Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
S2 Ep36: Portal
68 Plays7 years ago
Join Dave and Jake as they violate the laws of physics for their own amusement.
Thoughts? Comments? Requests for new episodes? Feel free to email them in!
SoapstonePodcast@gmail.com
Like our podcast? Like our podcast! We'll post when new episodes are uploaded!
https://www.facebook.com/SoapstonePodcast/
Recommended
Transcript
Humorous Introduction & Season Two Kick-off
00:00:00
Speaker
Welcome to the Aperture Science Enrichment Center. Let's look at some of the challenges you'll face as a test participant. You may be required to perform simple tasks such as locating an exit. These simple tasks may be supplemented with insurmountable obstacles. Thanks to the Aperture Science handheld portal device, the impossible is easy.
00:00:25
Speaker
At the Enrichment Center, we believe that a highly motivated test subject can carry out rather complex tasks while enduring the most intense pain. So in case you don't make it through the testing, goodbye.
00:00:57
Speaker
How's it going, everyone? Welcome to another episode of Soapstone. My name is Jake. I am joined by my co-host as always, Dave. How's it going tonight, Dave? It's going good for season two. Season two. Season? A two. Yeah, it's, uh, usually seasons are significantly shorter than a year, but that's not how we do things around here. We dedicate a year to each season, so...
00:01:25
Speaker
Here's the 40 seasons of the podcast.
Misleading Intros & Game References
00:01:28
Speaker
Oh, God. Oh, yeah. What are we talking about tonight, Jake? Or do we want to discuss how new the year is still? I think as the intro may have spoiled for people, as it always does. We should do an unrelated intro at some point. Just like a different game. Name the podcast differently, too.
00:01:48
Speaker
Yeah, we'll be like mystery episode and the intro will be like something from Bayonetta. And then it's like Worms Armageddon. You're like, that was a fucking twist. We got to get like a clickbaity title for it. Something people would be like, oh, the Fortnite episode, finally. And it's just absolutely not. My heart sunk when you said that. Yeah, it's like, well, that's the thing, our viewership.
00:02:13
Speaker
It's terrible, but our listenership put all the sync at the... You don't watch like they used to.
Portal's Release & Significance
00:02:20
Speaker
All right, but yeah, Portal, I guess. I was just gonna talk about Portal. That one. Yeah. Came out, I don't know, when, a long time ago. Yeah. It was part of the Orange Box, was probably how a lot of people had picked it up. PC, Xbox. But it had to release before the Orange Box, right? I think it came out alongside the Orange Box. I think that was the OG released at Portal.
00:02:48
Speaker
We're the Fox News of video games, whatever the fuck we feel like doing or get paid to do. Yes. Which isn't at all. Yes, we can do whatever we want, really. Including lie. So it was there in the orange box. That's when it released. Still probably one of the best deals in PC gaming ever, because that was Half-Life 2. I was about to say Unreal Tournament. Team Fortress 2. Yeah, Team Fortress 2 and Portal for $20, I believe.
00:03:07
Speaker
Let's go with that and I'll double check. Right. I mean, we don't, we don't deal in facts here.
Innovative Mechanics & Player Appeal
00:03:17
Speaker
It's 20 or 30. It was, I thought, higher initially. It was pretty cheap when it initially came out. Go in. Even so, a lot of those games we grew up with for, oh, you play at LAN parties, or Half-Life 2 wasn't really so heavy on the multiplayer. Yeah. But that was just a super solid game, and we were even talking about it last night a little bit.
00:03:38
Speaker
And of course fucking portal. Yeah portal is which we'll get to eventually. Yeah, that's a that's a game We should cover one of these episodes, but I tried to look it up, which is why it sounds like I'm drifting but I'm struggling. Yeah, it had half life 2 episode 1 episode 2 portal TF2 and was a pretty good deal at some amount of money that I can't find on Wikipedia so I
00:04:05
Speaker
Yeah. We'll say 30 bucks and we won't consider inflation. Yeah. Um, I think it's fine. I'm gonna close this so I stop wasting time. I think portal was the reason I got the orange box or maybe it was when the orange box became free and I started playing it. But just from the initial fucking trailer, I was immediately enthralled. Oh yeah. Because PC gaming for me was fairly limited at that point. A lot of it was just kind of.
00:04:28
Speaker
RPGs and other shenanigans. So they're like, hey, there's this first person game where there's going to be like some physics puzzles. I'm like, I kind of like puzzle solving first person stuff. They're like, also you can put holes in walls and go through other things. I'm like, what the fuck? And I was super into that.
00:04:47
Speaker
Yeah, Portal's kind of the... There have been some games where one mechanic kind of defined the game.
Tech Demo to Game Transformation
00:04:55
Speaker
I'm gonna go back to Dig Dug, where you dig. No, I'm just kidding. And then you dug. Dig Dug a grave for those things that he said. Blew him up. But Portal was like...
00:05:09
Speaker
I'm almost entirely sure it was just like a tech demo. They're just like, let's make a mechanic, throw it in the, the, the source engine and then, um,
00:05:19
Speaker
The mechanic was just so innovative and novel that you couldn't help but build a game up around it, which is why the first one was like so short. Yeah. I think the initial idea spawns from like, man, I fucking hate traveling. I wish I could just go there instantaneously. Yeah. And so you fucking do that. You reach new heights by placing a portal up on the fucking ceiling and then one under you. Yeah. Or you try to build momentum to launch yourself, which is another thing I've always wanted to do as a champion.
