Back in April, Geoff Keighley released Final Hours of Portal 2 – a follow-up to his “Final Hours” series of articles, that begun with “Final Hours of Half-Life” in 1998, and ended with “Final Hours of Half-Life 2” in 2004. It’s a digital book or story of sorts, a 15000-word interactive documentary chronicling Portal 2’s development. It was an iPad exclusive for a while. We even wrote about it.
And now, it’s finally where it belongs – on Steam.
Yes, for the low price of two dollars/two euros/one and a half pounds, you can get some major insights into how Portal 2 was created, how and why the initial concepts came about, why the original Portal 2 was so abruptly aborted, and lots of other things. And we do mean lots. 15,000 words of “lots”. There’s some lovely interactive sequences as well – such as… polls, some panoramas of Valve’s offices (3D pictures? My god, hasn’t modern society truly advanced?) and the one where you double-fling the stickman. Beware, however. There are so many spoilers in there it’s not even funny. The end song, as well as most of the major twists are revealed.
It’s got some problems with the Steam Community overlay, and there are some pages where you can definitely tell it wasn’t created with the PC in mind, but overall, it’s a good porting job, and the thing works. Definitely check it out. Just think about it – what could possibly you do with that money? Buy some ice cream? Play an arcade game, if they still exist? Or buy Final Hours of Portal 2? Which one of those sounds the best? I mean, I know – I’d love to play Time Crisis or… that amazing game with the jet fighters. But Final Hours just comes out on top. No contest.
Instanly bought it, so awesome!