By John Walker on March 22nd, 2011 at 6:44 pm.
Aperture Science’s documentary video game, Portal 2, is with us on the 19th April. In the interim the applied sciences company is releasing a series of videos advertising investment opportunities. The first of these is below. Valve’s president Gabe Newell says of these new opportunities,
“Portal 2 is the best documentary-style investment opportunity game we’ve ever contributed to and we’re confident that savvy investors will immediately see the value in these product demonstration videos.”
22/03/2011 at 18:45 Bilbo says:
Invest! Win a TF2 Hat!
22/03/2011 at 18:47 DJ Phantoon says:
Perfect timing- I was about to link that.
22/03/2011 at 18:53 dsi1 says:
mmm destruction…
Good to see that the new ‘big thing’ in games is something fun!
22/03/2011 at 18:55 skinlo says:
Can’t wait! :D:D
22/03/2011 at 18:55 Davie says:
I love it, it’s very Pixar.
Ah, Portal. How I missed thee.
22/03/2011 at 19:27 Wulf says:
That’s precisely why I like it, too. It’s very Pixar. These are game characters that I can actually like, and in a game that isn’t about endless violence. Imagine that! To be honest, I’d love to see the games industry doing more of this. Just fun, interesting, endearing games for the sake of it. But that’s just a dream, and these will barely distract from the more xenophobic (Yahtzee has covered this so well that I feel no need to drop anything more than that single word) military manshoots out there.
Still, what a dream.
I am very, very much looking forward to Portal 2, and my desire to play it is growing exponentially. I didn’t think anything would start catching up to my desire to play Guild Wars 2, but to be honest, this isn’t that far off. It checks many of my personal boxes. I’m also, quite frankly, absolutely delighted to see that so many other people are excited by this, too. And even moreso that I’m far from being alone in being interested in Portal 2 almost solely for the co-op.
23/03/2011 at 00:33 Gildon says:
@Wulf
You sound like my brother from a different mother. I’m with you on this one hundred percent.
23/03/2011 at 01:42 passingstranger says:
@Wulf, Of course, things like this require not only talent, but creativity and the willingness to take risks. The last two are things most publishers shy away from like vampires from morning sunlight.
23/03/2011 at 01:48 Keymonk says:
I love and agree with you all.
23/03/2011 at 08:25 bill says:
@Wulf: i think the games industry does a lot of this (though not usually as good as pixar and portal).
It’s just mostly on the console toys. And it tends to get sneered at by a lot of gamers for being kiddy.
22/03/2011 at 19:02 Nighthood says:
Valve is the Pixar of gaming, for so many reasons. Always great releases, always charming and beautiful, and always with brilliant characters and stories.
22/03/2011 at 19:13 MinnesotaBear says:
wholeheartedly agree.
22/03/2011 at 19:39 Wulf says:
I’m not so sure if Valve has always been about good characters though, to be honest. If I think of Valve games of the past, I remember them being a bit interesting, a lot of fun, having good stories tied into them, but having endearing or interesting characters? Not so much. No more than an average film, anyway. I found the cast of Half-Life 2 to be eminently forgettable.
About the only characters I took an interest in in HL2 were the vortigaunts, who were definitely worth a cocked eyebrow, but not much was revealed about them. And frankly, I’d love to learn more about them than I would about the rest of the cast. I’d like to see Gordon get a voice and a vortigaunt companion, so that they can chat and I can learn more about those decidedly alien aliens.
With TF2 though, I really started feeling the character thing. But the missing element there was story (at least before Valve started tacking one on, which was admittedly a good story, but it happened a long while after the game’s release). Still, TF2 did have a very memorable cast of characters. I still wasn’t feeling the same level of interest as I would in a Pixar film, but they got as close as they could with TF2, at the time.
With Portal 2 though, I’m definitely feeling the character thing. And not only that but there’s a great story present this time, too. So we have a fun game, an interesting setting, a great story, and endearing characters. This could be the first Valve game for me that’s truly magical, as opposed to merely being very, very, very good indeed. Portal 2 I’m very much looking forward to experiencing.
