Giant Bombcast Portal 2 Spoilercast!

[0] here from Valve.

[1] I'm sitting here again with Chet J and Eric, and we are now going to talk in detail about the plot and some of the various ins and outs of Portal 2.

[2] Don't listen to this.

[3] Spoiler filled.

[4] Spoilers are coming up.

[5] Your enjoyment of Portal 2 is going to be diminished significantly if you have not already played through the game.

[6] Buy it.

[7] Be warned.

[8] Bookmark this.

[9] Right.

[10] And then come back.

[11] Just pause.

[12] Yeah.

[13] Play it.

[14] Come back.

[15] Rewind it.

[16] Yeah.

[17] Remix it.

[18] Right?

[19] And honestly, this is going to be open spoiler zone for anything.

[20] So if you don't like spoilers...

[21] Yeah, in general.

[22] Let's warm up.

[23] What do you got first, Eric?

[24] Yeah, so it turns out that in Shutter Island, Leonardo DiCaprio, crazy the whole time.

[25] Actually, inmate of the hospital.

[26] I still haven't seen that.

[27] It's in my Netflix queue.

[28] And now you don't have to.

[29] It's on Instant Watch.

[30] And it's in my Netflix Instant Watch queue.

[31] The Instant Watch queue.

[32] Well, you better take it off then.

[33] See how dangerous it can be.

[34] All right.

[35] Spoiler.

[36] Seriously, that saved you like seven or eight hours.

[37] Tell me. Here's another spoiler.

[38] It's not a very good film.

[39] All right.

[40] Jay Pinkerton speaking, not Valve.

[41] Valve doesn't like Martin Scorsese.

[42] A lot of people at Valve like Shutter Island a whole lot.

[43] Few people have it tattooed on them.

[44] Tell me about The Animal King.

[45] What inspired The Animal King?

[46] Getting back to Portal 2.

[47] Everyone seems to be looking at Jay.

[48] What inspired The Animal King?

[49] I think it was just the idea of picking something as outlandish as possible.

[50] What was the other one?

[51] I think it was a sentient gas cloud or something.

[52] Yeah, a sentient cloud.

[53] It's very Star Trek.

[54] I love the idea of just a corporation essentially covering its butt with even the most outlandish possibility of what happened to the Earth, you know.

[55] It was the idea that they didn't know, like, they had this plan in place so they could keep testing for whatever reason, even, you know.

[56] If something really awful happened and then they're just kind of listing it, like maybe this happened, maybe this happened.

[57] Aperture science is not bound by governments or religions or ethics.

[58] They're science.

[59] Common sense, nothing.

[60] But if there should be an animal king thousands of years from now, they've got it covered.

[61] Yeah, they've got it covered.

[62] And then Richard Lord, who's kind of the mastermind.

[63] behind those little infographic videos, kind of came up with the idea of the giant leopard print turret in the UN.

[64] It's funny.

[65] I don't know where...

[66] It's about a life of its own, really.

[67] And then, well, now it's a super spoiler.

[68] I imagine, did you notice that the Animal King is there at the end?

[69] I did.

[70] I did notice him.

[71] It's not just fake.

[72] It's real.

[73] Yeah, the Animal King is real.

[74] We can spoil that here.

[75] Look for that if you didn't see it the first time.

[76] Go pause again.

[77] Pause.

[78] Pause.

[79] Rewind it.

[80] Play the whole game again.

[81] That's right.

[82] So this game, you really dig into a lot of the backstory of Aperture Science.

[83] We see the Cave Johnson stuff.

[84] We see some kind of – at least the – The Aperture aesthetic over the years, how much unseen backstory do you guys have for this, or is most of it kind of out there in the game?

[85] You want to talk about the 600 -page Bible you wrote?

[86] No, no, there's some stuff.

[87] I mean, we tried to work it out in our head, kind of what might make sense.

[88] But, you know, honestly...

