life 2: Episode 2 and Team Fortress 2, but it was also fairly central to my decision to buy a PS3 the following year. Alongside Mirror’s Edge, it was my own portal into a world of modern first person games.
By that time, the other success of Portal, that of its story and humour, was very apparent. “The cake is a lie” references had already reached backlash levels of ubiquity. Games which make the player listen to people talking while carrying out gameplay had become ever more commonplace in games over the preceding decade, whether it made sense or not. Fixing in on a single diegetic, passive-aggressive taunting monologue, slowly drawing out claustrophobic dark humour, was a form in which the approach could really flourish. At least when written as confidently and smartly as in Portal and performed as well as it is by Ellen McLain.
That’s a lot of words on the original Portal, but that makes sense for this post insofar as its bigger budget sequel does so many of the same things well. There are some new mechanics, but the puzzles show the same mastery of setting a scenario just complex and logically sequenced enough to be solvable without losing the excitement of doing so. The slapstick possibilities of bending the rules of physics are once again judiciously encouraged. Bouncing away turrets on a sea of bouncy blue gel is . The script once again sets an inventive range of cruelties banal and huge next to each other to very strong comedic effect. There is something potent in the escalating pettiness and absurdity of criticism of your character’s appearance being attributed to a woman with “a medical degree. In fashion. From France.”
The original Portal, though, was a short, two act game and benefited from it. Its action consists of one long series of controlled puzzles, followed by a quick chaotic escape to the backstage and a final confrontation, all talked through by a single voice. Precedent dictated that as a full release, Portal 2 couldn’t be that short, and it also doesn’t make sense for it to have such a long sequence introducing and expanding on its central concept when many players would already be familiar with it.
Instead it has three distinct acts, all of which put some kind of twist on the formula. First you confront the first game’s antagonist GLaDOS in a decayed version of the same spotless lab setup, but with Stephen Merchant’s gormless robot sphere Wheatley as a new ally. By the end of the game it comes back for a more chaotic reprise with their ally and enemy roles reversed. These are both great, and take all kinds of opportunities to put the full possibilities of being a video game in 2011 towards surprising laughs. Teaching you how to jump by giving you prompts to speak and seeing your character not quite get it right is a good one. Towards the end of the game there is my favourite use of an achievement notification ever. It even comes up with an epic but thematically satisfying final action.
In between those bookend acts, there is a fall and climb that goes right into the depths of the history of the Aperture Science facility, and adds another voice in the form of the echoing proclamations of Aperture founder Cave Johnson. As the biggest departure by far, this section is the most fascinating part of Portal 2. Its cavernous, deserted spaces are impressive and sinister, and lend themselves to new types of puzzles based on extended periods of failing to be a Portal game. The previous split between front-of-stage and backstage breaks down, with as much of its time spent trying to find ways to navigate into more typical puzzle rooms as solving them. Having you look around for distant walls and walkways is a strong way to get you to really take in the monumental bleakness of the spaces.
Cave Johnson himself is another video game vision of intrepid capitalism taken to the extreme, a flippant and even less self-aware version of Bioshock’s Andrew Ryan. Speaking into the uncaring ether of posterity, rather than to you specifically, he fires people for suggesting safety measures, pays no attention to trifling details, and has infinite certainty in his own exceptionalism and righteousness. When I originally played, perhaps partly because I was impatient to get back to a more typical Portal fix, I didn’t enjoy his parts, finding them too one-note. Playing in 2024, when Cave Johnson owns Twitter, I found it all both sadder and funnier. It’s also essential to making the game work at this length, building up a return to a glitched out modern version of the facility as being as much of a thrill as the first game’s trip backstage is.
So, overall, I’m making a note here: huge success. Portal 2 could never have been as surprising as the original, but it expands on it about as well as could be hoped. I haven’t even mentioned the excellent co-op two player campaign, which includes at least one truly brilliant new eureka moment all of its own. Portal 2 hasn’t had a further sequel, a pleasing fact that has to be down in part to having done so much already. Though also, of course, it was a dead end for other reasons. Valve were finding other things increasingly more lucrative than making single-player games. No one really picked up the baton of big budget AAA puzzle games in forms that didn’t already exist prior to Portal (like, Zelda).
Just like Shadow of the Colossus, though, that it’s a dead end within the story of the top of the UK charts doesn’t mean it was a dead end at all. I have spent the decade since playing all kinds of games with elements of Portal 2, and not just in the very direct sense of Kim Swift’s own Portal alternative Quantum Conundrum. Indie games big and small have risen to do everything that is good about it. Smart humour and mind-bending physics puzzles are everywhere. The door it opened has never gone abandoned.
Top of the charts for week ending 23 April 2011:
Top of the charts for week ending 30 April 2011:
