Mel

Early in Portal 2's development, Chell & Mel took the place of the Co-op bots. She appeared as a blond version of Chell, wearing a blue jumpsuit. Mel was removed from the game because play-tester's were reluctant to experiment within Co-op puzzles as they felt it wasn't okay to die - a problem which the Atlas & P-body, disassembly screens and GLaDOS destroying the bots at the end of each chapter tackled.

File:Mel.jpg

Model and texture of Mel found in Portal 2 game files.

Overview

• Mel was completely scrapped from the game when the co-op characters were turned into Atlas and P-body, two infinitely respawnable robots, whereas Chell is kept for the single-player campaign only. Replacing the two human test subjects with robots was decided when it was noted that play testers tended to die a lot, thus creating an in-universe reason for the constant respawning.

• Several GLaDOS lines written when the two test subjects were still to be human (notably GLaDOS taunting the two women about their weight) have been kept for the robots, adding to the comedy of the game.

• Her placeholder model was the Chell player model from the first game, with a light blue jumpsuit, blonde hair, blue eyes, and a much more fair skin tone. Her texture files for this placeholder can be seen in the game files of Portal 2.

Trivia

• Mel and Greg (whose role was replaced and expanded for Caroline) are the only two characters thus far known to have been cut from the Portal series. The Party Escort Bot would have been first if it had not been retconned back into the end of Portal.