First trailer of Valve's Portal released
by Ludwig Kietzmann 
{ Jul 18th 2006 at 5:45PM }
One of the announced games to be featured alongside the upcoming PC and console versions of Half-Life 2: Episode Two is one that promises to obliterate your concepts of traditional level design and generally assault your brain with a large rolling pin. It's called Portal and, should the name not be explanatory enough, it deals primarily with gaping holes in time and space which magically transport you to different locations. Where Human Head's Prey took you for a wacky ride through these portals, Valve's title equips you with a sterile looking gun and urges you to make your own entry and exit points with wild abandon. The trailer (embedded in the second part of the post) aptly demonstrates the powers of the portal gun, the dangers of getting caught in an infinite loop and, of course, how using rampant teleportation can enable you to solve puzzles involving crates of some kind. As they say, hilarity ensues.
[Thanks Easy_G!]
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
Neil @ Jul 18th 2006 5:47PM
One word: Gimmick.
corwin @ Jul 18th 2006 5:50PM
One word: "looks gay"
Dark @ Jul 18th 2006 5:55PM
To Corwin:
That's two words.
jamaicanbwoydre @ Jul 18th 2006 5:56PM
see thats two words, and as for the game it looks like fun, makes you think.
gamer9190 @ Jul 18th 2006 5:58PM
I think the game looks rather interesting, personally. And who wouldn't love to play with wormholes?
Vince @ Jul 18th 2006 5:59PM
A sentence: Imagine the multiplayer fun you could have.
corwin @ Jul 18th 2006 6:04PM
Two words? are you sure? it was a lame joke hello. And it actually looks pretty clever. At least valve is being innovative.
corwin @ Jul 18th 2006 6:06PM
For one, I love holes. You could say im pro-hole.
Nate @ Jul 18th 2006 6:07PM
I hope puzzle FPS games or whatever genre portal is, catches on. Also Neil or anyone else for that matter explain how its gimmicky, you probably think the gravity gun is also gimmicky too I guess?
Greyline108 @ Jul 18th 2006 6:08PM
Actually looks pretty cool. The infinte drops will be awesome.
Haston @ Jul 18th 2006 6:09PM
This game looks sick..end of discussion.
Pro-hole @ Jul 18th 2006 6:12PM
I dont think im smart enough to play this game.
ogvor @ Jul 18th 2006 6:14PM
I think this looks really interesting, even though I just recently finished Prey, this seems to make a much better use of portals because you control them. It's also frustrating to see people mad about a game that is inovative. But it's worse when they get made at something that is basically free. This happened when Valve gave Lost Coast away free: a lot of people were made becuase their computer coudln't run it. This is annoying because they are complaing about something that is free. This is coming with HL2: Episode 2 for free, so why should they complain about it? Would you rather valve be like Ubisoft and charge 15 for extra content with GRAW? It's seems very simialr to the saying that beggars are not choosers in that when something is free, you should either like it or ignore, but don't complain becuase then their won't be any companies giving away free content.
James MacAulay @ Jul 18th 2006 6:14PM
This game looks amazing. Valve *almost* made the gravity gun enough fun to centre a whole game around, so I'm sure they'll do a fine job with this. I'd actually love to see this "gimmick" in a more fleshed-out game than just a single-player puzzler tacked on to the Ep2 release.
Hopefully they'll make the levels look a little less antiseptic, though.
Raynre @ Jul 18th 2006 6:16PM
Hmm... Portal gun with Counter-Strike: Source zombie mode.
There would be no safe haven...
Abbas @ Jul 18th 2006 6:22PM
One word: "Donnie Darko"
Tank8131 @ Jul 18th 2006 6:22PM
uh...i know the video is embedded but the "trailer" link goes to Materials Science by Trans Tech Publications...
also pro-hole @ Jul 18th 2006 6:23PM
The only way this game could get better is if they called it Fuckin' Portal, and then made a sequel called 2 Fuckin' 2 Portal: Tokyo Drift.
corwin @ Jul 18th 2006 6:23PM
Hey pro-hole, your not smart enough to do alot of things.
i heart halo @ Jul 18th 2006 6:26PM
Hey why don't you guys stop making up words like 'antiseptic' and 'gimmick'?
