The Clone, the Cube, and the Construct: Part 2

April 14th, 2008 · 22 Comments

The lloooooooove cuuuuuube....

Every good story needs a love interest, and it should come as no surprise that Portal had one with some very comical overtones. The Weighted Companion Cube has captured the hearts of ~~millions?~~ hundreds of thousands that have played the game, myself included, and now can be purchased as lovable merch on t-shirts, or incredibly awesome plush toys.

I was surprised to see my face light up when I ran through course 17 when I took notes for this series the other night. I was just doing a speed run through the test course, listening to the audio calls as they were designed (I was having trouble remembering what was going on in-game listening to the raw sound files on their own), when I had this particular little epiphany. I can’t really think about the game any other way than what I wrote about in my first Portal piece, and I hadn’t played course 17 again since writing that. So what hit me was this:

The Weighted Companion Cube as a Love Proxy Device

Whoah, whoah, stay with me for a minute here, it’s not as outlandish as you think.

I mean, think about how much we all love that stupid little inanimate cube. It’s got pink hearts on it. How can you not love it? We’re all pretty much in agreement that as far as hard weighted cubes go, it’s pretty damn cuddly, right?

Well I got to thinking, GLaDOS certainly talks a lot about how fond she is of you, how you’ll be missed, and that you’ve broken her heart. She loves Chell (which I will go on about ad nauseum tomorrow) in some ways that only a Mother can, and I think she yearns for Chell to love her back. But how can she experience this? It’s a horrible relationship. One is a human-esque test subject a mile away, and one is a mechanical AI construct hanging from a ceiling viewing the other through video cameras.

One way would be to give Chell a device to love in GLaDOS’s stead. A proxy device, if you will. Much like parents will give children in isolation wards stuffed animals to hug instead of their parents, GLaDOS has sent Chell the Weighted Companion Cube.

I laughed at myself for thinking this, jokingly, when I started up course 17, and wasn’t even going to comment on the cube for this analysis. But then I got to the part where you were supposed to incinerate the cube, and I stood around and let GLaDOS go through all of her nags to prompt the player to burn the Cube. Some of them are…telling. Most of them are merely your garden variety nags. “Burn the cube or you can’t continue” type of fare. But two of them are different, and my jaw hit my table when I heard them, because they are the voice of a passive aggressive parent on their deathbed telling their child to go on and live life to the fullest without them:

The Companion Cube cannot continue through the testing. State and local statutory regulations prohibit it from simply remaining here alone and companionless. You must euthanize it.

My first thought was of GLaDOS, swinging from her perch, alone and companionless. At first I thought to myself “wow, this really backs up the theory that she wants the player to put her out of her misery.” But what if it’s more sinister than that? What if she’s just complying with state and local statutory regulations? She cannot be left in the facility alone and companionless. She knows that Chell will leave her if given a choice once she completes the testing, so Chell must be “convinced” that she needs to destroy GLaDOS. Now, I don’t really believe in this particular aspect of the theory (because who the hell made up that law???), but from a strictly logical law abiding AI frame of mind, it does make a very odd kind of sense. However, I instead think it is merely GLaDOS giving the player some foreshadowing of the coming events that she has planned out for her. You must destroy the Companion Cube just as you must destroy GLaDOS. She has given you a piece of her to love, and now you must also kill it.

The second line that pertains to the cube is even more chilling and parental in nature:

While it has been a faithful companion, your faithful Companion Cube cannot accompany you through the rest of the test. If it could talk, and the Enrichment Center takes this opportunity to remind you that it cannot, it would tell you to go on without it, because it would rather die in a fire than become a burden to you.

If this isn’t the most charged parental passive aggressive line of foreshadowing in the game, I don’t know what is. GLaDOS just comes right out and says that she’d rather die in a fire than become a burden to you. It wouldn’t be an outstanding bit of literary foreshadowing if it didn’t actually happen at the end of the game. Just looking at the line at face value, it is obviously a form of projection on the part of GLaDOS. Of course the cube can’t talk, but GLaDOS can, and she is quite literally telling you what she thinks while pretending to be the voice of the cube.

It is interesting that she chose projection to show Chell what she wants Chell to do, as projection is rooted in denial, and part of my apprehension with exploring this narrative that I see when I play the game is rooted in the fact that at times it seems that GLaDOS is quite dedicated to the concept of killing Chell. While I still believe that GLaDOS wants to die (or be destroyed/freed from her confines in Aperture Science, whichever it may be), I began to wonder if GLaDOS herself had come to terms with this. It is as if her subconscious knows that she needs/wants to die, and has positioned Chell to make sure this happens, but her conscious mind cannot come to grips with it, and fights it.

