Valve: Portal 2 Originally Didn’t Have Portals
Valve: Portal 2 Originally Didn’t Have Portals
Posted 09/10/2010 at 4:40pm
| by Nathan Grayson
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From the folder titled “Wait, what?” comes word that Valve’s initial concept for Portal 2 was a bit avant garde – even for Valve, the studio that brought us such hits as “MIT Scientist Fights Aliens,” “Cartoon Mercenaries Kill Each Other for Hats,” and “MIT Scientist Fights Aliens Again.” See, Portal 2 was going to give the portal gun the weighted companion cube treatment. That’s right: no more portals.
“One of the ideas was: what if the Portal franchise is, instead of always being about Portals – which’d be tough because it’s called Portal – but what if it was always about introducing a new puzzle element that you’re going through? it’s about Aperture Science, and now you’re going through this new testing track with this new element,” writer Erik Wolpaw told PC Gamer.
You can probably already see, however, where this is going. Wolpaw continued:
“We pretty quickly found that, even though we had a couple of pretty interesting mechanics, that people would always, to a person, every play tester we had would say, ‘Yeah this is alright, but where’s my portal gun?’”
As a result, gameplay mechanics like puddles of goo paint with different, gameplay altering properties switched from being central mechanics to a secondary ones, and thus, the Portal 2 we all know and love was born.
So hooray for that. Sure, we love a good brain teaser and all – so we can understand where Valve was coming from -- but it doesn’t take too much gray matter to figure out that maybe removing the feature that made your game so popular in the first place isn’t the best idea -- especially when you're dealing with a horde of easily outraged gamers.
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hades_2100
September 11, 2010 at 9:21am
If they make a game with coloured-sticky-goo, then why not create a new franchise called Coloured-Sticky-Goo instead of messing with Portal?
I Jedi
September 11, 2010 at 9:04am
While I do agree that Portal 2 wouldn't be the same without the portal gun, let's look at it likes this. Valve, being the genius game studio it is, could have introduced a very new, fresh idea to the Portal franchise. Something that would have been just as challenging, if not more, for the average user to figure out. We shouldn't discredit good ideas because they venture away from the a certain accepted concept. Instead, it should be played around with, and marketed to see how well it does. Even a small beta test, available on Steam, just to see the reaction would have been a good idea.
Silencer
September 11, 2010 at 12:32am
...really, really stupid idea. Makes me wonder, what stupid idea might they do later, if they're considering such stupid ideas now. Maybe they're losing it over there. I hope not.
That would be a different game, not Portal 2.
Eoraptor
September 10, 2010 at 5:08pm
Heard this on the football game last night, and it seems apropos here as well... "If it works, you're a genius, if it doesn't, you're a jerk."
seems like the same case as that stunt play on fourth and long.
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