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Portal’s key theme is that of freedom.
Portal is a witty game that was released in 2007 by Valve. It is most remembered for its witty and humours dialogue and its innovative run on the first person shooter genre. That being said what most did not realise is behind the witty comments and the glistening testing room walls we see a story of oppression and freedom. Throughout the entire games design the theme of freedom arises, from its plot, from its characters and even from its mechanical design.
While portal holds a simple plot it is only as complex as it needs to be in order to present the topic of freedom. You, the player, are Chell a human test subject at Aperture laboratories wake up in a “Relaxation vault” which consists of a small room with glass walls inside of a bigger room. The room has no doors and the player has to wait 60 seconds before they can get out. The plot begins with the character stuck with absolutely no freedom over what they can do. From here the crazy A.I. GLaDOS brings Chell through a range of test chambers, in these chambers Chell has less restricted movement however still has little choice to go but forward. The big change comes at about 2/3rds of the way though the game when GLaDOS attempts to kill Chell. After Chell narrowly escapes she is presented with a choice, to listen to GLaDOS stating that it was all a test and "A party associate will arrive shortly to collect you for your party." Here Chell takes her first steps on the road to freedom and by the end of the story finds herself overcoming her oppressor and achieving her freedom.
During the narrative the player will also meet and hear about the other characters, all of which also have been oppressed in some way. The first character the player hears is GLaDOS, an artificial intelligence that went crazy after being created and killed all the scientists in the facility by flooding the lab with neurotoxins. However a lesser known point about GLaDOS is that she herself was kept captive by the scientists, they had a person on call who at the slight provocation that GLaDOS was becoming sentient. Erik Wolpaw, one of the designers, explains the reason behind the phone in the final room with GLaDOS, he states “that person would pick up the phone and call somebody to come help.” This help would most likely come to shut GLaDOS down. The next character the player sees is themselves, their own avatar that is, Chell. Chell is an obvious example of a character who is being oppressed and fighting for freedom, she keeps on going being fed by whatever little freedom she has. Another less known character whose actions are demonstrated in Portal are that of the Ratman. It is never explained who the Ratman is or what position he has toward anything else in the narrative, his only connection to the player can be seen in small Ratman Dens where they are experienced his crazy ramblings. These ramblings, written in paint, includes oddities such as “why?” written over 15 times repeatedly, pictures of the Companion cube and the iconic quote “The cake is a lie.” This all comes together to suggest the Ratman is a crazy man who was Chell’s predecessor who couldn’t take the oppression and false truths GLaDOS was giving him. The small cast of Portal consists of only these characters, and each of these characters come from a life of oppression and are searching for, or have found freedom.
The mechanics of Portal also toy with this concept of freedom though its use of innovative movement mechanics. Take the example of how it is the player acquires the Portal Device. They begin in a room with no door and no place to go before 60 seconds later a portal opens and lets them out of the room. Following this they go through a few timed puzzles involving self-generated portals before they acquire the first half of the Portal device. It isn’t until the player is up to test chamber 11, about a third of the way through the game, do they allow the player complete freedom with the Portal Device. This freedom is plentiful, the Portal Device allows the player to quickly teleport themselves around the game space thus allowing them to quickly solve the problem that the games throw at the player. At the same time however the game restricts such liberties at points which serves to make the player feel discomfort as they have lost the little freedom they had. The way the designers have done this is with the introduction of Metal walls and surfaces that do not allow players to create portals on them. The underground levels were particularly notorious for this, it is in a way metaphorical of Chell moving into a new environment which she has little control over. Over all however the gameplay mechanics look at empowering the player to have more freedom as well as denying and restricting the player when the time is needed, this makes a well-crafted puzzle game while strengthening the argument that its main theme is freedom.
Portal was an incredibly well paced masterpiece of a game which was highly innovative and could even be considered revolutionary. The core theme of the game is that of freedom & oppression with this resonating in the story which is about Chell’s hunt for freedom, the characters who all have been oppressed and fight for freedom along with the mechanics which work to both restrict and liberate the player. This lack of ludic-narrative dissonance in Portal allows the player to become fully immersed in both its narrative and gameplay, thus it achieves what many games don’t and should be held up for this merit.
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