Portal Reloaded is a new mod available on the Steam workshop. It uses Portal 2 as its base game, and constructs an entirely new adventure with its engine. This is not a wholly new phenomenon for the game, as it incorporates a map maker and sharing function in the title itself, and avid fans of the game constantly create new content with these tools. As such, Portal 2 extends far beyond its original 2011 release. The game lives on in community maps and stories ranging from the comedic to the terrifying. Indeed, the variety of the workshop content is telling of the base game's quality. While many of these maps are complex and difficult, none compare to ambition of Portal Reloaded.
In fact, the mod creates an entirely new mechanic. Part of Portal 2's appeal is a simple core mechanic - one it elevates to some lofty heights. Placing two portals around increasingly complicated maps makes for great dynamic puzzles, but Portal Reloaded takes this idea and radically alters it with just one addition - a third portal. However, this is not a simple spatial portal that shifts players across a space. The new mod allows players to rip a hole in the fabric of time itself. Players can hop backwards and forwards across thirty years of time through a green portal. This makes for some devilish puzzles, with cubes and lasers thrown across decades to navigate puzzles in each area.
The release of this mod is particularly interesting considering the rising popularity of the "time loop" mechanic in games. Games like Deathloop and 12 Minutes both have a "Groundhog Day" style feature. This time loop resets the state of play, similar to restarting a run in a rogue-like. While not an identical mechanic, the massively popular Returnal narratively explains its rogue-like gameplay loop in a similar fashion. What is particularly interesting about Portal Reloaded is that its time loop is one the player actively chooses to engage with. Players create their own pockets of temporal flux to solve puzzles, and gives an empowering sense of mastering time itself to really competent Portal players.
Portal Reloaded Slows Down The Time Loop
A central difference between Portal Reloaded and the other games mentioned above is its pace. The mod does not confront its players with fast and frantic temporal shifts. Instead, it keeps the slow, considered gameplay speed of its base game. The time portal, and the dilapidated future that lies behind it, is something players need to choose to enter. As such, the nature and narrative weight of this time travel is much heavier. Players have time to contemplate the enormity of the broken future, knowing that the compound they play through is doomed to destruction. It is a similar feeling to the late game of Portal 2, where Chell comes across the abandoned expanse of the old Aperture science laboratories.
Players of Portal Reloaded have to confront the decaying effects of time. Other titles, like Call of Juarez, use this technique of hopping through time for a quick punchline or narrative beat. In games like 12 Minutes, the time loop resets the game and meddles with the notions of what is and isn't meta knowledge. Both of these require quick thinking to keep up with. Portal's puzzles have never been about lightning fast reflexive thinking, but instead focus on letting the player understand their environment. Blending that with the ability to step through time makes for some unique moments, and introducing time paradoxes to environmental puzzles is a clever move.
Portal Reloaded Uses The Time Loop To Remix Portal 2
Mods have been used for years to totally remix video games. As a completely new story, the content in Portal Reloaded is rearranged in an interesting new way. The assets that illustrate the future come from the latter stages of Portal 2, and to take the parts of an iconic game like Portal 2 that evoke the forgotten past and use them to paint a vision of the future is a unique choice.
Moreover, the mod makes some assumptions about the future of Portal's canon. By using the same ramshackle panels and textures as the past scenes from Portal 2 to illustrate a future Aperture Sciences, the mod assumes that the company will repeat its past mistakes. This would tie in interestingly into the overarching narrative of the series. If Valve decided to continue the Portal franchise, it would be no surprise to see the series take this tonal angle with future installments. It would be interesting to see if this comprehensive mod for Portal 2 becomes its own game, as several mods for classic games became standalone titles over the years.
Team Fortress, Counter Strike, Garry's Mod, and The Stanley Parable are all mods for Source engine games that received huge critical acclaim. These originally existed as downloadable content packs for their respective original games, but went on to massive success as their own products. More recently, The Forgotten City, an immensely popular Skyrim quest mod, announced its release in 2021 (after a previously scheduled 2020 release date). Both this standalone title and Portal Reloaded released on the 10th anniversary of some of 2011's amazing games.
How Can Other Time Travel Games Learn From Portal Reloaded?
In short: Portal Reloaded advocates for a return to slower, puzzle-driven time travel games. Playing through the game feels similar to early levels of Braid, the acclaimed 2009 indie time travel puzzler. Many recent time loop games have very specific and restrictive loops (as with 12 Minutes) that limit the player to a small cycle that they need to optimize their play within. This certainly creates an incredibly tense experience using time travel, but does not give players the time to truly absorb the enormity of their time travel ability.
The time loop here is not under 15 minutes, or even the three days of Majora's Mask, but 30 years. Choices in the "present" day ripple over several decades through a square emerald portal. Players can watch a solution to a puzzle fizzle away because the wrong thing moved in one time period. These moments playing out over 30 years reinforce Portal 2's themes of hubris, decay, and the dangers of unregulated science even more. Interestingly, the standalone Forgotten City game does exactly this. It originally made waves as a Skyrim mod incorporating a time loop, but emphasized slow, considerate gameplay and a multifaceted approach to puzzle solving.