Josh Weier, if you're reading this, your fears about Portal 2 disappointing fans definitely did not come true. Portal 2 is one of my favorite video games I have ever played, I have the utmost gratitude for you and your team for making such a passion project. I will never forget it.
@@JoshuaWeiermy favorite game ever. First proper PC game I played in 2014. Never realized how good I had it until I tried branching out to other game genres and kept coming back to portal 2. I love making maps and pretty much exclusively play first person puzzle games. Thank you!
At around 25:30 Weier mentions that he hopes nobody noticed the funneling, but I will be honest, when I noticed some of those things, I was more grateful than anything. When I saw my character shift a tiny bit, I didn't think that "ow they tricked me, they don't think I'm good enough to make that jump", I just enjoyed the cool jump without worrying about the hole in one from a hundred yards I needed to achieve. All those things are amazing and I'm glad Portal 2 is still to this day my favorite game.
I had the honour of actually meeting Josh in person at a showcase day for my university just yesterday, we talked a bit about Valve and their games. He even asked if he could come over to my team's game and talk with our team more. He was such a nice guy and so open to answering questions we had, and even told us some funny facts about some Valve games. Top notch guy!
What a fun interview. I was definitely part of the demographic of “sucks at gaming” and was able to play on co-op and have some incredible memories from it. Thanks for sharing this
TIMESTAMPS 00:00 - Intro 00:53 - Memories Of Valve 02:01 - Orange Box/How Josh Ended Up As Project Lead On Portal 2 05:20 - Portal 2 Storyboards/Design Approach With Portal 2 06:45 - Elevator Doors Are Actually Portals 07:40 - Playtesting/Design Of Game Mechanics 11:00 - Design & Storytelling Working Together/Changing Environments 13:00 - Story Constantly Changed Through Development 14:15 - The Moon Segment Was Added Very Late In Development 15:45 - Catapults/Bridges/Linear & Non Linear Aspects Of The Design 19:23 - Walking On Walls & Bullet Time Were Cut Game Mechanics 21:30 - The Gel Was Hard To Implement/Digipen 23:05- Difficulties Of Programming For PS3/Smoothing Out Portal Transitions 26:20 - Manscaped Sponsored Segment 27:23 - Momentum Physics/Where People Would Quit On The Original Portal 29:04 - Gabe Newell/Gabe Wanted GLaDOS To Have A Face/Gabe’s Struggles 31:05 - Underground Area Was The Hardest Area To Work On 32:55 - Portal 3/Portal For Xbox Was The Genesis Of Developing Portal 2 37:20 - Portal 2’s Intro Is Inspired By Super Metroid’s Intro 39:20 - Original Idea For GLaDOS In Portal 2/Announcer 41:40 - Trying To Sell The Part When Wheatley Turns Bad 43:20 - Dealing With The Weight Of Expectations/Valve Doesn’t Have A Template Of Developing 45:20 - Game Designing Is Stressful/Complications Of Crunch 46:50 - Portal 2 Almost Ruined Josh’s Marriage/Game Developments Effect On Family Life 48:30 - Josh’s Management Style/Communication 50:52 - Josh Cant Switch His Brain Off 53:09 - Crunch Process For Portal 2 54:35 - Certification Problems For PS3 & Xbox/How Much Time Certification Adds To Development 58:24 - Politics Of Certification 58:59 - Zero Page Game 1:00:13 - Where To Follow Josh Weier
Valve's use of sound segmentation is one of my hands down favorite and ageless aspects to the source engine that transcends what should be bland into reality. Just moving props around in HL2 has so much of it's seamless believability in this, even and especially when the engine glitches out... and having delved deep in creating weapons, the segmented sound adds something almost unmatched if done right, especially when interwoven with its procedural animation and interpolation systems... and as frustrating as the stutter issues that have pushed forward as the engine has aged with its ancient budgets, ect... because the sound works in such a seamless sync, even that feels like your reality is stuttering... rather than dumping you wholy out of any immersion like UE4 does. I kinda had my suspicions that ps3 had alot to do with the decline of audio, as we seemed to trade compressed audio for lossless... and yet sound design went to sh-- for some reason... to this day I constantly see beautiful animations ruined by engines like Wwise (Cyberpunk had quality sound design and spacial audio... yet on a regular basis the sound loops make it so much cheaper or off feeling... just as an on my mind example). So cheers, thanks, and props to whoever pushed for that design, I wish it had caught on, but that had so much to do with how Source engine games can still feel and hold up as well as they do and stood out at the time, even in a time when audio was much better on the surrounding field... good stuff.
I just replayed portal 2 and the puzzle design and atmosphere in this game is fucking immaculate. Idk if they could have made it any better. Have we peaked in game design? The answer is maybe
30:08 while I’m sure they still could’ve made it cool I’m really glad Glados didn’t get a face in the redesign! I think her robotic-ness is really unique and helps her other more “human” instances stand out more.
I know it was a team effort but I’ve always been impressed by how amazing Portal 2 was and it’s awesome to see one of the people behind the game’s development. This guy is legitimately a genius when it comes to game creation.
David Kircher is a different guy,even though he has a similar name to David Kirsch/Zoid. Easy mistake to make though! www.mobygames.com/developer/sheet/view/developerId,228037/
I gave a talk at a company function once and introduced myself by name, and half the company (everyone I had worked with already) in unison went, "Ooooh.." when they learned the pronunciation.