Even if you knew you were going to re-appear somewhere else when you died, death in itself is scary. Even people committed to suicide are hesitant. Those on their deathbed staring death in the face are rarely ever without fear of the unknown. Is this why GLaDOS seems so polar in her responses leading up to and during the final battle? Does she know she needs to die and yet is reluctant to do so?

Hopefully I’ll have time tomorrow night to explore it further in the final installment.

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Tags: critique · design

22 responses so far ↓

1 kost // Apr 15, 2008 at 3:47 am

I’ll start reading the post now, but first i must say that the WCC was introduced simply to make the player want to take the cube with him on the cube marathon level, nothing else..

But lets see what you have to say about it..
2 kost // Apr 15, 2008 at 3:57 am

OR “it would rather die in a fire than become a burden to you.” means that the devs dont want you to carry it around with you for the rest of the game.. (remember Ockham’s razor? “All other things being equal, the simplest solution is the best.”? but maybe you are right and I’m completely wrong in all I say here..)
3 Poke // Apr 15, 2008 at 6:34 am

This is a bit of a stretch. I think that the cube itself was a (brilliant) game mechanic provided to keep you attached to the otherwise standard box (in my opinion this is a joke made by Erik Wolpaw, the previously box-obsessed Old Man Murray).
The burning part, however, can be looked at more seriously. Simplest solution, as kost said, is that the cube is to be incinerated to allow the player to move forward, but it could also be forshadowing. But the whole love-proxy seems a bit overanalyzed to me. GlaDOS is still GlaDOS, and it doesn’t need to love or be loved. If anything, i’d say this part was to motivate Chell into killing her, as a sort of revenge.

If you ask my overall theory, the Portal story is a story of Chell clones which are put through the test chambers (this includes the “last chamber” part). Each Chell made it further than the last one, a bit like Alice from resident evil extinction. The notes (rat-man) are left by previous chells. Whenever a Chell dies (not unlike the player does in the game) GlaDOS creates a new one, modifies either her or the course (or both) and tries again until it achieves the goal (kill GlaDOS). The only thing needed to explain, in my opinion, is why can’t GlaDOS flat out kill herself but needs to work in such a roundabout way. I think you could investigate the function of each of GlaDOS’s cores to analyze her better. Just don’t start analyzing the cake recipe XD
4 Poke // Apr 15, 2008 at 6:41 am

It just occured to me that GlaDOS did this because she has a coded-law that prevents her from killing herself, but if she does this in the form of an experiment, it wouldn’t count as the purpose as suicide but rather investigation. The Chells are nothing but an experiment, and she slowly learns how to lead Chell into killing her. Her main methods are the companion cube and the pit of fire, both meant to make the player want to kill GlaDOS (or at least do it as self-defense).
5 Gregory // Apr 15, 2008 at 7:03 am

kost: The author is dead. It’s a concept often used in literary analysis and belabored by amateurs like me. The original intentions of the devs regarding WCC might have been utilitarian, but once incorporated into the greater story, it becomes more significant. We can’t read the minds of the devs; we don’t know if they later decided to make the WCC more significant in the story. All we can do is examine the resulting work and analyze it on its own terms.
6 Jake // Apr 15, 2008 at 10:33 am

As far as the WCC goes. This is a big one, so bear with me. The big thing that GLaDOS tells you early in the Test is that
“The Weighted Companion Cube will never lie to and infact cannot speak. It must be noted that, in the event it does speak; disregard its advice.”

Then Later as you qouted above.
“While it has been a faithful companion, your faithful Companion Cube cannot accompany you through the rest of the test. If it could talk, and the Enrichment Center takes this opportunity to remind you that it cannot, it would tell you to go on without it, because it would rather die in a fire than become a burden to you.”

We have to disregard its advice correct? So infact the WCC doesn’t want to be incinerated and does want to be rescued form the enrichment center. Assuming it could talk, anyway. Point being, we can’t assume that she is projecting herself onto the cube, because then we end up second guessting every thing she ever says with double - triple or more entendres.

I don’t think she wants to be loved by anyone. She has always sound to be to be a bit arrogant in regards to humans. I mean, just because you jump into a shark tank to kill yourself doesn’t mean you feel like you want the shark to love you. GLaDOS’s feeling is more like being angry that she would have to resort to the shark tank (Chell) to die. I see this as a two birds, one stone thing of tormenting something “beneath” GLaDOS and at the same time modivating it to hurt GLaDOS.

