Portal

Story

Portal's plot is revealed to the player through audio messages or "announcements" from GLaDOS and visual elements in rooms found in later levels. According to The Final Hours of Portal 2, the year is "somewhere in 2010" - twelve years after Aperture Science was abandoned. The game begins with Chell waking up from a stasis bed and hearing instructions and warnings from GLaDOS, an artificial intelligence, about upcoming tests. Chell enters various chambers that introduce players to the game mechanics one by one. GLaDOS's announcements serve as instructions for Chell and help the player progress through the game, but also develop atmosphere and characterize the AI as a person.[4] Chell is promised cake as a reward if she completes all the test chambers.[19] Chell walks through the empty enrichment center with GLaDOS being her only interaction. The closer the player gets to completion, the more sinister GLaDOS's motives and behavior become. Although she is supposed to be encouraging, GLaDOS' actions and speech indicate insincerity and callous disregard for the safety and well-being of the test subjects. The test chambers become increasingly dangerous as Chell progresses. The tests include a shooting course for military androids and some chambers that are flooded with a dangerous liquid. In another chamber, GLaDOS notes how important the Weighted Companion Cube, a waist-high box with a large pink heart on each side, is for Chell to pass the test. However, GLaDOS explains that it must be put to sleep in an "emergency intelligence incinerator" before Chell can proceed.[17] In some later chambers, there are automatic turrets with childlike voices (also voiced by McLain) that shoot at Chell, but only sympathize with her after they are destroyed or disabled.[20][21] After Chell completes the final test chamber, GLaDOS maneuvers Chell into an incinerator to kill her. Chell escapes with the portal gun and makes her way through the maintenance areas of the enrichment center.[22] GLaDOS panics and insists that she only wanted to kill Chell as part of the tests. GLaDOS asks Chell to assume the "party escort submission position" and lie face down on the floor so that a "party partner" can take her to her reward, but Chell continues her escape. In this section, GLaDOS talks to Chell when it becomes clear that the AI has killed everyone else in the center.[11][12] Chell makes her way through the maintenance areas and empty offices behind the chambers, sometimes following graffiti messages that point in the right direction. These backstage areas, which are in an extremely dilapidated state, stand in stark contrast to the pristine testing chambers. The graffiti includes statements such as "The pie is a lie" and pastiches of Emily Dickinson's poem "The Chariot," Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's "The Reaper and the Flowers," and Emily Brontë's "No Coward Soul Is Mine," referring to and mourning the death of the Companion Cube.[4] GLaDOS tries to dissuade Chell with threats of physical harm and misleading statements as Chell moves deeper into the maintenance areas. Chell reaches a large chamber with GLaDOS's hardware hanging overhead. GLaDOS continues to threaten Chell, but during the exchange of words, a bullet falls from GLaDOS and Chell throws it into an incinerator. GLaDOS reveals that Chell has just destroyed the morality or conscience core, one of the many "personality cores" that Aperture Science employees installed after the AI flooded the enrichment center with neurotoxin gas. Once it's removed, it can access the emitters again. A six-minute countdown begins as Chell removes and incinerates more personality cores from GLaDOS, while GLaDOS discourages her both verbally with taunts and juvenile insults and physically by firing missiles at her. After Chell destroys the last personality core, a malfunction rips the room apart and transports everything to the surface. Chell is then seen lying outside the gates of the facility amidst the remains of GLaDOS. After Portal 2 was announced, the ending was expanded in a later update. In this retroactive continuity, Chell is dragged away by an invisible being who speaks in a robotic voice, thanking her for taking the "party escort subjugation position."[15][23] In the final scene, after a long and rapid zoom through the bowels of the facility, a Black Forest cake[24] and the Weighted Companion Cube are seen surrounded by a mixture of shelves containing dozens of seemingly inactive personality cores. The cores begin to glow before a robotic arm descends and extinguishes the candle on the cake, darkening the room.[25] As the credits roll, GLaDOS gives a final report: the song "Still Alive," declaring the experiment a great success and showing the player that GLaDOS is still alive,[26] that her "lucky" core has not been deactivated.