Dawg605 @ Jul 18th 2006 6:27PM
Looks like some fun, but talk about a ripoff.
*cough* PREY *cough*
Neil @ Jul 18th 2006 6:29PM
Nate,
Don't get me wrong I'm sure it'll be fun (I love to read about dimensional theories), but could you really see this "feature" being used again in another game without it feeling too "been there done that". This is just something temporarily new and fresh until designers finally break through the current doldrums of game design and tackle the important things that film, music and literature have been dealing with all these years like human drama, relationships, life and death - hell I'd even be happy with any game that didn't take place in a dorky fantasy setting for once. So in other words this is just the new telekinesis in games. :P
emehrkay @ Jul 18th 2006 6:31PM
one word: that shit looks hot
Killer Instinct @ Jul 18th 2006 6:31PM
The link posted here was messed up it should be
http://www.gamevideos.com/video/id/4650
Anyway, this seems as though it would be really confusing in a gamematch, kind of like an instant puzzle. But it would fun to play others in DM with this.
Dan Clarke @ Jul 18th 2006 6:33PM
Apparently this is by the same team that made 'Narbacular Drop', so if you want an idea of how amazing an experience this game will (hopefully) be to play, google it and download it, its quite short but it is really fun. It even made me feel a little sick. That's a good thing. My only fear is that the idea of making your own portals is a novelty and that the alure will shortly wear off if the level design doesn't keep it interesting, but this fear is subsided by the fact that i have played through Narbacular Drop countless times and still find it breathtaking. Just dont judge its merritts solely on its appearance ('cause it looks a wee bit bad).
corwin @ Jul 18th 2006 6:34PM
one word: "your shit looks hot"
Stoo @ Jul 18th 2006 6:36PM
It's not got anything in common with Prey - this game actually looks like it could be remotely fun.
pro-hole @ Jul 18th 2006 6:38PM
Hey "I heart halo", antiseptic is a word. Its that stuff that numbs your throat when you have a really bad cough.
Chris @ Jul 18th 2006 6:40PM
one word: "it's nice to see Valve trying something different. Multiplayer should be a good laugh and to the person who said Prey. Prey did not let you make your own holes, They could have been doors in Prey they were so boring"
was that more than one word?
Andy @ Jul 18th 2006 6:42PM
I think that looks amazing. Bring it on.
Will you need HL2 for this, or is it stand alone?
neil is stupid @ Jul 18th 2006 6:42PM
Hey Neil, why don't you stop whining and go design a video game yourself that deals with human drama, relationships and life and death. Unless you can't of course, in which case why don't you get off the designer's collective back? You're probably some thirty-four year old grad student who still lives at home and is too self-absorbed to realize that 'doldrum' is a word that dumb people use to look smart, just like 'paradigm' and 'pro-active'. While game designers are out on the front lines every day your fat ass sits on a lice-ridden partially disintegrated couch stuffing baked lays into your mouth and drinking diet whatever because 'it's good for you', waxing philosophical about the correlation between 18th century romanticism and Halo 3. Get a life.
FreQ @ Jul 18th 2006 6:42PM
I'm sold.
Could it be possible that THIS is the new gravity gun ?
There are several points in the video where the player grabs an object just like the gravity gun.
Think about it...if your primary fire shoots the portal ( and assuming you can only fire 2 at once, one entrance and one exit), alt fire would be to grab objects, and once you are 'holding' it, primary fire would then punt the object, like HL2.
Hmmmmmmm....
I know this is a stand alone game but Gabe did say that it takes place in the HL universe. Could portal be our training for the implementation of the tech in EP3 ?
Inquiring minds want to know.
AoE @ Jul 18th 2006 6:44PM
Dawg605... nah, portals are a very old concept in FPS, tying it to a gun is rather new however... Also, in light of the fact that valve hired the guys who created Narbacular Drop and who are presumably the same minds behind Portal... I'm going to go out on a limb and say this isn't going to feel like a Prey rip-off at all...
Rallion @ Jul 18th 2006 6:44PM
I read that it's going to be single-player only.
