Portal 2 Release Date & Stephen Merchant Voicing Wheatley

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At Gamescom 2010 Valve has announced that the release date for Portal 2 will be February 9, 2011. When it was pushed back into 2011 a couple months ago I think we all feared we would have to wait quite awhile to get our hands on it, but that doesn't seem to be the case.[br]Along with the release date, they also discussed the new voice actor, Stephen Merchant, who will be voicing Wheately, the British robot featured in the gameplay videos from E3. Stephen Merchant is popular for being a writer and actor on the UK version of The Office. News comes via Gamepro.
 
WORDS CANNOT DESCRIBE...How happy this makes me, I was pretty upfront about Lord's voice acting for Wheatley, this a massive and drastic improvement casting Merchant. MAN ALIVE. His voice will be significantly better.

I love it when two worlds collide. I adore all the work of Ricky Gervais & Stephen Merchant (including every xfm show they did, and every series of their podcasts), it is going to very odd hearing Steve while playing Portal 2. But still it will be brilliant as I'm sure he'll bring his comic tone to the character.

So happy. For people who don't know Merchant he only made a brief appearance in The Office (series 2) as the 'goggle-eyed freak' the oggmonster, but he had the more involved role in Extras as Darren Lamb, the agent of Andy Millman (Ricky Gervais).

1282136904_Stephen_Merchant_2.jpg
 
Ah good, plenty of time to actually play through Portal myself. Glenn you've also just reminded me that I should probably get around to watching 'The Office' one day soon!
 
Wow, I'm going to ask for this on my birthday. (8 days prior)
 
Update to news post with new gameplay footage with Merchant's voice as Wheatley. There are the demos at the end with the other new Portal gameplay features, but they are not all the same as the E3 videos...so watch it all!
 
"The best game we have ever made" just became a massive understatement. Excuse me while I scrape what's left of my jaw from my basement.
 
Apparently, Lord's voice was only ever placeholder, and this was confirmed on wired.com around E3 time.

Stephen Merchant sounds better obviously... but, I'm just not sure I like the character anyway. It's tough to do humourous disembodied computer voices that aren't goddamned annoying.
 
Dat lighting....

Gah, watching this makes me really hope that they'll stay on track for the February release date.
 
So the Lighting and Shadow system has been improved, and then some
 
Lighting is extraordinary and that voice actor sounds much better than the previous one for Wheatley.
 
Forget what I said about lighting, it appears every aspect of the Source Engine has been improved, even the Gels can be effected by the excursion funnel
 
Episode 3 trailer on release date/at the end of Portal 2.

YOU HEARD IT FROM ME FIRST
 
I can't honestly think of anyone better to voice him. Now only if they managed to cram Karl Pilkington as a small cameo playing a personality sphere thing or something, I would cry tears of joy.
 
Just noticed Portal's Test Chamber 5 at 8:56 in the video.
 
The new voice actor is just less annoying than the last, nothing to write home about.
 
Still don't like the voice. Doesn't really make any sense for him to sound like just a normal human and not a robotic voice like with the previous game's robots.
 
Jesus Wheatly, *EVERYTHING* you do you could "die"! Even giving yourself a sponge bath!! Oh wait, that could actually kill him being an electronic piece of equipment. Anyways, great footage and while it's nice to hear a release date, I have a feeling Valve time will rear it's ugly head one again......

And by the way, VALVE *MUST* RELEASE A WHEATLY MODEL! I would buy it in an instant! It would be super awesome if you could plug him into a USB port and he would light up.
 
Awesome.. the voice acting doesn''t sound great (imo) but the game looks good all the same :D Just hope it isn't; a) suffering from consolitis b) only a few hours long.
 
It's great that Merchant got to replace the old voice of Wheatley, at least they replaced it with a good voice actor.

And, during the bit where Wheatley's light is leading Chell through the maintenance, he mentions something about the foreman being "an exact duplicate of himself". Who exactly is 'himself'? We'll have to wait and see.
 
At this stage I'm wondering what Optimization is on the game. The game currently has more complex scenes that anything they've pulled before. I'm beginning to think the guy who made the Minerva mod has been working on this project
 
I love that the Source engine still manages to churn out beautiful looking games even though it's 6 years old! Amazing, Valve.
 
Wow! Even from that video this looks awesome. The attention to detail is truly jaw dropping. And the lighting FX?! Superb. Really exciting news about the voice acting as well. It's going to be a blast to play for sure. Really, really exciting :D My only resrevation is that Valve have gone & shot themselves in the foot by again giving a release date. They've not managed to meet one yet! Could Portal be the one to the break the chain?! Let's hope so.
 
:eek::naughty:

I am speechless! Portal 2 looks amazing and so much better then any game I have seen or played in recent years!! Is there anymore news on coop/multiplayer? I heard something early on about both modes being offered upon release. Also I hope they release DLC like they did with the left4dead games!
 
Wow. The repulsion gel section was impressive. This game looks pretty godly.
 
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