The Besties - Y'all, Portal Still Rocks

Episode Date: May 1, 2020

This week starts off the new series on the best year for video games. Now with the spotlight on 2007, the gang of course had to discuss Portal and game developer Valve! Plus, the boys pitch Portal 3 concepts to a very special guest. Get the full list of games (and other stuff) discussed at www.besties.fan. Want more episodes? Join us at patreon.com/thebesties for three bonus episodes each month!

Did you guys see this new David Blaine special? I think it was like The Taste of Magic or something like that. A Taste of Magic? The Taste of Magic, something like that. The Magic of the Art of Magic and Cards and Magic. Did you guys see this special? No, I haven't seen it. No.

He does a lot of wild stuff. He goes in and eats Tom Brady's cups at his house and stuff like that. Sorry, he goes to Tom Brady his house and stuff like that but um he doesn't sorry he goes to tom brady's house and he just starts taking cup eats tom brady's cups in front of him was he invited uh i mean we have to assume that he was not intruding in on this that's not the point the there's this one bit where edward norton is there's no dialogue. There's no introducing this segment. Edward Norton it's in slow-mo. Edward Norton runs out of a

darkened alleyway and his feet are on fire and David Blaine starts spitting massive, a massive gush of water like squirtle levels of like blasting water to put the fire out on edward norton's feet

and then it's just over oh and that's just like a bit that's in it i've seen uh david blaine do this trick where he just spits out water like squirtle and i gotta be honest that's not magic guys it's not magic but edward norton's feet were on fire and see that's the that's not magic, guys. It's not magic. But Edward Norton's feet were on fire. And see, that's the element that makes me think it was actually an erotic dream that you did have that you don't understand, and now you're sort of exposing the world to it.

Yeah, none of us have seen this. I would not say I'm exposing the world, I'd say I'm welcoming the world in at the world's discretion. If that would be perhaps more accurate. What era Edward Norton was this? That might help narrow it down. Huh? Oh, the Hulk.

He was so mad about his feet that he turned green and killed David Blaine. But it was all part of the act. My name is Justin McElroy, and I know the best game of the year of the year before the best game of the best year, the game of the best, the game of the best of the year before the best game of the best year. The game of the best of the year. Of the year game. My name is Griffin McElroy and I know

the best year. Yes. My name is Chris Plant and the game is alive. Yes! My name is Russ Prustik and I know the best year of the games.

Oh, that's good. I should mention that that was a Twitter submission, so thank you, Twitter person that suggested that. Twitter person. I don't remember who suggested it, I'm sorry. Hollywood Russ can steal your shit, can't remember your name.

This is the besties where we talk about the latest and greatest in electronic entertainment it is a book club but for video games it's a king of the game of the year show that goes all year long and the games folks the games have left the building for a little while but we are not deterred we are going back to the beginning of video games and then skipping forward about 30 years to 2007 which you find people with only the gentlest prodding from us on social just the gentlest finger upon the scale the gentlest nudge have selected 2007 as i want to call video games i want you weren't right but you weren't as wrong as you could have been video games. I want to call bullshit. You weren't right, but you weren't as wrong as you could have been. How's that?

I want to call bullshit. I'm the only one, because I don't tweet, that wasn't like, please don't make us do 2011. I would have fucked with Minecraft 1.0. Yeah, me too. With my 2011 Road Dogs. I would have fucked with Steel Diver on the Nintendo PS. Come on. But no, we had to.

We got to play Mass Effect 1. It's weird that you're saying that because I do distinctly remember you text messaging me, how could 2011 possibly beat 1997? This is a crime. It was a crime. Well, 97, that's different.

Cause that's where Alucard lived. This is, we're going to be over the next few weeks doing a mini series where we explore some of the biggest and best from 2007. A lot of people thought they were trapping us into having to, to talk about certain games. This is not the deal. No,

we picked the games from 2007 that we want to talk about, but I this is not the deal. No, we picked the games from 2007 that we want to talk about. But I think we could please everybody with this one because it is Portal. Narbacular Drop, but I'm old school. Do you want me to do the background on Portal? I love that, Chris.

Okay, here we go. So Portal is a spiritual successor to Narbacular Drop, a game that I'm sure everybody listening to this podcast has played. It's a fucking good name for a game, though, if I can say that. I remember it some, you know, 13 years later. It's pretty good. It is definitely a student game name for a video game that has not seen a marketing department.