Edit #1: I’m even going to give the single-player a spin, since Wheatley seems to have plenty of personality too. Not even remotely interested in the ever-silent Chell, but between Wheatley and GlaDOS, I suspect that there’ll be a number of really good laughs to be had, there.
23/03/2011 at 11:44 edit says:
I absolutely share the enthusiasm for this game, but we should keep in mind that these two characters aren’t (as far as we know) playing traditional performance based character roles in the game itself and will only be experienced as avatars for the multiplayer experience. The experience we have with them will be more about how well the game’s structure supports social enjoyment and cooperation than Valve’s pixar-like ability to express stories and emotion through non-human characters. I suspect Valve have nailed those other aspects too, but I hope the people whose primary affection for the game comes from seeing these characters perform are not disappointed when the only interaction they can have with these characters is that provided by other gamers, tea-bagging and whatnot included.
22/03/2011 at 19:04 SMiD says:
Absolutely marvelous. Well played Valve, well played.
22/03/2011 at 19:04 Sarah says:
Wow that looks amazing! can see me watching that over and over!
22/03/2011 at 19:13 tomeoftom says:
Fantastic.
22/03/2011 at 19:15 Gnoupi says:
I’m interested in investing in the second article presented at the end.
And placing one over my doormat.
22/03/2011 at 19:18 LTK says:
Cave Johnson just gets better and better with each video. Does anyone know who voices him?
22/03/2011 at 19:24 skinlo says:
J. K. Simmons, who was J. Jonah Jameson in Spiderman and Juno’s Dad in Juno.
22/03/2011 at 19:24 Mungrul says:
@LTK: J.K. Simmons, he of J. Jonah Jameson fame in Spider-Man.
Edit: Beaten to the punch by Skinlo!
22/03/2011 at 19:29 DJ Phantoon says:
Really, was there anyone better for this?
Probably not.
22/03/2011 at 19:37 Garg says:
He was in Red Alert 3 as the (awesome) US president.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pduRbz7IbIo is rather splendid.
22/03/2011 at 19:46 Wulf says:
Haa. He does seem perfect for this role.
22/03/2011 at 20:05 dan. says:
Or J.K. Simmons who played Schillinger in Oz.
22/03/2011 at 20:41 Bret says:
The head of the CIA in Burn After Reading!
22/03/2011 at 21:21 xesharpx says:
Yeah! The more I hear of Wheatley and Johnson the more excited I get… and I was already very excited SO EXCITED
22/03/2011 at 21:52 DigitalSignalX says:
I love him in “The Closer” – his char has that perfect wry sarcasm that falls perfectly with his voice and acting style.
22/03/2011 at 19:39 SuperNashwanPower says:
<3 <3 I am awash with wub
22/03/2011 at 19:45 Miktor says:
Oh man, I can’t wait for more of those.
And I just realised how much the characters remind me of pixar characters, now that someone mentioned it.
22/03/2011 at 19:50 Wulf says:
I’m totally sold on this game, and especially those characters, which actually adds something to PC gaming that we don’t see often. The console toys tend to get exclusives with very memorable characters indeed, but it’s rare that the PC gets anything that isn’t forgettable. These little guys are anything but forgettable!
Plus, I’m eminently pleased that Portal 2 is so very good at not taking itself seriously. At the moment, we’re awash in games that are stone-jaw and iron-fist levels of seriousness, laughing is a crime. I am seeing evidence that we’re breaking out of that rut though, and to be honest? It’s about bloody time. This is definitely what I want from gaming, and I truly hope it sells well so that there’ll be more of it.
Go Valve!
22/03/2011 at 20:24 subedii says:
I think it’s about time we saw Cate Archer return to the world of FPS’s.
