“The 06 is an arbitrary graphic put on there. It made her look physically capable, but at the same time, there is a vulnerability about her. This just seemed to strike a chord with everyone, because it really seemed like it belonged in the Portal world. “The stuff that was more successful was the really minimal approach, and that's sort of led us to this concept.
#Chell portal 2 code#
“We played around with some different machine-read imagery, and what extra things you might have on a suit like this, but we’re leaning away from the bar code design now, because it seems like it's been done quite a bit before, and originality is something I really associate with Portal. Anything that doesn't serve a real purpose on the character tends to get cut. But that's something we fought with – to make her still appealing to the player, but not look over designed. She was never supposed to look as if she'd been designed.
The constraints we had were that this girl was supposed to be dressed by machines, so any markings on the suit would have been on there for readability by the computer. In the end, the things that were successful were the more minimal, clean, utilitarian looks. 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. Nobody really knew what Chell was in the first game. “We explored changing Chell’s nationality for a little bit. We were playing around with proportion as well, trying to play a lot more with extreme feminine proportions and a totally different color scheme. Very different from the first aesthetic, even though we were still going for clean and simple. Some of the images started with a sporty look – almost like motorcycle gear. Later on, we decided that we were probably missing a trick by not having Chell present, so we moved her back into that role. “Right from the beginning, we were constrained to replicate the character that was in the first game. So we explored a few other characters before returning to Chell. 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. She fit into the world really well and complemented it without the distractions that a more flashy character would bring. “We sort of agreed that as a character Chell was really successful in the first Portal. Valve's concept artist, Matt Charlesworth, explains how that process is working for Portal 2. Designers will go through hundreds of concepts before settling on a final design for their character. Redesigning a character brings additional challenges because players already have a set of expectations for established characters. Even little nuances such as a character's shoes or hairstyle can affect how players perceive their hero.
Designing a character for a game is no easy task.
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