Friday, May 20, 2011

Meet the Test Subjects

Scout
Challenge: aerial faith plate

The scout sits at an aperture brand folding chair, leaning back and resting his feet on the table. He's wearing the standard Aperture jumpsuit with the sleeves cut off plus his dogtags, headset, and cleats.

Credit: official WikiInterview: "Yeah. I finished the tests. All of 'em. Perfect score. Yep. Didn't take any brain smarts or nuthing. They gave me this cube thing? Bam, I incinerated it. No problem. Listen pal, I can solve tests. I can solve any test, any time, no problem. Yeah, they tried giving me these dumb looking boot things when I came in here and I said "No way are you putting those girl shoes on me, nerd!" And then I gave him a noogie. You know what I'm saying? This guy does, ha ha ha."

Test Footage:
The door to the room opens, and the scout comes out, arms outstretched, mugging and strutting for an imaginary audience. He stops mid-gloat, noticing that the room is mostly empty of objects and completely empty of people. Cautiously he scans the whole room while backing up, only to step onto an AFP, which then launches him into the far distance. At the far end, another AFP activation can be heard, and one of the scout's shoes comes flying back and knocks over the camera.

Soldier

Challenge: Thermal Discouragement Beam

The soldier is dressed in an aperture jumpsuit, Long Fall boots (in a slightly more masculine style) and a test helmet that hides his eyes.

"How do I feel about this challenge? What is this, girl scout preschool? I am a man, and MEN do not talk about their feelings. Men do things with their hands, like build PROUD NATIONS or BIRDHOUSES. Do not test me, science man, I will not be--Oh! Sixty dollars? I'm in!"

The soldier tumbles into the middle of the testing room floor as though he were diving for cover, and lands in the middle of a nearly empty chamber. Quickly he takes stock of the elements in the chamber. Thermal Discouragement Beam generator. Two weighted discouragement beam redirection cubes. The Thermal Discouragement Receiving Port. After thinking carefully, he fires four successive shots. The first portal drops a redirection cube under the Thermal Discouragement Beam, rerouting it to another discouragement cube, into a portal on the wall and out to the Receiving Port. Standing direction in front of final receiver, on fire, is the Soldier.

As he crumples, the portal gun drops out of his hand, rolls through the open door, and the "test completed" success bell is heard.

Spy
Challenge: Turrets

The Spy is wearing an inexplicably classy Aperture jumpsuit with the sleeves rolled down and buttoned. He has a boutonniere on the lapel, and somehow retains his balaclava and cigarette. His pants are rolled up at the knee, revealing the Advanced Knee Replacement and a pair of wing-tip shoes. While speaking he dismisses one smokable and lights another.

Interview:
"Am I to believe you will be administering a test? And during this test, you will allow me to be alone in a series of rooms which may grant an invisible man who is not me access to unguarded industrial secrets? Top shelf."

Test Footage:
The primary testing area consists of a small antechamber with a security camera and aroom with several turrets (a genuinely ridiculous amount), arranged in a crowd that leaves a path between two doors. There's some conversion gel splashed on the floor. The spy enters the room, and immediately uses the portal gun to dispatch a nearby security camera. Glados' signature complaint regarding vital testing apparatus is heard. The Spy peers around the corner. One turret asks "Hello?". The spy ducks back into the lee of the door, activating his invisibility watch and chuckling softly.

Completely invisible to the viewer, his movements are implied by the movement of the camera. Quickly, he enters the room, the camera moving laterally to suggest he's strolling casually and mark his progress. There's an overhead shot of the scene, with the many, many turrets' targeting lasers staring straight ahead. A close up of the conversion gel puddle being disturbed, with a few footprints trailing out of it, then a close-up of a turret.

The turret is staring straight ahead, then blinks and looks down, its eye following the apparent progress of the footprints. There's an overhead shot again, only this time one of the sentries is following the footprints with its tracking beam. Slowly, ominously, the tracking beams begin to converge on a space near the footprints.

One of the turrets quips "Goodbye" and the scene fades to black over gunfire, and a gentle thump.