It is freeware, so I believe you all can play it for free right now. The game was made by a group of digipen students um i idolized digipen as a kid because they advertised in game pro uh the director was jeep barnett and the producer was kim swift um and narbacular drop it was actually quite a bit different you could shoot portals through portals so if you want to imagine a game that is way more difficult it did exist um you also couldn't jump your character was named princess no knees because without knees you could not jump um the plot was uh you're a princess and you're escaping a dungeon but twist the dungeon is actually the inside of beast um so this game was shown at a school like career fair it won the igf student showcase and uh famed valve developer robin walker who i believe was

like a lead on half-life alex which we talked about a little while ago he saw the game is incredibly excited about it takes it in front of the entire uh valve team and valve is like we don't know what this is but we know it's good we know that you've done a lot of the hard work the the demo even though it was really short i think it was like five or six levels already had the physics built into it which would have been very very difficult to make so like let's just bring them on board uh and we'll figure out what this is. So they bring this entire like tiny team on board at Valve. The team never grows,

like the core team never grows bigger than 10 people, which is wild when you play this game. And want to know why it is a Half-Life game? Like part of the Half-Life universe? Because the assets were free. They're like, well, we have these assets. It's a small team. We're not going to be able to make a whole lot.

So I guess it should be a Half-Life game. I mean, there wasn't a cube before. That's so true. They did make a new cube. Yeah. Is that the end of the history lesson? That's the end of the history lesson. Don't worry.

I have a lot more history lessons here. But I wanted to, like, you know, spread it out. I think that's interesting. lot more history lesson here but i wanted to like you know spread it out i think it's all i think that's interesting it that's like the dream uh as as a student that just valve comes to your career fair and is like okay this is the next half-life congrats yeah it's interesting i remember playing narbaculo drop when it first came out knowing that it was going to become like a full valve game and it is so like visually rough but you can instantly tell it's like something special i remember being like really blown away by it and that's the hardest part uh as i understand it or one of the very

hard parts of making video games is the prototyping phase where you finally land on the thing that works right and that can take years and sometimes it never happens so like yeah were you guys in the industry when portal came out yes uh it i want i'd like to yeah. Were you guys in the industry when Portal came out? Yes. I want, I'd like to talk a little bit about that. I assume that if at this point, like we don't have to sum up Portal that much. It's a, it's a 3D sort of puzzle platformer where you have a gun that shoots portals and, and there's, it's a very brain twisting sort of game that plays – it's one of the earlier games to really mess a lot with physics and stuff like that and has a famous AI antagonist that sort of ate the internet

for a couple years after the game's release. For me, my memory of – like 2007 was right when I started at Joystick. It came out about six months after i started joystick um i've been writing about games for a long time before that but i was doing it like sort of semi full-time professionally at this point and my memory is that portal was kind of an afterthought because everybody was talking about half-life and it was all part of this amazing package that had team fortress 2 half-life to episode two and portal, which was the,

uh, the orange box that came out in 2007. And, um, it was a really weird sort of, uh, very organic thing of people. Absolutely.

Like half-life two episode two was in there and then people started playing and finishing portal. And I feel like that became the conversation. It was like all any, like, listen, don't let anybody tell you about it. It'll take two hours. You have to play this game right this second. And it caught fire like that. It was not a sort of pre-release hype type thing. It was one of those like, which I don't think you see nearly as much in this in this era but like uh a very massive sort of

groundswell and then it was basically omnipresent well that's what Valve did like back in the day I feel like that was the Valve uh way like when when I got started in the industry uh it was sort of in the wake of Portal and all of a sudden I feel like a lot more people were interested in Valve and the way that they were making games. I remember reading and probably even writing a lot about Valve's open, no-doors development environment of just collaboration. It made me think of the Tofutti sketch from Mr. Show. Just like, people can come in and do whatever, man. sketch from Mr. Show just like people can come in and do whatever man uh and and so a game like Portal came out of that and it was so fascinating because it you know the physics stuff and the Portal stuff was not like anything we had seen in games before aside from I guess Prey the original

