Story
Yes, there is an actual plot to Portal! I understand that this was a bit of a surprising revelation to some people who have already heard a bit about what I had to say about this title. I really do not wish to say much about the story other than what you already know from previews, screenshots, and interviews.

The narration is carried throughout the game by a snide and often sarcastic computerized female voice. The design decision to include this level of narration actually came rather late into the creation of the game. It was just too quiet, and the humorous voice was added break up the silence.

Interestingly enough, the developers requisitioned the help of Old Man Murray (http://www.oldmanmurray.com/)’s Chet Faliszek and Erik Wolpaw to kick up the humor factor a few hundred notches. This is a narrative experience that you do not want to miss.

The player in Portal is a female test subject. I really don’t believe this should come as any surprise to anybody reading this given the media released both in screenshot form and from a number of past interviews conducted with the Portal team. Why are you there? For what purpose are you there? How did you get there to begin with? Well, those questions may or may not be answered as you progress through the story. I dare not ruin any of the plot for you as it’s more fun to discover the clues and unravel the plot on your own.

[ad]Game Mechanics
The basic idea behind Portal is that you’re given a device dubbed the “Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device." To you conspiracy theorists out there, there is no relation to Adrian Shephard from Opposing Force, sorry. Controlling the device is similar to controlling the gravity gun from Half-Life 2. It has a “grab" function that allows you to pick up items and drop them. There is no “fling" action that you’d typically have with the gravity gun (IE: if you were holding an item, the alt-fire would then shoot the object forward).

Beyond that, the device can (obviously) create entrance and exit portals in the game environment, but only on the appropriate surfaces. You will quickly learn what surfaces you can and cannot place portals on. If you’ve played Narbacular Drop, you may already be familiar with this sort of restriction and also with how the game’s difficulty advances throughout. In fact, in the beginning you won’t even have the ability to create a single portal of your own for a short time as the game shows you the ropes.

The primary fire will shoot one-half of the portal, the secondary fire will shoot out the second half of the portal. If both portals are placed on appropriate surfaces, a link is made and you can essentially walk through walls and traverse just about anywhere you’d like to. It sounds simple enough, and that’s where the beauty lies. The controls and game mechanics are kept simple while the puzzles become increasingly difficult.

Your ability to think and react will most certainly become a key factor in later stages as you try to fling yourself over obstacles propelled solely by your own momentum. Add in the fact that you will have to create additional portals “on the fly" in order to reach distant platforms, because your first jump may not be enough, and you have the makings of something very special, and very satisfyingly dizzying.

Graphics
As you have seen, the environments in Portal are very aesthetically clean. Not only does this further the notion that you’re in a controlled testing environment, but also there is a secondary purpose for it. The textures convey a setting that is very modern, or even slightly futuristic in nature. To give you some idea of what the Portal levels are like, it may be easier to picture a lab rat running around inside of a clean room (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean_room).

Areas in which you cannot place a portal are given a dark metallic look that is easily distinguishable from the large tiled and concrete surfaces that portals can be placed. Portals can be placed just about anywhere these tiled surfaces are including floors, ceilings, and walls and all surfaces will be put to good use during some of the later puzzles.

I had also mentioned that the clean graphics in Portal have a dual reasoning. The second reason, as mentioned by Kim Swift, was that the environments would just be too confusing for the player. During a few initial play-testing sessions, testers were presented with environments that had various litter and objects strewn about. This led to testers spending upwards of a half of an hour trying to move non-critical objects onto a button in order to progress, completely ignoring the large box sitting right next to them.

The items were cleaned up to make for a more gameplay friendly environment. Trust me, you won’t miss those extra items scattered about when you’re flying through the air or looking at your next goal. There is one last piece of information to state about the graphics. Without ruining too much, your visual setting will change as time goes on.

As far as new visual effects go, there will be motion blur in use, about as much as it is in use in Team Fortress 2. For those who are already enjoying the BETA, you should have a good idea of what to expect. For those not in the TF2 BETA, you can expect a subtle level of motion blur as you turn your character and move rapidly throughout the environment. Nothing is ever overdone and the new effect is a subtle, yet brilliant addition to this and the other Orange Box titles.

[ad]Technical Challenges
Jeep Barnett kindly clued me in as to some of the technical challenges faced when creating a title as unique as Portal. One of the biggest challenges in creating Portal centered around the physics in use in the game. Obviously, if you’ve played a Source title, you have a good idea of just how heavily the titles rely on physics. Everything from litter scattered around a level, to physics based puzzles, to even the ragdoll simulation is all covered under the physics category. Portal, is certainly no exception to the rule. Luckily, the transfer of a player’s momentum when traversing between portals is kept intact and put to good use.

Issues arose when trying to figure out what to do to overcome a box essentially colliding with itself once it starts to slide through a portal was one such obstacle that had to be overcome. In addition, had there been mobile AI in the game, the paths used to chase a character would become far more difficult than in a typical title. Beyond having a typical A to B, point-to-point path, the portals introduced two additional paths that could be taken with static portals, or an infinite amount with controllable portals.

Finally, you may recall seeing a few issues with shadows in early Portal videos. I’m happy to say that the shadow issue has been dealt with. You won’t see any weird, out of place shadows as objects fall through portals. This was fixed by clipping the shadows off on a specific plane. It’s all very technical, you know how it is.

Beyond the Story
An interesting set of bonus features are primed to be included with Portal. Beyond the levels of the story, Portal will offer users the ability to play a set of “Advanced Chambers" and "Time Challenge" maps. I hadn’t had much time to look at these maps, but beyond the lengthy primary game, these additional modes are sure to offer up hours of additional entertainment as you try to beat your previous best.

User created content might end up being the biggest draw for extending the length of playtime in Portal, and the Portal team is trying to make the process of installing new maps as painless as possible. Sorry, there is not going to be a means to download user created content through Steam, at least not yet (this is still a goal of Valve, but we may not see anything on this until 2008).

Instead, players will manually have to download their new maps. The SDK will package everything into one, easily distributable file. The user can place this file in any location on their hard drive after being downloaded. From the main interface inside of Portal, the player will be able to browse to the download location and find the file. Their new system will automatically move the files to the appropriate location and add an easily viewable shortcut to the user created content within the Portal menu.

This is very different from having to manually place the downloaded file into an appropriate folder and then having to use the console to load the map. Now, all user created maps will be available as if you were selecting a chapter to jump to in the main story (such as in Half-Life 2 and Episode 1). The only title I know that will have this is Portal, but I can certainly see this as becoming the norm in other titles such as Team Fortress 2. Only time will tell.

Closing
I trust I didn’t give away too much in this preview. Keep in mind that this is just one game out of three that is included with the Orange Box. The amount of enjoyment a player will be able to obtain from Portal alone could almost be covered by the full price of admission for the Orange Box.

There are plenty of elements to the story that must be discovered for yourself during the course of your playing. The 10th is not that far away now. Whether or not the cake is really a lie will soon be unveiled to all. There is one last item I must mention here. During your lifetime, you may never again experience ending credits as amazing as those found at the end of Portal.

Next up at CS-Nation, we'll have a brief look at Episode 2, the next chapter in the Half-Life 2 saga. Stay tuned!