[89] Like, if we thought of it and it was good, we were trying to find a way to cram that in there somewhere.

[90] Probably there five times.

[91] Like, oh, it was really good.

[92] Let's not put it in the game.

[93] So you guys are the Native Americans of video game writing.

[94] Yes, we use it.

[95] Well, yes.

[96] Having said that, we cut a lot of stuff as well.

[97] Yeah, no, a lot of stuff didn't make it on the cutting room floor.

[98] I guess the aperture thing we just felt, rather than just regurgitate more of the same, why not, what were they like in the 50s?

[99] What were they like in the 70s, right?

[100] It just gave us more.

[101] I guess a more complex vision of the company where we kind of got to check out, I don't know, what would it be like under the regime of this different guy who was clearly not Gladys, right?

[102] He's the antithesis of Gladys.

[103] To a point, but there's definitely, there's a turning, there's a moment in that game when Gladys and Cave are suddenly aligned and in tune with each other.

[104] There is, I think...

[105] What moment are we talking about?

[106] Are we talking about the lemons?

[107] The lemons to lemonade.

[108] Yeah, that speech where she gets all pumped up.

[109] Yeah.

[110] And clearly they're both maybe more invested in their own actions and their enthusiasm for what they're doing than they are in your personal safety, I would say.

[111] That's like the Aperture way.

[112] Yeah, that's the corporate culture of Aperture.

[113] But, yeah, they definitely are on the same page at some point.

[114] I keep, like, talking.

[115] Spoiler free, but I forgot we're in the spoiler zone, so I can say whatever I want.

[116] I mean, the big thing, Kay's been kicking around for years as a character, and he's had various incarnations, but he's just one of those guys that just refused to go away.

[117] I mean, he's been out of the game so many times, but he just keeps kind of sneaking his way back in.

[118] I think actually the lemons to lemonade speech is...

[119] That's the one through my net speech.

[120] That was written a long time ago.

[121] Oh, so here's a question.

[122] I don't know if you guys remember this.

[123] A few years ago, after Portal 2, I believe, had been announced that someone had leaked out.

[124] that here's the whole story of Portal 2.

[125] We hadn't announced yet at that point.

[126] No, we didn't even announce.

[127] No, we was a casting agent and posted that up on a forum and then somebody ran with it.

[128] I think I pretty deliberately kind of...

[129] went around that because I did enjoy the first portal so much I'm like I don't want to have this ruined even if it's fake because then if it's fake what if I end up liking the fake thing better than the real thing so those lines are not in the game now but if you go back and find it I think they do speak to the fact that originally Cave had a much different role and that's all I'll say but yeah so I mean even just seeing that you can see the various attempts we've had with Cave and the various roles at given points in time he's had in this game.

[130] Yeah, so if you didn't read the casting sheet, it turns out that most of the stuff that's in the casting sheet isn't actually in the game.

[131] game kind of went in a different direction ultimately.

[132] I mean, it did make it sound like the little bit that I did see made it sound like, oh, this is going to be like complete throwback.

[133] You're not going to see any of like the modern stuff.

[134] It's going to be set in, you know, in the 60s or whatever, which, you know, you it's it's I there's there's something very satisfying of the, you know, the the physical, the vertical physical space also representing the timeline of of aperture as though you're just like they just.

[135] They started at the bottom, and then they just kept building each decade on top of the next one.

[136] Aperture built upon Aperture, essentially, much like New York City, built on New York City.

[137] And that was one of the things, again, we've always had this view of Aperture that if they screw something up, they just literally cement in the building.

[138] Yeah, yeah.

[139] Brick it up and never speak of it again.

[140] Yeah, just brick it over and then build some new stuff on top of it.

[141] And so, I mean, that speaks a lot.

[142] In the 50s areas, in the 70s, you can kind of see these bricked -in walls.

[143] And that's something, again, we...

[144] one of our things we don't really like to explicitly state, you want to kind of just suggest.