Prey had something like it but not nothing to this level of like complex complexity but like it it was so fascinating from a just like justin said like where did this fucking thing come from games don't games didn't get released like that back then either like yeah it was unheard of to have that and i think this was our game of the year at joystick that year if if memory serves sounds right we were all very we were bought in pretty deep at joystick i do want to mention though that like this is this was not typical for valve and it kind of hasn't been typical since the game came out if you can like the idea that a triple a studio would make a small two-hour experience and use all their talents and

like hone it like to a scalpel. But for that to happen, it was like really unheard of and really hasn't happened for Valve specifically since then. There have been other studios that have made like small experiences for VR and what have you. But I can't think of another example of a Valve game where like,

yeah, here's this two hour thing. No, no, no. But that experimentation, I think manifests in different forms. Like, and to be completely frank it has not worked as well as it did with portal yeah obviously but that experimentation manifests in like the spending you know fucking a billion years figuring out the uh the the steam controller or uh you know sinking a billion quadrillion dollars into uh vr development and stuff like that like that that ethos exists in other things um but it it i mean portal was such a perfect little nugget of uh like i don't know of software ingenuity that like it it for me that

is peak valve yeah i think it's the good and the bad of what griffin was talking about with that weird you know anybody can make anything but who knows if we'll ever actually release it mentality i was listening to um there's a podcast called game makers notebook which ted price who runs insomniac games does and interviews all of these like high ups uh and they give like surprisingly open interviews i assume because they think nobody listens to this podcast which might be true but it's very good and he just had uh robin walker on it who is the the person who kind of picked this out of uh out of that that you know career fair and rob And Robin Walker was talking about Half-Life Alyx

and how that game came to be. And basically it was like, you know, anybody on this team could have gone and worked on CSGO or Team Fortress, and that probably would have been the smarter thing because, like, they know that the work that they're going to create is going to ship. And, like, convincing people to come and work on Half-Life Alyx

was a huge risk. Like, you would think, like, oh, new Half-Life Alyx was a huge risk. You would think, oh, a new Half-Life game, sure. Everybody involved, there was no guarantee that that thing was going to ever become a real thing. And I think that's the scary thing about that mentality is, yeah, when it works, you get

Half-Life Alyx and you get Portal, but when it doesn't work, you get however many dead versions of Half-life episode three there have been or yeah who knows how many games we don't know about that die on the floor because of this format as a creative person yeah and like i i think it's telling that robin walker was somewhat involved in both of these like yeah it certainly helps when one of the you know biggest names at your studio is willing to throw their weight behind your project did you all play with commentary this run around i know we had talked about it in slack

uh and i i i did and it was fucking radical uh i had never really gone through really any game like that can you explain how it works for people because it's different than like a dvd commentary yeah once you finished uh the game and i don't know there's probably a way to do it with console commands or something like that, these little speech bubbles will appear throughout the levels, and you just look at them from anywhere in the level and click the Use key, and then you will hear from any number of developers on the game,

Eric Wolpaw or Kim Swift or Gabe opens it up. Gabe, you launch the game with commentary on, and it starts with Gabe Newell saying, hi, this is Gabe Newell from Valve. Thanks for playing this game. We hope that you've experienced it and enjoyed it, and we are so excited about all the different opportunities that this is going to open up for us.

Do you mean Portal 2 and only Portal 2, Gabe? Cool. And by the way, tell me how you feel about it. Here's my fucking email address. And he gives out his email address in the game, Gabe. Like McNamara giving out his home address. Right. It is very, very, very cool, though, because I think it dovetails really nicely with the whole conceit of portal, which is you are this test subject in a lab going through

and being very carefully and deliberately instructed on how to use portals and use this portal gun. And through the commentary, you learn that, like, in making this game, you see it through the commentary as, like, a video game about teaching people how to play video games. And then the sort of extended tutorial of this game, you see through a different light of like, oh, everything is in a very specific place for a very, very specific reason.

There's a great moment early on where there's like just a tiny glass partition. And they're like, oh, yeah, that glass partition. We had to test this level so many times because people kept finding ways to cheat it and then we realized like all these things we were doing we could just fix by adding one glass partition uh that blocked off a certain corner of the room i wanted to talk just like broadly about like the like i had i hadn't played the game uh it had been probably five years since the last time i played portal and i sort of forgot that like it is so when it starts off you you know you begin

the game and the puzzles are very simple and you're getting some good laughs out of glados and her little quips but by and large it's like the the most simple straightforward game i actually while i was playing it flashed back to when i first played it where i had like been hearing a little bit of positive buzz but it was still very early in the game's release cycle that like there wasn't the like groundswell and i was like this is okay i mean it's okay i'm having a good time like it's kind of interesting it's like a puzzle game and there's funny jokes and stuff and the fact that like the game is so smart about slow playing i mean it's not a long game but it essentially slow plays what it's eventually going towards um was so fascinating because like you start the game and

