Portal 2
Portal 2 is a platform-puzzle video game developed by Valve Corporation. It was released in 2011 following the cult success of the earlier title Portal, which was praised for its originality and clever writing. The second game was a far more in-depth and expanded effort, and upon its release drew similar acclaim, winning the Golden Joystick award for 'Ultimate Game of the Year' amongst numerous other accolades. It is noteworthy to RSK fans for featuring the voice of Stephen Merchant in a prominent role as inept sidekick Wheatley.
Gameplay
The game consists of a succession of different rooms in which the player must find their way to the exit, armed only with a Portal Gun. This gun can shoot two 'portals' into the walls, allowing the player to travel through one and exit out of the other. The player must find a way to utilize both the gun and their surroundings in order to progress through the Aperture Science Facility. As the game goes on, more variables and elements are thrown into the mix, such as Weighted Companion Cubes, Thermal Discouragement Beams, Excursion Funnels, Hard Light Bridges and turrets.
Premise
The player takes on the role of Chell, a human who has been imprisoned in the Aperture Science Laboratory. She awakes to find herself in a stasis chamber, and is put through a cognitive test by a robotic voice before losing consciousness again. After many years, she is awoken by Wheatley (Stephen Merchant), an artificial intelligence robot who attempts to guide Chell to escape through the test chambers, which have been abandoned since the first game. While the two work their way through the facility, they come across the remains of GLaDOS (the villain from the first Portal title) and accidentally reactivate her. GLaDOS begins to take her revenge on Chell by putting her back into the test chamber, while Wheatley attempts to find a way for them to escape.
Wheatley
Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.
Wheatley is a bumbling, haphazard robot who guides the player through the early part of the game and gives them advice on how to progress through the first few levels. Initially an item of comic relief, Wheatley is at first an ally to the player but begins to change his mind when he sees an opportunity to seize control of the Aperture Science facility.
When Stephen Merchant agreed to take the role of Wheatley, he was unaware of the cult following the Portal series had amassed. It was only through talking to friends that he realised there was a huge amount of hype surrounding Portal 2, and this led to him feeling pressured by the expectation. He spent 16 hours in the recording studio in order to fulfill all the dialogue necessary for the character, and later lamented how difficult and exhausting the process of recording a video game voice was. He was quoted in this interview as saying:
"I have to say, I found the entire thing really exhausting. More than anything I've ever done before because I'm in this little recording booth, shouting down these imaginary corridors, imaginary gantries, pretending to fall off things and really trying to move around and live it as best I could. I know it sounds really pretentious, but really try to move around like this robot so my voice would feel like it was animated. I was really working hard to try and put myself in that environment, I guess, which is not something I normally do as a performer. Normally I just rock up and I do the lines and I go away again. I'm not an accomplished actor. But for some reason I was really working hard. I guess because I wasn't really in a set, I wasn't in a costume, so I was using my imagination as best I could to try to imagine this would. And again, the guys at Valve were very good at painting a portrait of what the world would look like before it was designed."
Despite finding the process particularly challenging, his performance as Wheatley was met with almost universal praise by fans and critics. Many considered the frantic and scatterbrained nature of Wheatley to be both hugely entertaining, and a good contrast to the more calm and sinister voicing of GLaDOS. Comparisons were drawn between Merchant's voicing of Wheatley and his performance as Darren Lamb in Extras, with one reviewer saying they were 'basically the same character'. Merchant won two awards for his portrayal of Wheatley: The 'Outstanding Character Performance' award at the Interactive Achievement Awards, and 'Best Performance by a Human Male' in the 2011 Spike Video Game Awards. Stephen's role in Portal 2 also opened him up to an entirely new fanbase who identify him primarily as Wheatley.
Since the release of Portal 2, Stephen's has voiced a new appreciation for video games as a form of entertainment, and has hinted that he would return for a Portal 3 if such a project were to be announced.
Quotes
- Wheatley: Most test subjects do experience some, uh, cognitive deterioration after a few months in suspension. Now, you've been under for quite a lot longer, and it's *not* out of the question that you might have a *very* minor case of serious brain damage! But don't be alarmed, all right? Uh, although if you do feel alarmed, try to hold on to that feeling because that is the proper reaction to being told that you've got brain damage.
- Wheatley: Whoah! Hello? Can you see the portal gun? Also, are you alive? That's important; should have asked that first. I'm - do you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to work on the assumption that you're still alive, and I'm just going to wait for you up ahead. I'll wait - I'll wait one hour. Then I'll come back, and, assuming I can locate your dead body, I'll bury you. All right? Brilliant! Go, team! See you in an hour! Hopefully! If you're not - dead.
- Wheatley: All right, so that last test was seriously disappointing. Apparently, being civil isn't motivating you, so let's try it her way, all right, fatty? Adopted... fatty! Fatty, fatty no parents?
- Wheatley: Here's an interesting story. You might like this. I almost got a job down here in Manufacturing. Guess who the foreman went with? Only an exact duplicate of himself. Nepotism. Ended up giving me the WORST job, tending to all the smelly humans... The...um... sorry.. I wouldn't say smelly. Just attending to the humans... Sorry. That just slipped out. A bit insensitive. Umm... The smelly humans...