Woah. I never even noticed the bust in that picture. Very cool analysis.

There is one line in Portal 2's sound files in which GLaDOS says Chell's name. I wish they had kept it in the actual game.

[youtube 9bvJ7i90dbI http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bvJ7i90dbI youtube]

How did I not notice before that the Wheatley logo was sloppily pasted over the word Aperture? That's hilarious.

Ooh, I hadn't seen that concept art before.

But yeah, the military shower curtain stuff was background material for the first game. The military contracted Aperture to produce shower curtains for the air force and army. The Portal device supposedly had something to do with that. I think that backrgound might have been dropped in Portal 2 though.

I love Cave Johnson and the 50s test chambers SO MUCH. It's just the perfect extrapolation of pulp scifi tropes. There were astronauts and olympians and American Heroes doing SCIENCE because that's what they did! They'll shoot lasers at people just to see what happens! Who cares what the outcome is, so long as it's SCIENCE!

Aperture clearly has had the same "We aren't sure how it works, but it's damn cool" ethos since it's creation. They meant to make a military shower curtain and invented the Portal device by accident. They accidentally made time travel. They meant to make a dietary supplement and created repulsion gel. It's terrifying and hilarious at the same time.

POTaDOS is the best thing ever. End of story.

The levels here! I know I talked earlier about how expansive this game seems, but it really comes into play here. The environments are so massive. It blows my mind. And again, the atmosphere is fantastic.

In the commentary tracks, I think, they mentioned that the giant circular doors were originally meant to be much smaller. But a coder added some extra 0s or moved a decimal and suddenly the doors became comically large. They kept them because having a tiny person-sized door behind a massive portcullis is just fucking funny.

(Is it just me, or does 50s Cave look a bit like Mitt Romney? I think it's the hair.)

Gur flfgrz TYnQBF vf cyhttrq vagb jnf bevtvanyyl zrnag sbe Pnir, evtug? Znlor gurl vavgvnyyl onfrq vg ba uvf crefbanyvgl naq jrag n yvggyr... hu, rkgerzr. Nsgre nyy, gurer vf gung cneg jurer CBGnQBF gnyxf nobhg ubj Pnir "Fnlf jung jr'er nyy guvaxvat."

Fb jung ryfr qba’g V xabj nobhg gur bevtva bs Ncregher naq TYnQBF?

Mark. Mark. You're trolling us now, right? Because. Holy crap.

God this chapter. Everything about it is wonderful. The plot twist, the dialogue. Oh man, the way that Wheatley's laugh slowly turns evil, and the lights on the robotic arms switch from blue to red and sort of glare at you malevolently... It's just such a perfect tonal shift. GLaDOS' scream as she gets switched out of the mainframe is chilling. Despite the fact that she's been trying to kill you for a game and a half, I really felt sorry for her.

The sets in this part of the game are so wonderful. They've got this eerie atmosphere, but there's also just the sense that it's a bit broken. Everything in Aperture is a little bit broken even after it's been fixed. Some of the turrets are defective, but all of them get eternally built, tested, packaged, then dismantled. There's no one to buy them, but the factory's still running.

Has anyone else read Bradbury's "There Will Come Soft Rains"? That's what Aperture reminds me of. The automated facility that just keeps going even after there's no one around to use what it makes, for no reason other than that's what it was programmed to do.

And then suddenly GLaDOS is a potato.

I felt like we just didn't see all of it in the first game. The parts "outside" that we saw in Portal 1 were mostly offices, with a few maintenance areas. In this game we're in a completely different part of the facility--more of a manufacturing plant. (This, of course, ignores that the elevators are different and everything about gur byq grfgvat punzoref but it works for me.)

I tend to just stand around and think of ways that might work, but sometimes there's a bit more running around and flinging portals on the ceiling just in case. Oh, and dying. There's lots of dying.

Gur cneg va gur 80f ynof evtug nsgre lbh trg CBGnQBF jurer lbh unir gb syvat lbhefrys bagb gur ryringbe cyngsbez gbbx zr SBERIRE. V npghnyyl birefubg vg n pbhcyr gvzrf. Abg ernyyl fher ubj.

"NER GURER FREVBHFYL GJB ZBER UHZNAF VA GUVF SNPVYVGL NAQ NER GURL PURYY’F CNERAGF. JGS. JGS!!!"

I know I shouldn't laugh, but I cackled at this. Oh, Mark. Guvf vf TYNQBF jr'er gnyxvat nobhg. Unir lbh yrnearq abguvat sebz gur pnxr?

"V’z pbhagvat ba Jurngyrl gb uryc zr bhg."

nununununununununu Bu zna. V pnaabg jnvg.

Wheatleyyyy! I was so happy when I realized he was still alive. GLaDOS doesn't ruin everything for once! (Jryy. Lrg.) Then there's the thing with the bird and the door manager thing. I kind of feel sorry for this door control character that we never see. Thanks, Wheatley. At least he is trying to help, although he's not very good at it.

The fat jokes do get really grating after a while. Still, I kind of love the "You look like an eagle... piloting a blimp" line. The first time I played through that level I literally stopped what I was doing so I could laugh at that line. It's SO absurd.

Mostly unrelated, but there are deer where I live and sometimes in the mornings they come into our yard. EVERY TIME I hear GLaDOS' "I saw a deer today" line. Portal just sticks in your brain.