00:05:49
Speaker
and it's kind of like a technological feat that also kind of matches the mental gymnastics you have to do to kind of wrap your mind around it because you're like up until this point you know video games are mostly you know euclidean and they're in nature you know how physics work you know like you can go through walls or if you can it's a secret and things like that portal feels
Intuitive Puzzle Design
00:06:13
Speaker
really smooth with how quickly you can transition from one location to another you can be halfway
00:06:19
Speaker
in two places at the same time. Like, if it was less smooth, nobody would have cared nearly as much, but they made it freaking perfect in the way it felt. So yeah, that's Portal, so. All right, well, thank you. But like, so you start off with the Portal. Sorry, let's go way back. Yeah, let's bring it back, back, back.
00:06:50
Speaker
So you kind of just wake up in this glass box, you have some random ass radio music, you have a toilet, you have a bed, and things open up, and you find it in this testing facility, you don't really know too much about what's going on. Yeah, like what the hell's going on, it's real tough. I'm glad how you utilized that random bullet for me. That's Dave's joke, I stole it, that's fine.
00:07:14
Speaker
But a portal actually does open up for you for you to get out of your room. So that's your first introduction to it. You're like, okay, cool. But you're actually just kind of going through portals, like stepping on buttons initially, which are kind of pre-constructed in the levels.
00:07:30
Speaker
and it's a little bit until you actually get the portal gun. Yeah. And they introduce things at a very measured pace in portal. Yes. Like it starts off and like your puzzle is just like hit a switch and it's like, okay, I hit the switch, the door opens. You're like, great. I mean, this is like Pavlovian response. It's like, oh, you stepped off the switch, the door closed. You're going to have to find some way to hold that door open. Yeah. Put a box on it.
00:07:56
Speaker
Put a box on it. I really like when they... I like when games introduce things in a slow kind of intuitive way. Yeah. Where I think it does help if you have like the background of video games and you're used to, oh, if I do this, this is going to be the expected interaction. Exactly. If you're like pushing a button or like looking around for something like a door that's locked.
00:08:21
Speaker
But what was the little side thing? What was that game with all of the lines and the puzzles and the light and all of that? You know what I'm talking about. You walk through. It was a Jonathan Blow game. Oh, Talos Principle. Well, the Talos Principle, but what's the other one? Witness. Witness, yes. The Witness. The Witness, yes. Thank you. The Opposite of the Witness.
00:08:48
Speaker
And it works in Portal and Witness kind of tries it, but Portal never lets you do it the way the Witness does. Let me describe what I'm talking about. In the Witness, you can encounter a puzzle where you have not been told how you should build the pieces together to solve the puzzle. Portal never does that. It always has all the intuitive pieces there for you to figure it out. And then you have that building block in your repertoire and you always know that those building blocks will be available
00:09:19
Speaker
For the next puzzle it never gives you a puzzle and was like go off do something else then come back with a solution Yeah, and they'll introduce it might not say like oh, we'll continually add like oh, it's not lasers and walls You can't take things through yeah or other things, but it will Add them slowly and then bring them back exactly doesn't that really add more than one at a time mm-hmm so like when you first interact with like the wall you can't take anything through you're like
Character of GLaDOS & Humor
00:09:44
Speaker
Oh, what do I do here? I can't do this stuff. Right. I can only be in one place at one time, but you then find the way around that. Yeah. And then the next time it's like, Hey, these walls are here again, but also, um, some other stuff. And you're like, Oh, okay. Yeah. And they started building into like these timing puzzles as well, where there's something you have to manage or kind of guide like the balls of light into the receptacle and you learn to work with it as.
00:10:13
Speaker
They always, if you run up against a concept you haven't been introduced to before, that's the one problem you need to solve at that time. Later, you'll always be using things that you've already learned, in addition to one problem you haven't seen before, to solve it. Like you mentioned, with the timing puzzle plus using portals to manipulate the light orbs, it's like,
00:10:38
Speaker
A different game that didn't have the same learning curve may introduce multiple problems at the same time and multiple pieces you could use for a solution. Portal is always, here's an obstacle. There's a way past it. And once you figure a way past it, that's knowledge you'll use in the future. It's just assume that you know it because you must have learned it to get through. And I don't think for any of the stages there are multiple ways to solve it either.
00:11:06
Speaker
Yeah, outside of the speedrunning community where you can like ledge portal through the entire game in like five minutes. You shoot through a corner and then it puts something else. Yeah, you can like shoot a portal through all the geometry to the exit and then just step through on the other side of the laser beams and stuff. It's insane, but yeah. Check out speedrunning for Portal obviously after this podcast. It will take none of your time. Yeah, it's surprisingly quick.
00:11:36
Speaker
I know what that's like, but yeah, it's like right off the get-go, you hear GLaDOS' voice, right? She's guiding you in what you should be doing as a test subject here at Aperture Science.
00:11:53
Speaker
You're going to hear her voice a lot because it's like the only other character in the game that you're going to interact with. Yeah. And you have the silent protagonist if you've ever played a Zelda game or anything else. So she guides you through and we'll say like, here's what you have to do for this test. It's not usually like, here's how you solve it. It's just like, here's the next test. Exactly. Because it's observation, right? They want to see how you perform. Exactly.
00:12:19
Speaker
And occasionally through the levels you can kind of see these blurred glass panes and a little office behind it. Observation room I think. Yeah, he's up there. And they have security cameras throughout the levels too to keep an eye on what you're doing. You can destroy quite a few of them. Yeah. And that's never taken super well. But when you do succeed, you're never really
00:12:43
Speaker
rewarded or you're rewarded with the next puzzle. Yeah, it's it's not a positive reinforcement is what I'm saying. I use always very like a mocking commentary but in like a playful tongue-in-cheek way like very as I would use the term sassy bitch. Yes. Yeah, that's pretty accurate for that is but you have the presumed reward of cake eventually obviously they push you forward with the cake.
