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The Importance of Portal
Team Fortress 2 and Episode Two may have been more anticipated elements of Valve's Orange Box offering, but it's the charmingly small Portal that's been getting a lot of attention in the last few days. MTV's Multiplayer blog thinks the game has the move of the year, and the Gamers with Jobs site offers up a convincing argument why Portal represents a significant step forward for storytelling in games: "Portal is an object lesson in interactive storytelling. We in the media are so fond of shaking our heads, scratching our beards and looking for the "art" in videogames. Well it's time for us all to shut the hell up. This is it. It's in this finely crafted, lovingly rendered piece of short-story literature. Honestly, I'd be surprised if the authors themselves see it as the accomplishment it is. It's a simple set of mechanics, a few pages of sound-booth dialog, a handful of textures and repetitive level designs. But then, a novel is only made up of 26 letters, black ink and white paper. And most artists of lasting brilliance don't recognize the importance of their own work. And how many now-revered musicians and painters died unknown and broke?" If you still haven't heard it, Jonathan Coulton's 'Still Alive' (the ending theme to Portal) has been in my head for over a week now. Just try to get it out of yours.
The thing I hate to see is that most review sites are docking points off their arbitrary number scales for its length. I normally wouldn't care how someone "scores" a game (and I rarely read reviews to begin with), but I fear it is indicative of a group of people who just don't get it. I've seen similar thinking kill games and good franchises in the past. Luckily it seems most people do see the genius at work and we'll be seeing more from the Portal universe.
Seriously, what?
Storytelling, depth, intrigue, and good writing are important, and have been forever.
Portal has succeeded to meet these age-old criteria. It is a quality piece of work. This has always been 'important' with respect to any product. So.. yea.
I do not respond to cowards. Especially anonymous ones.
What impressed me the most about Portal was that I was never frustrated with the inability to find my way through a puzzle, in fact, the portals in Portal are the most useful gameplay device here. Dropping boxes on turrets, catapulting yourself hundreds of feet in the air through constantly shifting Portals to reach a far away place. The dialog had me in tears sometimes, it was cynical, sarcastic, funny, and more all at once. And all it was was a disembodied voice floating in the vaccuum. Portal blew my mind as a game, I don't think I've enjoyed something as puzzle orientated as Portal was before. And the ending... oh the ending.
If you can't see how a small team creating a fun, unique, and interesting game relying on mechanics instead of thousands of man-hours worth of art might be important to an industry currently weighted down by a thousand similar "next gen" "HD" games that play like bad renditions of the same things we played ten years ago, you need to rethink your hobbies.
For the last ten years or so the gaming industry has seemed to be all about franchises, once-a-year iterations of games with little content and less innovation.
Portal isn't about the plot--the plot helps it be endearing, but as you say it's "not-so-indepth." That doesn't mean it's bad (as you seem to imply), it just means that it's light. It's a humorous game. Nobody is claiming it's Faulkner. What it is is a capably done small-team game with mechanics which can lead to a thousand iterations of interesting puzzles (there are already a few custom maps with interesting puzzles involved). There are already several custom maps.
There is no video game written as well as East of Eden or Blood Meridian. That's not the point of video games; the point of video games is gameplay, and Portal is an absolute masterpiece of gameplay in an industry where that virtue has been forgotten. It's challenging (try the advanced levels and extra challenges if you don't think so) and unique. In addition to that, it's got a well-presented, witty storyline with more funny-per-minute than any game I've played--without resorting to the asinine juvenile humor most "funny" games rely on.
Hiding in your last statement, of course, there's a lesson about preconceptions. I leave that for you to find.
Let's spin this post back 20 years, shall we?
The importance of Tetris is the the ART!? Are you kidding?
It has less story than most games. The pieces are all just squares. There is only 1 way to interact with the environment.
The only thing that might qualify it as art is the AMAZING music in the game. I didn't realize that was taken from 19th century Russian composers.
Now, whether you consider Tetris art, and whether you think the situation is comparable isn't really the point. The point is that simple is not bad, and simple certainly does not indicate a lack of art. If anything, it's the reverse--"trying to cram in too much content" often indicates lack of art.
I've never understood the use of the word "gimmick" when it comes to deriding video games. They're all gimmicks.
Once upon a time, a machine that plugged into your TV with joysticks and buttons that let you manipulate what was on screen was a pretty big gimmick. A lot of people thought it was a pretty stupid one.
Flashback? Telling a story with little/no dialog and cinematic cutscenes? Yeah, never seen that gimmick before. And we've definitely never seen the concept of shapeshifters or losing your memory and regaining it anywhere else.
Portal's storytelling gimmick has used before. Portal is important with regards to its story because it carries out that storytelling gimmick *extremely well.* Does it give you "choice", like Deus Ex pretends to? No, but that's not the only compelling way to tell a story. In Portal, you are trapped. You have no choice. Your only option is to proceed. There's not much dialog and no direct interaction with other characters, but the little that you do get gives you a lot to think about. Things aren't spelled out for you or simply foreshadowed or revealed at the end of the game for you to go "aha!" about. I don't see how you can call the storytelling bad in a game that has generated a memorable entity out of a metal box with hearts on it.
