Portal 2 Will Have Co-Op

[pwnophobia]

http://evavhost.com/i/news/portal.jpg

On the heels of the Portal 2 Announcement (http://www.evilavatar.com/forums/showthread.php?t=107813), Kotaku (http://kotaku.com/5486758/portal-2-adds-multiplayer-co+op-hits-this-holiday?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+kotaku/full+(Kotaku))has word that the game will feature a unique story driven co-op mode. Check out Gamestop's (http://www.gamestop.com/Catalog/ProductDetails.aspx?product_id=77276)product description below.

Coming this holiday. Portal 2 is the sequel to 2007's Game of the Year and draws from the award-winning formula of innovative game play, story, and music that earned the original over 70 industry accolades. Features single and multiplayer co-op modes. The single-player portion of Portal 2 introduces a cast of dynamic new characters, a host of fresh puzzle elements, and a much larger set of devious test chambers. Players will explore never-before-seen areas of the Aperture Science Labs and be reunited with GLaDOS, the occasionally murderous computer companion who guided them through the original game. The game's two-player cooperative mode features its own entirely separate campaign with a unique story, test chambers, and two new player characters. This new mode forces players to reconsider everything they thought they knew about portals. Success will require them to not just act cooperatively, but to think cooperatively.

[Wyrm]

WTF? Not something I would have expected, but exciting nonetheless.

[modeps]

This is a recipe for completely hilarity.

[Wyrm]

I was kinda hoping they would change up the setting a lot, but it doesn't sound that way. The Game Informer covers are damned cool though.

[yutt]

I was kinda hoping they would change up the setting a lot, but it doesn't sound that way.The portal into a jungle on the Game Informer cover doesn't seem like a setting change? What, pray-tell, did you expect?

[Morpheus]

Holy shit that is awesome news!

Portal is one of the greatest game of all time, can't wait for the second!

[net7runner]

This is a recipe for completely hilarity.
My friends had a similar problem when they were playing the LEGO games. Turns out you can kill your "teammates" and take their points. They rarely finished a level.

I look forward to the metagame of "how many ways can I gruesomely murder you while looking innocent."

[White667]

Yeah, man I can imagine having some major fun killing my friends on this. xD Shooting portals under and then continuously having them loop falling or somewhat. Could be fun.

[Capt_Thad]

Co-op portal? The possibilities are astounding.

[TeeCakes]

Guess they'll need to make more portal colors than just Orange and Blue

[rulyblue]

The later levels of Portal required a bit of hand-eye co-ordination. Tough enough for one person to plan out a series of portal jumps, but if your next portal is required for your friends to jump into while they are falling the difficulty scales dramatically. I suggest playing with friends only and not random strangers. I also suggest a plan of attack and a Snickers.

[Suicidal ShiZuru]

The Co-Op is a separate campaign with two new characters which is a good thing.

[Rafer]

I wonder how co-op will work... one person has the gun, the other person gives instructions?

[SwitchBlade_Jax]

I did not see that coming or even think to ask for it. Hell yes, can I please have another?

[brandonjclark]

I wonder how co-op will work... one person has the gun, the other person gives instructions?


I wouldn't be surprised to see a gun for each player, the caveat being either player would have only one side of the portal they can fire.

Sounds fucking delicious!

[Capt_Thad]

I wouldn't be surprised to see a gun for each player, the caveat being either player would have only one side of the portal they can fire.

Sounds fucking delicious!

hah I didn't think of that, one portal per. That would be pretty crazy.

[Ruff_Daimont]

Okay...didn't see this one coming... I enjoyed the first portal immensely...(I'm still working on the XBLA version advance chambers)

Anyway....I hope they can pull me in just as they did in the first one... GlaDos was an incredible adversary...

And (to please my GF) put the companion cube back in there.... She loved that part of the game... (and when she loves something I can play it...)

[Anenome]

Sounds like a rehash.

It'd better not be a rehash.

[Anenome]

And (to please my GF) put the companion cube back in there.... She loved that part of the game... (and when she loves something I can play it...)

