14 DAY TRIAL // Though initially slated for release in the last quarter of 2010, the sequel to the highly-acclaimed Portal is scheduled for release on February 9, 2011 for both retail and Steam-enabled versions for Mac OS X, and Windows, as well as retail versions for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.
The people at Gamasutra have scored an interview with Valve’s Erik Wolpaw, who shared a few interesting tidbits about Portal 2, including the game’s storyline.
Those who’ve finished the first Portal should well know that, at the end of the game, the Aperture Science facility crashes to the ground along with GLaDOS, the evil mind behind it all.
“Basically, you’ve destroyed the environment in Portal and GLaDOS comes back to life through a sequence of events, and starts rebuilding the facility,” Wolpaw reveals. “So that’s the first part of the game, and then it goes off in some other directions from there,” the premises for Portal 2 goes.
“It seemed like it would be an interesting way to show Aperture Science,” Wolpaw continued. “We wanted you to see the effects of what you’d done in the first Portal.”
“And part of what we always envisioned in Portal, but really didn’t have the manpower to do, was to imagine the facility as this living, breathing place,” Wolpaw shared with Gamasutra.
“We always had this idea, in our heads, that the test chambers were modularly assembled and can be reassembled, but we didn’t have the manpower to actually create any of that, and now we do this time.”
Then, Wolpaw reveals an interesting aspect about Portal 2. Apparently, GLaDOS will have more control over the action, in a way that will actually affect the player’s progress, during a test.
“Having her rebuild the facility before your eyes gave us an opportunity to show off some of that stuff,” Wolpaw continued to explain.
“And then once she rebuilds the facility this time, there’s a lot more. Besides being the voice of the facility, you can really feel that she’s in control, because she can manipulate the environment in real time as you’re doing things,” Wolpaw finally reveals.
As noted above, Portal 2 will ship February, 2011 for Mac OS X. The game will be available via Steam, the popular gaming platform developed by the people at Valve.
Steam was released for Mac earlier this year when Valve also decided to offer up the original Portal game for free to everyone.