00:13:06
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, yeah, gotta get that cake. But her personality really, the pieces, since Portal is such a compact experience, like we said, it's very short, the pieces had to fit together or the whole thing would have just fallen apart. Like if you were going through this game and it did not have GLaDOS, it didn't have that narration,
00:13:29
Speaker
People still would have beat it because it's now long you wouldn't get tired of mechanic in an hour, but The fact that she's there pushes it that much makes it that much more interesting and Like we were talking about before there is
00:13:46
Speaker
more characterization in GLaDOS and just the way that she talks to you and kind of like goads you further with like taunts and like minor sarcastic compliments that you want to figure out what's going on.
00:14:01
Speaker
Yeah, it kind of teases you with information because you get to hear a little bit about the testing subject process, the tests in general. You know you're not the only one because they mentioned like other subjects performance.
Cultural Impact & Memes
00:14:14
Speaker
Yeah. In particular with a companion cube.
00:14:19
Speaker
It's like, and Portal just spawned memes like crazy. Companion Cube is one of them. Cake is a lie. Yeah, cake is a lie. Now you're thinking with Portals. Yep, exactly. It's pretty pervasive for how, like, linked into, at least not even just PC gaming, but really some Xbox too. The gaming culture it is.
00:14:44
Speaker
But the companion cube level stands out. When I was replaying for this, I had forgotten a lot of the levels. Most of the puzzles, I couldn't remember the exact solution. Some of them I knew because they were more fresh in my memory. But the companion cube thing, I was just like, oh, yeah.
00:15:02
Speaker
because it's just a standout level on its own. You get like a cube that's like all the normal cubes, but instead of the Aperture Science logo on it, it has a heart. That's it. Yeah. And it's just like... Glados warns you that if the companion cube starts giving you advice, then it's just hallucinations and you should not pay attention to what the companion cube advises you. Yeah.
00:15:26
Speaker
And you have to use it for your puzzle solving. And once you get all the way through, you have to incinerate the companion cube to progress. It's one of those things where you can put attachment for the player's investment into an inanimate object by just giving it a heart and being some commentary from God above saying, oh, it's there for you. Oh, it's being helpful.
00:15:56
Speaker
And that's it. And you kind of project onto it these, it's my buddy, it's my companion cube. Exactly. And the very first thing you have to do with the companion cube is use it to jump up a ledge. So here's the two pieces, like the psychology of portals, like crazy. Place the cube next to the ledge so you can jump on top of the cube, jump up to the ledge.
00:16:16
Speaker
You are then required to pick up the cube behind you and carry it with you. The cube has now helped you ascend and you have helped the cube ascend. It's a symbiotic relationship with the cube. And it's just hilarious that the acts like that get you more attached to this.
00:16:33
Speaker
Literally a video game object that is a cube, right? But that's why people have companion cube swag and like keychain. Yeah, I was thinking like there's merchandise for portal obviously because it's a game Mm-hmm, but like for how much companion cube merch there is. Yeah, cuz it's it's a fucking box right real talk It's a box, but it was a box that was taken from you before it's time Yeah, exactly. You gotta get that in real life and I I don't even like say that sarcastic. I do actually feel that way. Yeah
00:17:03
Speaker
because it's weird to like put it in the incinerator mm-hmm yeah and then glad this is like oh wow I didn't expect you to actually just kill it yeah all we want you've killed it faster you've you've euthanized use the word euthanize yeah you're companion cube faster than any other test subjects okay it's clinical murder yeah
00:17:24
Speaker
Fucking A. But that's kind of the start of a little bit of the rivalry with GLaDOS. Up until that, she's kind of just the obnoxious teacher. Up in here, she's killed your friend. The only other person you've encountered, which is cute. And there's a lot... It's not the only thing you really encounter with personality, right? No, that's definitely true. Around the same time, you'll start encountering the turrets, right?
00:17:54
Speaker
Yeah, those are those are the other real things with personality and portal portal one. They're just kind of like Obvular I said like if you think of them a long egg with one eye and three little legs. Mm-hmm. They're very simple I Think you get to see them before You hear them Rick. Okay. Yeah, and then you hear them like kind of just talking like oh
00:18:18
Speaker
Hey, are you still there? Yeah, because like they have this very cute innocent AI. And then when you start getting in range of them, it will detect you and start shooting at you. Yeah, this machine gun basically or laser. No, it's a like two machine guns that kind of like pop out the side, pop out the sides. But they almost seem.
00:18:40
Speaker
reluctant in a way because like when their guns start firing they should go on like they're unsure of what's happening and it's not like they have the desire to kill right that's just they're like well we'll give it an ai so it can be a little bit more self-sufficient as like an obstacle
00:18:58
Speaker
And they're just like, you can actually go up and sneak behind them and like pick them up and move them so they're facing a wall so they can't shoot you. That's one of the ways to get past. They sound like uncomfortable and disoriented when you pick them up. They're like, hey, what's going on? Yeah. You like drop them to their side. That's the standard way to dispose of them is.
00:19:16
Speaker
Make them lose their balance and they'll deactivate. Yeah after they flipped over but it's maybe you'll like put a portal above them and like drop a Standard cube. Yeah, or it's a companion here. There's only one companion cube. Yeah Or like another turret onset or yourself. Oh I didn't realize your fucking drop kick Kudos to you sir or another turret
00:19:42
Speaker
Yeah, it's to cause warfare amongst the turrets. That's the key. Yeah, they're used interestingly, too, because they're area denial. You have to subvert them to get through different sections of the game. And the rest of the game is pretty intuitive. And the area is where you have to start dropping things on the turrets. On top of the turrets, they'll put red X's on the ceiling. Yeah. It's just like, oh, OK, I got you.
