Where to now for Portal? (Spoiler thread)

[JUL3]

Tell me your speculation on the future for the series.
I feel that the Portal team are in their prime, Portal has become a gigantic universe of it's own now, it'd be crazy to have Portal 2 as the last. But where can the series go now? Chell is out in the middle of a field somewhere with CC, GLaDOS is happily living forever, and Wheatley is in space with Mr "I'm in space".

Also, no Half-Life tie-ins.

 

[deathcheckedin]

Give the game a solid month before future speculation. The game hasnt even been out for 36 hours. We arent getting any direct Portal sequel for years, I assume with the rumored Source 2 Engine, then we'll get one. Just give me more Half Life first

 

[StarBob]

I think the Portal as we know it with GLaDos and Chell and all that jazz is over. There may be another game with Portal functionality, but I think it will be set in a different time with different people... with a different scenario. That's my opinion. I don't think it's reasonable to continue from that ending...

 

[Parky]

I think the Portal as we know it with GLaDos and Chell and all that jazz is over. There may be another game with Portal functionality, but I think it will be set in a different time with different people... with a different scenario. That's my opinion. I don't think it's reasonable to continue from that ending...

I'd say that was pretty accurate.

 

[Laivasse]

I wasn't even convinced that it was reasonable to continue from P1's ending. It had to be altered for P2 to be viable. Good thing P2 is an amazing game.

As much as I would love to get game after game of Portal-calibre, set in the Portal universe, if you twist and warp the story just to support a narrative through-line then the story starts to collapse under the weight of all the retcons and leaps of faith we're asked to make, purely to support the viability of yet another sequel. That's when a great, innovative game and story becomes a sorry cash cow (I'm not even touching the topic of DLC here).

Portal 2 justified its existence but if its ending didn't say 'finality' I don't know what does. You've played through practically every test chamber Aperture created across something like 60 years. GlaDOS has her replacement non-human test subjects. Wheatley is remorseful, and in space. Chell has the CC, her freedom, and a door slammed in her face. Just let the franchise end on a high instead of milking it like a withered teat as is the convention elsewhere in the game and film industries.

 

[<RJMC>]

chell tryes to rebuild civilization using portal technology and wheatly is found by aliens that use him as a guide to conquer the earth????

 

[Hectic Glenn]

I think it's done in terms of story, like Laiv says...the ending felt pretty final. We know 'testing will continue' with the androids, now humans aren't needed so I imagine Valve can mess around with atlas and p-body in some kind of DLC out of the story arc. Advanced chambers for example, they could just throw in those levels.

 

[MJ12]

A Portal Prequel would have massive potential if it was set in the old Aperture labs back when Cave was alive and they had other weird experiments. Sometime Circa 1970. I almost feel like they were setting us up for that, introducing us to Cave and all.

I am sure anything with Chell is over, especially since we now know there would be no portal surfaces other than in aperture (it's all made from crushed moon rock, right?) I guess one could argue they could continue her journey onto the surface with a different puzzle game, but that would be unlikely and not really in line with the portal style of play and humor.

 

[Hectic Glenn]

That made me just remember something GLaDOS said along the lines of "I was checking the test subject names and one of them had the same surname as you, isn't that interesting?"

Husband / Brother / Sister ? The comic had her surname redacted, why would the surname be kept back from us & GLaDOS not say it either? It makes me think that perhaps she is of relation to a surname we would already be familiar with?

 

[Omnomnick]

All of you guys shush for a moment.

Go play the full Co-op campaign, experience the ending cut scene, then come back :3
If you've done that, well done.

Spoiler

Valve could easily build some kind of campaign out of any of the new thousands of test subjects GLaDOS makes Atlas and P-body find in the underground vault.

 

[JUL3]

Chell Freeman does have rather a nice ring to it.

 

[Damic]

YOu guys now that there where thousands more test subjects are in cryo?? So ther can be a 3 portal but testing will be going on further butt without the killing like GlaDOS said

 

[leib10]

I think that there's potential for a prequel, but not a sequel. The way they ended it (and the ending song) basically seals the permanent separation between Chell and GlaDOS.

 

[[Dragoon]]

That made me just remember something GLaDOS said along the lines of "I was checking the test subject names and one of them had the same surname as you, isn't that interesting?"

Husband / Brother / Sister ? The comic had her surname redacted, why would the surname be kept back from us & GLaDOS not say it either? It makes me think that perhaps she is of relation to a surname we would already be familiar with?

