Sorry folks! I have limited computer access for the foreseeable future. Will update regularly, just probably not daily. To make up for it...here's an absurdly long post.
So...one more video game post and then we'll move on to other games.
"Portal" is a short video game produced by Valve available on the XBox360 and for the computer. You play a woman named Chel (although how I know that is beyond me, as she remains unnamed throughout the game) who is testing out a new technology in a science facility.
It is also one of the funniest games I have ever played. The grasp of dystopian themes, horror elements, and dark humor is absurdly impressive for such a limited game.
So what about Portal gives it such strong elements? As always, we turn to the world of literary analysis. The game employs several writing strategies employed by the greatest books.
First, let's look at the horror elements they implement.
Bleak settings are creepy.
Portal is by no means "basic" in the way Pac-Man is basic. The graphics are everything you could hope for in this effects-glutted modern society. They should be - there is not much to the game. The walls are almost uniformly white and flat. The lighting is florescent and corporate. All of the tech looks like it was developed by Apple - smooth, curved and white. It is the epitome of the science lab.
It's sterile and cold and wonderfully chilling. The first time you see blood smeared on the walls, the bright redness of it after the unending white and grey is that much more striking.
The other thing about the setting that strikes a chord is that it's mostly empty. There are the few necessary devices that make each level playable, but for the most part you are dealing with large rooms with high ceilings that are mostly empty. As humans, we like to fill our space with stuff. We buy silly nicknacks, collect things, and hang art on the walls to inject personality into a space and feel comfortable. Rooms devoid of these things, like college classrooms, are vaguely unsettling to us. This is why waiting rooms in Doctor's offices have ugly art pieces and boring magazines...the clutter is comforting.
Starkness + loneliness = discomfort and anxiety.
Disorientation
There is a book called "The Haunting". I think it was made into a movie but I don't particularly care. The reason I bring it up here is because there was one thing in the book that truly made me scared while I read it: the description of the house. As the characters walk through it the first time, they realize it's all built on angles that are off by only one or two degrees. They're close enough to the standard 45 and 90 degree angles that you don't notice on a conscious level...but as you turn corners, they throw you off just enough that when you look out a window the view is completely wrong based on your orientation. You've made a certain number of right turns and are expecting to see the front lawn and instead you see the side driveway. This, believe it or not, set the tone for the book and was scarier than all the gore and psychological torment that followed...combined.
Most films and art implement this basic strategy. If a scene is meant to freak you out, nine times out of ten you will notice that your point of view is skewed...either by viewing from below or above or by having the screen off kilter.
The story of "Portal" is similarly designed to keep you on your toes at all times. You are never fully aware of where you are, how you got there, what your purpose is or any other basic information.
You begin the game "waking up" in a small space with no doors. A quick glance around reveals a radio that plays one song, a toilet, and a pod thing in which you were apparently sleeping. The tone is set immediately. You are alone, you are trapped, and you have no idea how you got there. Many of the rooms in the game are similar. Since you are working with portals (essentially wormholes that connect to each other) many rooms are impossible to escape from without this physics-defying technology.
At every level you are alone except for the voice of GLaDOS, a computer that guides you through the game and an awesome character. But more on her later. Sometimes, empty boardrooms can be seen or entered. You gain the impression that you are not the only one who has tested this tech through comments made by GLaDOS, usually through the fact that most of her comments to you sound like form letters.
"You [subject name here] must be the pride of [subject hometown here]"
Yet you never encounter these other testers until you reach the level where laser turrets are introduced. When the threat of death is introduced to the game, you suddenly start finding these bright red bloody handprints. Follow them, you may find a cubbyhole marked by a bloody scrawled "help". In these cubbies you see these mad scrawlings and pictures indicating death and torture. It is, frankly, hilarious.
This is where the famous "the cake is a lie" quote comes from. Through the game, GLaDOS makes reference to "cake" being a reward for completing all of the tests. "Cake and grief counseling will be available." One of the cubbies simply has the line "the cake is a lie" scrawled over and over and over again on the walls.
It's jarring, it's freaky, and I love it.
Knowing it all is boring.
You know what kind of movies and books I really, truly love and never can seem to find?
The ones that don't answer all of your questions.
I'm not talking about major plot points remaining unresolved. You should always resolve the issues you raise in a story. (Apologies to fabulous tv series who are unjustly cancelled before they can address these issues. Next week will be all about you.) Deus ex machina? Not ok. Unexplained plot advance or character development? Bad.
(Science fiction authors, you are the most guilty of this. I'm happy for you that you've worked out how, exactly, your faster-than-light-speed drive works. Interrupting the plot to explain it for 5 pages is not ok.)
