9 Video Game Endings That Were Changed Because Of Fan Feedback

7. Portal Patches In A New Ending To Explain The Sequel

portal glados
Valve

The original ending to fan-favourite Portal didn't leave much room for ambiguity. In fact, blowing your way out of the Enrichment Centre while destroying villain GLaDOS was about as happy of an ending as you could have hoped to get for Valve's seemingly doomed protagonist, Chell.

But then a sequel was announced, and fans were worried that her happy ending would be ignored for the sake of building a franchise. Confused as to how Valve were going to include the character after wrapping up her story so neatly, this announcement only fuelled suspicions that the new game would be nothing more than a derivative reimagining of the original rather than a fully-fledged sequel.

But Valve had already anticipated this kind of fan response, and sneakily patched in a brand new ending to the original Portal days before the second game's announcement to address some of these issues.

Instead of the game cutting to black after an optimistic final shot, the update changed the climax of the original to be much more ominous, with a barely conscious Chell being dragged back down into the depths of the Enrichment lab by an unseen AI, thus justifying her appearance in the second game.

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Josh has over 11 years of experience as a published writer, having worked nine of those years as a full-time content producer at WhatCulture. In that period he has created hundreds of articles, videos and podcast episodes for multiple WhatCulture channels, specialising in gaming, horror and film & TV. He now primarily works as a senior content producer and presenter on WhatCulture Gaming where he co-hosts the WhatCulture Gaming Podcast, a top 3 UK most listened to gaming podcast that he co-created in 2018. Over the years he has reviewed several high-profile gaming releases, covered industry events with on-site reporting, opined on breaking news, and even kicked off his interviewing career by chatting to childhood hero, Tommy Wiseau.