Failing that, I wish No-one Lives Forever would go up on GOG.com
22/03/2011 at 20:25 The Army of None says:
“it’s rare that the PC gets anything that isn’t forgettable”
Why you gotta go and say things like that Wulf :(
22/03/2011 at 21:11 Wulf says:
Because it’s true, and it’s actually somewhat bothersome to me, but we have to admit this. When it comes to games that really stick in my mind, they tend to come less from mainstream publishers who’re cross porting a title, and more from indie developers. But the reason I’m bitter about this is because it didn’t always used to be this way. Around the ’90s we had plenty of odd games, very memorable, and even into the early ’00s, we continued having such games, then it just petered off into cross-platform stuff, and that was generally rather dull.
Now the indies are picking up, and what I’m saying is that I’m glad that this is the case, because over the past few years I have actually found PC gaming to be kind of forgettable, with only a few exceptions that I tend to talk and talk about. There have been many cross-platform manshoots (as they’re apparently now called) and sandbox games, and yes, they have been good. But have they actually been memorable? Or are they just games that are quickly forgotten so that gamers can move on to the next big thing? I don’t know about you, but I see a lot of the latter.
And many memorable games we do tend to talk about aren’t that recent. People tend to go back to their favourites from yore. If I asked people to name really memorable PC games, there’d be very few games from recent years in that list, and that’s because games developed for the more eccentric PC have gone downhill. The likes of Sam & Max, Uru, Vangers, Ecstatica… games that were really, compellingly strange to the point that they were memorable, and so very PC, became rare. But now we’re getting more of what the PC used to be, it’s seeping in through the cracks, hints of greatness, and I think that the only way from here is up.
So no, I didn’t mean that in a bad way.
22/03/2011 at 21:14 Wulf says:
Also!
@subedii
I would put my money toward that cause. I absolutely loved No One Lives Forever. I still can’t forget the bloke who had a perpetually cocked eyebrow. Really, those were characters, and memorable ones to boot. So yes… more of that, please?
22/03/2011 at 19:59 Olivaw says:
Holy shit wait JK Simmons is Cave Johnson?
Holy living fuck WHAT. I clearly have not been paying enough attention.
22/03/2011 at 20:16 Hideous says:
Oh man I can not stop watching this. Too much awesome.
22/03/2011 at 21:05 Wulf says:
I think I must’ve watched it four times.
22/03/2011 at 20:43 hogofwar says:
Valve are getting better and better, they are truly great.
(Biggest Indie Dev)
22/03/2011 at 23:50 PodX140 says:
Err, I hope you mean Biggest Indie Dev in some sort of signature, because they are anything but indie. They have more money that they can roll around in then likely the combined incomes of everyone that frequents this site.
(Also, the combined value of all of the organs of the people in [SUBJECT HOMETOWN HERE]).
23/03/2011 at 00:27 Jibb Smart says:
Indie = making games without the funding of an external publisher.
Valve is indie.
23/03/2011 at 00:33 Vinraith says:
Only insofar as Valve is the example that proves that definition of “indie” is inadequate.
23/03/2011 at 00:40 Jibb Smart says:
I think “indie” is just generally misused. The important thing about indie is not their size (or lack thereof), but about the fact that their creativity isn’t stifled by the need to please an external publisher, nor limited by contractually enforceable time limits.
“Indie” is, after all, short for “independent”. It just so happens a lot of people associate it with small independent teams.
23/03/2011 at 00:53 Wulf says:
@PodX140
That becomes awkwardly recursive if, indeed, they too visit this site.
23/03/2011 at 02:23 PodX140 says:
I have no need of your logic Wulf! :P
But in the sense that yes, they publish their own games, and are independent, but they aren’t indie in the sense of shoestring budget, no lunches, thankgoditsoveranddonewith…letsdoitagain.
