The Aperture Science Laboratories are a research facility introduced in Portal. Its "Enrichment Center" forms the setting for the entirety of Portal. The company is a direct rival to Black Mesa. The company's history, as revealed by in-game information and a web site for the fictional company, was initially building shower curtains for the US military. However, when its founder contracted mercury poisoning from a series of mercury lined shower curtains, he shifted the company's direction to several ill-conceived projects, interspatial portal research among them. The project was deemed worthwhile and government funding was granted to expand Aperture Science's facilities, including the installation of a new artificial intelligence named GLaDOS; however, shortly after its installation, GLaDOS turned on its creators and killed everyone in the facility.[18]
The areas of the underground Enrichment Center that the player sees during Portal include clinically-white "test chambers", overlooked by laboratories and office spaces devoid of life, and disused maintenance areas behind these chambers, where messages for the player note to be aware of GLaDOS' motives. The clinical feel was designed after the settings in the film The Island, aiming to reduce the amount of background detail to allow players to focus on the puzzles.[19]
In Half-Life 2: Episode Two, the player learns that the Borealis, an Aperture Science research vessel, and a portion of the drydock it was moored to, was somehow teleported to the Arctic, and is a point of interest that the player is told to investigate. Episode Two concludes as the player prepares to visit this location.
Thoughts?
The areas of the underground Enrichment Center that the player sees during Portal include clinically-white "test chambers", overlooked by laboratories and office spaces devoid of life, and disused maintenance areas behind these chambers, where messages for the player note to be aware of GLaDOS' motives. The clinical feel was designed after the settings in the film The Island, aiming to reduce the amount of background detail to allow players to focus on the puzzles.[19]
In Half-Life 2: Episode Two, the player learns that the Borealis, an Aperture Science research vessel, and a portion of the drydock it was moored to, was somehow teleported to the Arctic, and is a point of interest that the player is told to investigate. Episode Two concludes as the player prepares to visit this location.
Thoughts?
