Portal 2 was originally supposed to have competitive multiplayer, Valve have revealed, but they recently axed the idea, since the puzzle solving was turning into “chaos” for the players.
In an interview with 1UP, Portal 2 writer Erik Wolpaw said that the Portal 2 MP mode was more like Speedball having portals- obviously, it didn’t work.
“Along with co-op, we had the idea of sort of a competitive Portal multiplayer. We went down that path, actually, for a little while and had something up and running,” Wolpaw said. “The best way to describe it is sort of Speedball meets Portal. You know, a sports analog.”
The MP mode comprised of the player having to teleport a ball from one end of the game space to another using our portal gun, with rival players throwing their own portals in our way, sending us and/or the ball anywhere else in the arena.
“It quickly became apparent that while it’s fun for about two seconds to drop portals under people and things like that, it quickly just devolves into pure chaos,” Wolpaw said.
“It lost a lot of the stuff that was really entertaining about Portal, which was puzzle-solving. Cooperative puzzle-solving was just a much more rewarding path.”
Watch how they discussed over the multiplayer in the video by 1UP below.
Portal 2 will be releasing February 2011 for the PS3, Xbox 360, Mac OS and Windows.
By the way, did you check out our Portal 2 preview? If not, see it here.