The only thing I can see the WCC is used for in GLaDOS’s tests is one thing: Emotional stress test. Its all over the level. All of the writing/drawings on the hidden alcoves are aimed in some fashion towards the Cube in a loving fashion. And the ones towards GLaDOS all tell of her stealing Love (the WCC) from them. And not to trust her. But I digress. There is the fact you are forced to hit your love (the WCC) with antimatter, Not something I would do to my love anyway.

Its a test designed simply to see how a person handles massive amounts of psychological torture.
7 Norm // Apr 15, 2008 at 11:11 am

@Gregory: you’re certainly right regarding the “author being dead” but you’ve also got to have a sense of perspective. At some point you’re analyzing Caddy Shack.

Now, I’m not saying that Portal doesn’t have some neat bits of back story and artistic merit, but it’s very clear that the developers didn’t intend for much of that to happen. Portal is a dark comedy game, and GLaDOS’s lines are meant to be funny because of their deadpan delivery of ridiculous subjects. It’s less passive-aggressive and more ironic.

I was with the OP 100% on the first post in this Portal series - I thought it was a very clever observation that warranted prodding the devs to see what they thought. The subsequent posts, however, seem like trying to find spiritualism in a Monty Python sketch. There are myriad layers of subtlety in the comedy but don’t mistake them for something more serious in nature.
8 kost // Apr 15, 2008 at 12:20 pm

“The subsequent posts, however, seem like trying to find spiritualism in a Monty Python sketch. ”

Epic.. thanks..
9 spitfire // Apr 15, 2008 at 1:02 pm

Huh. And to think, Monty Python made no less than three movies about or related to the topic of Spirituality. Perhaps you’ve seen/heard of them?

I guess I’m in good company then.
10 Norm // Apr 16, 2008 at 10:26 am

@Spitfire: absolutely, and my choice of Monty Python was intentional. “The Life of Brian” was a cutting satire that makes no bones about what it’s trying to say - it is clearly a comedy with a message about individuality and religion. The difference is that Portal wasn’t trying to say anything and the devs have made that pretty clear in their interviews.

I didn’t mean to be confrontational, but I really do think that you’ve taken your analysis past the point of relevancy. I could go with you if you stuck by the argument Gregory made, which is that “the author is dead” and what the devs intended to do is irrelevant in the face of the themes you can dig up in a work of art. That is to say, whether the Portal devs meant to convey these themes of suicide and freedom doesn’t matter because the piece can be interpreted in such a way that they’re apparent.

However, in part 3 you go back to talking about the devs’ intentions, and on this point I’ll stick by what I’ve said before: in numerous interviews Wolpaw and Swift have made it clear that there aren’t deeper themes there. What you interpret as heart-rending, revealing insights and lines I interpret as modern ironic dark-humor. GLaDOS’s lines are funny because of the juxtaposition of her words with reality, or her tone with her words, or things she just said a few minutes ago with what she’s saying now. You’re taking a comedic device and turning it into an artistic statement.

You’re entitled to your opinion on that but to belittle those of us who choose not to go with you on this point is silly.
11 Norm // Apr 16, 2008 at 10:32 am

Addendum: I left out a part that makes my first paragraph confusing. I intended to mention that there’s a marked difference between “The Life of Brian” and the sorts of comedy sketches that Monty Python’s Flying Circus ran. One of these things was specifically created to be a satire with numerous elements that clearly indicate this fact. The other occasionally deals with subjects that could be construed as such but doesn’t go any deeper than irony and a comedic device.

One uses the comedy as a means to an end (Life of Brian) and the other uses it as the end itself (Flying Circus). Portal falls into the latter category.
12 spitfire // Apr 16, 2008 at 10:52 am

Actually, re-read Part 3. I do say “intentional or no.” The devs made a conscious decision to make GLaDOS the tutorial. That doesn’t mean they intended to make her want to die. It means the narrative, accidental or intentional, dictates that she taught you how to kill her.

I am entirely comfortable with people disagreeing with this thesis on what I see when I play the game, and I have written it entirely from the standpoint of “the author is dead.” I’ve only analized the choices made making the game and available to the player during the game. I didn’t analyze any intentions that were not present in the actual game, so I’m still on mission. The introduction of elements not available in the game via post mortem interviews were made by others in the comments, never by myself.

And to be clear, I have not once belittled anyone’s opinion for not siding with this narrative analysis. I have said it is foolish to ask me to take the game at face value, because everyone does that when they open the box. Let’s look deeper, even if we might be wrong.

