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Video game sequels, specifically sequels to games I like, have been on my mind lately. It seems more and more, game developers have been creating sequels, and they often leave me feeling vaguely unfulfilled. Allow me to elaborate verbosely:

I played Call of Duty: Modern Warfare and liked it. Not the multiplayer, obviously, I mean the game. The single player campaign was compelling, filled with huge set pieces, water cooler moments, and other words and phrases from the video game review generator. In particular, I liked the ending. I felt it was very conclusive. I'm not saying it didn't leave room for another mission - in fact, the epilogue did the opposite - but I am saying that a sequel was unnecessary. The epilogue, to me, answered any questions anyone may have had about what happened to Soap: He goes on with his life. Regardless of the importance of the events depicted in Modern Warfare, the epilogue showed me that they didn't actually change anything, giving the entire affair a feeling of cosmic insignificance. World saved, mission success. Good show, everybody, let's get back to work. What can I say, I like cosmic insignificance in spite of a meaningful plot. I think it works. But then Modern Warfare 2 comes along. "Oh," says MW2, "You liked the satisfying conclusion to the last game? Too bad! Check this out:" Modern Warfare 2 went on to show me how it intended to blur the lines between FPSs and rail shooters and how it intended to say that everything I got out of the last game was wrong. This mission was anything but generic. This mission changed the lives of our protagonists rather significantly with its crazy revenge plan. Now, there wasn't anything wrong with either plot, I just didn't think they worked well together, as I reached a more or less opposite conclusion at the end of each game. Let's move on to something a little more concrete:

Battlefield: Bad Company 2. In terms of gameplay, it was largely similar to its predecessor, though I felt it could have focused more on the somewhat unorthodox approach to game design more present in the first game. However, gameplay is not really the point. In Bad Company 1, he plot was amazingly self contained. We had a beginning, a series of wacky misadventures and an ending, so much so that I was shocked when I heard a sequel was even being considered: The events left little room for an epilogue, much less a sequel. The characters are partly successful in their quest for gold after many hardships, giving them enough money to retire in style... or so it would seem. Instead, they're back in action for game #2, with no mention of the gold, and on a very generic mission that ended with an extremely akward set-up for a sequel. Yes, I'm annoyed that the sequel changed how the story was told (from a quest for gold with hijinks and misadventures to a generic action game... with hijinks) but what I disliked most was that in making a sequel, the developers deny the conclusion of the first game. This is a good lead in to what this thread is more or less about:

Portal 2. First of all, everyone loved Portal. Personally, I never saw what made it so amazingly hyped up. Sure, it was a fantastic game, but I didn't see that it was all that. I don't know, maybe it's because Portal was on the same disc as Half-Life 2 and I hadn't played either game before. Maybe Portal really is a shining beacon of gaming, but, for me at least, it will always play second fiddle to Half-Life 2. Anyway, I'm getting sidetracked. Where was I: Everyone loved Portal. I did, you did, non-gamers did, for three key reasons (or, at least, three reasons I feel like talking about):
1. A well-told, dark yet humorous story.
2. A very simple mechanic.
3. People are morons. I'll expand on these in reverse order:

3: Stop saying the cake is a lie. That wasn't even a very central element of the game. I would go on to say how people need to shut up about the companion cube, but that's a thread in and of itself.

2: For all the talk of "Thinking with Portals" and "Mind bending puzzles" (review generator strikes again) Portal had a single, core mechanic that was very easy to understand and to use. Yes, the puzzles were clever and all, and the concept was neat, but it was very accessible. That's one of the things that makes Portal such a great game. This point is not really relevant, I just thought I'd mention it.

3: The story is not about Aperture Science versus Black Mesa. It is not about advances in portal technology and how these will help or hurt the Combine. It is about GLaDOS and the protagonist... about GLaDOS and you. GLaDOS's calm indifference and horrific actions set up a dark and interesting story, and her comments are often laugh-out0loud funny, but it isn't all about GLaDOS. It's also about the protagonist (to whom I do not refer by name, as I have yet to hear it used in game). Her quest starts out not as a quest for freedom or as a quest for revenge. In Portal, we aren't given an objective, we just are. As we go through test rooms, we arrive at our own conclusions and find our own reasons to move on to the next test. Near the end of the game, the time comes when we disobey GLaDOS and take control into our own hands. After the humorous and fun boss battle, we see a brief cinematic as the ending. At first, I was mildly confused. Did the hero live or did she die? More important, does it even matter? In her few hours of testing, our hero took a stand, took her revenge, and most of all, her freedom. We had no way of knowing if she survived or died after her confrontation with GLaDOS, but we do know that she lived and to me, that's all that mattered. Of course, now the sequel rolls around. We are captured once again. What did we accomplish in Portal, then? Not a damn thing, evidently. GLaDOS is, in fact, "Still Alive" and we are no closer to freedom. In my mind, this short-changes everything I felt or did in Portal.

Also, they issued a Portal patch that altered the plot slightly to fit the sequel in an act of pure hackishness (I use the past tense to express what we did and did not know for this reason). I cannot express the depths of my (maybe a bit irrational) fury in a PG-13 manner (I tried a few times), so I'll leave it to you, the reader, to not make nearly as big a deal out of this as I will.

Of course, I'm only saying these things because I am worried about Portal 2. I want it to be good, and I trust Valve to make good games, I just can't help but worry. I knew the sequel was inevitable, and I was worried then, too. I hope this all turns out well, but what I've seen of the plot so far (very little, in Portal 2's defense) is worse than I had previously feared.

Too long, didn't read version: In Portal and Modern Warfare, I found meaning and their sequels seemed to detract from that. In Bad Company, I found entertainment and its sequel seemed to ignore that. In ranting about video games on the Internet, I use way to many italics and this sentence is grammatically dubious.

Anyway, hopefully you can understand what I'm talking about to some degree. So yeah, discuss, disagree.