it says okay there are 19 test rooms and i'm blowing through these test rooms like forget about it i'm crushing it and then the fact that you slowly get hints of like, oh, this is going to get a little bigger. And then this is going to get a little weirder than you thought. And then obviously towards the end, it goes like outrageous in places that you really didn't at all expect. And that confidence to be like, we're going to make a game where the first hour is like, yeah, it's okay. I mean, it's's interesting but not groundbreaking because we know that setup is gonna pay off in such a huge way when you have the contrast of like stayed and stoic to like holy shit moment i was thinking about a lot when i was replaying it because obviously you know i played a lot in in the olden times but it's

probably been i mean 10 years easy since i like went went back through it um i think there's a lot of reasons that this game works and it's really fun but i think that if you were to put it for me at least if i was to put my finger on one thing it is one of the first games i think and i think you've seen other games do this since but it's one of the first games that i can recall where it takes the joy of subverting the expectation of the game developer and weaponizes it. It takes the joy of figuring out a sneaky workaround. Or a lot of these things I feel like are foundational to the speedrunning community and stuff like that. This idea of like, I'm going to a a loophole in what you're doing that

you didn't intend for me to find and i'm going to do it and i get a thrill out of that and then there's this second layer that portal ads which is like oh we knew you were going to do that like and you're supposed to and that's the game like how how can you subvert what we designed at while intentionally like us also understanding that yes this is how we intended for it to be uh subverted i think that that joy is is really the at the core of why it's such a successful game still and to add to that there's a third layer layer because you have the first layer the second layer and then the third layer is people going on top of the things that they already set up to speed run like definitely

non-intended methods because if you've ever watched a portal speed run they are doing things that like there is no way were considered or attempted or whatever um doing like crazy physics things with the cubes flying across the room when they shouldn't be flying across the room and like so it really like keeps kind of looping back on itself in really interesting ways there was a there's a great commentary note on one of the test chambers like halfway through the the first part of the game where uh you walk in and the exit is like right in front of you but it's elevated in a way and you need to like find a way to turn on this hydraulic lift to get up there but it's probably the easiest test chamber to figure

out how to skip because you just drop a portal on the floor and then look for a place with like a decent enough drop that you can carry your momentum through and just leap right up to it. There's a commentary mode node right there that said like in play testing, people figured out like how to just kind of ninja skip this test chamber. And to fix that, we would have had to like completely redesign the thing but it led to a sort of philosophical change where we were like people really like that feeling of discovery people really like that feeling of ha ha ha i've i've i've cracked the case i figured out a way around it that like we just decided to leave it because like if you can if you can if you've been

following the tutorial closely enough that you have learned how to manipulate the rules in this way and you get that sense of satisfaction out of it then like that is the game design working like fairly well uh it i would genuinely um i was not like really looking forward to replaying portal because it seems like a game where um and i think this held true like i wasn't particularly stumped at any point, because it, it, it is fairly, here I go, it, I mean, it's not, Portal 2 is, Portal 2 would fuck me up, like, Portal 2 still would take me a long time to figure out, because there's a lot more complexity there, Portal 1, once you know the tricks, like, it, you know what to look for, and it's kind of easy to burn through it, playing it with commentary, though, again, like, get through it in an hour

and a half, two hours, and learn a lot about, like, just all of these things that they had to consider while making the game. It was fantastic. I want to talk a little bit about the Portal 1, Portal 2 comparison really quick, and especially the writing and the puzzles. So I played right through Portal 1

and immediately loaded up Portal 2 just to see, like, you know how how different are these games and it is wild how elegant portal one is by comparison and obviously like that's a byproduct of them having i would say smaller ambitions but to me portal one has maybe the greatest opening shot in a video game that moment where the you're in the test chamber and the portal opens and you go through it and you see yourself and it immediately explains so much about the game it explains blue portal go it like go in go out that you are that it doesn't send you to a different dimension that you see yourself i like at this time this is pre-gamergate but a female protagonist was

still pretty unusual i mean it's still less common, but still at that point was very unusual. It just accomplished so much and that you can hear the diegetic music from the radio that you were just in the room with, but now it's like slightly muffled. It accomplishes so, so, so, so much. And the writing is just amazing in Portal 1

in that it is a parody of, like, that awful corporate speak, right? Like, that's the joke with GLaDOS, is that, like, she still has all these, at the very end, you remove, like, all these different parts of her brain that makes her much more malicious and, like, I would say in some ways human-like character. But up until that point, it's much more suppressed. Portal 2, the puzzles, like Griffin said, are incredible. And they're like so next level. But the writing going back to it is, I was like really not feeling it nearly as much as I remembered back in the day.