It’s the only way to advance the medium and art form.
13 Timmah // Apr 17, 2008 at 2:54 am

It has been a while since ive played portal so correct me if I am wrong. But as I remember it killing the companion cube opened a door to the hallway strait to the elevator. Now every elevator had a force field of some sort that vaporized anything from the test chamber that wasnt Chell. Turrets, cameras, cubes, nothing made it through. So why kill the WWC just to open a door when the cube would of been vaporized before entering the elevator? Well certainly it teaches the player a game mechanic, red button opens the incinerator and you have a few seconds to send anything that will fit in the tube to its death before it closes.

Surely that is the most obvious reason, although for some reason I vividly remember being told to kill my companion cube for the first time. I remember opening that tube to cube hell and staring down into the pit of fire till the trap shut. I was hesitant to kill the only friend I had in that game, he helped me climb to where I couldn’t reach, he took bullets for me, deflected glowing death balls, and as an intimate team we toppled turrets and opened doors I could never open on my own. His name was Zono the platonic solid zonohedron. And I loved Zono the cube, we all did.

Eventually I dropped my cube in the lake of fire to continue on my course, but not before I held it close and promised him it would be alright. We all euthanized our trusty pals and gained access to the next level along with a way to defeat GLaDOS, but we all lost something in that incinerator, more than lifeless block, we lost a valuable asset both offensively and defensively. Without that cube we never would of made it through most of the mazes.

RIP Zono beloved accessory, friend, cube.
14 MemBrain01 // May 17, 2008 at 11:48 am

Ok here it continues (See Part 1 comments for my initial statement).

“Of course the cube can’t talk, but GLaDOS can, and she is quite literally telling you what she thinks while pretending to be the voice of the cube.”

I didn’t agree with your course of describing that the cube is a love proxy to GLaDOS, until that sentence, which fixed your layout for me again. Let me dare to finish what you didn’t: I don’t believe the cube is a proxy to GLaDOS in such a way that it is meant to convey love between Chell and GLaDOS. It *is* similar to the final scene where GLaDOS is being incinerated, but chances are the final scene was developed after the level 17 existed, and they took the chance to use similar gameplay there too (for anyone concerned that i take a peek here at the meta-level of how Valve designed the game: Chris does that too).

GLaDOS is the voice for the cube, but she also said to *ignore* anything the cube says. It would be just another case of her typical split-minded behaviour which would be actually very funny! I didn’t see it like that until now, but you brought me there, thanks! (However i still don’t believe in your interpretation of the cube *seriously* being a *love* proxy to GLaDOS)
15 Syl // May 29, 2008 at 2:45 am

Well I liked your essays even though I don’t agree with everything you say. It makes me think of the bigger picture of the game.

First I don’t think she wants to die, but a death wish wouldn’t be out of the question entirely. I think she really does want to do her job and enjoys it, but someone messed up. Maybe because the person who created the facilities was a crazy person himself. She seems more like a broken or corrupted program.

She filled up the facilities with deadly gas, but they corrected that by putting the morality eyeball device (I can’t remember the name) but I don’t think it took out the aggression she feels. Remember the eyeball device falls out. So that means it was already lose.

I’m not sure what happened to the people in the offices. I’m sure she didn’t just kill them all with the deadly gas, because they fixed her, more then likely they ran off. Leaving people in stasis because they were in too much of a hurry to come back for them or wake them up.

So they leave GLaDOS alone and after sometime she breaks down and starts to wake up people that are left as test subjects.

I don’t think the character doesn’t remember her past. I think she just doesn’t think about it or there is no mention about it. I think she was a person who signed up to be a test subject. Kind of like a human guine pig does. The clone idea is cool though. So maybe that could be true.

The messages I believe are from that rat man character that never was mentioned. Even if I hadn’t heard about that character I would have thought it was something like that. Someone living in the test center that figured out that someone else would be woken up some day and they could use the info if he or she never got out alive.

Anyway I can see why you’d think she wants to die, but I think she’s being horrible because she enjoys it, because she is broken. Those little eyeball devices are the key. One is her morality. Still intact but not attached properly. This is why she can kill them, but only in the test not out right until you throw the eyeball in the fire.

The next few are the cake recipe and the curiosity ball. I believe the cake recipe eyeball shows that she is corrupted. After all the sediment shaped sediment means nothing. Its just nonsense. The curious eyeball is what makes her want to test the subject. She’s just curious and bored.

The crazy murderous eyeball is the thing causing her to want to kill. Like an ID it just wants to do damage and hurt people. That’s why she wants to kill Chell. That part of her might have been put in there on purpose. It might have some kind of virus. Who knows a competing business could have corrupted her files secretly so they would get the contract with the military, but that’s just speculation.

So I think it just comes down to a very delicate instrument being thrown off balance or never being balanced to being with.