00:20:11
Speaker
But the thing is, that's for in universe, that's not from the test and givers themselves. It's believed it's from like other test subjects would like run through. And they're like, I might not make it all the way through. I know other people being subjected to these tests. Yeah. So let me like leave behind these like hints and clues. The wrap.
00:20:32
Speaker
And yeah, that's where the kick is a lie. Message originates from, is you find a section where the wall is like propped open by some crates, some cubes, and you can sneak around behind there.
00:20:47
Speaker
And usually Aperture Science is very whitewashed, clean, the aesthetic is very much there. But if you just go behind one of these walls, it's all like rusted and decrepit and it's like falling apart. You find all of these scribbles on the walls of like the cube with like wings next to it, the companion cube. And the message to Cake is a lie that they're watching you scribbles of like the cameras and things like that.
00:21:13
Speaker
Yeah. And like the cake itself is not even mentioned until kind of like that second half of the game. It's like, Hey, do some tests. But then after you, uh, I think it's after you kill the companion cube, Gladys starts mentioning like, after your tests, we can have cake. Yes. Like, Oh, this is something that humans like. Let me use this as an incentive for you to keep going. It's like the pellet at the end of the rat maze, basically. Yeah. But you see like these.
00:21:39
Speaker
this outside existence you see beyond like the initial like hey these are like these clean test rooms right but you can tell that they were like really like manufacturing set up and there is like an outside and it's dirty and it's not together like how long has this been a thing yeah yeah and like later games touch on that like a little bit more but like in what state is aperture aperture science really in
00:22:08
Speaker
It's worth noting you haven't seen any other people during this time. You don't see anybody from those observation rooms. And you can still kind of like the looking through on this side, they're obscured a bit, but you don't see any G-man like figure watching over you, right?
Portal Gun Mechanics
00:22:25
Speaker
As far as you know, you're just running science for this AI.
00:22:32
Speaker
yeah so this is kind of this is it's interesting that you mentioned the fact the cake is a lie or the the line shows up before the mentioning of the cake and that's kind of an interesting storytelling piece because usually you introduce
00:22:48
Speaker
information and let people assume it's true and then you kind of introduce doubt. Yeah. But they've subverted this here by introducing doubt before the information comes to you, the mention of the cake. So that as soon as the cake is mentioned, you are already suspicious. Yeah, it makes you doubt GLaDOS directly.
00:23:08
Speaker
It's like a friend is introducing to somebody else like, hey, don't trust this guy. He's very, very shady. Yeah. Wait, what? Because you don't have any other information to back that up at this point. You're just kind of taking their word on it. You're like, why should I be on edge and suspicious? Yeah.
00:23:24
Speaker
And Valve is really good at keeping information unknown, as we all know at this point. The ones Half-Life 3 coming up. Yeah, right. And they don't answer questions and they let the community be, from a positive twist on it, is they let the community be more engaged by not providing all of the answers so that you have an opportunity to discover what's actually going on.
00:23:51
Speaker
Downside is obviously sometimes they don't tell you what's actually going on and as they own the canon for all of their IPs, if that's never resolved, that's kind of unfortunate as well, right? But that's a company-wide thing at this point.
00:24:07
Speaker
I feel like you can just generate interest at a point and that's enough. Which they do for sure. Like they mentioned Black Mesa and a slideshow in Portal and how they're kind of like competing companies. I guarantee you people that were like huge fans of the Half-Life universe have already played Half-Life 2, like as soon as they, well before the Orange Box came out, just lost their minds as soon as they saw mention of Black Mesa. They're like, holy crap, it's the same universe, right?
00:24:34
Speaker
This isn't like TF2 where there's never been a tie-in with the Half-Life universe.
00:24:41
Speaker
dimension put these two things together and people lost their minds, guaranteed. I mean, portal gun, gravity gun. Yeah. It's been mentioned before. People have theories. They both have gun in the name, so obviously half-life. That's how you know. But yeah, speaking of the portal gun, they don't give it all to you at once. They give you just half of it. They give you the portal gun. It can shoot one type of portal.
00:25:06
Speaker
So like the stage will kind of generate the other side of the door essentially. Exactly. And you can place your entrance and the exit's kind of auto-generated somewhere. And it'll like be on rotation. So like you have some choice going back and forth. You get a feel for how it works before getting the full power of the portal again. But once you have both, you're like, woo hoo! And you start playing around with it. Portals on the walls, on the floors.
00:25:31
Speaker
And Gladys actually mentions as soon as you pick up the other portal functionality for the portal gun that the portal gun is now more valuable than all of the collective organs of every single resident of subjects, hometown, here. Slightly ominous. It's pretty great. But it is a fucking marvel because you can... I think Psylocke from the X-Men universe
00:26:00
Speaker
Yeah. You can kind of create these portals to jump between and they're like fairly short distances, but I'm sure she has the capacity to do it further, but just the utility of that and having objects that have momentum going through them and shifting. Um, but gravity is here now and you can build up that momentum to then launch yourself conservation of momentum.
00:26:21
Speaker
yeah yeah because sometimes you need to do something in a quick manner and you can't just oh let me shorten the distance between space time and have this wall connect to that wall down at the end the hallway where you need to get to right sometimes you need to launch yourself up and you can't shoot on a portable surface yes yeah which is another thing because you can only shoot on
00:26:43
Speaker
clear white walls. Yeah, they've got these like gray kind of tint to them. But there's a lot of darker like metallic walls. I think I'm almost like a diamond or pattern on them. And that those are unportable. Obviously, like this is how physics work like we do. Yeah. Yeah. So that's kind of how they help design the levels is
00:27:03
Speaker
Because obviously if you can see any point, you can kind of just click there. And that would make, I would say the game too easy. Yes. Yeah. This is the constraint. Because you can go from point A to point B. Yeah. So they build constraints around that by maybe you have parts that move. Yeah. And you can't put portals on moving surfaces. That's true.
