Portal 2 Almost Had Competitive Multiplayer

Valve is really trying transform Portal into a full-fledged triple-A release with the sequel. The development team even thought of putting in a competitive multiplayer component, but scrapped because of the chaos that ensued in practice.

Speaking to 1Up, Eric Wolpaw, lead writer on the project, said that, "Along with co-op, [we had] the idea of sort of a competitive Portal multiplayer."

"We went down that path, actually, for a little while and had something up and running -- the best way to describe it is sort of speedball meets Portal. You know, a sports analog.

"And it quickly became apparent that while it's fun for about two seconds to drop portals under people and things like that, it quickly just devolves into pure chaos.

"It lost a lot of the stuff that was really entertaining about Portal, which was puzzle-solving. Cooperative puzzle-solving was just a much more rewarding path."

The idea was that one team had to move a ball from one place to another, while the other team tried to stop it through the clever use of portals. While it sounds good in theory, Valve said that it turned out a mess that was not fun.

Portal 2 will, however, contain a cooperative multiplayer component that will see players take the role of two robots that must pass a series of challenges working together. Not many details have been released about this new addition to the franchise, but the trailer does look interesting.

This feature alongside the many others shown during Gamescom 2010 and E3 2010 make Portal 2 seem like one of the most promising releases of early 2011. This is the first non-Left 4 Dead game to come out of Valve in awhile, with the fans eagerly expecting the announcement of Half-Life 2: Episode 3.

Portal 2 is set to be released on the 9th of February 2011 on the Xbox 360, the PlayStation 3 and the PC.

Portal 2 cooperative trailer: