Comment on Stardew Valley dethrones Valve classic as Steam’s top-rated game
altkey@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 week agoThe Talos Principle became an interesting spin on the idea of FPS puzzles that try to keep you engaged. They got more direct with introducing the lore of the world around each time (P1<TTP1≈P2<TTP2). The puzzles are probably less eye-catching because you rarely shoot yourself into air, they are closer to classic 2d logic timekiller games, but I find these games are what Valve need to look at to see if they want to expand the world like that in their own way. If we assume Portal 3 would be about portals, wouldn’t reinvent the formula from the ground up, I think they’d need to go for higher stakes, and seemingly expanding the world or the mission at hand (from the probably sterile conditions of it all affecting just Chel and Apperture’s robots and facilities), be it an escape into the outer world of some sort (although it overlaps with Half-Life, is it bad?) or make her herself not the only thing at stake. My only hope is that it won’t be AR\VR\whatever experience because it would make me nauseos and\or poor.
azertyfun@sh.itjust.works 1 week ago
(They’ve already stated they won’t do Portal: VR because of the nausea issue.)
I completely agree with your analysis, they would need to completely switch up the ambitions from a writing perspective for Portal 3 to make any sense. There are plenty of super interesting stories to be told in Aperture Labs, but I don’t think that Valve is structured to write any of them
Valve has always been “gameplay/tech first, story second”, and it just happened that Portal 2 delivered unexpectedly well on the writing. But I don’t think they can make a game with gameplay/tech twice as ambitious as Portal 2, and at the same time double down on Portal 2’s amazing writing. They’re just human and most of the people involved have moved on with their lives; in fact Portal 2 was their last truly ambitious narrative-heavy game, and they had to hire the old writers as consultants to make Alyx (which I haven’t played but from what I heard the narrative wasn’t on HL2’s level).
I’d love to be proved wrong but IMO there won’t be a Portal 3 for as long as Valve exists in its current form.
altkey@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 week ago
I agree. But hear me out:
Portal 3 explores the fleet of Gaben’s megayachts with puzzles to get a control of them and also some abordaging\swimming mini-games to get from one to another, from smaller to bigger, with the last one being the promised Aurora Borealis, where game leaves us on an uncertain moment after we too see the feared G-Man but in Freeman’s glasses, got catched by a Smoker’s tonque in mall ninja rainbow colouring, only to be freed by Pudge teaming up with Scout.
VALVE TEAM: THE END OF LIFE FOR DEATH FORTRESS: EPISODE FOUR: THE PORTAL TO THE INTERNATIONAL