23/03/2011 at 11:54 Bhazor says:
Huh?
http://www.gamesonsmash.com/2010/12/22/ea-will-publish-valve%e2%80%99s-portal-2/
23/03/2011 at 15:31 sneetch says:
Despite that articles headline EA aren’t “publishing” it as such. It’s just a poor choice of words on the authors part. They didn’t fund the game development (AFAIK), instead EA have done a deal to handle the retail, disk versions of the game.
I assume that this means that Valve get most of the money for sales rather than the usual crusts and meat rinds that developers normally get.
22/03/2011 at 20:53 My2CENTS says:
I <3 Crushers. Glad they sell them too…
22/03/2011 at 21:28 DRoseDARs says:
Cave Johnson: “That is not a panel. That’s a crusher. We sell those too.”
Damn it, that made Coke-flavored Slurpee shoot out my nose… XD
23/03/2011 at 12:40 Vanderdecken says:
Likewise. But in my case sparkling water. JK Simmons is SO GREAT.
22/03/2011 at 21:33 Nomaki says:
This reminds me that I haven’t pre-ordered Portal 2 yet, I love Valve all-too much.
22/03/2011 at 22:01 SuperNashwanPower says:
I would love to see a Portal 2 short movie, sort of along the lines of the Wall-E spinoff, Burn-E. Ah yes here we go, a link to Burn-E and his loveable inability to weld http://www.snotr.com/video/1927/BURN_middot_E . Just imagine a full 7 minutes of loveable Valve droids.
22/03/2011 at 22:34 Wulf says:
I’d certainly buy that and I think that a large enough amount of people–enough to make it financially worthwhile–might too. Dead Space had an animated feature accompanying it and that sold well enough, as is my understanding, so a short film with those Aperture Science droids would likely sell a whole lot better than that, even.
Perhaps even as part of a collector’s edition. Wherein you get the game and the animated feature for ‘the kids’ (and you, secretly). That’d be a great thing to have in a collector’s edition. And we all know it would sell. Look how smitten we all still are with Transformers (myself included).
23/03/2011 at 00:28 PodX140 says:
Why… Why… Why have I not heard of BURN-E before? You, good sir, made my week! And it’s Tuesday! Also, I would love to see some comedic short film with these two guys, and I’ve only seen one Portal 2 trailer! I think they give that vibe (comedic gold, pixar, ect.) off of the way they walk, it’s got just enough spring to it.
22/03/2011 at 22:57 ado says:
That was very awesome, can’t wait for Portal 2!
22/03/2011 at 23:03 Vandelay says:
Oi Razer! When can I order the waggy stick version of Portal 2? You said it would be ready on release and here we are, four weeks from release day and still no word.
Awesome video from Valve, as ever.
22/03/2011 at 23:51 PodX140 says:
Also, John, I’M CLICKING AND NOTHING IS HAPPENING!
Why do you taunt me so? :P
OT: Extremely Pixar vibe, as a person who plays hundreds of games a year and only buys maybe 2, I’m definitely buying this.
23/03/2011 at 03:09 reticulate says:
Sweet merciful jeebus that was awesome.
They’re really outdoing themselves with these videos recently.
23/03/2011 at 05:06 ulix says:
I just had a stroke of genius:
Do you guys remember how the games from the Orange Box had developer commentaries? (Why didn’t the L4D games?)
Wouldn’t it be awesome if Portal 2 had them too, but instead of the developer’s explaining why they designed the levels like this or like that, let some Aparture Science dude explain why they designed the test chambers like they are.
23/03/2011 at 06:22 Sassenach says:
L4D2 did have developer commentaries, not sure about the first.
23/03/2011 at 06:29 sexyresults says:
L4D also had dev commentaries :)
23/03/2011 at 09:41 Milky1985 says:
Ok i really hope when protal 2 comes out they have these videos as unlockables or something, the adverts for portal 2 have been the best marketing i have ever seen for a game, and very very funny .
I lost my drink to “Thats not a panel, thats a crusher, we sell those too” :P
23/03/2011 at 13:31 The Sombrero Kid says:
i lol’d