Portal 2’s writer talks difficulty, co-op speedruns

14 March 2011

Remember when the platform was sliding into the fire pit and I said “Goodbye”, and you were, like, “No way!” And then I was all, “We pretended we were going to murder you?”

Well, there might be some of that in Portal 2, but nothing you won’t already be prepared for.

Talking at PAX East (via Joystiq), Portal 2 writer Erik Wolpaw said that, “We’re going to train you. At no point are we going to ask you do something that we haven’t prepared you to do.

“One of the things we learned after releasing Portal 1 was that there were a couple puzzles in Portal 1 that required some sort of twitchy ninja skills to actually execute the solution.”

Valve apparently monitored the game’s user activity over Steam, and determined that those people who quit the game “almost universally” quit after playing one of the game’s two most difficult bits.

On the topic of some record speedruns through the first game, Wolpaw also said that “I pretty much will lay down the gauntlet and say no one’s going to solve Portal 2 in ten minutes,” but also added that, due to its complexity, “we cannot wait for the video where the guy and his partner who manage to solve co-op in whatever the fastest time is.”

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