Highlights - Portal

Welcome back to Highlights, the series where we talk about memorable moments from memorable games, movies, comics, books, shows, and more. Today we’ll do what I’ve wanted to do for a few posts now, video games. And I think we can all agree this one has memorable moments worth discussing. Portal.

Portal is that rare game that comes along and is designed so tightly and thoroughly that nothing feels unnecessary and everything fits perfectly. In short, it’s probably the closest we’ll see in gaming to a perfect game because it did what the developers set out to do just right. Few games ever live up to that expectation. So what moments do we remember from Portal that bring this near perfect game to life?

First Turret Encounter

The first time you meet a turret was a little intimidating. You’ve spent the whole game without having to fight anyone or anything. The closest thing you’ve had to a hostile enemy is an energy ball, and that functioned more as a hazardous puzzle piece than an enemy-type. You’ve never been given a weapon to defend yourself with and all you have is your portal-device. Suddenly, you meet a new entity that seems harmless. As you approach, it beings to unleash a torrent of bullets your way. You get around the corner before it’s too late. You turn around to see your blood smeared across the wall. It’s them you immediately realize you have a new problem and that this test chamber may not be all GlaDOS is telling you.

Upon entering, GlaDOS says these chambers were for old military testing and you’re only here because of a “slight” detour. We all know this is GlaDOS’ attempt to kill you more quickly as you’ve progressed so far. From a developer perspective, the first encounter with the turrets is to slowly get you adapted to how they function and how to get around them. This way you know best how to deal with the final maps of the game. And you really aren’t doing any new tricks with your portals here. It’s just familiar tricks to dispatch new obstacles, pushing forth the notion of trial and error that makes a puzzle game like Portal so spectacular.

And what makes the encounter even more unsettling is the fact the turrets will speak. Once out of line-of-sight, the turrets will ask if you’re still there. Their voice is both cute and haunting, knowing that their sole purpose is to end your life by orders of the only voice who’s been “guiding” you out of these test chambers. All of this makes the first encounter with a turret very unsettling but sets the tone in an absolutely brilliant way, while sticking to the tone of the dark-humor the game has already been throwing your way throughout bits and pieces of the experience.

The First Chamber

It doesn’t seem like much, does it? You enter a room. You place a block on a button. You’re out of the room. So why is it here? It’s the first puzzle in the game. For those of us who quickly adapted to this game, I’m sure many of us looked at this puzzle the first time and said, “Really? This is the puzzle game people say is amazing?” Little did we know this was just a brief tutorial as the many rumors that followed would require blocks on buttons. By illustrating how the blocks function in the most in-your-face way possible, it would be impossible to not figure out how to deal with those later puzzles. In short, yes, it seems insultingly easy, but the goal of that first puzzle is to make sure everyone is on the same page whether it’s their first game, first playthrough of this game, or first playthrough of this game on this particular day.

A very similar puzzle is brought back in Portal 2 when (SPOILERS) Wheatley takes over the facility. It is the first puzzle he creates and the solution is just pushing a button. He’s so proud of his creation, believing it to be the most difficult puzzle. So proud, in fact, he forces you to solve it more than once, believing you beating it so quickly is nothing more than a fluke. A way to highlight the less than impressive intellect of Wheatley (just don’t call him a “moron”)

But this is why I love Portal so much, and possibly more than Portal 2. It’s about providing a very small and simple concept and then just expanding upon it with each successive level or puzzle or challenge. We could have gone straight to shooting portals and complex puzzles. But it makes more sense for us to know the most very basic aspect of the puzzles, which would be manipulating objects in the environment without the portal gun. And, hell, you don’t even get a full portal gun until several chapters in so you can learn how to function with just one portal at a time.

The Unsolvable Room

At a certain point in Portal, you get put in a room  in which GlaDOS states that the room is impossible to escape and this is a flaw with the test chamber. If she were telling the truth, you would die and never escape. But since we, as gamers, should be smart enough to figure out a solution to getting out of this supposedly inescapable room, we do. And GlaDOS acts surprised when you do. Okay, fine, so we outsmart the machine again. That’s the point of the whole game, so why bring this up?

This is one of the first moments in the game when you can confirm GlaDOS is lying to you. Prior to this, you’re never really sure, but you have no reason to doubt her because she’s the only voice you’ve encountered. There are moments when there are audio quirks (intentional) which can cause some doubt. But nothing that conflicts with the physical truth before you. The moment this lie occurs, you immediately click in your mind that something is off about this facility beyond the machinations having some kinks to them.

And, as you progress, you receive more lies. All of which are subtle, but all of which are highly suspect from the promise of cake, to the strange description of the companion cube, and even to the whole detour through the turret-laden path you’re forced to endure. But, GlaDOS is a machine, and machines shouldn’t be capable of lying. Thus, this little lie is the first hint in the game that GlaDOS and Aperture are more than they appear and it’s at this point when the player brings their guard up and prepares for the real dangers ahead.

The Companion Cube And Final Battle

No, these are not in the same area. But they do tie together in terms of game-mechanics and because discussions on both the Companion Cube and the final battle with GlaDOS have been done to death, I’ll only touch on them a little bit (especially since this article is running a little long). I find the Companion Cube memorable not because of its unique design or because GlaDOS told us to. I find the Companion cube memorable because of the information we’re meant to infer from the clues in the game to the secret behind the Companion Cube. But rather than rehash a popular YouTube video, I’ll just throw a link down HERE to Game Theory’s thoughts on the Companion Cube actually being stuffed with former employees of Aperture. There’s some damning evidence to support that claim and you should definitely check out THIS LINK if you’re at all curious.

These areas are also connected because of the way you dispose the cube. In every other puzzle in the game, you dispose of cubes and other test-related objects via the emancipation field before the elevator. It disintegrates all non-organic material that is non-essential for testing purposes. But the Companion Cube is different because GlaDOS refuses to let you access said field until you drop the cube in the incinerator she provides for you. If you watched that Game Theory video, you know the very possible lore-reason for this fact.

But from a gameplay standpoint, this is because, in order to defeat GlaDOS at the very end, you must throw the component’s she drops into the incinerator near her. But because such a concept was never introduced, the developers worried no one would get that’s what the incinerator was for and be unable to complete the game. Therefore, they force you to use the incinerator once to tech you this game mechanic before it becomes vital for success. As an added bonus, they probably hoped you were still pissed off about being forced to use the incinerator by GlaDOS that this little revenge would be all the more satisfying.

There are plenty of other memorable moments worth discussing, but we’ll save those for another time. In the meantime, are there any moments you felt we should have mentioned? Please be sure to tell us in the comments below! As always, we’d love a comment, like, share, and subscribe if you enjoyed out content. We’ll be back with more Highlights.