Portal 2? Like Portal but better, dummy!

Hello Felix readers, Cave Johnson here, founder and CEO of Aperture Science. Now I’m sure you’re all wondering, “Cave, why are you writing about Portal 2? Why are you breaking the fourth wall?” I’ll tell you why, it’s because I’m Cave Johnson and I don’t let silly little things like rules and regulations get in MY way. I’ll do whatever I damn well please and damn the consequences.

Here at Aperture we believe in striving for the best. We took the original Portal and thought, ‘What would make this bigger? Better? BOLDER?’ And let me tell you, THAT was a hefty challenge. Multi-award-winning product, seamless design, revolutionary gameplay, it had our best eggheads scratching their shining bald domes for hours. They came back and said, “Cave, we can’t make this game better. Please don’t fire us.” Did it anyway, no room for failures here. Got some smarter guys in, cranked out Portal 2.

I don’t pay my lab boys $100,000 a year just to sit on their thumbs and suck up coffee.

Science has proven that short games are bad, no two ways about it, so we made Portal 2 even longer than Portal. Twice as long in fact. If you’re dim witted it might even take you three times as long, maybe more, we don’t know. We at Aperture only test with the best of the best, no dunces allowed.

“What about story Cave? Have you skimped on that?” Who do you think we are, Black Mesa? Of course we haven’t skimped on story. Portal 2 has at least 65% more story than Portal, and you can go ahead and quote me on that (Disclaimer from the suits in PR: quoting me on that WILL result in a court injunction). It’s got thrills, twists and turns and so much action it’ll make the sappier amongst you soil your diapers. No, seriously, our story writers have told me those of you with weak hearts need to stay away from this game. We really can’t afford another lawsuit.

We’ve also gone ahead and thrown in some new gameplay elements. I don’t pay my lab boys $100,000 a year just to sit on their thumbs and suck up coffee. No sir, Cave Johnson makes sure my boys work ten hours a day, seven days a week to churn out fresh new challenges. If they get exhausted, fire them and bring in new guys, simple as. We’ve got asbestos funnels, lasers, hard-light bridges, plates that fling you about the room and more dynamic surface-coating gels than you have fingers (provided you only have two fingers, that is). All of these have been proven to be 100% safe for human use! (A note from the boys in the lab says that Aperture Science takes absolutely no responsibility for any damage or injury that probably will occur when you use our products).

Fact – the key to any successful co-operative test is trust. Now we understand you can’t just trust anyone. Hell, I trust the next man just as far as I could throw him. Turn around, next minute he’s stabbing you in the back or pushing you into a crusher. Boom, dead, end of story. The solution? ROBOTS. Not only do robots give you a guaranteed six extra seconds of co-operation versus human subjects, you can’t kill ‘em. Just try, totally impossible. Perfect solution to co-operative testing. We’ve gone and designed thirty five new test chambers, and all require the use of two sets of portals and participants to complete successfully. If you manage to do it alone I will personally come to YOUR door and refund you the cost of the game, provided we haven’t already spent it.

Now we’ve been receiving some complaints of late. Normally I’d respond to these in the usual way and throw them down into the incinerator, but our PR department has somehow managed to convince me to try and tackle some of these issues head-on. Boost the company profile or some junk like that. One of the biggest complaints we’ve been getting from you big babies is the game’s length. Stop and smell the ROSES people! I didn’t spend thousands of dollars out of my own damn pocket to bring in writers and voice actors and only have one-tenth of their dialogue listened to! Slow down, open your eyes and ears, it’s not like you young people have anything better to do besides watching pornography or washing your hair anyway.

If you moaning minnies are STILL going on, guess what? This summer we’ll be giving you all FREE extra content. You hear that over your blubberin’ and bawlin’? FREE STUFF. Would Black Mesa do that? Hell no they wouldn’t! New levels, new challenges, new leader boards, all for nothing, NOTHING. I had to fire HALF MY STAFF just to afford this. Are you still crying now? I should damn well hope not! Why the hell am I even answering these God-damn letters, don’t you think I have better things to do?!

So anyway I had a meeting with PR and Carol, and they said that I ought to just go right ahead and chuck those letters down the incinerator chute. Best thing for ‘em if you ask me. To sum up, more challenges, more story, more fun. Just slow down and if we’ve not filed for bankruptcy we’ll be getting out some more test chambers this summer.

Cave Johnson, we’re done here.

Portal 2 is available now from stores and from Steam.