14 DAY TRIAL // Portal 2 has been released at the beginning of the week and, even if some players might beg to differ, serves as yet another great example of how video games need to be done, with a great story, a well-paced narrative and some of the best characters this side of large scale role-playing games.
We already highlighted one of the game's characters, Wheatley, with yesterday's diary, but now we'll talk about the rest of the "beings" found in Portal 2, with some recurring ones like GLaDOS, the antagonist, or new ones, like the two robots from cooperative mode, Atlas and P-body.
Valve has a great reputation when it comes to crafting believable characters that actually manage to convey lifelike emotions, and instantly carve a connection with the playable character, with the most representative example being Alyx Vance from Half Life 2.
Now, with Portal 2, the company offers another textbook example of how to make characters feel human, even if they're actually robots with their own artificial intelligence.
While many games just use robots as target practice, mainly because they make the perfect enemy and don't leave players feeling bad after they kill them, Valve tries to showcase their humanity and how, even with their cold and calculated logic, AIs can be more than just simple enemies.
Throughout the game, the heroine, Chell, is interacting with all sorts of robots, from GLaDOS to Wheatley or the regular turrets, each with unique motivations, dialog and different, yet important roles in the story of Portal 2.
Through the single-player as well as the cooperative campaign, Valve makes players care about the lifeless robots more than most games manage to do with actual living and breathing human beings.
Given the choice, I'll always prefer GLaDOS to a dull, one-dimensional villain, or Wheatley to an annoying companion who doesn't know when to shut up or who barely manages to rise above his role as a bullet sponge in first-person shooters.