The commentary track they did for Portal is really educational They talk about how the very first puzzle with the portal gun is very simple to solve if you know how it works, but almost impossible to solve by accident
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You have to complete this very specific series of actions to show that you understand the concept of making a portal, going into it, redirecting the portal to a new third location, etc
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As an intentional gate to make it impossible to have the thing all too many games do where a player who doesn't get it kind of stumbles through the early game by accident anyway and then gets completely stuck midway through and gives up in frustration
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Hence before you get the chance to actually use the gun yourself and start randomly spamming portals The puzzle to actually *get* the gun requires you watch it being slowly, systematically used in an automatic sequence by the robot arm
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The lack of a time limit (and often, lack of a death condition) on early puzzles was genius. That first game let me put a controller in my dad’s hands and the game taught him not just how to play itself, but how to play *videogames*. Including how to use the controller.
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Yeah they made a game design decision very early on to limit the "danger" factor of this game because it could quickly become un-fun otherwise Falling damage just can't be a thing if you want the game to be fun, hence Chell's magic heel-springs
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Replying to @arthur_affect @muddlewait and
They even lampshade it with one of the GLaDOS dialogues -- talking about how it's an absolute rule in this universe that going through a portal is completely safe, portals have no physical effect on the body whatsoever (But *holding the portal gun* may give you cancer)
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Replying to @arthur_affect @muddlewait and
I love how Portal 2 lampshades how harmless the turrets are ("We fire the whole bullet, giving you 32% more bullet per bullet!") I.e. it's not actually a gun, it doesn't set off the propellant in the round, it's just a spring-loaded pop-gun that shoots the whole round at you
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Replying to @arthur_affect @muddlewait and
Presumably the muzzle flash and gunfire noises are SFX Cave Johnson added after the fact
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you gotta love the huckster smugness about it too, like other guns have been cheating you out of most of the bullet this whole time, like it's the empty air in chip bags
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And the way this lets them also store more bullets in the turret (they're just haphazardly piled in there, the whole thing is one big spring-loaded chamber) Lampshading how they never run out of ammo
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Replying to @arthur_affect @Nymphomachy
In the first game I always thought they were some kind of energy weapon like the Combine turrets they were copied from.
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