GLaDOS said she found 2 subjects with Chell's surname, a man and a woman. It was part of the building to the big surprise that GLaDOS heavily implied would be Chell's parents. Surprise! She made it all up. I'm assuming the part about the test subjects was a throwaway joke.

On the original topic: Recall the credits song from Portal 1, where GLaDOS kept saying that she's still alive? And how she's actually still alive in Portal 2? Now in Portal 2 the refrain involved GLaDOS counting on Chell for something or other. "You've got your short sad life left. That's what I'm counting on" "Go make some new disaster. That's what I'm counting on"

I'm likely just misinterpreting it, but that seems like a pretty nice setup for Portal 3. GLaDOS likely has a decent idea what's going on up there, and perhaps has some ulterior motive in tossing Chell out. The right woman in the wrong place can make all the difference in the world.

 

[JUL3]

The right woman in the wrong place can make all the difference in the world.

I see what you did there.

I like this idea though. Despite her muteness and, I suppose lack of depth, Chell is my favourite character in Portal. I hope we get continue playing as her in future.

 

[Lanthanide]

we now know there would be no portal surfaces other than in aperture (it's all made from crushed moon rock, right?)

No.

The portal gel wasn't created until the 70's when they bought the moon rocks. He says they discovered that the gel works well as a portal surface - clearly they had portals and portal surfaces before the gel was created.

Cave says that he's sick because moon rocks are deadly, but the announcement ARG indicated that he died from asbestos poisoning. Interestingly near the beginning of the repulsion gel tests he says that the testing spheres are made from asbestos, but not to worry because it'll take 40-something years before you die from it.

The clearest evidence that not everything in aperture is made from moon rocks is the fact that the initial repulsion gel tests were in the 50's. At the entrance to the first test there's a poster on the wall saying that you need a quantum portal device in order to complete the tests, with a cartoon man with a big back pack on. Clearly they had portals and therefore portal surfaces back in the 50's, before they had the moon rocks. It appears that portal surfaces are simply concrete, so it also makes sense that moon rocks would work as portal surfaces, and therefore not surprising that once they put it into a gel (just to see what would happen - they were innovating) they had to come up with some use for it.

That made me just remember something GLaDOS said along the lines of "I was checking the test subject names and one of them had the same surname as you, isn't that interesting?"

Husband / Brother / Sister ? The comic had her surname redacted, why would the surname be kept back from us & GLaDOS not say it either? It makes me think that perhaps she is of relation to a surname we would already be familiar with?

Over in the spoilers thread, someone posted a texture of one of the potato battery stands. It clearly says "by Chell" in the corner. I'm not sure if it was every conclusively determined that GLaDOS killed everyone on Bring Your Daughter To Work day, or perhaps they just had multiple of them. If GLaDOS did kill them all on BYDTWD, with Chell looking to be at least 18 or 19 years old, she may have been a prisoner of Aperture for at least 10 years before Portal 1. It also means that Chell is the daughter (or adoptive daughter, if you believe GLaDOS) of an employee of Aperture.

On the original topic: Recall the credits song from Portal 1, where GLaDOS kept saying that she's still alive? And how she's actually still alive in Portal 2? Now in Portal 2 the refrain involved GLaDOS counting on Chell for something or other. "You've got your short sad life left. That's what I'm counting on" "Go make some new disaster. That's what I'm counting on"

Yeah, I don't think the ending is so clear cut that we'll never see Chell back at Aperture.

The original portal ending song was a bit of a jibe at fans in general, that tend to both come up with grand conspiracy theories, as well as refuse to believe anything they haven't seen with their own eyes. Hence the song repeatedly saying GLaDOS was "still alive" - to beat it into people's thick heads that it isn't a conspiracy theory and that despite how it looked she didn't actually die.

In the new song, GLaDOS just repeatedly says that she wants Chell gone.

I haven't played the co-op, but with thousands of humans in cryo stasis, it's easy to imagine a scenario where they escape en-masse and Chell has to return to either help them attack GLaDOS, or protect GLaDOS from them (for some reason).

In terms of settings, the early section of aperture that we played through was only testing shaft #9. The "where are you" map shows there are several other testing shafts. When you first enter into shaft 9, there's a stencil on the wall that says "testing shafts 1-8" and also "testing chambers 1-200", but they're both closed off with posters that say "this experiment discontinued" with a picture of a liquid being poured into a testing sphere.