GLaDOS really just negs you about you being overweight like 50 of the jokes the the like the the it's like it it's very funny but it is way more comfortable kind of starting to jump the shark and like really take big swings that don't actually make for a consistent universe there's a thing that i loved when I played that game originally where you see a board and it's like, oh, these other products that, why am I blanking on the company's name? It's not Black Mesa. Aperture? Aperture Science?

That they make and they show like the Animal King, which is this like towering robot that lands in the middle of Congress and takes over. And it's like, oh, this is like one of the Aperture things. And yeah, sure. I mean and it's like oh this is like one of the aperture things and yeah sure i mean it's very funny but again like the one of the hilarious things about portal one is there's moments where you can peek into the windows of the the people who are watching you and you look at like powerpoint slides and the powerpoint slides are so pathetic like it's like black mesa makes this much like percentage of the military industrial complex fund from the government, and Aperture makes this.

And Aperture is such an embarrassing company that is trying to compete with Black Mesa, and it all logistically fits together. Where Portal 2—again, I like it. I'm not saying it's bad. I just think it's different, and it didn't click with me as much as Portal 1 did going back to both. Okay. I mean, there's a lot to sort of like break down there i would say uh well just talking about the aperture thing i think the aperture like inferiority complex thing is like a very consistent through line for the whole portal series through one and two um and it kind of like in addition to like the mention in the song of maybe black mesa that

was a joke haha fat chance etc is like the whole thing is like they feel like dog shit in comparison to like black mesa who is the like apple of this uh military industrial complex so i would say there's that i think the jokes in portal 2 still. I realize that we're kind of living in a different time with sensitivity and stuff like that. But I think the objective of Portal 2 is essentially trying to write a relationship, an adversarial relationship between two women, which I realize is very simplified. but that was the i think the

attempt it wasn't like yeah i think that was attempt i just don't know if it lands as well for me as it did when i played it steven merchant though so great kicks so good i think the voice acting is i also just just because we're talking about portal 2 you talked about the opening scenes i think the opening scene of portal 2 is like also pretty spectacular it's not as refined or like representative of the overall gameplay but just the like you wake up in a hotel room in this it's like a 70s hotel room and then the walls fall off and the world falls apart yeah i had an interesting sensation uh with with portal returning to it it was this this sense of being at a party that was very crowded with somebody I liked

and then the room kind of cleared out and I was able to like appreciate them again. I feel like this is a game that for me at least that I adored so much when it came out and for me it became so mimetic in the following decade that like I really, and maybe this is a fight failing with me i don't know but i feel like i kind of my ability to appreciate it and really love portal

like almost got swallowed up by how how much of uh uh i feel like this is one of the like this game itself is one of the like proto memes it's like you know what i mean it's like i almost feel like every aspect of it was so dissected into meme culture that i feel like there was a lot that i couldn't um engage with anymore yeah i have the explanation for uh why the cake is in the game uh that i'll share with you uh eric woolpaw did an interview with rock paper shotgun and asked about like how the cake came to be. He said, well, there are a lot of message games coming out now. Like they've got something really important to get off their chest about the war in Iraq, or the player is forced to make some dicey underwater moral choices. Really just a whole

heck of a lot of stuff to think about. With that in mind, at the beginning of the portal development process, we sat down as a group to decide what philosopher or school of philosophy our game would be based on. That was followed by about 15 minutes of silence and then someone mentioned that a lot of people like cake. Alright. That works.

Just on Justin's point. You can't understand if you weren't an adult in 2007 what an absolute train wreck the internet became. It was like an arrow to the knee. Thank you. Yes.

Arrow to the knee is a good example. I think the best example is a little guy named Pickle Rick. Pickle Rick ruined the world with Rick and Morty and we all lived through it and it ruined that show for people. I like Rick and Morty. I think it's a funny show. Am I proud to admit that?