00:27:25
Speaker
they'll deactivate as soon as the surface starts to move, which can leave you in a bit of a tight spot. A bit of a rut, a bit of a rut. Yeah, it's kind of like the constraints they put in place here, like the walls you can't put portals on or the fact you can't shoot through the matter disintegrator walls. It's basically putting the walls in the maze.
00:27:48
Speaker
Without walls in a maze, it's pretty easy to find the exit, right? But Portal's really deliberate about the obstacles it sets in your way. And it doesn't try to hide it either. It's not like it has a specific set of things it wants you to figure out, which is like intuition around the portals. Things like obstacles, it'll tell you about those in advance.
00:28:12
Speaker
Yeah, up front it'll have like the testing room number. And then I'll have a couple pictures and ones are like, bolded in black, which are kind of like very, like MS Paint style. Yeah. Very simple, like person like drying hands type pictures. Yeah, exactly. So you know, like, oh, this is a...
00:28:33
Speaker
pool of acid yeah like stick figure person kind of yeah yeah or maybe there's like turrets here or maybe like you get a cube or access to a cube in this or maybe there's like lasers and other things it's like just very humorous ways to depict life-threatening situations essentially which i think is great it's it's the aesthetic for portal is absolutely nailed
00:29:00
Speaker
and they don't introduce anything other than like you don't get a gun you have a portal gun like you don't get anything more than that it's a very focused short experience and they didn't try to slow you down to pad anything out like there's very few points in the game where you have to wait for a certain uh state of the room to complete a puzzle it happens a couple times but it's not more than you know 10 seconds or something like that so
00:29:30
Speaker
It's like I said, it's a very focused experience and I appreciate that. They knew what the strengths were and that was the portal gun and the puzzles living around it. You don't need any other character building besides the snippets you get from scrawlings behind walls, the turrets, Ella McLean voicing Gladys and just adding her personality and flair there.
00:29:53
Speaker
There's no cutscenes. None of that shit. Yeah. You just get hit with the obligatory source engine loading as the game freezes entirely and then resumes.
Narrative Shift & Antagonistic GLaDOS
00:30:03
Speaker
In the modern day, they probably would have not done that. But that was that was how the source engine worked. Source one. But it's not until you actually have made your way through all the puzzles, you've gathered all of that knowledge that
00:30:18
Speaker
the ultimate betrayal happens and it was always planned so I don't even know if it's really a betrayal but they go to lower you into this this furnace you're basically on a platform that it actually moves at a steady clip you a little bit of portal puzzle-solving to like avoid obstacles on the path but stay on the platform. Like there's some lasers and things going around corners. Yeah. So you kind of have to
00:30:43
Speaker
put a hole in the wall here and then shoot one ahead and kind of like time it and jump and drop that back down on the platform. Yeah. It's actually, it's hilarious to like think about intuitively, but there's like, if there's a wall blocking you on a platform and you've got a little corner off to the side, you can see, or you can see the wall in this hallway to your left, you can shoot a portal on the wall in front of you and then to the left and then step forward
00:31:12
Speaker
From through this obstacle coming out of the hallway side onto the same platform and it's just awesome. It feels so cool Yeah, that's the main draw the whole fucking game if it wasn't awesome to fucking walk through walls and go do other cool shit
00:31:31
Speaker
Like if I have no game design experience, but I can tell you that if I found a way to implement this, I would have like a stupid little warp thing where you touch the portal and you warp through to the other side, you know, cause that would be easier to implement, but that wouldn't have been a portal.
00:31:48
Speaker
but this all really comes to the head when you're going down into this furnace, which is just all entirely fire. Galanos tells you that classic line of all aperture materials are able to withstand up to 3,000 degrees Kelvin. You don't have to worry about the portal gun being damaged. And you're like, but I'm not a portal gun. But as the platform is going down into this fiery abyss,
00:32:14
Speaker
It's a little bit slower, you hear like the music kind of ramp up. It actually slows down, the platform does. It does, yeah. And all of your information for like, oh fuck. Now I'm sure a lot of people are like, I guess that's the game. Right. I think I was that way for like the first thing too. Yeah, I screwed up. And then it said reloading, I'm like, motherfucker, let's go. I knew something was up. Right.
00:32:39
Speaker
As you get close to the fire, you see above the fire, there's like some white walls. You're like, huh, let me use that knowledge mentioned from earlier. Yeah. And then you shoot one up there and then you shoot one on the side of the wall. Yep. And you have to jump down to jump near the fire. Yeah. And then you're out of it. And now you're kind of behind and above the like the testing area. Yeah. And then. There's like a little observation platform, kind of like, well, it's.
00:33:06
Speaker
It's not a scientist observation platform, but you're clearly outside of the testing zone. Yeah. It becomes different as you start going into like more back doors or kind of just like girders and other things. Yeah. And it's it's like a hard hat area. It's like the maintenance tunnels. Yeah. People aren't supposed to be going through there typically. Yeah. But I feel like a good chunk of the game
00:33:34
Speaker
kind of starts from this point, where you get to see behind the curtain of all these things. You actually get to walk into some of the observation rooms from previous levels. And you spend like a good 15 or 20 minutes, which feels like half the game, going back to these and kind of figuring out where you can go and still utilizing your portal gun.
