Portal 2

There is a part in Portal 2 soon after you escape from the Aperture Relaxation Center when the player as the elusive and, within the game, nameless character falls through a glass ceiling (Though a quick Google search will reveal her name to be Chell.) The player finds that they are in a glass cube. It is not hard to see that this cube is as high-tech as the facility it resides in, yet vegetation has grown  over it. The natural world is encroaching on Aperture Science at an alarming rate. The cube is mostly empty with just a a few things lying around. A portal opens up on a wall and, in case they didn't know already, the player knows that this is the cube where the first game started. It's obvious that Chell is right back where she started.

Portal 2 is a game that knows it's not in a vacuum and exactly what a developer can do within this new artistic medium. It's timely, dealing with issues of technological advancement for it's own sake, the blurred line between the natural and the artificial and, especially when looked at in conjunction with the Half Life series, the effects of a war between two corporations that have brilliant minds, unlimited money and no morality. They are aware they are making a game, not a movie, and use that to tell their story. Look at the very beginning of the game. Wheatley, played by Stephen Merchant who is one of my favorite actors and new favorite voice actors, tells you that you may have a little bit of brain damage. He tells you to speak. A giant A button with the message "Press A to speak" pops up on the screen. If you press A, you jump. Wheatley then tells you that you jumped , so try saying apple. Same thing; you jump. Wheatley then says that it'll have to do and the game moves on. This scene exists because it's hysterically funny, but also because it shows that Valve knows what they're doing. They rarely use cut-scenes or cinematics in any of their games; they tell the whole story from the first person perspective. They play with the medium because the medium needs to be played with. This game is a great game because it has something to say and knows how to say it without giving up.

Something people seem to forget about this game is how simple it is. There are, really, two active characters in the game besides the player; Wheatley, and GlaDos the big evil robot lady. Of course, there is also Cave Johnson (voiced by JK Simmons, who is also amazingly good,) but he is really just a recording. He is fantastically funny and informative, but he also isn't in the game beyond a few portraits and a gruff voice-recording. You could also argue that the turrets are characters, but they are more just obstacles to be overcome. So, again, two characters besides the player, who never speaks. Yet through darkly hilarious dialogue and through design choices they made with the world, Valve manages to convey all the meaning they need to. For instance, look the reoccurring theme of the blurred line between the natural and the artificial. To start with, Aperture is falling into disrepair and there is vegetation growing throughout the facility. Once Chell falls to the bottom, the old facilities are rundown and ravaged by age, not to mention surrounded by these massive caverns. Nature is reclaiming this area as well. Birds are even nesting down there. Wheatley is an AI, sure, but he speaks like a nervous human. He is all robot but he has a personality, something usually reserved for organic life. GlaDos embodies this idea more than anything else. She is an AI, but one derived from an organic consciousness (Caroline.) Though she is more monotonous than Wheatley, she still has a personality an plots revenge, something only humans and dolphins do. Then, there is also the fact that she is plugged into a potato battery for about half of the game. This is essentially an organic body for her. Even Chell has been augmented so that she can fall long distances without dying. There are more examples, but the point is that Valve is using the game medium to convey themes in a very subtle way. This is something lost in most games and for most developers.

Gameplay also holds meaning in this game. One of the most important things that video games tend to lack is a way to convey meaning that is unique to the medium. Valve uses the world's design and aspects of gameplay to make reflexive statements about the industry itself. Look at how Wheatley makes puzzles. All he does is cram two different test chambers that GlaDos made together to make one large test. One the first one that he makes, he even makes Chell run it twice because he's too lazy and stupid to make another one. This seems to be a very obvious statement about the lack of ideas in the industry. Wheatley takes the role of the designer or level designer who just doesn't care. The level doesn't matter, its a means to an end. There's also the introduction to the game I discussed earlier which pokes fun at the tutorials that most games start with. Then there's the conflict resolution button that Chell presses to stop the dispute between Wheatley and GlaDos, which is less meaningful but is using gameplay for comedy rather than as just something to do to make it to the next cut-scene.

This is what makes the game truly great, possibly even perfect. The gameplay and the narrative are inextricably entwined in Portal 2. One supports the other. You are always moving in this game; always doing something. The gameplay doesn't exist to advance the plot so much as it's where the plot lives. Everything happens within the context of the interaction between the player and the game. Wheatley can't hack anything until the player turns around. They could have easily had him just hack the door, but this works for the character and is tied to what makes a game a game. They use the unique tools that the medium gives them to tell a story that never could have been told in any other medium. The world is too deep for a film. It's too reliant on the actual senses for a book (would Cave Johnson be funny without JK Simmons' voice?) It's story is too tied into a player actually controlling Chell to be anything other than a game. That's the way it should be.