![]() ![]() And people spend hours just moving across this fictional space. How important is movement and space to humans? Portal is a game that centers completely on moving across space to get to another space to move across more space for no purpose other than to move from where you started. Any book considered a “wizard book” (there are several types of books in the series: Death Books, Witch Books, Wizard Books, etc, based on what the book focuses on in the world) tends to be one centered around how this all powerful concept of magic actually has almost no power. In fact, not only is magic focused on in several books, but one book, Sorcery, is completely dedicated to showing how useless it is, and how not only useless but incompetent the wizards who practice it are. Terry Pratchett’s Discworldseries has basically an entire sub-plot on how useless magic in. Second off, how would we know that knowing the right question would prove that the answer “42” was any more useful to daily life? And third, the machine couldn’t even figure out what the question that it was answering was, so it can’t be that great of a machine – yet it was still worshiped for 7.5 million years. But even if the “right” question had been asked, how useful would Deep Thought really have been anyway? First off, it took 7.5 million years the first time, and no one knows how long it would take to answer any other question. After 7.5 million years it says “42,” but cannot say what the Ultimate Question is, and thus the answer is obviously useless. Deep Thought is a massive computer able to tell the Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, The Universe, and Everything. Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxyis one of the few books that succeeds in having a lot of wacky pieces of technology, some of which are very useful, some of which become more useful than normal (say, towels), and one in particular that is almost use less. In literature it doesn’t happen as often with technology as it does with magic, partially due to the barriers of explaining crazy technology with only words. If done badly it breaks our suspension of disbelief, however if done well it makes us wish it were useful. ![]() This theme of a really cool idea that doesn’t have a lot of real relevance is pretty common. Think on the Portal Gun for a second: in game it’s extremely useful, but what about out of game? What would you do with a Portal Gun? Maybe make one portal that you would use a lot, but you could never change? On a day-to-day basis the portal gun has maybe, at most, a quarter of the use that it does in game, especially taking into consideration how big and heavy it must be. Sometimes the most awesome things are also the most pointless things. ![]() This mechanic is easy and uncomplicated, but can be related to many outside themes, due to its consistency with other fictional and real technologies. The Portal Gun has the most important mechanic of the game: making portals through shooting. ![]()
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