

[This article contains spoilers about the story of Portal 2, obviously. So, you have been warned now. Though I think that most of the people reading this have already completed the game… whatever]

On my way through the adventurous and perilous depths of the Aperture Laboratories I was thrilled by the fascinating game mechanics, the brilliant puzzles and, of course, by the adorable character design. Rushing through the test chambers I unravelled more and more of the secrets that lay behind the doors of Cave Johnson’s giant research complex. Nonetheless, I never had the feeling that there was a compelling story that guided me through the levels. Honestly speaking, I was kind of disappointed by the obvious twists and lengthy stages.

The Dark Side of the Moon

For example, as an aficionado of the first Portal I clearly know that “a surprise” by any AI from Aperture means that they are going to kill you. Period. No exceptions. A devoted Portal gamer might see this as a witty running gag. In my eyes, it was simply an expression of uninspired story-telling.

Even worse, I risked my (virtual) life for several hours to reach the point where they finally promised the “surprise”. And then – nothing happened. This was really neat in Portal 1, but again, in Portal 2 this seemed false somehow. (At least, the designers in Portal 1 promised me a cake. So where is your cake now??)

Speaking of: The infamous “cake” in Portal 1 was eventually an ironical and funny feature, which fell flat in Portal 2 by simply not labelling the surprise. It was also kind of a letdown that the interesting hints concerning the background of the main character literally led the player to nowhere.

What emphasizes this feeling is that I had seen this coming TWICE. A weak point of Portal 2 certainly is the repetitious last section (mainly chapter 8) where the story with the megalomaniac AI (from chapters 3 and 4) is retold. And even the dialogue, though sometimes utterly hilarious and witty, seems to repeat itself too often.

These may be just some annoying details for some of you, but there are imo too much of them. But the point where I’m up to is that there are good reasons for some of these vexations.

The Bright Side of the Moon

So far, the story of Portal didn’t make me think that this is the near to perfect title the press reviews had promised. Until, well, until I reached the last stage and even then it took almost five minutes until I fired this memorable shot at the moon. This was something really unexpected and jaw-dropping. But even more than that: Again, a few hours later, the tape recordings from chapters 6 and 7 came back to my mind: the story Aperture Science CEO Cave Johnson told about the moonstones that poisoned him and that seemed to be one of the secrets behind the portal technology. Ahh, of course!

This is a classical move of “planting” information that’s going to „payout“ later. But I was surprised afterwards that indeed the whole fundament of the story consisted just of these subtle remarks. The connection between GLaDOS and her human counterpart Caroline, the decline of Aperture sciences, everything is going on almost unnoticed while I was busy thinking with portals and torturing my synapses for hours. After all this background story revealed much more than the superficial AI-gone-crazy-plot could do.

Well, you might have noticed all these tiny and well-thought bits. More important, however, is the conclusion that could be drawn from it. It shows that Valve has a unique way of telling a story. That’s because this isn’t just simply a neat trick played on the gamer. In fact, it reveals a certain view on gaming itself and the importance of gameplay that is typical of Valve.

The Valve Way of Gaming

So, developer Valve hasn’t just got their own computation of time, they also defined a unique way in story-telling. This is also exemplified in their Half-Life series. It’s baffling when you take a closer look at the relation between game mechanics and the presentation of the plot.

Most games have a clear distinction between story parts and simple gameplay. You shoot-shoot-shoot or quest-quest-quest and then there is a cut and a short story sequence interrupts the game until again you shoot-shoot-sh… you know, what I’m aiming at.

In Portal 2 the relation between game and story is amazingly different. You always have the impression, that the game mechanics, the puzzles and the humour have the priority, while the story silently creeps through the background of the stages, present at any time, but never really disrupting the experience. Listening to the story is just an option, a tentative invitation to the world you are moving in. This is a unique feature of Valve games and I can rarely imagine any AAA title that’s as consequent as Portal 2 in doing so.

Story-Telling in Video Games

Moreover, I think this is exactly, what totally matches gaming as a medium. While other games sometimes define themselves as movies with game elements (I’m looking at you, Call of Duty) Valve focuses on gaming throughout the whole storyline. There are so many developers who maintain this fine separation between story and gaming and are not able to resolve this distinction any better than by including story parts told from first-person view. (This basically is the case in any modern FPS.) And again, Valve shows the most involved and evaluated form of presenting a story possible in games nowadays.

To conclude, although I feel a bit rejected by the rough and seemingly superficial way that Portal 2 told its story I’m still deeply impressed by its consequence and subtlety. In my opinion, this is one of the reasons why Valve games are so much more important to the development of games and the cultures of gaming than its contemporary competitors, also seen retrospectively. They are aware of the specific requirements of games, or rather: They understand the nature of video games. Well done, Valve.