So many questions...(spoilers duh)

[VortigauntLover]

Well, I beat this game yesterday and it was AWESOME but as usual for a Valve game, there were way too many questions.

1. Who is Chell? Why is she here?
2. When does the game take place?
3. Is GLaDOS saying facts during the final battle? If so, that's very interesting.
4. Is Chell really not a good person?
5. Is she really adopted?!
6. What does GLaDOS mean by "the world outside is very different, I have an infinite capacity for knowledge and still I don't know what is happening"
7. What does the ending song mean? Is GLaDOS really still alive? :O
8. Why does the term "the cake is a lie" appear on the walls so often? The game is not a lie! I seen during the ending cutscenes, and the companion cube was there too!

The game was awesome btw. I think Level 18 was the hardest...and I think the funniest lines were "Wow, *SUBJECT NAME HERE&, you must be the pride of *SUBJECT TOWN NAME HERE*" and "Here, this is what you sound like "Oh Hello!" That's how stupid you sound!" not direct quotes but close

Oh, and interestingly, I played through the whole game and I don't think the term "GLaDOS" appears once in the actual game and the radio that plays at the beginning plays a song that kinda sounds like "Still Alive"

 

[cjohnson]

1> Cave johnson, [was, now dead] CEO of aperture, Brought her in 'Bring your daughter to work day'
2>We dont know for sure
3>Maybe, Maybe not, She bluffed the whole game so maybe, but she maybe referencing to portal storms/combine invasion/7 hour war.
4>We Dont know enough info but we may find out in HL2: Ep3
5>Probably not, see Q1 but GLaDOS os proboly trying to dtress her whilse she is killing GLaDOS.
6>See Q3
7>She maybe "still alive" on another system somewhere else in the HL universe (borealis?)
8> Well, you were promised cake, but some other test subjects never made it out of the building so they never saw the cake.

 

[Gordon-Shepherd]

1> Cave johnson, [was, now dead] CEO of aperture, Brought her in 'Bring your daughter to work day'

source?
it doesn't say anything about this in the aperture science site notes..

 

[cjohnson]

Well thinking about that, maybe she was adopted by Cave. I cant provide a definate source, but from what i've read around the net, it seems that that is true

 

[ríomhaire]

1. Who is Chell? Why is she here?

We don't know. GLaDOS says that she's not a "full-time" employee of Aperture though, which doesn't really narrow things down very much. Some speculate that she was brought in for the Bring Your Daughter to Work Day that's mentioned in the game and on aperturescience.com

2. When does the game take place?

After 1996 if you take the website as canon (which many don't). It could be after the Black Mesa Incident and the Combine takeover. GLaDOS claims that "things have changed" in the outside world and that she's keeping "them" out.

3. Is GLaDOS saying facts during the final battle? If so, that's very interesting.

We don't know.

4. Is Chell really not a good person?

That depends on the player.

5. Is she really adopted?!

Who knows?

6. What does GLaDOS mean by "the world outside is very different, I have an infinite capacity for knowledge and still I don't know what is happening"

She means that she doesn't have enough information to know what's going on outside. She's cut off from everything else. She could also be lying.

7. What does the ending song mean? Is GLaDOS really still alive?

Possibly. Seeing as GLaDOS is an artificial lifeform there could easy be more copies of her lying around the same way you can have more than one of the same type of computer.

8. Why does the term "the cake is a lie" appear on the walls so often? The game is not a lie! I seen during the ending cutscenes, and the companion cube was there too!

Because your little helper, ie, the guy who scribbled on the walls, though that the cake was a lie, but he was wrong.

 

[Gordon-Shepherd]

I really don't see why the aperture science site isn't seen as canon. obviously the team making portal would cut out anything from the site that didn't make sense with the canon storyline.. and obviously the site was made (or approved by) the portal team..

 

[Doombringer]

Just a note about the "full-time employee" crack... it may be simply that, a crack, rather than any indication of Chell's connection to Aperature as an employee.

You're not a scientist, you're not a doctor, you're not even a full-time employee!

Basically GLaDOS could be deriding Chell saying she is so unintelligent she cannot even hold down a full-time job in the outside world