Minor characters should have back story. As an author, you should know why a character behaves the way they do. However, unless it's important to your reader to know, you should not insert it.
Ugh...this is getting way too long winded. I'll simplify.
There are two bad extremes and one happy medium in story telling when it comes to minor plot elements. Imagine you are an author. The protagonist of your story was betrayed by his estranged sister.
Extreme one: The sister did this because you needed a betrayal to move the plot along. You, the author, have no idea what her motivations are but it moves the plot. Problem: this will feel stilted, your reader will be confused, dissatisfaction follows etc.
Extreme two: The sister did this because of a complex series of circumstances...such as growing up resenting her missing brother and being seduced by the guy chasing him or whatever. Problem: If you explain all of this, even though the protagonist would have no knowledge of the circumstances and the book has until this point been in the third person limited. The plot screeches to a halt, the reader becomes bored and ultimately forgets what was happening before this tangent.
Happy medium: Same as above, except you, the author, know these motivations but do not share. It will make your writing of the sister more natural and the readers will notice. If you feel the urge to tell her story, you can do so in a sequel or a side book. (J.R.R. Tolkien is a good muse for this.)
Portal does this brilliantly. There are many things that are left unexplained. Winning the game, of course, comes with resolution of Chel's (I really have no idea how I know your character's name.) immediate problems.
Things that are not explained within the game:
Where all the scientists are
Who "Black Mesa" is...other than a rival company
Why Chel was there to begin with
Now...I think some of this is explained in the game "Half Life" which Portal was sold with. I'm fairly certain there is a company called Black Mesa anyway. I don't know. The missing scientists, however, are definitely a mystery. Did GLaDOS kill them?
Not knowing is much creepier and satisfying. It fires up my imagination. More importantly, it keeps me immersed in the story by not breaking the fourth wall. There is no way my character would know, so she doesn't.
And last but not least...
Dark Humor
I can not rave enough about how awesome a character GLaDOS is. She is the mainframe computer for the laboratories and guides you, more or less, through the game. Obviously inhuman, incapable of lying subtly, and utterly insane, her bits of speech are great.
This is good, because Chel doesn't talk at all, and the only other voices in the game are the turrets which talk in childlike voices asking where you are before shooting you.
All of GLaDOS's dialogue is stuffed with dark, dark humor. Here are a few of my favorite examples.
Please note that we have added a consequence for failure. Any contact with the chamber floor will result in an unsatisfactory mark on your official testing record, followed by death.
Did you know you can donate one or all of your vital organs to the Aperture Science Self Esteem Fund for Girls? It's true!
Remember, the Aperture Science Bring Your Daughter to Work Day is the perfect time to have her tested.
As part of an optional test protocol, we are pleased to present an amusing fact: The device is now more valuable than the organs and combined incomes of everyone in *subject hometown here.*
Do you think I'm trying to trick you with reverse psychology? I mean, seriously, now.
We are pleased that you made it through the final challenge where we pretended we were going to murder you. We are very very happy for your success. We are throwing a party in honor of your tremendous success. Place the device on the ground, then lie on your stomach with your arms at your sides. A party associate will arrive shortly to collect you for your party. Make no further attempt to leave the testing area. Assume the Party Escort Submission Position, or you will miss the party.
Do I need to explain further?
The best part of the game by far is a level in which you are given a "companion cube". It's simply a heavy block of metal with a heart drawn on it. You use it to block deadly energy balls and weigh down buttons. However, throughout the level, GLaDOS makes weird comments about how it can not talk...but if it does you should ignore what it says.
Throughout the level it talks about how the cube is loyal to you and will be happy to do anything for you etc. etc. After not having met anyone throughout the entire game, these statements slowly start to freak you out. You imagine the cube is alive. That it somehow contains a human brain and heart or something along those lines. You at least get the impression that it is sentient and can feel pain. It never shows any indication of this. It is a box with a heart drawn on it.
At the end of the level, in order to move on, you have to throw it in an incinerator. There is no way around this without a cheat code. I literally spent 30 minutes trying to figure out a way around this. It was emotionally agitating. I was distraught over destroying a cube of metal, in a video game. That is a sign of good writing.
It probably didn't help that instead of saying "incinerating" or "destroying", GLaDOS called it "euthanizing".
Finally, there is the ending credits song. It was written by Jonathan Coulton, a geek rocker whose music is excellent. You should check him out if you've never heard of him. I like the song about taking pills for everything and "Code Monkey".
Jonathan Coulton's website - some MP3s are free to download!
He wrote "Still Alive" specifically for portal. It is sung by GLaDOS and is in the style of a report on the the events of the game addressed to Chel.
It's insane and excellent and the perfect ending...so I'm going to end my post with it.
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