[145] It's there for people.

[146] If you want to kind of poke around, you can see all these ideas of experiments gone wrong, but it's all like in the corners, in the shadows kind of thing.

[147] This is, though, a much more traditional narrative than the original.

[148] The original portal is very much, it's almost exclusively implied.

[149] And minimalist, yeah.

[150] And very, very minimalist.

[151] This, there's more exposition.

[152] There's more characters.

[153] Well, there are characters beyond just Gladys and your kind of voiceless avatar.

[154] A lot of scope, I guess, right?

[155] I mean, you can't maintain this many hours of game.

[156] Yeah, scope and pacing.

[157] You know, the minimalist vibe or aesthetic, we kind of...

[158] Believe me, if we could have written 15 lines of dialogue and done, don't think we didn't go down that path.

[159] There's no way in Portal 2 you're going to start off and like, oh, is there a story or not?

[160] What's going on?

[161] You've got to jump in.

[162] We were able to leverage the sort of minimalist thing.

[163] to sort of launch into a surprise story that you didn't even think there was going to be a story.

[164] That cat is out of the bag in Portal 2.

[165] I think there's also just a sense of why repeat yourself, right?

[166] Certainly.

[167] This isn't just faster, harder, more challenging portals.

[168] Right.

[169] So, I mean, just to have the opportunity of, like, let's have fun with some new characters.

[170] Let's mix it up a bit and see what happens.

[171] I have a question.

[172] Early on, Wheatley is talking about how there's the event where Chell kills Gladys, and then there's a period in which nothing happens.

[173] That's Wheatley, yeah.

[174] Yeah, that's Wheatley.

[175] What's going on there?

[176] I don't feel like there was necessarily ever a payoff for that line in the game, or are you guys seeding stuff?

[177] Well, so one, it's from his perspective.

[178] So we're getting this idea.

[179] He doesn't know that you are, in fact, the person who overthrew Gladys.

[180] So the idea there, you kind of have to listen.

[181] There's a lot going on.

[182] But he's talking about there was this guy who came and beat up Gladys.

[183] There's one line that, yeah.

[184] Then this person escaped, and no one's seen him since.

[185] It was a nice little throwaway line.

[186] It was just this idea that he's talking to you about this supposed male hero who came and overthrew everything, not knowing that you are, in fact, the hero.

[187] And the nice thing is, if you haven't played the first game, it kind of gives you a really quick little recap kind of thing, and then, obviously, he figures it out, and it gets corrected.

[188] And if you have played it, it's this cool moment of like, oh, you dumbass, you're talking about me. So I read it as being so obviously...

[189] leaving out information so deliberately that clearly there has to be something in that period.

[190] Well, I mean, we do cover that in the comic that's out now of what happens between one and two.

[191] Are you talking about that?

[192] Yeah.

[193] We're talking about the space that Wheatley literally says, like, a period when nothing happened.

[194] Although I would argue from Wheatley's perspective, really nothing of importance happened.

[195] Yeah, again, this is all this.

[196] I mean, from his perspective, he's been sitting down there pretty much.

[197] Yeah, on that rail, afraid to.

[198] jump off the broken end for a long time.

[199] But again, a lot of that is just, I mean, it's boring just to spell it out, right?

[200] I mean, there is that sense of it.

[201] He could have prattled on for every single, you know, little minuscule thing that happened.

[202] And the nice thing is the plot of Portal 1 is fairly easy to summarize in a couple of sentences.

[203] But yeah, so I think just exactly what Chet said.

[204] It hopefully lets old players, or new players, gives them a recap of what happened, and then old players, returning players, get this added benefit of realizing that Wheatley doesn't know that you're the person who took GLaDOS down.

[205] And I would argue that there is a payoff when you wake GLaDOS up and she acknowledges you.

[206] The payoff is Wheatley's like, holy shit, that's you?

[207] Obviously did not work for Ryan.

