![]() Zooming is the action of a camera, or a sniper rifle. To aim is to constantly recenter the screen, to align the proper view. Most first-person shooters go further and equate aiming with viewing. First-person games are so much about looking anyway – the player encounters views and collates them into mental maps of three-dimensional space. To think with portals is to play with point of view. I move this way but she goes the other I forget, so trained on mirrors, to recross my brain signals I remember, suddenly, the frustration of first trying to control my direction on the live feed of a camcorder. I set my portals just so and get a good look at myself, my Chell, bootstraps and all. I look to my portal, straight ahead, and see also from behind or above. Not just moving through portals and all the attendant cleverness, but in the very seeing itself. They allow your eyes to be in two places at once, to occupy, literally, multiple points of view. ![]() But portal windows, like portal doors, usually point back in. Windows mean to point out there, somewhere not here. Portals bend the architecture of the world so that we see it from a new point of view. The establishing portal shot of both games, Chell in her cell, confirms this. They are designed to take us back into our own room. No wormholes or slipspace drives shifting us to the other side of the universe. Though, admittedly, an elevator is kind of like a slow portal, with a small waiting room inside.įinal moonshot notwithstanding, these portals aren’t meant to take us far. It’s not even like the less anachronistic elevators. It’s local transport, yet so unlike all those rickety pneumatic tubes veining Aperture. (Please finish Portal 2 before reading further.)Ī portal is a door. Each time I connect portals, I wonder: what will I see, what will be revealed? There’s something about this mechanic, like Mario’s jump, that is inherently compelling (a portal, too, is a kind of jump – a local, mobile warp zone). Each time I shoot a second portal, a connection is made, a gap closed, and I feel a little synaptic spark. Portal 2 keeps asking me to think with portals, but I like to think about them too. I’m seeing myself, of course, but it’s not some trick with mirrors, a reflection of light. It’s just me in here, save the voices, and yet it’s suddenly creepy to think I’m not alone. I’m about my business – puzzling through space, feeling smart, doing science – and there she is. "Hey, Squeaky-voice, gimme some of your bullets.In the depths of Aperture, I sometimes glimpse another. "Yeah! Clickety click click! Right on the money." "Oh no, i'm one of the bad ones, aren't i?" "So, uhh, what am i supposed to do here?" "Shootin' blanks every time." "Watch and learn everybody, watch and learn." "Blam! Blam-blam-blam! See? I'm not defective!" Are you gonna give me bullets? Are there bullets up there? Where's my gun?" ![]() "So, we're all supposed to be blind, right? Not just me?" " Gah! I can't see a thing! What just happened? Better open fire." *click-click-click* "Oh my god! You saved my bacon, pal! Where are we going? Is this a jailbreak?" "Now is a broken turret's time to shine!" "Hey, be a sport, lady, and just tell 'em I killed you." "What's a guy gotta do to get some bullets around here?" The Defective Turret is voiced by the ubiquitous Nolan North, who also voiced the Space Core, Adventure Core, and Fact Core in Portal 2. From then on in the line, only defective turrets will be allowed to pass through, thus eliminating part of GLaDOS' arsenal. Chell must catch one of these defective turrets and replace the perfect one with it. If a turret does not match the template, it is considered defective and tossed into a nearby incinerator. Wheatley leads Chell to the production line's template room where a perfect turret is being scanned and judged against the turrets on the production line. The player first encounters it during Chapter 5: The Escape when Wheatley leads Chell to the turret production line in the hopes of shutting it down. It seems to be missing its outer white shell-casing and, according to its dialogue, is blind. It has a very boisterous, talky, self-aware personality as opposed to the monotone, largely docile non-defective turrets. The turret itself has a unique look and personality far different than the regular turrets encountered throughout the game. The Defective Turret is a character featured in Portal 2.
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