Portal Stories: Mel: Difference between revisions

* '''[[Mel]]:''' Mel is the main protagonist of Portal Stories: Mel. She is a middle-aged brunette woman sporting a brown Aperture jumpsuit and spring based long fall boots. She also has minimal makeup such as red nail varnish and red lipstick. Little is known about her history as she is a silent protagonist similar to Chell from Portal and Portal 2, however Virgil does tell us about her struggles in Olympics, thus proving her Olympic status as an athlete in the 1936 Nuremberg Olympics. Her story starts in the old 1950s Aperture in a small train, akin to the beginning to the original Half-Life [[http://combineoverwiki.net/wiki/Half-Life]], and Cave Johnson gives us a quick synopsis of the facility, along with his usual antics (i.e. firing an employee for a simple spelling error). She soon walks through the brand new unnamed community founded by Aperture Science themselves, and going into the new yet faulty Aperture Science Short-Term Relaxation Vault (most likely an earlier version of the Aperture Science Long-Term Relaxation Vault). She falls asleep as Cave Johnson instructs her to do and then she soon falls into a long slumber. Once awoken "Cave Johnson" soon tells her she successfully completed her test and that she can complete another brand new test. As Mel looks around, it is clear that a long time has passed and Mel carries out her adventure inbetween Portal and Portal 2, and after the Bring Your Daughter To Work Day incident leaving all the scientists dead as well as GLaDOS deactivated and badly damaged by Chell. Mel is soon led by "Cave Johnson" to a vintage portal gun, in a smashed shelf filled with an array of comical rewards and trophies highlighting Aperture's achievements. She makes her way around the destroyed Aperture facility with technology well beyond Mel's time period, but "Cave" reassures it was simply an earthquake that brought things from the future with it. Now Mel needs to use her 'new test' to try and solve the Enrichment Spheres and finish the 'new' testing shaft. Throughout the rest of her testing adventure, Mel has a lack of a deep character and simply acts as a gateway for the player. Soon, through testing along with Cave Johnson acting increasingly suspicious, it is soon revealed that he is not Cave Johnson and in fact a [[Personality Core|Personality Construct]] named Virgil, who wants Mel to help him get out of the Aperture scrapyard that he fell into, off his management rail. If Mel is successful then Virgil will let her escape Aperture to go back to her 'normal' life.

After Virgil reveals himself, the relationship starts off shaky due to a lack of trust, Virgil himself even stating 'why would you trust someone who just lied to you' but as soon as Mel sees Virgil, Virgil seems very grateful when Mel picks him up stating "my motherboard was going critical". With Mel saving Virgil's life this seems to strengthen their bond.

With the introduction of AEGIS, the main antagonist of the game, Virgil seems rather quite alarmed about the 'flooding protocol' instigated by AEGIS, flooding the whole 1970s Lima Whiskey testing track, so Virgil tries to get Mel onto his testing track, which is soon hijacked by AEGIS, showing his power over the facility, and throughout the testing track Virgil tries to get Mel out, protect her and further encourage her. Soon, Virgil devises a plan to go to an overgrown testing track as the AEGIS scanners would be instantly overwhelmed by the amount of organic life (i.e. the overgrown plants and feral wildlife). Now in the overgrown testing track, Mel treks through it, still avoiding the imminent flood. Meanwhile, Virgil tries to gather as much information on AEGIS to shut down the autonomous core and then fully shut it down. Once devising a new plan to finish off AEGIS, Mel escapes and meets up with Virgil momentarily to then go to the AEGIS hub and systematically shut down his security, such as his thermal discouragement fields, and disabling his turrets. Finally, Virgil says he can't go in due to the lack of management rails. He wishes Mel good luck and she soon goes forward to shut his autonomy off.

Then, a clear view of Mel shocked by her surroundings is shown and her adventure ends, we have very little information on Mel and seeing as Portal Stories: Mel is not canon, there is no acknowledgement to her in Portal 2, but it can be assumed she tries to live her life, but seeing the surrounding is completely overrun with wildlife, it seems that human life is scarce and society has probably collapsed, probably to the events of the Half-Life series.