Portal 2 is a video game taking place in the Apeture Science Testing Facility. You play as a test subject testing the Apeture Science Handheld Portal Device. The Device allows you to shoot two portals to walls which connect. Using the "Portal Gun", players solve puzzles to progress to the next test chamber.
- Gameplay from the original game, Portal. The same gameplay mechanics apply in the sequel.
In the first game, set in 2010, the player is guided through the chambers by GLaDOS, an AI set on testing Apeture Science equipment through human test subjects. At first, she seems indifferent toward the protagonist (you). However, as the game progresses, she become increasingly malevolent until she unveils her intentions of killing you. To make a long story short, you break out of the testing chambers and navigate through the bowels of Apeture Science, ending with a final battle against the GLaDOS hardware.
After the battle, the hardware is disabled, but you are rendered unconscious, allowing a robot to take you away and store you in a stasis room, keeping you available for testing in the future...
Fast - Forward 1000 years into the future: There has been an undisclosed apocalypse and the Apeture Science Lab has remained untouched, causing it to be overgrown by various vegetation. You are awoken from stasis by a "personality core" for the GLaDOS hardware, Wheatley. We later find that Wheatley was created for the sole purpose of causing GLaDOS to make bad decisions - This was an attempt to prevent GLaDOS from taking over the entire facility (which was successful when she flooded the facility with a deadly neurotoxin).
You and Wheatley accidentally re-awaken the GLaDOS hardware, but this time she has a vengeful disposition. After escaping from the test chambers, again, you replace the GLaDOS hardware with the Wheatley personality core. Wheatley goes mad with power, forcing you to team up with GLaDOS (now in a potato) to stop him.
In a side story, we learn of Cave Johnson, the CEO and founder of Apeture Science. Johnson is, in a word, insane, and drove his company into the ground. Poisoned by an experiment, his dying wish is to have his assistant, Caroline, put into a computer AI so she can "live" forever. We find that Caroline's mind became the voice and a hidden sense of morality behind the GLaDOS hardware.
Instead of embracing any new found sense of humanity, GLaDOS deletes Caroline from her memory, dejecting any possibility of being human.
Portal 2 relates back to one of the central questions: What does it mean to be human? GLaDOS originated as an "efficient" AI, removing what wasn't needed (i.e. human life). Scientists made an assortment of "personality cores" to adjust her, to make her more human. For example, there were the finalized cores like the Curiosity Core, the Knowledge Core, the Anger Core. These cores were unbalanced due to the corrupt nature of their counter-parts, such as the Morality Core and the Bad-Decision Core (aka Wheatley).
In short, all attempts to give GLaDOS a sense of humanity were for naught. GLaDOS, upon realizing her human origins, deleted any sense of humanity she had left, deciding that humanity was weak and inefficient.
Portal 2 creates a world where technology has vastly improved for the human life that is unworthy to wield it.
*Portal 2 just recently won the Golden Joystick award for the best game of 2010. The game itself is not only challenging and fun to play, but it's hysterical as well, with a dry and dark sense of humor. Below are some quotes from GLaDOS, the malevolent overseeing hardware.
*GLaDOS often attempts to degrade the protagonist through lying about her weight and status as an orphan.
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