Victor Experiences An Emotion.

Footage of Victor Frankenstein fucking around in his attic.

Wow!

Wow, wow, that was so much fun. I have a lot of thoughts about it, so I’m just going to toss them all below. Spoilers, of course.

The game was an absolute mind-fuck, having to deal with three portals and two timelines. Maybe if everything “clicks” well for you it wouldn’t be so hard, but I found it really difficult -- probably up there with Portal Stories: Mel’s advanced mode.

The human storage from Portal 2′s co-op! It’s neat to see it again!

The portal community just fucking hates elevators apparently. Everyone’s desperate to use pneumatic vents and dematerializers and everything else in place of just a normal elevator.

!!!!!!!!The Announcer!!!!!!! Portal Reloaded has no companion core character like Wheatley or Virgil -- it’s you and the announcer the whole time. And I’m okay with that! Harry does an awesome voice (as expected; I’m so glad he got to voice it), and the way they portrayed the Announcer is really interesting in this game. I would tentatively say they gave him some emotion and character? He still fits into the original role of “fully robotic emergency system AI” well, but also seems to really care about (or at least be passionate about succeeding in) doing his job and saving the facility, without ever forming an attachment to the main character and having absolutely no reservations about literally forcing them to do whatever necessary while still providing encouragement. A super neat dynamic and it makes me happy to see the Announcer got so much love in the game!

This game feels like the spiritual remake of Aperture Tag, in a way. Being woken up from stasis to train for a specific task with an AI leading you through it, getting a special portal-like gun that turns on and off as you walk through colored fields, etc. Even the die or go free ending is sort of similar, at least in basic concept.

The humor in Portal Reloaded was excellent. It really did feel like the classic dark humor, especially like that early on in Portal 2.

I like where the plot went with this one! It’s not nearly so story driven, so even if the ending is kind of sudden and technically the whole game is overall inconsequential, I prefer that to the developer biting off more than they can chew and trying to actually directly work it into the pre-Portal 2 storyline. Portal Stories: Mel was able to work its status as a midquel into the story nicely, but I’m glad that this one just did its own thing and left it there since the driving force of the story was “stop Chell from defeating GLaDOS in Portal,” which obviously can’t happen. Overall, the plot was a very nice way to tie together the 25 test chambers without trying to turn it into some big story-driven thing or give it some big bad boss. It’s semi-short, and very enjoyable!

I also went wild at the headcrabs. I know that for the most part Portal and Half Life keep themselves separate, so while that was very overt, it was unexpected and enjoyable.

TL;DR: very good game. Loved seeing more announcer content; I feel like he’s an underutilized character. Not some big story thing, it was just a cute little thing tying together 25 really hard test chambers.

I had fun!

Oh fuck I forgot portal reloaded is out, I’ll be back in five hours after playing the entire thing in one sitting

portal coffee shop au 

This next test involves the Aperture Science Pain-Limited Insufferable New Killing Obstacle. Or "PLINKO" for short. Originally designed for equines, we have now repurposed it for human testing. Good luck.

imagine your pompous self-important ass of a colleague finally fumbles it with the goddess of magic, he goes into isolation for two years, is stripped of most his magic, and youre revelling in the schadenfreude, only for him to show up with a baddie hanging off his arm, skin glowing, a stable job, a hero of baldur's gate, a new, humble(r), #blessed 🙏 attitude, and a wedding invite. id chew off my arm.

The consequence of making your creation 8 feet tall is that being scooped up/carried/dragged is a looming threat.

“It’s a magic gun. You channel your mana into it and it fires it out as a beam of energy, like any other magic weapon really.”

When you’ve accidentally fallen in love with a fish

L. Let them cuddle.

(Based on the response to this ask.)

Character designs/AU belong to @aspidateasteism!

Bonus: Wink!