How Valve Opened Up Portal 2

They both take place in the same universe, although we think of Portal as taking place in Aperture Science, which is this absurd bubble buried in the ground where anything goes, to a certain extent.

Internally we think of it it, if it's the X-Files, Half-Life is the meta, ongoing story and Portal games are the self-contained, funny, absurd episodes.

The Jim Rose Circus Show.

Or the one with the genie with the three wishes.

The ones that were good.

I didn't want to say that but yeah, the good ones.

Aperture Science is better than Black Mesa. Black Mesa blew up the world.

We will say Black Mesa, they're a bunch of snooty toots, who think they're so great, and then they destroyed the world.

Way to go.

We definitely think of it as snobs versus slobs, and Black Mesa is the snobs and Aperture is the slobs, the loveable goofballs.

It is. It's gone off to certification. We sent it to Microsoft and Sony. They're evaluating it and everything's going well. We're set.

This was a weird one, because it was so smooth. It was a little anti-climactic, in a way.

There wasn't the panic at the end. In the old days, with Half-Life 2 when it was PC only, they'd be working on it until the night of release. Now you have to have it done. The certification process is long and you have to allow some time for changes after that.

There is a sadness. It's not a depression about the product, but we've all been working together really intensely. In our room where we've been working for two years on Portal, seeing people they've moved on to go do other things.

Everybody at Valve, your desk is on wheels. You move where you're needed. So people have wheeled their desks out and the room feels empty now.

We'll start up another project. There is also a sense of relief because it's over.

People are really proud of it. At the end we played ourselves a bunch, and there a sense of accomplishment, of this is good, it's really good. When Gabe says he considers it the best game Valve ever produced, there's a reason for that.

If you looked at Half-Life 2 to The Orange Box, which had such great stuff, and Left 4 Dead 1 and 2 to this, we keep getting better at doing it and delivering a fun experience.

Valve definitely gets better delivering things - I know Portal 2 slipped - but generally on time. Valve still has this reputation of being a company that takes a long time to make games. We've shipped how many games in six years? A lot.

What game?

Well, Portal takes place in the Half-Life universe, and also, we don't know what you're talking about.

Never been asked it. You're the first one.

We'll have a think about it and then get back to you.

Rudest interview ever. I'm out of here.

Actually, I'm just going to shoot a mail. Hey, somebody mentioned Half-Life. What is the deal with that thing? We're going to find out what's happening.

It would be spoilerish to bring it in.

Aperture Science can keep going on and on and on.

Aperture Science is as big as we want to make it. I will tell you the earth does not get vaporised at the end of Portal, so it's still possible...

At least not all of it.

A big chunk of it does. The structure of Aperture as this fun house of science certainly supports more things.

Apocalypse has multiple meanings.

None of which we'll define today.

I will define one, which is you blew up Aperture so in terms of the micro-climate of Aperture Science, it was an apocalyptic event. Everything got destroyed within Aperture. That's the sense we talk about it in.

Portal 1, I can state it clearly now, took place place just after the Combine invasion, which was in a sense an apocalyptic event. Half-Life is an apocalyptic game. Apocalypse doesn't necessarily mean last human on earth, though.

Yeah, a long time after the first game, without getting specific about how long.

They could have repopulated the entire earth at this point and it's under a 7-Eleven.

We don't know.

What's the movie where they hide in a bomb shelter underneath the city?

But there was no apocalypse and he comes up and everything's fine? Blast from the Past.

It was actually a good movie.

Maybe that's what happens.