True, the GWJ article is poorly written, and even manages to miss the point of the story entirely in a few spots. I don't think Portal is the high point of literature. But it's a story that's damn well told. "Heavy storyline" isn't the only kind of good storyline, and not every storyline has to develop like most novels or movies do, with a clear progression from beginning to end. Portal is the first chapter of a story set in a known universe, albeit a part of it that we haven't seen yet. It's the first chapter in a story arc that has a lot of mystery and potential.
I stopped thinking about Flashback and Deus Ex after I stopped playing them. I replayed both of them a few times, and enjoyed the gameplay and the storyline as I played, as both are excellent in both games. But when the game ends, the story ends.
I finished Portal days ago, and continue to think about it's potential and the mystery of its story. Most of the highs of the story arc presented through the gameplay (the music cue as you are about to be dropped into the fire, discovering the rat-nest rooms, the final battle) have faded. But it left a nagging question, beyond the insignificant details (being an android, can the companion cube really talk) that a set of obsessed people continue to discuss and argue about: Who the hell is Chell, how did she end up taking the test, and what's going to happen to her? That's why Portal is important - not simply because it leaves a cliffhanger, but it leaves a cliffhanger that the player *cares about*.
Oh, and besides the story, the portals themselves are the most important gameplay mechanic since the freedom and complexity granted by the transition to true 3D in games. They change the way you interact, move within, and think about the game world. They can be used in simple or complex ways. A good game will have a moment or two that makes you feel like you are really there, as if everything you are experiencing is so "almost real" you feel like you could do it in real life. Portal was over 2 hours of that, start to end, and the sheer satisfaction of jumping through portals will never wear off as long as there are creative levels to exploit the mechanic. That right there is the key: the fun of using portals doesn't rely on a specific condition or constraint, it relies on solid level design, of which there is an arguably infinite amount.
The story is subtle and slowly revealed -- from the growing realization that no human is watching you to see test areas that are broken down to finally wandering behind the scenes and getting the hints of what happened at the facility and the occasional clues that the computer is lying to you. Then there's the gleefully sociopathic devolution of her behavior towards you as it becomes more and more apparent that she sees you as a rodent to run though a maze an euthanize when it's all over.
The way the madness of the computer slowly becomes apparent and the way that she relentlessly screws with your mind -- from telling you that the Weighted Companion Cube will not stab you and cannot talk, but if it does you should just ignore it to the whole cake obsession to the callous way in which she highlights unnecessarily deadly parts of the test and so on -- are both masterful examples of storytelling.
It's good because it doesn't slap you in the face with what's going on. It's also a great example of good dark comedy writing.
"Have I lied to you? I mean, in this room? Trust me."
"That thing you broke isn't important to me. Not any more. It's the Fluid Catalytic Cracking Unit; it makes shoes for orphans. Nice job breaking it, hero."
"Cake, and grief counseling will be available at the conclusion of the test. Thank you for helping us help you help us all!"
"Although the euthanizing process is remarkably painful, 8 out of 10 Aperture Science engineers believe that the companion cube is most likely incapable of feeling much pain."
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
there is only a handfull of games I play more than once (besides shmups) and Portal is one of them... this game is simply perfect in the true sense of the word, as in complete. self contained. completely done.
the story that is presented to you at the begining is as simple as it should be, since you are actually in a test enviroment. the truth is never fully revealed. you have to break the walls and try to discover the truth behind this perfect, clean enviroment. and as always in distopian sci-fi, the truth is much more crude and evil. and perhaps that isn't even the whole truth.
the simple fact that at the end you can beat the test masters is a 180 shift in storytelling. it's another level of freedom to turn the test around and defeat the testers.
very very few games can capture your imagination as this...
the answer to the question "is this art?" is a simple one. How Portal made you feel ? If you felt something, it's art.
I played the beta UT3 demo, and despite the awsome graphics, I didn't felt anything.
the team behind half life 2, ep 1 and 2 and portal are true artist. you really feel something when you play those games.
and also, the cake is a lie. (this is another example that Portal is art. this phrase will be in our minds forever.)
I can only point you to this short story:
"For sale: baby shoes, never worn."
-Ernest Hemingway
That's art, my friend, and its lack of length only adds to its status as such. You don't have to craft an entire galaxy to strike a chord with your audience.
The importance of Portal is the the ART!? Are you kidding?
It has less story than most games. The areas are all virtually identical. There is only 1 way to interact with the environment.
I think it was Erik Satie who said that he considered a piece of his music to be complete not when he could think of no more notes to add, but when he could not think of any more notes to remove.
Think on.
I was just joking around but i guess some people have no sense of humor.. sigh.