Anyway, I think I'll pick this up. It looks insane. I LOVE insane.
After I heard about it, I also went and downloaded Narbacular Drop, the game that came before:
http://www.digipen.edu/GameGallery/websites/NarbacularDrop/
The creators of that are working on Portal now. Very interesting, though the Valve version is much more graphically impressive.
This is, in a sense, going to be a one-shot deal. We won't be seeing 'Portal clones.' Still, the idea could be adapted to fit into other games, and I wouldn't be surprised if some other ideas emerged from the ridiculous gameplay.
Yamen @ Jul 18th 2006 6:45PM
I'd just like to let everyone know that this game is being made by "Valve", but it's actually being coded and created by a team of Digipen graduates that made a game called Narbacular Drop. Valve liked thier game so much they hired the whole team to remake it on the HL2 engine.
You can download the original Narbacular Drop here:
http://www.digipen.edu/GameGallery/websites/NarbacularDrop/
Hopefully it'll give you a decent idea of what to expect with Portal.
bv @ Jul 18th 2006 6:45PM
This game actually has been in development long before Prey was released. According to a member of the VE3D forums named Campinginfiwise :
"Valve hired a group of developers (nuclear monkey software: www.nuclearmonkeysoftware.com)who had made a game called Narbacular Drop(released on April 22, 2005), where a princess (princess Noknees) shot portals at walls. It's debatable whether this game was inspired by Prey(since it's been in development forever), but it came out at least a year before Prey, and the entire team is working at Valve, so this seems to show how the idea came about."
He seems right. Unfortunately the website is down due to bandwidth limits being exceeded. Maybe it got dugg.
Yamen @ Jul 18th 2006 6:47PM
Wow.. so, I guess a bunch of us all decided to post about Narbacular drop at the same time.. lol
pro-hole @ Jul 18th 2006 6:55PM
The origin of Portals actually becomes a really tricky topic. I wikipedia'd it and it seems that portals were invented by mistake when when a bunch or doosh bags wanted to talk about portals as if they were a current event.
Eric @ Jul 18th 2006 6:56PM
One word: The trailer is gay, The concept is cool, but the game might get repeditive.
corwin @ Jul 18th 2006 6:57PM
oh LOL,
Yamen, dont make me Narbacular drop kick you.
Scottr @ Jul 18th 2006 7:07PM
Leave it to vavle to inovate the tired FPS yet again. Marvelous.
Pie @ Jul 18th 2006 7:34PM
I think I'll buy this game just for the infinite loops.
Awesome.
AoE @ Jul 18th 2006 7:37PM
"designers finally break through the current doldrums of game design and tackle the important things that film, music and literature have been dealing with all these years like human drama, relationships, life and death"
Neil, I hope to god that no designers agree with you, for a few reasons:
Who wants to play a game if it's not "fun"? Films/books that deal with more complex philisophical issues (such as life and death) while interesting and engaging on an intellectual level tend to lack the "fun" that you'll find in your average mindless summer blockbuster. Games are an interactive medium, not a passive one; it makes sense to cram a book/film full of weighty phlisophical topics; it's a passive medium and the audience is reading/watching precicely because they want to engage those parts of thier brain while passively experiencing a very static world that's there to essentially just tell a story; there are exceptions of course, but I think we can agree the vast majority of movies/lit are narrative.
Games on the other hand are an interactive medium; people don't play video-games so they can contemplate the human condition, they play them mostly to be entertained. If you tie a video game down with a strongly narrative story, you've effectively killed it's replay value. Sure it's easy to tack on a multiplayer mode or two; but that doesn't make the core of the game any more replayable. Your thinking, Neil, leads us down the road of games like King Kong and Condemend, two games that aren't remotely replayable, and in all honesty weren't that fun either(the *cough* narrative kept getting in the way of the gameplay). If we steer clear of the narrative game quagmire though, we find outselves with games like Pacman, Super Monkey Ball, Marble Madness, where the single-player is very fun and very replayable, and the multiplayer, where avaliable, makes an addictive, fun game even that much more endearing. Which isn't to say that a bit of story is bad, but it must serve the gameplay, not the other way around.