*Shakes head* Seriously... grow a pair. Or, you know, marry her and be unhappy for the rest of your life.

Parting shot: Once a girl has you that wrapped around her finger she's unwilling to renegotiate the power ratio of the relationship. Therefore, you've ceded to her power that you cannot recover within the context of this relationship.
Your only option is to break-up with her or accept it forever. And if you break-up you should probably take some time to fix your own issues, to wonder why you'd accept this sort of relationship, and grow up a bit before getting into a new relationship which would otherwise most likely end up the same way.

There's my snap-judgment, completely patronizing, fatherly advice for you :P

[lockwoodx]

Guess they'll need to make more portal colors than just Orange and Blue

Add green, yellow, and black. Then you can have the portal Oylmpics.

[Aneurhythmia]

Sounds like a rehash.

Yeah, I'll just keep playing Portal 1 co-op without having to shell out cash again.

[ThomasPaine]

I bet that they will make it so you only have control of first portal, while the other person has control of the second portal. This would decrease the amount of griefing that could occur.

[Anenome]

Yeah, I'll just keep playing Portal 1 co-op without having to shell out cash again.
The co-op sounds largely tacked on from the description. Would be different if the whole game was co-op.

It sounds like Portal 2 will have the same premise as Portal 1, I think that's a problem.

If I were conceiving what to do with Portal 2, it would be to graduate it and take it to the next level:

Our protagonist awakens out in the real world, being dragged away from the GlaDOS explosion by some robot janitor. There's only one thing on her mind: Why? Why me?

She breaks free of the robots grip, grabs the fallen portal gun, and dashes away, portalling through the fence and disappearing into the foliage outside a nearby city drainage ditch. She spends a week in a homeless camp living under some bridge while she plots her revenge.

The camp's been augmented with new portals that serve the needs of the community and make her the queen of the homeless. She's got a latrine portal that has the entrance on the ground, and the exit far away, downstream on some rock facing the river.

This latter portal is also halfway submerged in the water, providing a stream of clean water coming back to the camp, which has been redirected from the latrine areas using a wood plank, and provides running water (and due to the angle of the rock portal provides only clean water).

In return, she mobilizes a homeless army to surveil the corporate compound she knows must hold information about why.

Within a week she's got enough intelligence about security patrols and the like for a strike into the company offices to find some information about what happened to her and why and who's responsible. But first she needs some equipment.

She bids farewell to the homeless camp and apologizes as she shuts down their portals.

By day she walks into a survivalist store wearing a backpack with the portal gun inside, which she plans to claim as a movie prop if they search her on the way out. Here she surreptitiously plants a portal on a wall behind a large shipping box then covers it up with the box again.

Once the store closes she plants the other portal and enters the store, pushing the box out of the way. She loads up on clothing, rope, crowbar, and other infiltration gear.

She heads back to the river near the compound to prep and wait for dark. She puts on her new clothing and gear and spends the rest of the evening shooting the portal gun at a target she marked out on a concrete wall with chalk and rigging a crude sight onto the portal gun made with some lumps of polymer clay and a McDonald's straw which allows her to hit the wall target accurately from far away.

Then, finally, it's dark and time for the plan to proceed. She knows she needs to move high, much higher than the compound she plans to infiltrate for the plan to work.

She hikes near to the complex fence. The complex itself is surrounded by nearby hi-rises and city towers less than a quarter mile away. A high-rise window provides that flat surface a portal needs to remain stable. She chooses a nearby high rise and randomly shoot at the windows halfway up and with a few shots finally gets one to stick.

Then she shoots the 2nd portal at the wall of the canal right next to her which allows her to look out from about the 30th floor of the office building to the compound a ways below, the one she must infiltrate.

The compound itself is an expansive building, not tall, only two stories, but very wide, meaning that this plan should work.

There's only one way to take advantage of this situation. She leans through the portal, balancing just on the edge of falling, and takes close aim at the roof of the compound through the makeshift straw-sight.

And just as she's sure she's got her aim, she leans forward every so slightly, gently falling through the portal and out of the 30th story window to avoid its closing as the new portals open, and takes her shot at the compound, praying it gets there and opens before she hits the pavement below.

