At PAX East last Saturday, I got a chance to awkwardly speak to Portal 2's project lead, Joshua Weier. Despite my woeful incoherence, I learned a few interesting tidbits about the game's inception, including that Valve isn't ready to divulge the nature of a new puzzle mechanic which it scrapped early on in development.
In an interview with The Telegraph earlier this month, Valve writer Erik Wolpaw explained, "... a brief idea we had was having a different puzzle mechanic, with each Portal game introducing a new way of solving puzzles with Aperture Science in the background, this big funhouse where every game would get a new thing. We quickly discovered through playtesting that people liked it, but just preferred the portal gun."
The new mechanic was also brought up byValvelast year - I asked Weier if he could elaborate on it, but apparently it's not fully in the bin.
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"We're not really talking about that one too much," said Weier. "I think we're still kicking that around - it's kind of interesting. I think that kind of came from us trying to make Portal 2 a surprise. But the more we started to dig into the mechanics, the more we realized there was tons more for us to do."
Digging into a different sensitive topic, I also asked Weier if he could comment on the recently-leaked Portal 2 Achievement list, and whether or not fan speculation regarding a possible Half-Life 2: Episode 3 tease had any weight. Weier, of course, couldn't say anything definitive about that either:
"Yeah, the Achievements always come out a little earlier than we want, but it was fun to watch people speculate and see what they were gonna get. I think when it hits on April 19th it'll be fun to see people actually experience that."
EXPERIENCE WHAT?! Yeah, I know - April 19th. Anyway, you can read the rest of my impressions and Weier's comments in the rivulet-of-consciousness preview I banged out from the floor of the press room. I'm sure obsessively-informed fans already knew all of it months ago, but given that I still have a bruise on my leg from the foot of a furiously rushed videographer, I'm making it important. It's a dangerous job (not really).
Mar 14, 2011
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