Portal 2 - Chet Faliszek Q&A Feature

Chet Faliszek is the co-writer of Portal and Portal 2, with credits on Half-Life 2: Episode One and Episode Two. The 'Company People' section of Valve's official website has this to say about Chet:

"We are all still trying to figure out exactly what it is that Chet does at Valve, but at the very least he occupies office space on the 11th floor as self-proclaimed Mr. Awesome."

TVG sat down with Valve's 'Mr. Awesome' to find out more about Portal 2 at a recent event showcasing its brand new co-op campaign.

Could you just explain a bit about what you're showing today?

Today we're showing the intro levels of the co-op experience. In co-op we still wanted to do some training but figured you're probably familiar with some of the elements, so we have really accelerated training. So what you see there is just... we've broken the co-op game into multiple tracks and that's the very beginning track - and we're going to start adding more elements to it as you go on.

What sort of additional elements?

It's everything that we have from the single-player game: so we have the light bridges, the tractor beams - the paint - all those, and we add them all together as well. But much like the single-player it's just not like, 'Oh my god it's just so difficult'... like if you watch the video it's like, 'I'm never going to be able to do that' - we make sure we train you on how those different elements work together and how you work together. So the very first - did you play the very, very first...

I got a little look at it...

So it's very, very like, 'Look, you can pass something to your friend, he can carry it, he can put a portal over a portal,' that kind of thing. So we start that slow, ramp it up really quick, where you're learning all these... you're learning paint and bridges, and all this stuff's going to happen, yet it'll make sense to you.

So the co-op campaign is totally separate from the normal single-player levels; they're a separate set of levels...

It's entirely separate levels, entirely separate story; it takes place after Portal 2's single-player.

And you're playing as robots... What's the story in the co-op then?

Well we're not really giving that away. You're no longer a human, you're playing as robots and Chell definitely has - she has a different relationship with you because you are a robot, she kind of has some affinity for you - but she definitely has something she wants from you. Chell can't help - I mean GLaDOS can't help being GLaDOS.

How long is the co-op part of the game?

It's weird because, Portal - by its nature - length is determined by your ability to solve puzzles. So, less smart people get a really long experience [laughs]... so a lot of value playing hungover. No, so the co-op's about twice as long as the original one: so however long that took you, co-op's going to take you twice as long. Single-player is... twice as long plus... a bunch more. It ended up we expanded out even more than we thought we were originally going to.

In terms of the single-player, what's new for Portal 2?

Well, so probably one of the most striking things people picked up on is that you're hearing Stephen Merchant speaking; he's not the only new thing there - there are new characters there which help give you a different way to look at GLaDOS. You have a more extended world so, you know in Portal 1 you had the behind the scenes, you had the testing lab? Here you can see where the plant life's grown over compared to the destructed scenes and you know a bunch of other different things. You know, we've just added a lot of density to what's happening; it's the densest game of experience that Valve's ever released.

In Portal 1 we had the idea of the walls moving - in our minds that's how it always was working - but we couldn't pull it off. We are now: if you've seen the videos it's like entire walls are reconfiguring, puzzles are being created right before your eyes, so that was one of the cool things we brought in. There's just a lot of... animation going on, things in the background... it's definitely a game that... you can run through and play it, but if you just sit back - especially Stephen Merchant, he'll talk forever - if you just sit back and approach it slowly there's just a lot of content to soak in.

How has your approach to the level design differed from the first game?

As we added all these different elements to it... well, there's two things: we add all these different elements and we put them in different places. So one of the things we always want to train you on is: 'what's the puzzle?' So if you go into a new place and you don't understand 'this is the portal surface', or 'this is where I need to go', and it's got different artwork you're going to be lost. So we have to first, in new areas, always step you into that; and then we step you into these new elements that you can use inside of that. And we can do that because we test and test and test and test; and we always want to make sure it's not about dexterity with the controller; it's about your brain being able to solve a puzzle, so if you can figure out how to solve a puzzle you can solve them. And it's through testing, and we just keep testing as we're expanding the world out.

Are you going to have a set of harder versions of the single player puzzles just as you did in Portal 1?

Well, there are achievements tied to going through them in different ways, and definitely that's a way to expand out the replayability of that, and co-op brings that out as well. But you know, definitely the easiest way to expand Portal 1 would've just been to make Portal 2 harder, but we wanted to avoid that, because we wanted to make sure that you could get to the end of the game. Because that's the cool thing about Portal: you started it, and you ended it - you had that experience. So we train you on your tools and we train you how to put them all together so that - in a weird way Portal, to me, is this game that made me feel really smart often - like, way more than it should have right? - and Portal 2 has that same kind of thing where you're actually, 'Oh alright yeah, yeah I feel good about that.' And so it's taking all those elements and putting them together.

Which of the new elements are you most happy with?

Honestly there are these things that fling you around Portal Faith Plates, that just... I just like flinging through the air - and especially in co-op you can do what we call air taunts, where you can kind of do like little tricks in the air as you're going; it means nothing but it's fun. I don't know it just has a sense of really fast movement that's really fun.

Yeah, I mean that's one of the things that was most fun about Portal 1 as well, just setting up a couple of portals and whizzing through...

Yeah, well especially with co-op, because you know when you did that in single-player it was often hard to reorient yourself, while in co-op you have a partner, so we use that and it's actually one of the tests we're showing today - which shows the first time you train with that. So you just have the person really flying through and then you take the top portal and put it some place else and you'll whoooo! [makes gesture to indicate someone flying through the air].

So the co-op is online and there's going to be split-screen as well...

Split-screen as well. You know when we first released Portal 1 we'd always see people playing and we'd hear these stories like, 'Oh my mom played with me, she told me where to put all the portals and stuff.' And so now you can actually give that person the controller and have them give it a go.

TVG would like to thank Valve's 'Mr. Awesome', Chet Faliszek for taking the time to speak with us about Portal 2, which is due out on PC, PS3, and Xbox 360 on April 22nd.