What’s this? A Portal mod featuring eight new chapters, nineteen test chambers, forty-eight challenges, six advanced maps, and a brand new storyline just coming out of nowhere? Looks like it. Set as a prequel to the events in Portal, Portal: Prelude shows what Aperture Science was like before the completion of GlaDOS. Team leader Nicolas Grevet explains that back in January, he had the idea to undertake this project since no one was doing anything “really serious” with Portal at the time.
Portal: Prelude, as its name states it, is an unofficial prequel to the game Portal. Its story revolves around the pre-GlaDOS epoch, even before she was plugged in. At this time, test subjects were monitored by real Aperture Science employees, whose work was tedious, lengthy and repetitive. This is why they decided to build a great artificial intelligence that could both replace them in these difficult tasks, and also take responsibility for many other tasks within the complex and compete with Black Mesa’s superiority.
All employees of the Aperture Science complex are now eagerly awaiting GlaDOS. Maybe even a little too eagerly, as the upcoming events will tell…
Nicolas decided to speed up production after Valve made the announcement that they were working on an official prequel back in June. Since he’d been keeping the whole thing a secret — he wanted to surprise everyone with a fully finished game — the urge to get this out first led him to work twice as hard; now we can expect to see Portal: Prelude released before the end of September. That’s certainly good news, because I really want to play it.
