Honestly, Portal wasn't a great example of overall writing. Honestly, from what I have seen, its a very excellently desgined puzzle game. However, the writing was ok, but not great. Adding some bit of interesting dialogue and story to a puzzle game may be unusual, but honestly, it doesn't by itself make the writing great. It was sufficient for what it was, and it was better than in some games. In the end, it was a very fun, even exceptionally fun, puzzle game with much better graphical quality than most. It gained some value from the Half-Life series. It had some funny in it, but jesus, really, great writing? I know many games have zero writing/dialog/story quality, and in many ways its going down in quality. Does that mean we lower the overall standards of writing? Assigning absurd value to a box? Wow. References to "hollow" cake? Genius! Umm... if im missing something, really, is it that important? The beauty of Portal is its gameplay, which was never-done-before and really excellently implimented. Don't get me wrong, both the box gag and the cake gag were entertaining, and even the half-life borrowed backstory added something, but great writing? Should these folk give advice on writing? For pulp fiction, sure why not. In the end, why should anyone not adding depth to a puzzle game give a flying fuck? Because I enjoyed the gameplay, do I really need to think everything else about it, especially the obvious, meh dialog, is so groundbreaking? Bah Humbug!