00:33:55
Speaker
this is a wall glad it's kind of like freaks out like yeah hey uh you're not supposed to be back there like when you make your initial escape there's a line she says where she's like uh oh like congratulations she freaks out for a second it's like oh congratulations you've passed the final test now lay down and assume the position basically well a associate is dispatched to retrieve you so that you can eat the cake
00:34:19
Speaker
and uh later taunts you saying like oh someone's already cut the cake i told them to wait for you but um kind of still playing around there this is this is actually where there's a transition in the game as well because previous to this it was always single obstacle single solution yeah that was the learning phase this is the deployment phase of portal where all of that knowledge you get to just
00:34:43
Speaker
work your way forward, figure it out yourself, and your learned intuition with the portal gun to start solving problems. Yeah. And Galavos doesn't give you any advice or help because she wants you to stop, to go back, because she wants you dead and to retrieve the portal gun so that they can resume testing, which is the whole focus.
00:35:07
Speaker
but you just get to freely explore the entire background of the Aperture Science Facility. And I really loved going through so many of these places because there was pipes or automated things you'd jump through and make sure you didn't get squashed. Yeah, the pneumatic pipe system that deploys the cubes. Yeah. Yeah, and they had the, I think you mentioned it, but the crushers, basically pneumatic crushers.
00:35:38
Speaker
And they alternate before, it's like if there's portable surfaces, they're probably portal-able surfaces. They're probably part of the solution or on a path to the solution. Now it's like they go back and forth between, there's almost no portal-able solutions. One room I'm thinking of is there's like a concrete disc kind of in the center. And part of the solution is you have to put a portal on the bottom and a portal on the top.
00:36:02
Speaker
and then just jump up and crouch so you're on top of the disc and then you can make your way forward. But you're kind of making a hole in that case instead of standard portal usage where you're trying to get from one place to another. I really like that. And it's one of the few times that you use portals and it's not spatially disorienting because you're literally just jumping through a hole. There's another point later where
00:36:29
Speaker
You essentially get into this room and you can't get out of it. And a turret kind of spawns in the middle, but it's not like the other turrets you've seen. It's kind of more snake-like and has a giant eye. Oh yeah. This is in the observation area more than the maintenance.
00:36:46
Speaker
and it has like a tracking laser, and then once it's locked onto you, it fires a rocket. So you dodge the first rocket, and you're like, that's gonna fucking kill me. So you're not sure what to do. But there's three walls of cement, which are portable surfaces. And then there's like that observation room glass. So what you end up doing is making a portal so the,
00:37:12
Speaker
Rocket goes into the one wall and shoots out and breaks the glass. And then you have to go through there. But at this point, there's no more portable services, and you need to jump up to a vent, which seems to be the only way forward. So I kind of went back and grabbed chairs and other physical objects and stacked them as best I could, mashed the jump button, and found my way into the vent. Now, as far as I know and everybody I've talked to, that's the only way to do it. I don't think there's a way out of the vent.
00:37:42
Speaker
using the chairs. I always go back, grab a chair, jump up there. But what I love is like the whole time you taught these puzzle solving solutions utilizing the portal gun and other things. But it's like, hey, grab a chair. You're just literally a rat in a maze. You have to work with actual physics and just get your body up there. Yeah. It feels dirty like doing manual movement in portal after a while because you're like, why am I not using the gun?
00:38:09
Speaker
It feels like you're almost cheating in a way. You're like, oh no, I know a way around this where I'll just like stack a bunch of things and make a tower or two. You get to feel the speedrunner experience for a little bit. And even though you're outside of the guidance by GLaDOS at this point, the portal game as itself is still teaching you. Like when you first encounter that turret,
00:38:32
Speaker
in order to enter the room where the turret is, it has to shoot a pane of glass to open the way. So it's like, gotcha, these things break glass. And it takes a moment to actually fire the missile. It locks on and then there's like two seconds or something before it actually fires it. So they're not actually that dangerous unless you're stationary, but they come up again. Like the fact that you're learning how these turrets work is essential later in the game. Yeah, throughout everything in the game, there's not a,
00:39:02
Speaker
Well, that was one time saying thank you for trying out the laser level. That will never be a thing again. Yeah.
Final Confrontation with GLaDOS
00:39:09
Speaker
And actually, I do remember there's a large kind of like rectangular room with tons of cubby holes full of lasers. And you basically get to play as like metal gear, special agent, Chell for this. And you're like portalling behind the turrets and dropping them off ledges and stuff.
00:39:30
Speaker
I think we forgot to mention earlier, the turrets do have a laser that kind of goes out. It's for tracking. So you know where they're facing or where they're looking. But you kind of put portals behind them and you kind of like punch them in the back and you go through and you take out, I think it's a good 15 at least. There's a whole lot, yeah. But it feels good to clear them all out with your espionage tactics you develop for dealing with turrets. Do you remember the basics of CQC's?
00:40:00
Speaker
And then once you've gotten all that you get the the high of having to use angled surfaces which the game uses sometimes to launch you and Creating portals on the ground repeatedly to continue to gather momentum and like escape through the top of this like off a side passage Really cool stuff. Yeah It kinda goes back to that
00:40:26
Speaker
I'll use the term power fantasy. Yeah, the male power fantasy. Yeah. So like, as a person, if I'm walking around, if I see like a really tall building, the part of me is like, I wish I could get up there. Right. Whether it's being able to climb all the way up with my sheer strength, if I had that. Yeah. It's that desire to like be able to get to a place, which is usually physically inaccessible. Yeah. But through these means you can just
00:40:51
Speaker
launch yourself up there in a second. And it feels so cool. So cool. Yeah. I've never really been satisfied with how traveling works in real life since playing Portal originally. I'm like, have you really not got this technology yet? I realize that it's impossible like the way this exactly worked, but I want it. I want it. It's a want for sure.