[208] I was so caught up in watching the resurrection of Gladys as a pretty great, intense moment early on in the game.

[209] Yeah, we argued with the animators, toned down the awesomeness in the animation so people could focus on the dialogue a little bit more.

[210] Yeah, did not listen.

[211] Did not.

[212] So speaking of the implication, the inference, one of the things I noticed early on, having literally just...

[213] the day before played through the original portal.

[214] First time you hear Gladys speak, clearly a much more human -sounding voice.

[215] Like the filtering or whatever the effects are, much lighter, not as heavily modulated.

[216] And I was wondering, like, I wonder if this is a kind of a very deliberate move to humanizer.

[217] And then you get to that payoff when you start realizing, oh.

[218] you know, she actually does have this human character or at least some piece of her inside of her.

[219] Yeah, so, I mean, obviously that was deliberate, partly because she's obviously closer towards a more human -sounding voice at the end of Portal 1 than she is at the beginning of Portal 1.

[220] She's already kind of moving towards this human voice, and we just wanted to push it a little bit farther to start her from a place that was...

[221] close to where she ended in Portal 1, but we moved a little bit forward.

[222] And then she gets more human as the game progresses, and then...

[223] Oh, wait, we're in the spoiler zone.

[224] And then resets herself at the end.

[225] But yeah, the idea was just to take it right off the bat from Portal 1.

[226] I mean, she did undergo an arc, so we didn't want to nerf that arc and take her right back to Swear 1.

[227] Let's talk about potatoes.

[228] Potatoes.

[229] Well, how did you know she was called potatoes?

[230] What inspired the potatoes gag?

[231] Oh, you didn't actually say potatoes.

[232] Or did you?

[233] I said potatoes.

[234] No, he said potatoes.

[235] There's a potato.

[236] There's a potato.

[237] No, but calling her potatoes.

[238] I don't think we ever actually say that in the game.

[239] No. I'm literally talking about potatoes.

[240] Oh, just the plural of potatoes?

[241] Yeah, or of potato.

[242] Oh, okay.

[243] So when we first thought it up, We refer to her internally as potatoes, which is...

[244] Oh, potatoes.

[245] Yeah, GLaDOS.

[246] Got it.

[247] Pause now for laughter.

[248] Man, I could have made that a lot more.

[249] Anyway, thank God we didn't put that in the game.

[250] So even beyond the potato gag, there is actually some sort of long -lost connection to the origins of GLaDOS with the potato gag.

[251] Well, no, we just, when she's in potato form, we just call her potatoes.

[252] Actually, he made you sound a lot smarter than you actually were.

[253] You should have just said yes.

[254] For now and then, let me correct you.

[255] The rest of the answer is just say yes or no. You're saying at a subconscious level.

[256] No, no, I just meant when Gladys is in the potato.

[257] It's funny when she's called potatoes.

[258] So, okay, so obviously there's, you know, the potatoes create electricity, but, like, what line of thought brought you to we're going to put Gladys in a potato and stick her on the end of the portal gun for half the game?

[259] So we knew we wanted to bring her low.

[260] That was a huge point with it.

[261] We were like, we have to.

[262] take this character someplace new and interesting, and let's strip her of her power.

[263] And so that was, from day one, that was it.

[264] It was just, what were we going to do with it?

[265] And originally we were going to put her in a core like Wheatley was in originally, and I think we were all just out walking one day, and just stumbled on the idea of a potato battery, and it just felt so right.

[266] It seems like the most demeaning thing that you could possibly do to GLaDOS would be put her in a 1 .2 volt.

[267] Potato battery.

[268] The more we talked about it, just the visual was there in all our heads, and we're like, oh, we have to try this.

[269] We have to try and convince the rest of the team this is the way to go.

[270] Yeah, and also we wanted her to be with you but not have to move on a rail like Wheatley because we knew that in the underground it was going to be tough to get a rail going.

[271] We didn't want you to have to carry her around.