She has just enough time, with the air stinging her eyes, to look down and fire the second portal into the concrete below her, which opens fully just before she hits and she braces for impact instinctively, but then laughs as she's flung straight up into the air above the compound, upside down.

As the fall crests, giving that weightless feeling, she straightens and falls back into the portal, now seeing her reflection in the office building windows as they race by her vertically, seem to pause, and then race past again in the other direction as she falls back into the portal.

She waits patiently as the momentum recedes within a dozen more rebounds and she's finally at rest between the portals. From here, she climbs out onto the roof of the compound. The easy part is over.

...

Portal 2 with you back inside a testing chamber? Blegh. Step it up a notch or don't even bother. Takes the brakes off.

[brandonjclark]

The co-op sounds largely tacked on from the description. Would be different if the whole game was co-op.

It sounds like Portal 2 will have the same premise as Portal 1, I think that's a problem.

If I were conceiving what to do with Portal 2, it would be to graduate it and take it to the next level:

Our protagonist awakens out in the real world, being dragged away from the GlaDOS explosion by some robot janitor. There's only one thing on her mind: Why? Why me?

She breaks free of the robots grip, grabs the fallen portal gun, and dashes away, portalling through the fence and disappearing into the foliage outside a nearby city drainage ditch. She spends a week in a homeless camp living under some bridge while she plots her revenge.

The camp's been augmented with new portals that serve the needs of the community and make her the queen of the homeless. She's got a latrine portal that has the entrance on the ground, and the exit far away, downstream on some rock facing the river.

This latter portal is also halfway submerged in the water, providing a stream of clean water coming back to the camp, which has been redirected from the latrine areas using a wood plank, and provides running water (and due to the angle of the rock portal provides only clean water).

In return, she mobilizes a homeless army to surveil the corporate compound she knows must hold information about why.

Within a week she's got enough intelligence about security patrols and the like for a strike into the company offices to find some information about what happened to her and why and who's responsible. But first she needs some equipment.

She bids farewell to the homeless camp and apologizes as she shuts down their portals.

By day she walks into a survivalist store wearing a backpack with the portal gun inside, which she plans to claim as a movie prop if they search her on the way out. Here she surreptitiously plants a portal on a wall behind a large shipping box then covers it up with the box again.

Once the store closes she plants the other portal and enters the store, pushing the box out of the way. She loads up on clothing, rope, crowbar, and other infiltration gear.

She heads back to the river near the compound to prep and wait for dark. She puts on her new clothing and gear and spends the rest of the evening shooting the portal gun at a target she marked out on a concrete wall with chalk and rigging a crude sight onto the portal gun made with some lumps of polymer clay and a McDonald's straw which allows her to hit the wall target accurately from far away.

Then, finally, it's dark and time for the plan to proceed. She knows she needs to move high, much higher than the compound she plans to infiltrate for the plan to work.

She hikes near to the complex fence. The complex itself is surrounded by nearby hi-rises and city towers less than a quarter mile away. A high-rise window provides that flat surface a portal needs to remain stable. She chooses a nearby high rise and randomly shoot at the windows halfway up and with a few shots finally gets one to stick.

Then she shoots the 2nd portal at the wall of the canal right next to her which allows her to look out from about the 30th floor of the office building to the compound a ways below, the one she must infiltrate.

The compound itself is an expansive building, not tall, only two stories, but very wide, meaning that this plan should work.

There's only one way to take advantage of this situation. She leans through the portal, balancing just on the edge of falling, and takes close aim at the roof of the compound through the makeshift straw-sight.

And just as she's sure she's got her aim, she leans forward every so slightly, gently falling through the portal and out of the 30th story window to avoid its closing as the new portals open, and takes her shot at the compound, praying it gets there and opens before she hits the pavement below.

She has just enough time, with the air stinging her eyes, to look down and fire the second portal into the concrete below her, which opens fully just before she hits and she braces for impact instinctively, but then laughs as she's flung straight up into the air above the compound, upside down.