Pickle Rick has competition. Portal did not have competition. Everyone was all about this cake and its veracity. It was a fucking nightmare. Somebody sent us a video of GLaDOS talking about Pickle Rick, which really brought all of meme culture full circle. I did not engage with these, but a wild fact, by the way. Pickle Rick, which really brought all of meme culture full circle. Oral gross. I did not engage with these, but a wild fact, by the way.

Oh, by the way, the song is great. It was everywhere. Still Alive, the song that plays at the end by Jonathan Colton is fantastic. It's still everywhere. And I just wanted to mention I didn't want the episode to go by. I won't recreate it.

Yeah, the Portal 2 song is very good. There is like a wild Portal mod scene of people continuing the, like just continuing it on with other ideas. Not an exaggeration. There is a, if you go to like the mod DB page for Portal, there is one that was updated seven um seven hours ago there there are five from april like this april it is amazing they're ambitious too there's one i think it might have actually been for portal too but there was a mod i played once that was a time travel mod where not

only could you create portals you could create uh repeat clones of yourself that would follow the actions that you performed once you go through the portal so all of a sudden like you not only have these different windows through the world you also had a a time manipulation element to it it was fucking wild and also like uh man there's so much to talk i joked about there not being much to talk about in the like we're gonna do a lot with this because they just did Portal 2. But, like, Quantum Conundrum is also a really fascinating sort of test case, which was Kim Swift's project that was, you know, basically inspired heavily by her work on Portal. But that's a story for, what, 2013, 2012, whenever that game came out?

Right now we are going to take a quick break. when we get back uh we have more show hello hello my name is gabe newell and i just got back from a holidaying in foggy old london england you shouldn't be doing that right is that like a madonna thing where he picked up the accent while he was there? I don't know what you're talking about. Anyway, now that I'm nice and refreshed from my spartity, I thought I'd bring three of my bestie best friends to pitch me on a new video game. It's called Portal Trio. That's what we call three in blimey old Somerville. That's not true.

Yeah, it is. Yay, that's where I summer. Anyway, I'm wondering how you blocks could make a video game for Valve Entertainment for me. It needs to be big. It needs to be 2020. Maybe 2021 because not a good year to

release a video game. Where are you going? So I'll let you take it from here while I drink a cup of water. Okay. It sounds like you also traveled to New York like the Bronx at some point. It sounds like you also travel to new york like the bronx at some point it sounds like you took the tube all the way to the subway that's totally uh so we have

to make portal three is is the challenge ahead of us that's right are we stuck with that name the easy answer is we just add a third portal in the gun. So you have red portal. You have orange portal, which they call red portal. You have blue portal, orange portal. And then third portal will be lilac, a sort of gentle lilac. No, that's not going to work because I can't see those different. Well, what do you, then a checkerboard path.

Yeah, right. It needs to be gridded. Okay, a checkerboard portal. Now, obviously, portals are a very elegant game. You go through orange, you end up in blue and vice versa. Checkerboard portal, maybe half you, you go in the blue portal as a whole half you your legs come out checker your torso arms and head come out the other one like a fly situation and then now it's like a tale of two brothers situation oh that would be bonnie rubble you'd be in a spot of

trouble i didn't hear a word you just i don don't understand what you said. It's okay. I want to build on that. That's such a good start. Checkerboard, lilac portals. That's excellent. Here's my pitch. The portals are all sentient, and any time that you step in them, they get deep erotic

pleasure. But any time you shoot a different portal that erases that portal, they scream in mortal terror because they're being dissolved into oblivion sorry every single one every portal you fire birth death the renewal birth death renewal sexual gratification sexual gratification uh the fact the more uh narbacular you have when you drop through one, the sexier it is. So like the more speed, the more erotic pleasure it gets from it.

Cool. Yeah. I was just distracted by you mentioning shooting through portals next to erotic. And it just, no. And they did it for Russ. Yeah, maybe it was. Russ was awakened sexually.

To add on that, maybe every time- How about it, Vivid? Where's that porn parody? on that maybe every time about it vivid where's that where's that porn parody go on uh i'm sure it's been made an easy easy adjustment is just adding two eyeballs above every portal and then as you get close to each portal you realize that it's actually a big mouth singing a deep operatic note and that'll just be going constantly just like as you get closer just that dovetails perfectly russ what have you got to bring to this franchise yeah i thought guns would be good oh dog bollock you must have gone to uni there's there's a dollar there's $100 bills shooting at Russ's computer because he said add guns to portal.