[272] We wanted something also small enough that it could be visible to you at all times but, you know, not obtrusive.

[273] So it's...

[274] There's this thing where when we're trying to solve, you know, you have the broad strokes of the story, then you're trying to solve, like, the moment -to -moment problems, and you'll come up with a solution, and it starts clicking off boxes.

[275] Like, it solves this problem, it solves this problem, it's funny, you know, and that's when you generally know that it's the right solution.

[276] So did you always know that she was going to...

[277] end up becoming kind of a, at least for a time, a sympathetic character.

[278] She is still kind of sympathetic by the end.

[279] Like, she has gone from, or, you know, maybe it's just, it's coldly calculating, but, you know, it's...

[280] It's easier for her to not kill you than to kill you.

[281] I mean, certainly not from square one, but there was a point where it struck us, like, wouldn't it be great if we could do kind of a buddy cop, where we actually have you and Gladys kind of team up against a new enemy.

[282] And so it wasn't always the potato, but there was certainly a sense, I think probably at least a year or two back, where we were like, we've got to try this.

[283] It's too good an idea not to try.

[284] The one thing, too, is, you know, you're writing a character, you're writing Wheatley, and, you know...

[285] If I had my way, everything we ever do, every character gets their chance to be the villain.

[286] Because it's so awesome to see a character, when they're villainous, how is a particular character villainous when they become villainous?

[287] Wheatley, just an idiot.

[288] Yeah, bad at villainy.

[289] Yeah, bad at it.

[290] But still dangerous, just terrible at it.

[291] And that was another interesting, because Gladys is this super smart...

[292] you know, conniving person.

[293] So the idea of, as Eric just said, it's a different kind of danger because this guy has no idea what he's doing.

[294] And that gave us a lot more opportunities in the last act to have some fun with that.

[295] I don't know if we did.

[296] I like the idea.

[297] We did, probably.

[298] The idea, you know, it's a puzzle game and it's about being smart.

[299] So it'd be kind of interesting to have, you know, the boss monster, for lack of a better term, be the world's greatest moron, you know?

[300] Right.

[301] Yeah, it puts you in the death trap.

[302] Death trap after death trap.

[303] Yeah.

[304] Constantly thwarted.

[305] Let's talk about the moon.

[306] Let's do that.

[307] When did we get to the moon?

[308] How did we get to the moon?

[309] So we got to the moon.

[310] I believe it was an Easter egg at some point.

[311] Yeah, well, I think it might have been Josh Wire, who's the project lead, was like, oh, you know, it would be a cool Easter egg.

[312] Well, back up one more step.

[313] had discussed at some point, we were like, well, how far can the portal gun fire?

[314] I don't know, I guess as far, we've never really said, I guess it fires as far as, you know, it fired anything that you pointed at.

[315] And Josh was saying, well, oh, it would be great if we had an Easter egg where at some point you can see the moon and, you know, off some beaten path somewhere, and you shoot a portal on it, and if you shoot a portal on the wall, it sucks you out and kills you, and we'll do a fake ending.

[316] Like, we'll have a fake song.

[317] And we loved the idea because it was like...

[318] I think the idea was three minutes, literally three minutes into the game, you could do this.

[319] The credits would roll, and we'd have a song about the three minutes of the game while they're showing you all the things you did.

[320] Yeah, yeah, oh, we're, right, we have a retrospective of the first three minutes of the game.

[321] Remember the time you got sucked out into the moon?

[322] Into the moon, it was sad.

[323] You died on the moon.

[324] And then we realized, like, we're putting all this, burning all these calories, putting all this effort into it for something that...

[325] Well, there was two things going on.

[326] The other one was, much like Portal 1, until...

[327] And relatively light in the project, we're like, what are we going to do?

[328] What's going to happen at the end?

[329] And again, there's a series of problems.

[330] We didn't want to destroy Wheatley because people still kind of liked Wheatley.

