Ontwikkelaar Valve is er nog steeds niet helemaal uit: komt protagonist Chell uit de eerste Portal terug in Portal 2 of maken de mannen een nieuw hoofdpersonage? Valve’s concept artist Matt Charlesworth besprak dit dilemma laatst en hier is zijn conclusie:
- “We sort of agreed that as a character Chell was really successful in the first Portal. She fit into the world really well and complemented it without the distractions that a more flashy character would bring. She served a utilitarian purpose for that game, but at the same time when we started out on Portal 2 we weren’t sure if we wanted to bring her back. So we explored a few other characters before returning to Chell.
Right from the beginning, we were constrained to replicate the character that was in the first game. Later on, we decided that we were probably missing a trick by not having Chell present, so we moved her back into that role.
We explored changing Chell’s nationality for a little bit. Nobody really knew what Chell was in the first game. She kind of had a hint of Japanese ethnicity to her, but we were still not quite sure if we were going to keep her or make her a new character.”