It's piling up behind him. He's suffocating. Oh, God. We're all incredibly rich, but at what cost? With all that money, he's real dog's dinner. He's wearing a bulletproof jacket. What is going on? Is that a knife?

Gabe, can I hear you say that's not a knife this is a knife because that seems like something that you would really be into saying oh well are you looking at my mighty fine knife collection well that's not a knife this is a knife guys a quick sidebar away from gabe can you stand over there justin um we should get really deep into talking about how we need to add all kinds of cool knives into Portal 3 because I think that's going to be what Gabe will greenlight at this point. So let's just... No, that's a good idea.

That's a good idea. Okay, so... Gabe, come back over. Oh, God. So here's an idea. I'm thinking of like adding a knife, but picture it like this way, right? So it's typical knife,

but instead at the end of the knife, it's a bit wider and longer and rounder and for scooping. Oh, you nutter. I'm gobsmacked. I'm real chuffed of you. Do you have any statement about that? Yeah, can you green light us so we can move on?

Yeah, you know, I think I'll put down a few quid on this one. You know, maybe we can bring on a few scouses from Liverpool, make a nice prayer to the C of E, and I'm real knackered, so I'm gonna be off to Bedfordshire.

Alright. Means I'm going to bed. Is that what this is like? Yeah, it's a lot like that, Russ. It's a lot like that, Russ. I'm sorry. We asked you for your memories of Portal, your recollections. Several of you were kind enough to email in. This one's from Joel.

I remember sometime in 2008, my dad brought home Portal on his laptop, more excited than I had seen him in a long time. We played it for hours, him teaching me the mechanics and helping through the especially hard puzzles when portal 2 came out we saw there was co-op we both ran out and bought it and played it for dozens of hours more now that i'm stuck inside with my family we decided there's no better time to introduce my brother to our favorite series starting of course with the game that started it all portal um that's really cool. It reminded me that I actually played most of Portal with Charlie watching.

And she got really freaked out because Gladys in one of her first hints of menace says, and after you've completed the test, you will be missed. And Charlie said, did you hear that? I was like, yeah. She said, pretty hear that i was like yeah she said pretty scary i was like yeah she said they're gonna turn us into mist i was like no way and then for the next 20 minutes like is is this it is this where we turn into mist is she turning us into mist no no listen please listen the cake's alive uh we're not gonna have time to talk about portal 2 because we're not doing that year but i just wanted to mention because i i'm looking for agreement from my co-hosts the high

five solution to the very last puzzle of portal 2 co-op is the best fucking moment of oh yeah in the history of mankind yeah i did that with plant actually yeah and i forget i think yeah i did that with with somebody at joystick and we were both just like cheering, like, holy shit, that's so fucking good. Yeah. So good. A few comments. Sorry, I have to be quiet because Gabe is sleeping on my floor. A few comments from Twitter.

Hannah said, The first and last time I ever tried edibles, I didn't respect their, quote, lag effect. Long story short, my friend and I spent the next 12 hours, or two hours playing portal we never made it past the first tutorial room oh boy uh this is from uh a lag on twitter i enjoyed a lot when it came out but uh but when i had my mom played a few years back it was her first xbox game dual analogs are always weird to adapt to and the game physics on top of it my mom got pretty

immediately addicted to it but seeing her mind try to grasp two completely new things was a source of wholesome entertainment that i've never been able to tap again she got to maybe the fifth puzzle but i've never seen elation like her beating the few levels she did um and and this is from ross on twitter well i do want to mention that one one quick thing on that. So a couple years back, Alex, my wife, was playing Portal 2. And whenever she would get stuck, I would just tell her, but are you thinking with portals? And that is the most obnoxious thing you can say to anyone. This is from Ross on Twitter.

Listened to a Kim Swift interview this month where she shared that the cake is based on a black forest cake from this bakery outside Seattle. It's called Regent Bakery and Cafe. Seems to be in Redmond. So if you want to see that the cake is in fact not a lie, I recommend you to Regent Bakery whenever

bakery is open again. Thank you all so much for sharing with us. We are so excited about this brief respite from new games to be able to to to uh repose line repose bathe in nostalgia is all very satisfying we hope you're you're enjoying it too uh you all been playing anything new though to take a brief diversion into the modern era yeah i do want to mention uh as of last night, I finished Half-Life Alyx. I know how you guys, Justin and Griffin, specifically feel about it.