[331] So we didn't want to destroy Wheatley, but we needed to get him out of the chassis.

[332] We wanted GLaDOS to save you, which leads into the surge of emotion when she does that, lets her locate Carolyn.

[333] And we wanted it to be spectacular, but in a fairly ridiculous...

[334] over -the -top way.

[335] And so we're talking about it, talking about it.

[336] And the Easter egg actually made it into the game, and playtesters who found it, it was a consistent high.

[337] It'd be like, list your highs of the game.

[338] Oh, the moon thing was hilarious.

[339] So at some point, we were in a meeting trying to hash this out.

[340] Yeah, and it's just like, why didn't we think of this six months ago?

[341] Let's move it from the Easter egg and make it something that this solves all the problems.

[342] Wheatley gets shot out into space.

[343] Oh, and there was also, we had one of the spheres who we knew wanted to be...

[344] We just had this thing where we wanted it to be, like, kind of Rain Man -ish, just wanting something desperately, and that's all it wants.

[345] And then we were like, oh, it wants to go to space, because then it gets to go to space.

[346] And again, that sphere was another one that's been around for just ages.

[347] Yeah, the space sphere?

[348] It didn't originally say space, but the idea, it was just this kind of monosyllabic sphere.

[349] I want to go.

[350] I want to go here.

[351] I want to do this.

[352] I want to do that.

[353] And we're like, oh, what if he said space?

[354] Yeah, and he gets to go to space, and he gets a genuine, I think he's the one character in my mind who gets the genuinely.

[355] Happy ending.

[356] And that voice?

[357] That is Nolan North.

[358] He's the voice of all the...

[359] Games.

[360] Yeah, of all the games.

[361] Every game, every character.

[362] No, he's all the corrupt cores at the end, and he's the defective turrets as well.

[363] Yeah, it was a lot of fun working with him.

[364] Yeah.

[365] Jay had worked with him on a game Jay had worked on earlier called This is Vegas.

[366] Yeah, he impressed the heck out of us just with how many voices he could do.

[367] So the idea was just to let's bring him in and have him just...

[368] You have to point that microphone at him.

[369] There we go.

[370] Pointing at my chest.

[371] Your chest has nothing to add to this conversation.

[372] I was just laughing that off -camera you can't see, there's no camera, that you were just openly laughing at Jay for having worked on This Is Vegas.

[373] I'll mock, I played This Is Vegas.

[374] Oh, nice.

[375] You're probably one of the few.

[376] In Vegas, in fact.

[377] Oh, really?

[378] The final midway trip.

[379] I'm not even sure if I was working there at that point.

[380] In defense of Jay, Nolan North was able to recite when he came in to do the recording two years later.

[381] Lines of dialogue verbatim from This Is Vegas.

[382] Yeah, I mean, when I was on there, they let me get pretty NC -17.

[383] I have no idea what eventually made it into the game, though.

[384] But either way, yes.

[385] This Is Vegas, I think he ended up by the end of it, he was doing like half the voices on it.

[386] So he just really impressed.

[387] These guys like the Mel Blanc of video game voiceover.

[388] Eric, what do you think, Blanc or Blanc?

[389] I think it's Blanc.

[390] Although Jay's Canadian, so that in Canada might be Blanc.

[391] Chet, what do you think?

[392] I thought it was Blanc.

[393] Launch?

[394] All right, so back to the moon here.

[395] So we established earlier in the game that at least some sort of portal technology is using or is involving moon stuff.

[396] Crushed up moon rocks.

[397] So I was thinking about this while I was playing the game.

[398] In fiction, and this is the kind of thing that I was more talking about as far as kind of backstory.

[399] In fiction, what determines a portable surface?

[400] Portalable.

[401] Yeah, portalable surface.

[402] Huge 700 email thread on that.

[403] Oh, God.

[404] Is portalable a word or is there a better word for portalable?

[405] I think we ended up with portalable.

[406] Portalic?