Her cute soft voice of comfort is much the same as the ATM machine and just as sincere. Maybe she was made that way so she’d put people at ease. Maybe she uses that tone of voice to throw the test subjects off so they don’t see her murderous intension right away, jump through the hoops and then they die. She’d get a kick out of that if she liked to hurt people. Getting their hopes up to pull the rug from under them.

She might also be suffering from multiple personality disorder that causes her to be nice and murderous at the same time. One part of her says be polite and kind and the other says hurt the person taking the test. Basically that would explain the eyeballs. All are different parts of her personality. Until you get to the last eyeball and she finally gets less psychotic and more pitiful and dies.

The last thing I can think of is that she just like to tourcher people period, and her kind loving ways are just a part of that. Its worse if the person who is abusing you is nice to you as well. Much more creepy and much more painful, because it confuses you. And when you try to get away or kill her then she gets scared because SHE doesn’t want to die. She just wants to hurt you until YOU are dead. That might be her only job actually. Maybe the person who made her was quite mad and like the idea of a psychopathic computer that tourchers human test subjects and kill most of the staff?

Anyway that’s what I think might be happening in the game. Wonderful site! Thanks!
16 Dozer // Jun 5, 2008 at 5:58 pm

The dev commentary states that the WCC exists to get you through the puzzles on course 17, but players would ignore the Cube and try to run the course without it, and succeed. So they “made the AI talk about the Cube, a lot”. The result is that players “never let the Cube leave their side”.

The reason the Cube is incinerated is
a) to teach the player about incinerators
b) because it would rather die in a fire than become a burden to you.

I’ve read all your posts about Portal’s subtext but I’ve become athesisistic - I don’t believe this is a valid thesis! I think the dialogue is purely humourous, sarcastic, an almost-afterthought which turned a tech demo into one of the greatest pieces of computer-based entertainment ever made. Valve seem to put a LOT of effort into very subtle things but I don’t believe backstory and literary symbolism are amongst them!
17 Endigo // Jun 8, 2008 at 9:49 am

Everything… Everything makes sense! This is insane! Awesome thinking. Though I do have one thought. “The only thing you’ve managed to break so far is my heart…” Maybe.. her physical heart (or whatever a robot has.. it’s core maybe?) is actually.. the Companion Cube? You incinerate it and it’s covered in hearts… It would make a bit sense..
18 Wolfwood // Jun 29, 2008 at 12:36 am

Actually. If you listen to developer comment 3/3 in test chamber 16, you will find they *did* put a lot into the creation of backstory.

So they do put more into it, though I don’t think people have been asking the right questions. They obviously knew people would get attatched to the Cube, thus why GLaDOS remarks that you have the quickest time on record.

What I would like to know is how many other companion cubes there are out there…^_^
19 Drasken // Jul 16, 2008 at 3:59 pm

Whoah crazy thought gotta put this in. In the concluding fight with GlaDOS she mentions “SOMETHING” being outside in the world. She also states that she hopes you can construct super computer parts fast once she is gone. I wonder if we might have to make use the last “head” of GlaDOS as a companion cube for the further installments of Portal and maybe while lugging GlaDOS around she develops a relationship with GlaDOS and her learning to not want to kill you. Please be easy on me I didn’t want to forget this part.

On the article I think that maybe all the cubes were placed there in place or another person. Maybe in the original runs there were two people in the tests together helping one another. If that is true maybe one of the two escaped and during the process wrote on the walls after learning about the project whilst slinking around behind the walls. GlaDOS in return would probably be installed with a need to keep the Portal Gun inside the facility so she flooded the entire compound to stop the “companion” from escaping.
20 Drasken // Jul 16, 2008 at 4:06 pm

And by flooding I meant with the gas. So they installed the morality module to protect the workers and added cubes to help Chell in lieu of another person. Also to keep another human mind from being present which would cause an undermining of the system that was not intended.This may explain the talk about the “rat-man” that wasn’t put into the game.
21 Tstek // Aug 1, 2008 at 7:09 pm

The WCC was changed from a regular cube after play testing showed that people were likely to just leave the cube after it was useful the first time, as they had been doing up to that point. They needed a device to make the player want to keep the box for the entire test chamber.

The incineration at the end of the test chamber was merely a way to train the player for what they would have to do later, much like the first part of the game. in this case they needed the player to understand what the incinerator was, how to open it, and that they needed to throw parts of GlaDOS into it in a non threatening way.
22 Ryzanic // Aug 4, 2008 at 9:22 pm

@Gregory

Why are you insulting my mother? You have such a filthy mouth! I cannot tolerate such rubbish!