Opening The Orange Box: Portal

Another major... er... personality in Portal is the Weighted Companion Cube, but apparently the cuddly cuboid never had any voice of its own. “We tossed the idea around a little bit, but nah. There’s something amusing about imbuing this completely inanimate object with a personality that isn’t there, but everyone is impressing upon it these qualities - that it’s your best friend, it’s wonderful.”

Portal required major play testing to ensure the balance of gameplay, character and storyline to get it just right, using hardcore Counter-Strike fans, people’s wives and partners, and even Gabe Newell’s children. “I guess we just wanted to see how many kinds of people we could get to have fun,” adds Kim. “If people are laughing, we’ve done our job. If they’re ripping off their headphones and looking at us in disgust, then we need to make some adjustments. A lot of our dialogue and narrative came from inside jokes, and if other people enjoyed it too, it stayed in the game. I miss the days of point and click adventure games where they were just funny, a laugh riot...”

Before we left Kim to begin planning her next secret project, we wondered what she and the rest of the Portal development team felt like, knowing that millions of Portal fans are now quoting lines of dialogue to anyone who will listen? “It’s horrible! Why would I like people enjoying my game that I put my blood, sweat and tears into for two years?”

Feb 29, 2008