[407] I'm sure that came up.

[408] Anyway, what were we saying?

[409] So in fiction, I guess there's some coding that, so the implication is that there was some other surface that didn't involve ground -up moon rocks, but that wasn't as reliable as ground -up moon rocks.

[410] So we could say, but the surface property is something that is painted with this.

[411] Something that's portable has to be made portable by putting some substance on it.

[412] Okay.

[413] For instance, the moon.

[414] The moon's all portable because it's all made out of moon rocks.

[415] Okay.

[416] Should also be noted that we are all science experts.

[417] No, it doesn't have to make actual science sense, as long as there is some sort of internal logic, though.

[418] That's the key.

[419] Similarly, we see these new elevator rooms, and we see stuff that looks more advanced than the testing facilities that we saw in the first game.

[420] That one, there is no fictional explanation for it.

[421] That's kind of like just the up -resing, slight reimagining that you did in Half -Life 1 to Half -Life 2.

[422] It's just a matter of kind of rethinking some of that stuff.

[423] But then I wonder, like, you know, how long has it been since there were any people at Aperture Science or at this particular facility?

[424] We kind of purposely played fast and loose with the timeline.

[425] Yeah, just in case.

[426] A, because we didn't think it was.

[427] absolutely that important at the end of the day.

[428] It's been a long time.

[429] Having said that, you shouldn't read too much into the redesigned elevators.

[430] That specifically is just something that we did to make it look cooler.

[431] There isn't some other thing that's working on facilities.

[432] The implication is just...

[433] Isn't it that someone came in and built these in the interim?

[434] Nothing has happened in the interim.

[435] Although if you had a good explanation, now would be the time to share it with us.

[436] Yeah, like to hear it.

[437] What do you guys think of the old cloning theory as far as Chell is concerned?

[438] What are your thoughts on that stuff?

[439] What?

[440] I didn't hear about that.

[441] Have you ever heard that?

[442] No. Oh, so one of the theories that I had heard was that, at least this was in regard to the original portal, the Ratman dens, as you call them, the notion that that was actually a previous version of you that Gladys had been running.

[443] Did this theory come out after Moon?

[444] No, it was pre -Moon.

[445] Pre -Moon.

[446] What happens in Moon?

[447] Nothing.

[448] Okay.

[449] All right.

[450] I guess something's too good to be spoiled.

[451] I was just wondering if we had a lawsuit on our hands, because we could now say, yes, that was our intention all along.

[452] No, no, wait.

[453] That wasn't the intent.

[454] No, it was not the intention.

[455] No, it was not.

[456] There's no cloning as far as I know.

[457] And, in fact, your answers lie in the comic book, which is now out.

[458] Yeah, actually, we did fairly explicitly.

[459] I don't know if you've read the comic.

[460] I didn't know there was a comic.

[461] It came out a couple days ago.

[462] It's up on the website.

[463] And it ties together some of the event.

[464] Ratman is the star.

[465] It shows the Ratman.

[466] So, yeah, that's going to blow that theory out of the water.

[467] And also, we're in the spoiler zone, the ending of Co -op, which you haven't seen yet.

[468] Oh, I'm actually spoiling it.

[469] I'm spoiling it for you.

[470] Here we go.

[471] All right.

[472] Anyway, no cloning.

[473] Okay.

[474] None.

[475] Well.

[476] Yet.

[477] Yeah.

[478] I mean, do you think we need more cloning?

[479] Would that make it?

[480] Would you guys like some cloning?

[481] We can give you cloning if you want.

[482] If you had any good ideas, just fire them along.

[483] We'll take them.

[484] I think we're running out of time here, guys.

[485] I'm just curious what elements or maybe even just kind of specific moments that you felt really...

[486] were nailed and really that you find personally satisfying in Portal 2, that moments that you helped create or even just that were very satisfying to see in the finished game.

[487] For me, real quick, end of the first Steven Merchant session was my high.

