Gordon Pedersen
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title: B1.18 Narbacular Science – A Portal Map Pack Idea
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date: 2011-05-13
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location: /B1.18
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tags: Pro Tanto, idea, games, portal
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# Narbacular Science – A Portal Map Pack Idea
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An idea for a Portal or Portal 2 map pack. On the surface, it is simply porting all the Narbacular Drop levels into portal, set in the Aperture Science Enrichment Center testing facility. Although it would definitely add an extra something to it to include a story of sorts.
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Basically the player will be a small child, a young girl, which ambiguously may or may not be a younger Chell. All that is ever made clear about her story is that she is a daughter of an employee, perhaps somehow caught up in the unknown events of the infamous Bring Your Daughter to Work Day.
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The (admittedly little) story of Narbacular Drop would have been invented by an employee as the premise for a test sequence involving a child. His theory being that children would be much more suited to thinking with portals due to their lack of knowledge about the laws of physics. They have not yet learned what is impossible, as it were. As you progress through the test, nooks, dens and secret areas not present in the original Narbacular Drop can contain papers and possibly security clips detailing the inception of the current test, codenamed “Narbacular” and its subsequent dismissal due to putting children in danger. I’m thinking the person in charge would have been passionately against it, stating words to the effect of “We will not be testing children while I’m still alive”. In this way, GLaDOS can deem it acceptable to test children because that person is no longer alive.
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Perhaps after the Narbacular Drop levels are over there can be an extension with more levels of an escape sequence (now typical of Portal) that could explore some currently unexplained aspect of the story, like the post-activation attachment of the morality core on GLaDOS. The final boss battle could involve attaching cores to GLaDOS in a similar manner to the final battle of Portal 2.
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In the Narbacular Drop levels alone, there may be some new technologies to develop and explain in the context of Aperture Science. For example, the turtles that swim trough lava (or the green Aperture Science gunk that kills you in portal), and the perpetually rolling boulders. Also, in the very first chamber of Narbacular Drop there is a cube-and-button puzzle, and there is nothing stopping you taking the cube with you. In fact people made it a challenge to do “cube runs”: speed runs where you take the cube with you all the way to the end. I’d like to keep that, and for this reason that first cube should be a companion cube. It also means no Emancipation Grills.
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I wouldn’t even know where to start making a Portal map, and one like this involves some pretty advanced stuff, plus proper writing and voice acting.
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A thought that just occurred to me, perhaps the story could be explored by an ever present and always out of reach survivor scientist. The one who designed the test, but now sees the error of his ways and attempts to help you through the tests in order to help you escape. He can explain his reasons for creating the test, his feelings at the rejection of his idea, his escape from GLaDOS and the deadly neurotoxin and his fear and guilt now that his test is actually being used with a real child. He also tries to help you escape and through lack of other options gets you to attempt to attach the cores to GLaDOS. He may be blocked from her chamber, but is able to provide you cores to use in a mirror of the Portal 2 final boss.
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Ass always, feedback of my ideas is appreciated. |