 

[TheOneFreeMan]

I don't think there'll ever make a direct sequel. They pretty much exhausted, from what I read of the way they developed Portal 2, all their good ideas for additional mechanics to add originality onto the portal puzzle mechanic.

If there's ever another GlaDOS-involved game, it'll be using something other than portals.

 

[Darkside55]

http://www.thefinalhoursofportal2.com/

 

[PorkPi]

Chell's story is OVER. No way she's getting back and I like that because it means there is very likely not going to be a Portal 3. I do hope, however that we will get plenty of DLC for the co-op bots and I think they're planning on it because of all the crap they made available to buy for "bot enrichment". If everyone just stopped after playing through the original chambers, there wouldn't be any way to sell that stuff. But speaking of the co-op bots

Spoiler

there IS a small chance for a Portal 3 because of all the humans that the co-op bots found. However, I think it would be a bad move to have another game starring one of these people. BUT I think there could be an opportunity there for regular test-solving DLC.

 

[Darkside55]

I imagine from here they'll just continue supporting the co-op component rather than another full-fledged product.

 

[undertone]

They've basically perfectly set up Portal 3 as a direct sequel and as a prequel. Chell's story in aperture science might be over, but that doesn't mean she won't pop up somewhere else. I mean Chell is in a field, somewhere. That's not a very concrete ending if you ask me. She could still be in Aperture Science's compound, trapped. The state of the world is entirely uncertain, and let's not forget that GlaDOS has access to the surface, as I believe her statement about seeing two people and not having to kidnap them was very serious.

We also know that the co-op campaign takes place after Chell's expulsion from the enrichment centre, but we have no idea how long their story lasts. As the robots were constructed and deconstructed, and even exploded at the end of each section, the time-line for their story could be only as little as one day, or as long as a few weeks to a few months. Depending on how long it took to assemble the tests, and locate the location of the vault.

There is also a significant amount we don't know about Aperture's past, and I think exploring that in some manner would be a very rewarding experience provided that the game play is appropriate to the story and invigorating. Hell they've even set up a very strong connection to Black Mesa. The two are remarkably similar, being imaginably large underground scientific laboratories. It does seem like Aperture's approach to science brought them both great advances, but was ultimately their downfall. Ironically, Black Mesa's more controlled and safer environment brought them greater success, yet in the end destroyed civilization. GlaDOS / Aperture were responsible for murdering untold thousands of people due to their recklessness and having a low value on life, yet Black Mesa was in the end the cause of billions of people losing their lives.

I also think it would be interesting to find out how GlaDOS / Aperture dealt with the Portal Storms and Seven Hour War. Maybe not as a full game, but at least in some sort of media that tells that story.

Anyways, what I'm trying to get at is that there were a few questions answered in the game, but in the process of fleshing out Aperture's history we ended up with a lot more questions.

 

[ríomhaire]

That made me just remember something GLaDOS said along the lines of "I was checking the test subject names and one of them had the same surname as you, isn't that interesting?"

Could just be that two more people had their names withdrawn and being an AI assigned to test the people on the list, she couldn't tell that that wasn't actually their name.

 

[morgs]

That made me just remember something GLaDOS said along the lines of "I was checking the test subject names and one of them had the same surname as you, isn't that interesting?"

This was during her build up to revealing Chells parents which turned out to be a lie. I wouldn't be surprised if she lied about the names just to get Chell worked up.

 

[Darkside55]

Spoiler

There was definitely someone there with the same last name as Chell because she was one of the kids from the "Bring Your Daughter to Work" day. The way I see it, GLaDOS wasn't lying about Chell being left on a doorstep by her parents; her biological parents gave her up, someone at Aperture adopted her--this is why potato GLaDOS, who is incapable of lying, says "You really are adopted,"--and thus she had the same last name of someone in the facility. It's clear that that person was male, as she used a "secret ingredient from dad's work" to fuel her potato experiment, but just who that person is is a mystery.

 

[PorkPi]

Why is potato GLaDOS incapable of lying?