00:41:14
Speaker
After you figured all this out, you made your way through all these back tunnels. You enter this final... Well, you go through some observation rooms and you actually... What's really cool is they have you reach observation rooms that existed for previous levels. You can actually see these old test paths that you've gone through. And then you revisit one of the chambers, the very first one.
00:41:40
Speaker
And instead of the elevator being there, like it should be, if you were a good test participant, you cheat your way through the puzzle, because now you have a portal gun, and the elevator's gone, you drop down back into the bowels of this facility and eventually reach this large room that's completely hollowed out. Basically, like you can see through a side window that there's essentially a chamber suspended in the center of this giant, giant room. And then there's like this huge air gap
00:42:09
Speaker
on all sides of it and then a causeway you have to cross to get there.
00:42:15
Speaker
I feel like causeways are always a good way to build suspense. Yeah. It's like, this is the path. I know Mega Man had like those little air locks between the stage and the boss. Right. It's like, Hey, locking the shit in something's happening. If this was another game, there would be ammo pickups on this causeway. Oh, health and ammo. That's goddamn it. But
00:42:42
Speaker
Then you finally get to meet GLaDOS in person. I shouldn't say in person, because she's a giant robot from the ceiling. Yeah. It's difficult to describe, I guess. She's suspended from the ceiling with a bunch of cables and spheres attached to her. Kind of like a very large turret eye, sort of. But it's yellow instead of red.
00:43:11
Speaker
She's got a very distinctive look that's hard to describe. I mean, you guys could look up a picture of Gladys. Yeah. I mean, there is ways of describing it, but I feel like it's better if you just... Yeah, it would take less time to get to see how she looks online than to have us describe it. But it's kind of circular room with monitors that nothing displayed on them, but they're all strung up there.
00:43:36
Speaker
Yeah, there's like a couple of pipes that go from like wall to floor. There seems to be like another incinerator in like the distance for where you killed your companion cube you bounced. Yeah, behind Gladys and there's like a little
00:43:53
Speaker
stairway and like a little small hut off to the side. Yeah, she talks to you a bit and continues to do so. There's a lot of times where dialogue continues until the player does something. Yeah. So if you really wanted to get all the dialogue, you have to just sit there for a bit. But one of those spheres, a core drops off of her. And she kind of uses this reverse or the game. She mentions it's probably not important. You can leave it alone.
00:44:20
Speaker
But because she's saying that, you know, it's important. Yeah. So you go over and pick it up and it seems to be like this eye, which you have it picked up at like the gyroscope and it keeps moving around like it's looking at you. So you kind of walk over to the incinerator and kind of like set it in there. And there's like, there's a button and that like kind of command room. You have to open up the incinerator to open it up and then it'll drop in.
00:44:47
Speaker
And she says, I can't believe you just destroyed that for no reason, cuts off and like starts to laugh. Yeah. Like I found out what that core does and it's the inhibitor to prevent her from. Flooding the enrichment center with a deadly neurotoxin. Yes. Which was installed after I flooded the enrichment center with a deadly neurotoxin. So her next strategy is to flood the enrichment center with a deadly neurotoxin.
00:45:17
Speaker
And now all those monitors that were around the room light up with a countdown. And you have five minutes? It's not long. It's like three to five something like that. And yeah, this starts the actual boss encounter. Because you die once that expires. Yeah.
00:45:40
Speaker
Another missile launcher turret spawns in the center of the room and starts tracking you. And you're starting to dodge rockets again. But using your information from earlier, you can essentially have the rocket go through and then shoot back at her. Right, put a portal up somewhere.
00:45:58
Speaker
So once you do that, another core gets knocked off of her. Yep. And it might go on the floor, it might go somewhere else. Yep. And you might have to use portals to go up and get to it. They make it increasingly difficult too. Yeah. The first one's on the floor and then another one's on the platform. Or like a pipe or something. And the last one's like in the air. Suspended in the air and you literally have to physically hit it with your body and momentum to knock it out.
00:46:23
Speaker
So I really like that one. But you have to grab the core, you have to go over, push the button to open the incinerator, which is obviously on a timer. Yeah. Because you don't want to accidentally incinerate shit. Right, right. And then you have to go over and drop the core. Yep. So since it's not like a fairly short timer, you utilize the portals again and drop it in.
00:46:43
Speaker
But each core you pick up has its own personality. Exactly. I forget which of those cores... There's a logic core, which is just like running off math and stuff like that. And then there's one that actually goes across. It's reciting a recipe.
00:47:01
Speaker
And it's the recipe for the cake, which people have actually made. They've made the recipe for the cake. Apparently, it's not actually that great. It is a valid cake recipe, technically. Yes, yeah. And I think one is the anger core. Yes, the very last one is just unbridled aggression. It's like losing it and shaking rapidly. It's like rabid, yeah.
00:47:24
Speaker
It's just the three cores you have to knock off. Mm-hmm But after that that last one She you know You get your victory bellow kind of robotic thing and then she starts to like tear apart all of the machinery starts to tear apart and swirl around the room and like Flies up through the ceiling which is into this like white light basically. Yeah
00:47:49
Speaker
And then you're just kind of like walking around like, what is going on? And then you start getting pulled up, which is, you know, interesting because that's not usually a gravity work.
Ending & Accessibility
00:48:00
Speaker
And screen goes black and you wake up on the surface.