As the fall crests, giving that weightless feeling, she straightens and falls back into the portal, now seeing her reflection in the office building windows as they race by her vertically, seem to pause, and then race past again in the other direction as she falls back into the portal.

She waits patiently as the momentum recedes within a dozen more rebounds and she's finally at rest between the portals. From here, she climbs out onto the roof of the compound. The easy part is over.

...

Portal 2 with you back inside a testing chamber? Blegh. Step it up a notch or don't even bother. Takes the brakes off.

Yes, but you have to start somewhere for the new players to catch up with the old, and the lab enviro was a great place to learn. Now, the whole game better not be like that again.

[Capt_Thad]

The game was a series of puzzles with an amusing backstory. All they really need for me to be happy is a ton of crazy new puzzles, preferably with more variety and greater difficulty. That and the great sense of humor behind it all. I'm really not looking for an in-depth story experience with this.

[TheBot]

"Stop making me warp to the lava you dick."

I can hear the screams now :)

[Venkman]

The co-op sounds largely tacked on from the description. It sounds like Portal 2 will have the same premise as Portal 1, I think that's a problem.

http://www.thinkgeek.com/images/products/additional/large/office_space_kit_mat.jpg

[Anenome]

Portal 1 was so short largely because they ran out of puzzles that it's possible to put you through without covering the same ground again.

I feel sorry for anyone who claims that they just want Portal 1.5, a continuation of the status quo, because five minutes into the game you're going to yawn and say, "Ho hum, done it all before."

Normally I like co-op, it's one of my favorite game modes of all time and I am chagrined that more games don't have it. However, in this case, I have a little trouble seeing how it's going to work. Apart from simply having puzzles that require two people to solve, and that means simply adding another layer of complexity, there's not much they can do.

They can't give one player blue portals and the other orange, that violates the nature of the portal gun. Similarly, one gun's orange and blue portals are innately connected, you can't connect the portals or two disparate guns. Otherwise, you'd never be able to make more than one portal gun. So, they're in a situation where they have to violate the rules they've already established in P1 in order to make things more interesting for the co-op in P2, but what's more likely is that they'll not screw with the portal guns and simply make stupidly difficult puzzles that require two people and precise timing.

So, as should be clear by now, I'm definitely taking a 'wait and see' approach.

And I don't think any second game should be hampered by the ignorance of those who didn't play the first. They can easily add a training mode outside the context of the campaign proper rather than beginning the game back in the lab maze, when the first game already ended with you outside.

[ElektroDragon]

WTF? Not something I would have expected, but exciting nonetheless.

You wouldn't have expected it to include the latest "trend" in gaming? You should also expect it to have zombies. But maybe not, since that's what L4D is for. Still, if L4D wasn't also from Valve, Portal 2 would assuredly be full of zombies.... and co-op. Because that's what my beloved hobby has degenerated to. Zombies and co-op.

[Anenome]

I expected someone to remake Lemmings with zombies by now, tbh >_>

[Syl]

Otherwise, you'd never be able to make more than one portal gun.
Why not? I expect 4 portal guns by the end of Portal 2.

1 for Chel, the heroine of Portal 2 and her journey through the CRAZY OUTSIDE.
2 for the co-op pair. Probably a portal gun with a red/green portal gun or something to distinguish from the normal blue/orange. This, being a side mission, probably takes place inside aperture labs for the beginning part and then diverges heavily - as the original portal did.
3. Gordan Freeman needs one too. He'll get it, or at least, Alex will get it.

[Anenome]

Well, one thing I'm glad about, the art released with this announcement, and on one of the other threads, shows an outside scene along with a portal, implying we will not be spending the whole game in a lab. That might make me interested in playing it :P

[JazGalaxy]

Has anyone posted the additional info yet?

http://palgn.com.au/viewtopic.php?p=698170

this page will take you to the info plus links (further down the page) to the article scans. I don't reccomend you read the scans and just buy the magazine later, but the big info without spoiling anything seems to be...

-the game takes place a great distance in the future of the Portal universe
-.... yet somehow you still play as Chell
-The Coop mode is a seperate game from the single player and features you and your partner playing as robots equipped with portal guns.