That's it.
To: Denizens of the Intarwebs
Re: The Companion Cube Chamber of Portal
Please stop telling me you cried when you burned the cube.
That section of the game, as with the rest of the game, was supposed to be funny. The entire joke revolves around you knowing the cube is just a cube and stays being just a cube in spite of GLaDOS's self-contradictory ramblings. Which, as you may remember, is consistent with the rest of the game, when her dialogue mainly serves to prove that she is batcrap insane. It's not heartwrenching, it's a joke. The joke is that GLaDOS is nuts. That's Portal's main joke! It's a pretty funny one! I was laughing all the way through the chamber, and when I burned the cube, I had to pause the game to gasp for breath!
And don't any of you call me a monster. If I'm wrong, and the destruction of the cube was supposed to be sad, then that part of the game failed pretty spectacularly to be at all consistent with the tone of the rest of it. Honestly. Think about it. All the dialogue is written toward the theme of "GLaDOS is nuts", with the secondary theme of "Aperture Science is very bad at anything that isn't portal guns, including basic scientific ethics and reassuring us that they're not." To that end, the design is mostly an absurd clash between 'annoyingly cutesy', 'disturbingly sterile' and 'hideously deadly'. We get the rounded, sweet-voiced turrets who instantly riddle you with bullets, the basic warning signs depicting people getting vaporized and falling into acid, and GLaDOS's entire existence as a cheery helper A.I. that is homicidally, sadistically insane. And the cube. The cube, a totally inanimate object, where the only difference between it and every other cube is that it has hearts painted on the side. The idea that the thing could be personified enough to be endearing is absurd, and gets even more absurd the more GLaDOS insists otherwise. The crowning moment of absurdity is when GLaDOS seems to think that burning the cube will come as a terrible, crushing blow, when in fact you're laughing at the craziness of it.
...But instead you seem to have bought into the idea that it should be a terrible, crushing blow, despite the fact that GLaDOS lies about almost everything else for no other reason than to mentally torture you. So you've decided to take the word of a homicidal and frankly not overly bright A.I. so you can fail to get a splendid joke, break the tone of a wonderful game, and cry about a lump of plastic.
That sounds pretty stupid. I think I prefer the joke.
(P.S. If you think crying about it is buying into the joke, you fail. That is all.)
Re: The Companion Cube Chamber of Portal
Please stop telling me you cried when you burned the cube.
That section of the game, as with the rest of the game, was supposed to be funny. The entire joke revolves around you knowing the cube is just a cube and stays being just a cube in spite of GLaDOS's self-contradictory ramblings. Which, as you may remember, is consistent with the rest of the game, when her dialogue mainly serves to prove that she is batcrap insane. It's not heartwrenching, it's a joke. The joke is that GLaDOS is nuts. That's Portal's main joke! It's a pretty funny one! I was laughing all the way through the chamber, and when I burned the cube, I had to pause the game to gasp for breath!
And don't any of you call me a monster. If I'm wrong, and the destruction of the cube was supposed to be sad, then that part of the game failed pretty spectacularly to be at all consistent with the tone of the rest of it. Honestly. Think about it. All the dialogue is written toward the theme of "GLaDOS is nuts", with the secondary theme of "Aperture Science is very bad at anything that isn't portal guns, including basic scientific ethics and reassuring us that they're not." To that end, the design is mostly an absurd clash between 'annoyingly cutesy', 'disturbingly sterile' and 'hideously deadly'. We get the rounded, sweet-voiced turrets who instantly riddle you with bullets, the basic warning signs depicting people getting vaporized and falling into acid, and GLaDOS's entire existence as a cheery helper A.I. that is homicidally, sadistically insane. And the cube. The cube, a totally inanimate object, where the only difference between it and every other cube is that it has hearts painted on the side. The idea that the thing could be personified enough to be endearing is absurd, and gets even more absurd the more GLaDOS insists otherwise. The crowning moment of absurdity is when GLaDOS seems to think that burning the cube will come as a terrible, crushing blow, when in fact you're laughing at the craziness of it.
...But instead you seem to have bought into the idea that it should be a terrible, crushing blow, despite the fact that GLaDOS lies about almost everything else for no other reason than to mentally torture you. So you've decided to take the word of a homicidal and frankly not overly bright A.I. so you can fail to get a splendid joke, break the tone of a wonderful game, and cry about a lump of plastic.
That sounds pretty stupid. I think I prefer the joke.
(P.S. If you think crying about it is buying into the joke, you fail. That is all.)