Since you seem to be making a "games aren't artistic, they need 'x' to be so, and thusly taken seriously" kind of argument, let me respond by saying that, as we all know, both film and literature are passive mediums, and it's foolish to think that every medium should get the exact same kind of content. Do you think when film first became a force in art/entertainment people were running around saying "I can't wait for filmmakers to break through the doldrums of stories and tackle the important things that paintings/sculpture have been for all this years, still-life and nudes." Probably not, different mediums are used to express thoughts/concepts/etc. differently. You CAN NOT apply the template that works for film and expect a game that lives to the full potential of the medium any more than you can expect a book to do a good job as a painting, or a pre-recorded song to effectively stand in for a bit of performance art.
So... long story short, Neil, you don't want games, you want movies... If you want it to feel like a game (well, a metal gear game at least) why not just hold a controller while watching movies? Meanwhile I'll be off enjoying electroplankton, rez, and other games that lack narratives but have gobs of fun, and can possibly even be considered interactive art... even without philosophy.
corwin @ Jul 18th 2006 7:49PM
Whoa, didnt ask for your life story.
So... to make a long story short, AoE, didnt ask for your life story.
Bloo @ Jul 18th 2006 7:52PM
"It's not got anything in common with Prey - this game actually looks like it could be remotely fun."
If you don't think Prey is fun, then you obviously have never played it and have no intention of ever playing it.
AoE @ Jul 18th 2006 7:59PM
>>whoa, didn't ask for you life story
AoE @ Jul 18th 2006 8:04PM
corwin, thanks for the reply, but you already proved you were a jackass much earlier in this comments thread; don't you think you're just beating a dead horse now?
Also... I just checked the gun safe, and the gun's still there; I must not have been holding it to your head, telling you to read. ;)
Masamune @ Jul 18th 2006 8:05PM
A first person shooter Puzzle game? Sign me up! Portals, you say? Marvelious!
AoE @ Jul 18th 2006 8:10PM
Hey corwin im really sorry what i said back there, sometimes I just get a little carried away, cleaning my gun safe, looking to see if its still there, go eat at the red lobster, come back to see if my guns still there, and then clean my gun safe again.
Neil @ Jul 18th 2006 8:12PM
AoE, I agree with a lot of what you say (especially since I love Rez, Elektroplankton, Loco Roco, EEE, etc) but I'm not saying all games need to take this step, I'm saying that there are more avenues to explore in interactive entertainment than what's on the market. Read any dev article or attend any GDC and the hot topic always comes back to creating emotion in games. The longing for this is always there. That's because gamers and game designers are maturing but the content is not. I mean are you saying you're satisfied with another WW2 shooter? Is a game like Gears of War the cream of the crop as far as games go? Don't you (or any gamer for that matter) ever feel like you wasted time after a long session of an online deathmatch. I do! What do games offer me as a player? A diversion?? Escapism? What's the point? Sure it's entertainment but so is film and literature but they offer so much more at the same time. You could walk away from an episode of Lost or a movie like Eternal Sunshine feeling satisfied but also analytical of life. There's no reason games can't offer the same type of feeling.
Sure you don't need an interactive form of "Waking Life" to communicate real life ideas of life/death; etc but you could in a game like Indigo Prophecy, ICO, or Shadow of the Colossus. Just like in literature you always "show not tell" - in videogames that means you let these ideals be told through gameplay, without ever letting the player onto it. For example not at all like Metal Gear where Hideo uses the game as a pedestal for his personal opinions.
I mean it's pretty pathetic when a critic spouts out how limited games are and how they're not real art and the industry is so quick to point out the aforementioned examples. Isn't it hypocritical that companies publishers use games like ICO as their defense when they themselves never make games like these - not to mention most companies don't!
Anyway I can go on forever and I'm sure you could too, so all I'm saying is that I've been a gamer all of my life and now it sucks that games aren't maturing with me. Whereas I can go read a book or even watch a stupid episode of Friends and actually empathize with the characters lives, I cannot in a videogame. Instead of the overly saturated science fiction/fantasy settings used in games, I would rather have some depth with my games, you know?