I thought it was one of the most memorable shooters I've played. Not necessarily, like, gameplay-wise, I think you guys experienced it, even though I think it feels really good. I think just, like, holistically, an incredible experience, and it kills me because there's just kind of no way to pitch it uh and watch youtube or whatever kind of like any vr game and really get the vibe of it i know people have modded it to work without vr and it's just like that would be the most boring game ever but uh i really thought it was spectacular um and uh if you do have the rig I'd highly highly recommend it

I thought it was great I've been replaying the original Final Fantasy 7 on Switch because I finished Final Fantasy 7 Remake and I've been jonesing for it so bad I will say on Switch you can play at three times speed and turn off random encounters so I am nearly done with the game

it is a very it's a good way to play that video game so do you not like level up and stuff? No, you level up just like when you want to. You don't have to explore the, you know. Oh, that's great. That's nice. Like Wutai Cliffs while fucking like battling every four feet

while you're just trying to like figure out which switch you need to, like that shit's so annoying. It's, yeah, the scale of that game, you forget it until you like really put in the honest effort to try and play through it. And it is a staggering, big-ass game. Yeah, I've been playing Portal 2, and, you know, the puzzles are so very good. I might have some, again, it's not that the writing is bad. It's just not, my favorite is Portal 1.

But the puzzles in this game are wild. is my favorite is portal one but the puzzles in this game are wild and it is kind of a drag to play a game uh that has a co-op mode this good knowing we'll probably not get one like this for a very very long time i can't see any studio investing this much money in a two-player co-op campaign uh that is this polished when they could be you know spending money on a battle royale mode i just want to give a quick plug i finished uh i everyone who listens to the show knows my level of anticipation for final fantasy 7 remake was quite low and uh i just wanted to say that i finished it this week i completed all the side quests uh i adored it i think it's fucking so smart and cool and i really really hope that they capitalize on it uh because i thought it

was magnificent we're gonna if you don't have a soft spot for that franchise or whatever uh it's a it is it is a game that only final fantasy 7 remake could be. Yeah. And it is so, so, so cool. At some point in the next month or two, we'll do a B segment talking about the back half of that game, I think. Because there have been a lot of people

on Twitter and email asking us to talk about where that game goes, which is places. But where do we go? That's my question for next week well next week we goes to play call of duty 4 modern warfare um and here's some tips for people who are going to play it because i've already tried to start hey if you're going to play it on steam you probably want to play the remastered version uh i tried to upload or install the original original and it is tied to some like multiplayer software that is not working anymore and was that just a graphical update that doesn't

that doesn't remaster any of them i believe it's mostly graphical that said if you can find it on console go for that i i'd much rather all of us play the true original game i played still alive by the way on x i didn't mention i played uh still alive on xbox standalone version of portal one yeah yeah mirroring the xr uh emulating xbox 360 i unlocked a gamer picture too when i beat it so i'm pretty fucking stoked the uh there's there's a few are we talking about the remake of cod 4 that came out last year because that is not that that ain't the same game even remotely so i'm saying if people want to play cod 4 on pc their best bet probably is going to be no oh no no not the remake not the brand

new game there was a remaster that okay that's that's what i'm saying that's what we need sorry the game that came out last year is a nightmare um yes the the remaster version not the one where they like have like a shooting in london england like that yeah i think it's called call of duty modern warfare remastered on steam is the one you want not call of duty 4 it's very confusing correct be careful about what you get. Also, if you are playing it, I recommend that you go and follow us on Twitter, at TheBestiesPod, and share your thoughts or questions or anything that you want. That's also the best place to subscribe to our newsletter,

which is the pinned tweet at the very top. That's where we let you all know about things a little bit early, like the tournament that we were running this time. And if we do a future tournament, That's where we let y'all know about things a little bit early, like the tournament that we were running this time. And if we do a future tournament, that's where it would be. And Justin, where can people mail us? They can send mail to mail at besties.fan.

Besties.fan is also, incidentally, the URL that you should use to share the show, which we really appreciate you doing. You can follow and listen for free on Spotify, as you certainly know. And if you do get a chance to pass the show around, we would sure appreciate it. If you want the besties to continue,

it is only through your support and sharing the show that that will happen. So please take a moment and tell other people that we're talking about Portal, finally. That is going to do it for us, I believe, for this week. So until next time, we hope you'll join us again next week for the besties, because shouldn't the world's best friends pick the world's best games? The Besties is a Spotify original podcast

in association with Vox Media. The show is edited by jelani carter and our theme song is by besties