Party Escort Bot

"Thank you for assuming the party escort submission position."

- Party Escort Bot

The Party Escort Bot, also known as the party associate, is an Aperture Science personality core partially cut from Portal, and reintroduced in the game for the retconned ending featured in the update made on March 3, 2010, as part of the Portal ARG.

Overview


The party associate is first mentioned by GLaDOS after Chell escapes certain death at the end of Test Chamber 19. There she says that they are throwing a party in honor of Chell's tremendous success, and that a party associate will arrive shortly to collect her for her party. GLaDOS then orders Chell to assume the party escort submission position or she will miss the party. As Chell disregards GLaDOS's words, the party associate is never seen at that point. At the very end of the game however, when Chell finds herself on the Aperture Laboratories parking lot after eventually destroying GLaDOS, the party associate finally comes to pick her up, and drags her away inside the facility, thanking her for assuming the party escort submission position, while remaining unseen.

As the end of Chell's series of tests did not proceed properly, the bot is forced to reach the outside to pick her up. It is likely that during normal tests, the bot merely waits for the Test Subject outside the last Test Chamber, and directs them to the party, if it ever was part of the tests. Given its voice, it is possibly of masculine programming, and may not be the sole Party Escort Bot to have been used. Given the sounds it makes, it also seems to be mounted on two legs.

Behind the scenes

 * According to Erik Wolpaw, the party associate mentioned by GLaDOS was originally to be watching over Chell and be partially heard and glimpsed during the second half of Portal, waiting for Chell to assume the party escort submission position. The final payoff would have been that once Chell had finally defeated GLaDOS and collapsed on the parking lot ground, the party escort robot that had been following her would finally drag her back to their "party" inside the facility. Wolpaw states that this would have been a "super happy ending" for the escort robot, but a less happy ending for the player.


 * In the update made to Portal on March 3, 2010, named "Added valuable asset retrieval", the original Portal ending was restored, having, instead of the original direct fadeout, Chell finally being dragged away by the Party Escort Bot, thanking her for assuming the party escort submission position, "re-energizing" Portal, and bridging the gap between it and Portal 2, as Chell will be back inside the Enrichment Center in Portal 2. However the presence of the bot in the second half of the game was not restored. Furthermore, around 10 minutes before the Portal March 3, 2010 update, the progress bar and the words "VALUABLE ASSET RETRIEVAL INITIATED" appeared in the BBS, suggesting the BBS itself dispatched the Party Escort Bot.


 * According to Valve's Jason Holtman, changing the Portal ending was not decided until a few days before the start of the ARG, and the versatility of the PC platform greatly helped its inclusion.

Trivia



 * The track "Party Escort" in the Portal soundtrack is a reference to the Party Escort Bot.


 * Noclipping where Chell is dragged away in the updated " " will reveal at the camera location a cube model used for the game's camera, named "GhostAnim.mdl" and using the texture files of the can of beans found several times in the game (used as a placeholder). Found in the newly added folder "props/camera" in the Portal game files, the model has two animations, "idle" and "move", the latter being used for the movement pattern seen when being dragged away. Shooting a portal on it or anywhere near it will crash the game.

List of appearances

 * Portal
 * Portal: Still Alive
 * Portal ARG
 * Portal 2: Lab Rat