[Dan] Ah, yes. Portal.
Utterly charming and mechanically brilliant,
this game is one of the best of all time at
forcing the player to think in a completely different way
to solve puzzles, without being incredibly frustrating.
"Thinking with portals" is a phrase that gets thrown around,
but what it essentially means is that the game is
forcing a player to switch their perspective
and analyze problems in a way
completely foreign to them.
The fun of the game, then, stems from getting
incrementally better at thinking in this novel space.
Making such an unusual mechanic work
requires a special kind of tutorial,
and Portal absolutely knocks it out of the park.
The entire first half of the game is meant to
steadily get you acclimated to thinking
in this unfamiliar area.
What I want to do today is break down
the first several test chambers in Portal and talk through
the learning the game designers are intending.
The portal mechanic has a ton of depth to it,
and risks being very confusing
if the concepts are not introduced properly
and at the correct rate.
Portal properly spaces the different pieces
of the mechanic across the beginning of the game
to keep the player in flow while teaching them
everything they need to progress in the game.
Let's get started.
Chell wakes up and begins pointed toward
what looks like a potential door
on the outside of the relaxation vault.
The designers are trying to make sure that
you notice this pseudo-doorframe
and the countdown timer above it,
but for now, let's move on.
The designers begin by using some up-tempo music
to juxtapose with the prison you're apparently in,
creating a sort of mental dissonance.
[VAULT RADIO MUSIC]
Portal also takes this opportunity to begin
introducing you to the controls in a non-obtrusive way.
Much like the first screen from Level 1-1 in Mario,
the player is being given some space
to explore the controls
without the game pressuring them.
The prompts are off to the side and translucent.
and the time the player is given to mess around
with the controls is simultaneously used
for backstory from GLaDOS.
[GLaDOS] ...and learning are the primary goals of all
Enrichment Center activities, serious injuries may occur.
[Dan] The next scene is the most important in the whole game.
The doorframe and timer you saw originally
and its twin inside the prison
become linked by a portal as GLaDOS counts down.
[GLaDOS] The portal will open in 3... 2...
[Dan] The player's first look through the portal
is like a kick straight to the brain.
The mechanics of the game are summed up
so perfectly in just this one moment.
Portal is elegantly introducing the mechanics
of the game by showing this scene,
with an unlike any effect you've ever seen in the game.
It's utterly jarring, and yet it perfectly
sums up the core mechanic.
Two disparate places in space
can become adjacent with a portal.
It is the pivotal first moment in a series
of learning events the player will experience
over the course of the game.
I personally believe much of Portal's
successful learning curve stems from this one moment.
The rest of this level introduces our basic goal
for most rooms in the game:
find the way to open the door
and make it to the elevator,
mostly by placing boxes on switches.
The reason Portal uses this incredibly simple room
in the game is twofold.
One, it acts as a downward slope
on the game's interest curve,
giving the player time to stew on
the important scene they just witnessed.
Two, the game is very careful to make sure that
the player doesn't end up in over their head.
When operating in space this far
outside what humans are used to,
it's very easy to get quickly overwhelmed.
If taken at face value with a dash of text prompts,
a lot of tutorials would feel patronizing and sluggish,
but Portal neatly dodges it by turning
the necessary information into interesting backstory
as it's explained by our digital warden.
[GLaDOS] ...Emancipation Grill will vaporize any
unauthorized equipment that passes through it --
for instance, the Aperture Science Weighted Storage Cube.
[Dan] The room ends with one of the more
prescriptive pieces of information:
the explanation of the end-of-the-level field,
but even this is couched in GLaDOS's character
and serves to fill space as we take an elevator ride
while the next level loads its textures.
The next room shows us how we can
access different areas with the two portals.
The level is constructed such that we can
watch the game show us the concept of moving portals.
By design, all of the portals' exits in the cycle
are visible through the glass,
and this mechanic is presented in an environment
that we get to explore and approach at our own pace.
The game is teaching us how portals work in space
without having to tell us a word.
All the tools necessary are already there.
Following this, we get the first half of the portal gun,
which allows us to play with one portal.
The gun makes obvious audio cues when firing
to make sure that the player understands
that this is the source of the portals.
[PORTAL GUN FIRES]
Once the player receives the gun,
you'll notice that any portal that was in the pit
has disappeared, requiring the player
to use the portal gun to advance.
It''s a quick gating mechanic that ensures that
the player doesn't move on to the next thing
until they are able to do the task we're asking them to.
In this case, use the gun.
Also important to note,
the game hasn't given use control over both portals yet,
just to ease us into the mechanics.
The designers know they can still make
interesting puzzles with just the one portal,
so they do without adding the second portal
until the player gets acclimated to the first.
The separation of labor between the two, as it were,
serves to tone down the complexity.
The next test chamber is a simple puzzle
that has you begin thinking in terms of portals.
It teaches you the first two basic techniques
for crossing obstacles:
shooting a portal near yourself as an entrance
and shooting a portal to your destination to exit there.
The team is leveraging the time the player has
with only half the portal gun
to shallow out the learning curve
while still creating interesting puzzles
and teaching a fundamental skill for traversal
that you'll be using throughout the entire game.
I'm going to stop here, but, honestly,
Portal is teaching you something new
basically in every single test chamber.
Go through the next couple, and see if you can figure out
all the elements Portal is introducing and reinforcing.
If you're feeling super confident, go through all 19.
It'll be good practice.
We gotta get going, but feel free to
follow up the discussion in the comments. So long!