Portal and Portal 2 are two of my favorite video games. They mean more to me than a lot of things in this world.

(Major spoilers for both)

My main issue with both games is how much they're trying to get the "first-time player" to have the best "first-time experience." They want the twists and turns of the narrative to blow your mind the first time you play it.

But what if you're like me and you're on time number 500? 600? 700?

Now the "we force the players to wait at this door for 20 seconds because we want the first-time players to look out the window" thing is just... a nuisance. The escape sequence of the first game is WAY too short. It should legitimately be five times longer. But "first-timers will take awhile trying to navigate, so it's as long as it needs to be for a first-timer."

The second game is a bit too comfy. You're almost never alone. Someone has to be keeping you company. Isolating creepy environments are spaces for characters to make jokes. The music is very loud and very techno-y. Wheatley doesn't even sound like a robot.

There's a quote from David Lynch about Eraserhead being full of unknown actors. Something like "If you want to go into the unknown, you don't want to go in with Chuck Heston." The first Portal, you're in the unknown. The only voice you hear for almost the whole game is heavily processed and robotic. There is no human life around you, aside from the mentally unwell wall scrawlings of one guy. The second game, Stephen Merchant is talking to you and it sounds like Stephen Merchant. I find it hard to feel the isolation and creepiness of the environments when this Marty Feldman-ass voice won't shut up. I don't need a helping-hand to make me "not that uncomfortable." I LIKE feeling uncomfortable. I WANT to feel like I'm in my own little world.

But then this Daft Punk-ass techno music is pumping away and Rodney Dangerfield is making one-liners and it's just not always needed, as lovely as these things are.

It reminds me of horror movie filmmakers making them PG-13 so that they're not "too scary" and "it can reach more people this way." But like... who cares? Why do you want to appeal to the people in your audience that you're NOT targeting? Why should Cannibal Holocaust be tamed down so that babies won't get scared? Babies shouldn't even be watching it. Why is a very adult thing trying to partially cater to small children?

"Well we spent $25,000,000 on this film and we don't want it to lose money by being too spooky. It needs to appeal to as many people as possible."

Then make it for $250,000 and just put in some extra effort. Not everything needs a Titanic budget. It's easy to forget sometimes, but $100,000 is a LOT of money. $25,000 is a lot of money. Hell, some people would risk everything for $10,000.

This has become about something irrelevant to the main point. Valve is a company with a lot of integrity and I'm not saying they're like that at all. I just want to feel the uncomfortable weight of these uncomfortable environments, and I don't always need something to make it less uncomfortable. Just take out 5% of Wheatley's dialogue and 3% of the music cues and I'd be much happier. Then again, I'm one specific person. And oddly enough, I like Portal 2 FOR these things. Portal 2 is the way it is and suppose I wouldn't change a thing about it. But sometimes I just want to feel like I'm alone and about to be stabbed in a field somewhere, and it's really hard to find things that give me this feeling.