 

[Krynn72]

Spoiler

There was definitely someone there with the same last name as Chell because she was one of the kids from the "Bring Your Daughter to Work" day. The way I see it, GLaDOS wasn't lying about Chell being left on a doorstep by her parents; her biological parents gave her up, someone at Aperture adopted her--this is why potato GLaDOS, who is incapable of lying, says "You really are adopted,"--and thus she had the same last name of someone in the facility. It's clear that that person was male, as she used a "secret ingredient from dad's work" to fuel her potato experiment, but just who that person is is a mystery.

You could read the stuff written on those boards? I thought they were supposed to be unreadable since the textures were so low res for me.

 

[Darkside55]

mat_picmip -1 makes the textures clear. You just need to keep entering it in everytime you load.

Also PorkPi, she can't generate enough electricity to lie.

 

[Lanthanide]

Also PorkPi, she can't generate enough electricity to lie.

Actually she started off with 1.1V, which was just enough to support her functionality. The gun adds an extra 0.5 volts for 1.6, which isn't enough to allow her emotional outbursts. So she might be able to lie. I'm not saying that's concrete, but there's enough vagueness that we can't automatically assume that everything she says after that point is completey true.

 

[Gmr Leon]

Someone pointed out over on the Steampowered Portal 2 forums that:

Spoiler

Potato GLaDOS lies to Wheatley to get him to tell you the solution to a test chamber again to hurt him.

 

[PSUjorge]

Someone pointed out over on the Steampowered Portal 2 forums that:

Spoiler

Potato GLaDOS lies to Wheatley to get him to tell you the solution to a test chamber again to hurt him.

Thats not really a lie...

 

[Lanthanide]

Um, how is it not a lie? She said "all we had to do was pull that lever". There was no lever, so it is factually untrue, and she knew it. That makes it a lie.

The fact that it was also a trap for Wheatley doesn't somehow make it not a lie.

 

[Omnomnick]

Lets be honest. Valve aren't going to concentrate on Portal properly again for atleast another few years, if ever. Sequel or Prequel, they have a few games to shift before then. Episode 3/Half Life 3 whatever it's going to end up being, Dota 2 and that mysterious new game The Political Gamer got a picture of when he probably shouldn't have.

 

[cjohnson]

The portal on the moon was facing towards earth. Wheatley was blown, then, towards Earth, presumably by the rush of the atmosphere.
All aperture technologies remain operational up to 4000ºK

PORTAL 3: WHEATLEY FALLS TO EARTH

 

[Lanthanide]

The portal on the moon was facing towards earth. Wheatley was blown, then, towards Earth, presumably by the rush of the atmosphere.
All aperture technologies remain operational up to 4000ºK

PORTAL 3: WHEATLEY FALLS TO EARTH

Sure, it's possible. I mean they can write whatever they like into the story.

But the moon is actually very very far away from the Earth - 30 times the diameter of the earth away in fact. It's almost infinitely more likely he'd go into an orbit around the Earth and/or moon.

 

[cjohnson]

Yeah, we're talking about a universe where you can shoot portals from a hand sized gun here.

The thing is, in the vacuum of space, there's be nothing to slow you down, except the moon's gravity which is incredibly weak. The force of earth's air will have broken him free of that - the only other force, assuming he was heading towards earth would be the Earth's gravity and he if went an at the correct trajectory he could easily fall to earth - orbit requires a precise speed and trajectory (at least when launched from earth).

 

[Tenebrais]

Gravity on the moon's surface is around one-sixth that of Earth's. Consider how much power it takes to break the Earth's gravity - leaving the moon still requires a sixth of that. The physics is a bit more complicated than that but the upshot is Wheatley wouldn't have reached escape velocity and is more likely to gradually drift back to the moon's surface (in a decaying orbit) than fall to Earth.

 

[ríomhaire]

Escape velocity of the moon is over 5,000 miles per hour in fact. GLaDOS has some flicking arm.

 

[Kadayi]

I think it's done in terms of story, like Laiv says...the ending felt pretty final. We know 'testing will continue' with the androids, now humans aren't needed so I imagine Valve can mess around with atlas and p-body in some kind of DLC out of the story arc. Advanced chambers for example, they could just throw in those levels.

^This.

And personally I have no problem with that whatsoever. Loved Portal, but I don't feel they need to revisit it any further with regard to storyline of Chell or Glados (sometime ambivalence is no bad thing). More Co-op would be great, because I think Valve did a bang up job with that and have really nailed making co-op about co-dependence (building on the stellar work they've done with L4D1 & 2, and TF2 to a lesser extent). I think for them that is an exciting area to explore and more power to them.