Video games are often iterative beasts, evolving through multiple sequels. A game comes out, the players react, and developers go back to make things better with Game No. 2 (and sometimes No. 3, and so on). That process isn’t an ideal environment for comedy, though. A joke doesn’t work as well the second time around, even if it’s been polished since the first telling. It needs to take its audience unawares to work, and it needs precise timing. It takes craftsmanship to make a game that’s funny, but a miracle to make a sequel that’s just as good.
Portal 2 achieved that miracle. Last year, Valve’s sequel to the hugely popular Portal returned players to the subterranean depths of Aperture Science, where a series of “tests” present increasingly complex spatial puzzles. Amid these sci-fi trappings, there’s a core of humane comedy, embodied in the first game by the sociopathic supercomputer GLaDOS (voiced by Ellen McLain). Portal 2 added the idiotic bot Wheatley (Stephen Merchant) and visionary Aperture founder Cave Johnson (J.K. Simmons) to the cast. The Gameological Society talked with Portal 2 head writer Erik Wolpaw about starting with a clean slate for the sequel, steering clear of memes, and his work in the early 2000s at the satirical game-criticism site, Old Man Murray. (Note: This interview discusses the ending of Portal 2.)