[488] That was when I knew we'd gotten something.

[489] Or even just doing it in the studio.

[490] Just because up to that point, you've got the character in your head, you've got the voice in your head of what you think he sounds like.

[491] But it's always different the first time you hear an actor embody it.

[492] And I remember the first four -hour session in there with Steve Merchant and just walking out going like, this is going to be great.

[493] Eric, anything for you?

[494] That is the same for me. I mean, that was the scariest moment, the one just going in to record Steve Merchant and not knowing.

[495] If this is going to work, if it's going to be good.

[496] And, you know, we went all the way to London and, you know, it was a big deal.

[497] And then knowing, I'm not even saying after the first session, I'm saying 15 minutes in, it was pretty obvious that he was super invested and it was great.

[498] Personally, in -game, I mean, there's a bunch of moments that I like.

[499] I really like the Wheatley -Glado switchover.

[500] I thought it tread a...

[501] treads a kind of nice line between being dramatic and funny at the same time.

[502] So, I mean, I guess that would be a personal high for me. I think that's a part where just lots of stuff came together.

[503] The animation, the music, the acting.

[504] For me, I think my favorite beat is one of the ones that came on absolutely at the end.

[505] It was just the idea that Gladys has this immensely emotional, satisfying character arc and then just deletes it wholesale.

[506] Yeah, learns a lesson and then deletes it.

[507] We've all learned a valuable lesson here today, and now it's gone.

[508] I also like that she learns a lesson from deleting the lesson as well.

[509] Recursive lessons.

[510] Chet, anything for you?

[511] I just really like when you go back to Wheatley, and he's taking control, and you're with GLaDOS, and, I mean, he's just a moron running the place, and it's kind of like, yeah, that's kind of how, yeah, I probably wouldn't do much better.

[512] I don't know.

[513] It's kind of the story of me, Jay, and Chet at Valve.

[514] Like, laying in over our heads, surrounded by genius.

[515] I'm like, yeah, we've seen this before.

[516] Yeah, yeah, we'll do that.

[517] I'll do that.

[518] Oh, God, that's horrible.

[519] That's really bad.

[520] We'll put the two of them together.

[521] Yeah, wait, can we just do that test again?

[522] Yeah, that'll do it.

[523] No, that won't do it.

[524] Oh, so.

[525] I'm going to name, can I name two more things?

[526] Yeah, keep naming them.

[527] So there are two things closer to the end as well.

[528] There's a moment when Wheatley's dangling out there and he's like, you know, let go, let go, I can still fix this.

[529] There's this actual, I just like the idea that he still thinks, it's sincere on his part.

[530] Like, I can still fix this.

[531] I can make this right.

[532] And he wants to get back in there and do it.

[533] And then I also.

[534] I like just the very final beat where the boss monster offers you a sincere apology for all the trouble he's caused.

[535] I've never seen that in a game before.

[536] Just like, because you kill them a lot and they scream.

[537] But I've never had a boss monster come out and be like, you know what?

[538] Shit, you were right.

[539] I am super sorry.

[540] And actually be legitimately contrite about it.

[541] Yeah, I am so sorry for all the trouble.

[542] If I had to, I would have done it differently.

[543] I apologize.

[544] Well, yeah, I think that's going to do it for our time here, gentlemen.

[545] Thank you so much both for your time here and for Portal 2 available now.

[546] But you already know that because you played it if you're listening to this.

[547] Yeah, man. If you haven't played it, we were kidding about the spoilers.

[548] There's a bunch of other stuff in there.

[549] You should still probably go by it.

[550] We're describing another game.

[551] The next Call of Duty.

[552] That's what we've just been talking about here.

[553] Actually, laying down the gauntlet, Call of Duty is going to have to go like...

[554] To the sun or something.

[555] To top going to the moon.

[556] Well, it turns out this whole podcast was just a dream.

[557] Yeah.

[558] All right.

[559] And scene.