00:48:06
Speaker
Like the actual surface like you see grass and trees and pavement blue sky and there's like the wreckage of aperture science around you and a robotic voice thanks you for assuming the party like
00:48:23
Speaker
Position basically isn't to be delivered to the party and you start getting dragged away And that's portal that's that's that's where it cuts out you do get an ending sequence of You flying through the guts of the facility. Well in a camera camera camera because the facility and you do Go into a room with all these things on shell has been the very center of it. They're course Yeah, they're all like the same color, but yeah
00:48:51
Speaker
There are all these cores then center is like this cake. Mm-hmm, which gets lit. You're like, oh nice cool Then afterwards it could be a candle goes out. Yeah companion cubes also there. Okay, you gotta reach the companion cube But then the candle goes out and it's dark, but then all of those cores Started lighting up. Mm-hmm. So which is kind of your
00:49:14
Speaker
Hey, you beat the game, but is it really over? Yeah. It kind of like leaves things to the mystery like, well, we finally killed that serial killer in this horror movie. And then like his hand comes out of the grave. Right, right. Like it's not quite finished.
00:49:30
Speaker
And it's, uh, it's, it's portal. You can get through it in almost no time. It's routinely, it's literally been free on some occasions where they just gave it away. Other times it's ridiculously cheap. But yeah, I mean, I'd be surprised that people haven't played portal. I guess it's been out for awhile though. So if you started gaming later, maybe it was, uh, before, before your time.
00:49:51
Speaker
I think, so I don't usually like portal games. I usually don't like puzzle games. You know this of me as I've not beaten the Talos Principle, even though there's a cat on the box art. And it has cool lore and stuff like that. But Portal just kept me enthralled through the whole thing because the pacing is perfect. There isn't a puzzle in that game where it's like,
00:50:17
Speaker
I'm going to need to stop. I mean, this is an assumption of intelligence, I guess, but I'm going to need to stop for like three hours and then come back and figure it out like with Talos principle. Yeah. Certain ones, you're like maybe not looking at it in a certain way or you assume like, well, constrained by this. Yeah.
00:50:37
Speaker
And you kind of put yourself in that situation where you're not seeing all of the pieces you have access to. So you can't construct a solution. But with the pacing of Portal, it kind of leads you along with the bait of cake and simple introduction into mechanics and obstacles. It's easy for anybody to really pick it up. Even people who
00:51:01
Speaker
I would say are not gamers who have had like, Hey, check out this game. Yeah. Seem to intuitively know what to do. There's not many points. There's not many points in the game where the puzzles like timing limited. So even if you're like a little bit sluggish with controls, you can get through most of it. There are a couple sections where it's like you need to react.
00:51:20
Speaker
to adjust the situation before you lose, but it's pretty uncommon. And it's legit. It is a curated experience, basically, start to finish.
00:51:35
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I've never ranked my puzzle games that I've played, but it's up there. And I will not do so. Yeah, this has always been a solid game for me. People are like, what are some of your favorite games that I'll rattle off things that I've enjoyed recently. But
00:51:57
Speaker
I think everyone who has played Portal has enjoyed it. It's been a mainstay because of how streamlined and focused it has been. And it's still one of those games where if you haven't played it and you can't find it for free, ask me and I will most likely buy it for you. Because it's an experience I feel everybody should have. And you have 50 gift copies. Please, please take one.
00:52:26
Speaker
It's not a huge monetary or time investment, but it is a solid game.
00:52:32
Speaker
And it will make you disappointed in how transportation works in reality. But that's okay. And it leads you up for Portal 2. Which is a different game. It is. I'm not going to talk about it, though. Yeah, it's probably the best that we don't, because we need that content. We have a full season to get through. I'm just saying, maybe a future episode? Yeah, maybe. Yeah.
00:52:58
Speaker
Portal 2 is also good, but obviously don't play that until after we talk about it. Yes, please.
00:53:05
Speaker
Well, I think that's about all we've got for Portal. I appreciate everybody tuning in here to listen to us. It's great to be able to start off a new season. We haven't given up yet. Still holding in there. Operative word. But as always, you can reach out to us, contact us at our Gmail at soapstonepodcast.gmail.com for direct messages. Or if you'd like, you can follow us on Facebook.
00:53:31
Speaker
like us on Facebook and comment there. We'll post our podcasts when they're made available at facebook.com slash soapstone podcast.
00:53:42
Speaker
You can find us on Spotify, Soapstone, and then scroll to the bottom because we're not that popular, and it's under podcast section. And yeah, like I said, I appreciate people listening. It's always nice. Get that feeling sometimes that there's other people out there listening to your voice. Yeah, it's supposed to be just screaming into the void. Which is what we did prior to the podcast. Why doesn't the void scream back?
00:54:07
Speaker
All right. Well, that's all we've got. We'll see you in the next one. Have a good night. This was a triumph. I'm making a note here. Huge success. It's hard to overstate my satisfaction. Have better science. We do what we must because we can.
00:54:36
Speaker
for the good of all of us except the ones who are dead but there's no sense crying over every mistake you just keep on trying till you run out of cake and the science gets done and you'll make a neat run for the people who are still alive
00:55:07
Speaker
I'm being so sincere right now
00:55:30
Speaker
It hurt because I'm just so happy for you Now these points of beta make a beautiful line And we're out of beta, we're releasing on time
00:55:59
Speaker
I think I prefer to stay inside. Maybe you'll find someone else to help you. Maybe Black Mirror's soft. That was a joke, haha, a chance. Anyway, this cake is great. It's so delicious and moist. Look at these two of them.
00:56:31
Speaker
Makes me glad I'm not you I've experiments to learn There is research to be done On the people who are still alive Then believe me I am still alive I'm doing science and I'm still alive I feel fantastic and I'm still alive While you're dying I'll be still alive
00:57:01
Speaker
Still alive Still alive