Portal 2: You Monster

Last updated on: July 5, 2011 at 7:21 am by Richard Clark

Portal 2: You Monster 2011-07-05T07:21:28-06:00 Richard Clark

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This article contains spoilers.

When Chell awoke from a long nap, she could tell that the hotel room was a mere representation. The ceiling was made up of wires and tracks, presumably for the purposes of allowing machinery to be transported throughout what was in actuality a huge scientific testing and research facility. She was, unfortunately, still at Aperture Science.

A scripted, pre-recorded voice told her to look at the art. She was told that she was human. Still, the longer we spent with Chell, trapped in the testing chambers of GladOS, the less aware we were of our avatar’s humanity. We would enter a room, analyze, work backward from the exit, find the solution, and repeat. The constant white walls, the isolated nature of the experience, and the droning sounds of various mechanical devices began to take their toll. Once, they let Chell listen to smooth jazz – all it did was remind us of what Chell was truly missing out on.

In Portal 1, Chell destroyed GladOS out of a human fear – we spent the game unsure of the apparently villainous robot’s motivation. We thought for a second that she was on Chell’s side; it became clear that we were wrong. So we did what we had to do, even though she begged us not to. We destroyed her, because Chell needed to live. But even more, we destroyed her because we were supposed to – we were playing a game. We’d been here before – this is where we kill the boss.

In Portal 2, Chell is accompanied by a helpful robot known as Wheatley. He is appealing, precisely because he is all the things GladOS was not – humble, unassuming, friendly and forthcoming. His is warm and kind to Chell. Chell trusts him. We do too, because he is our tutorial.

Wheatley tells us it’s time to escape, and so that’s what we do. We follow him through corridors, across gaps, and back into test labs until one crucial moment. GladOS calls attention to an alternate route and gives you the opportunity to continue testing, as if nothing happened. She tells you it was what you were meant to do. It’s at that point that we have a choice. The game doesn’t offer up choices liberally.

What we choose doesn’t matter: what matters is that we chose at all. In a game about humans and their interaction with robots and computer systems, human agency is the highest aspiration – something even GladOS and Wheatley seem to desire.

In fact, it becomes clear that the villains of the game become villains first and foremost when choice is taken out of the equation and they give themselves up (or are given up forcefully by others) to to a system that makes those choices for them. Wheatley gives himself up to the system and becomes an incredibly dumb and destructive force – what made him lovable and distinctly human is all but erased by the system. Meanwhile, we discover that GladOS was also a slave to the same system, one that resulted in her doing everything she can to get subjects to test for her.

It was Cave Johnson whose slow reveal is most instructive: as an obvious human being, surely he should be the one who demonstrates the most human qualities, right? Still, heard only through an intercom and separated from us by time, Cave Johnson seems to be the least human character in the game. He reinforces that impression through his attitude toward human life and the concerns of other human beings. Time and time again he betrays his willingness to sacrifice their emotional and physical wellbeing to science. It was this idealogical system that ruled Cave and made him into the game’s most frightening monster: Cave was a scientist first, and a human being second. He thought like a scientist, acted like a scientist and if any ethical problem came up, he took the obvious (stereotypical) scientific side of that debate. He needn’t think through any of these questions, because his system took care of that for him. If you programmed a robot to be a scientist, it would make the same cold and calculated decisions that Cave Johnson made.

Cave Johnson is the real monster – but so are we. We follow each and every one of his instructions, just has we have Wheatley and GladOS before. We follow the markers, we go where we are told, and work relentlessly toward progress. Occasionally we veer off-course, but not for long. Our progress is linear and preordained. The companion cube never had a chance – we killed that cute little cube in the last game, and we’ll kill it again, if it gets us where we need to go.

All of this is the videogame’s low-stakes way of pointing to a human tendency that’s common even amongst those in the church. We find an ideologically we can subscribe to wholeheartedly (Christianity, Calvinism, Postmodernism, etc.) and we latch on to it with all our might, going through the standard motions according to the system. Even if our ideology may be The Truth, we rely on it for things that human beings should never rely solely on an ideology for. We blindly follow the advice of those around us whom we deem our God-given “tutorial.” We comfort grieving friends by sharing with them prepackaged cliches from our ideological bag of tricks. We seek out ordained answers to our ethical dilemma’s from the higher-ups of our faith. We have knee-jerk reactions against anything that may rub our faith the wrong way. Cave Johnson’s “For Science!” is our “For the Glory of God!”

Sin is the perversion of good things, and the good here is evident. It’s good to rely on God throughout every area of our life. It’s good to seek scriptural guidance in the hard times and with complex questions. It’s good to have a guide. And yet, if we’re honest with ourselves we’d have to admit that sometimes the answers aren’t spelled out or even alluded to. This world is an open world, not a linear course to follow. Sometimes God gives us some principles, some friends, and our mind. The more we try to overcome this lack of answers, which we wrongly perceive as imperfection or ignorance, the more we commit ourselves to a slavish and unholy devotion to a number of cultural and extra-biblical assumptions. Along with Cave, GladOS, Wheatley, and Chell, when we abandon the ability or desire to choose, we become something less than human. We become robots.

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