Interview with Portal 2′s Erik Wolpaw

Nazif Bogdanovic: The first Portal ignited the industry, everybody cannot stop making cake references.  Its sequel definitely seems to be picking up its momentum so tell us about the reception Portal 2 has experienced thus far.

Erik Wolpaw: It’s been positive so far.  We’ve been showing the coop demo at PAX Prime and everybody seems to be happy with that.  Today we’re showing some of the single player campaign, a  couple of characters, one who we’ve shown before and one who we haven’t.  The character we’ve shown before is Wheatley who is a personality sphere who kind of accompanies you [voiced by]  Stephen Merchant, a British comic.  You may have seen him in Extras or The Office.  The character we’re introducing today is Cave Johnson who is founder and CEO of Aperture Science and he’s voiced by J.K. Simmons who’s a character actor.  He’s J. Jonah Jameson in Spider-Man and he was in Oz and the father in Juno, bunch of other stuff.

Nazif Bogdanovic: Very nice, it looks like you’re going all out with this one. If I’m not mistaken, I think I heard Gabe Newell saying “Portal 2 is going to be one of the biggest games Valve has done.”

Erik Wolpaw: It’s definitely one of the densest games, if not THE densest game really, just in terms of the moment to moment content.  There’s a LOT of stuff in Portal 2.

Pete Kassel: Some of the most interesting aspects is the way you put these games together.  It seems like you’re in this wonderful position, the way you deal with the industry where you really have the opportunity to go all out.  What sort of ways are you going to allow the community to see that aspect of it?

Atlas (right) and P-Body (left) join the quest for science in their own fully featured coop campaign!

Erik Wolpaw: Well, like every game we’ve released since…Episode One, I think?  It’ll have a commentary mode where you’ll be able to play the game through and there’ll be little spinning  commentary icons and if you hit, you’ll get some insight into some aspect of the design of the game.

Pete Kassel: Were you guys thinking about releasing some art books relating to the Portal series?

Erik Wolpaw: We certainly have enough material to fill about probably like 40 books, like an entire encyclopedia, but nothing we’re ready to talk about yet.

Wheatley (an AI core voiced by Stephen Merchant) lends the player a helping hand while showcasing Source's enahnced lighting capabilities.

Nazif Bogdanovic: The gameplay that we’ve seen thus far publicly, a lot of it looks really fun.  Some have come off to say it may be a little too challenging.  How do you guys approach the difficulty to make sure that it is fun for everybody but not to the point where it’s over the top?

Erik Wolpaw: It’s definitely no more difficult.  We’ve expanded the puzzle space by adding some new puzzle elements but it’s still the same simple central mechanic which is “you have a portal gun, you shoot two portals.”  Everything else that we’ve introduced is external to that.  You’re not going to be hitting anymore keys or anything like that.  We also designed it with the exact same philosophy we used for Portal 1 which is the entire game is sort of a deliberate training arc.  We will never ask you to do something that we haven’t prepared you for.  And again, we test our games rigorously from week one.  We’ve had people of all skill levels in the play testing and that’s how we fine-tuned the puzzles and again. I don’t think anyone’s going to have a frustrating time getting through the game.

Pete Kassel: Are you actually going to be able to see another human being?

Erik Wolpaw: Oh man, that would be–well, another human being?  You see yourself.  But anything else I would say would just be spoiler-ish.  So, one way or the other is a spoiler.  You can take comfort in the fact that it literally is like three and a half weeks [away] and you’ll find out.

Nazif Bogdanovic: Valve has a great record of supporting products post release, offering additional campaigns or updates for games such as Team Fortress, the Left 4 Dead series, Counter-Strike, etc.  Considering that Portal 2 is obviously a different model from said games and comes packed with single player and coop campaigns, does Valve have any plans to continue to support Portal 2 after launch?

Erik Wolpaw: Well, the only thing we’ve talked about so far is that we are going to be releasing some DLC but that’s the only details we’re giving out at this point.

Nazif Bogdanovic: Ok, so there is post release content?

Erik Wolpaw: There is going to be post release content.

The star of the single player campaign Chell Johnson (left) is accompanied once more by antagonist GladOS (right) who appears intent on showcasing her signature Aperture Science hospitality yet again.

Nazif Bogdanovic: Excellent.  Now, I know you get this a lot.  I’m not going to ask you anything about Half-Life 2: Episode Three.

Erik Wolpaw: Ok.

Nazif Bogdanovic: BUT…

Erik Wolpaw: Uh-oh.  Stealth Episode Three question, here we go!

Nazif Bogdanovic: Since Portal & Half-Life are in the same universe…is there any nugget, anything that you may throw to the fans in Portal 2 that might please Half-Life gamers in the meantime?

Erik Wolpaw: In Portal 1, we had some nods to the Half-Life series.

Nazif Bogdanovic: Those were very appreciated.

Erik Wolpaw: Yeah, and you know, they’re there in Portal 2 as well.  Using the same light touch, if you’re someone who knows the Half-Life series you’ll probably pick up on them and appreciate them.  And if you’re not familiar with the Half-Life series, it’ll probably just pass right by you and you won’t even notice.

Nazif Bogdanovic: I’ll be glad for that.  Thank you for your time, looking forward to Portal 2!

Erik Wolpaw: Thanks for coming out!

Portal 2 will be available on April 19th on PC, Mac, XBox360 & PS3