This crap is cannon?

[Nitre]

Basically, i'd prefer if we didn't get the portal gun in ep3. Too many design complications and such. Although, if Valve do put it in, i'm sure it will be pulled off nicely.

 

[FriedchikenCamo]

Imagine how much longer it would take to build and test even the tiniest of HL2 levels if you added the portal gun. That would be a tester's nightmare. HL2 and it's eps are pretty easy games to begin with but it seems like this addition would completely destroy any sliver of challenge left. It would completely unbalance the game IMO.

In a game world with gravity guns and zombies I understand it's weird to say something is unrealistic. But a portal gun just doesn't seem fit in my eyes. Look at what it took machinery-wise in HL2 to teleport you and the issues that came with it. Having a hand held version just a few game days away seems dumb, IMO.

Pretty much sums up my reservation about the portal gun being in episode 3. While I think having the Borealis being AI controlled would be kinda cool in a Shodan way, I would feel uncomfortable if Portal's gameplay mechanics forced itself into HL2's universe. I think that linking Aperature Science to portal technology is pretty much as far as Valve can comfortably go in terms of integrating the two worlds, but only if the portal theme was similar to Black Mesa's material analysis scene.

 

[Silarn]

Apparently people fail to realize the portal gun's significant limitations. Think about it. Not only do you have to be within visible distance of your destination, but the creation of a portal requires a flat, unmoving, and apparently concrete (perhaps stone) surface. Glass and metal, at the very least, do not work. Outside of architecture (little of which remains structurally sound in the HL2 world), such circumstances are not that common.

Humor aside, I also fail to see how the literal location and existence of Aperture is at all logistically unfit in the HL2 world. Based on what we can glean about GLaDOS and the circumstances behind 'her,' I also fail to see how the events are unreasonable. Perhaps the 'science' behind the device has not been 'explained' to the ... fantastic degree of the BM portals, but considering the plot of the game, I hardly find this unreasonable. In fact, I would have found it rather more unusual for GLaDOS to suddenly spurt some vague particle physics reference just to give the gun more realistic credibility.

About the only thing I consider rather off-the-wall and ridiculous is the 'history' of Aperture detailed on the website.

 

[cyk]

I will eat my own testicles if the Portal gun is in Episode 3.

Alright, I'm not that rash. But still, there is no way.

Portal was a small, fun puzzle game to introduce us to Aperture Science. Obviously, Episode 3 will have to do with teleporation, but no, there won't be Chell or Companion Cubes (actually, a CC easter egg would be cool). I have a feeling GLaDOS will be in it, but slightly more serious (still with a sense of dark humor though).

 

[Psychanalysis05%]

I see the Portal Gun being used in Episode 3, and can already see how they'd pull it off without breaking a thing.

Gordon doesn't get to use it. Chell isn't friendly, and if she DOES in fact only posess the mind of a child, she'd only run away, and wouldn't let go of that damn thing to save her own life. Especially considering it's what has kept her alive.

 

[Grand Architect]

I see the Portal Gun being used in Episode 3, and can already see how they'd pull it off without breaking a thing.

Gordon doesn't get to use it. Chell isn't friendly, and if she DOES in fact only posess the mind of a child, she'd only run away, and wouldn't let go of that damn thing to save her own life. Especially considering it's what has kept her alive.

I agree that Chell is not going to just hand it over to Gordon. Ether Chell is just another NPC to help you though a sticky spot or two with the Portal Gun. Or in her own game will meet up with BM personal like Barney (Is this where that little rat ran off to?).

 

[Que-Ever]

So cheomesh doesn't like teleportation?

Isn't that what 80 percent of the HL storyline is based on?

 

[Tuskin]

Chell isn't friendly, and if she DOES in fact only posess the mind of a child, she'd only run away, and wouldn't let go of that damn thing to save her own life. Especially considering it's what has kept her alive.

GLaDOS said those things to you to stop attacking her, she was trying to hurt you mentally.

 

[Psychanalysis05%]

There's also the high possibilty that Chell hasn't had any contact with the outside world since she was a child.

 

[Cheomesh]

So cheomesh doesn't like teleportation?

Isn't that what 80 percent of the HL storyline is based on?

Cheomesh does not like uber 1337 h4ndh3ld p0rtalz. I liked how the teleportation systems in the game where large and complex. I even had reservations about the Magnade dispensers...

 

[Pesmerga]

It's canon, not cannon.

 

[Carbon14]

I agree with the original poster, definitely don't want to see any more of a tie in than we already have. Half life is an interesting story with deep immersive characters, portal is great but its a set around bizarre humor and puzzle games. I can't help but wonder if all these people saying they want more of a tie in are just obsessed with how awesome the game is and are not thinking how it would end up looking in a halflife game. I can't imagine anything worse and more out of place than coming across gladDOS in HL. I NEVER want to see a HL turret saying cutesy phrases in child like voices. I definitely don't want to see the levels from portal in all their non sensical designed glory.

I am hoping that the only tie in is that portal is set in aperture science and that the place exists in the HL universe as well. I hope aperture science in HL however is not run by a crazed AI driod, does not have miles of crazy box shaped rooms with pointless pipes carrying pointless boxes and is a fairly realistic complex similar in nature to Black Mesa.

 

[Psychanalysis05%]

You seriously believe that all of Aperture Sciencee was shown in Portal? Huh, conceited.

That was just the testing facilities, designed by a completely broken AI.

 

[Carbon14]

no I dont believe that we saw the whole complex obviously, its just highly unrealistic that humans would test other humans like that and I cant see a way that the "AI" somehow built all of that on its own. It laid down concrete? built steel walls? got a working way to transport fluids? built glass tubes??? not only would it need hundreds of specialised worker driods helping it but it would need the materials from.. uhh where? Even if this did all happen somehow aperture science is light years ahead of everyone technology wise? it just doesn't fit at all. (thats ignoring the pointlessly bizarre storyline and AI)

-edit- I am not knocking portal at all, its is an absolutely fantastic game. It does what it does well, but in the end its a funny puzzle game, not a HL game.

 

[Psychanalysis05%]

Wait, I said somewhere that GLaDOS built it now? I need to stop posting without knowing about it

I said she designed it, nothing more. And I may be completely wrong!

 

[FriedchikenCamo]

I'll definitely agree that the level design in Portal is pretty... crazy.

But there's a zero percent probability that the main HL2 team is going to adopt the Portal style of level design anyways.

 

[Carbon14]

Wait, I said somewhere that GLaDOS built it now? I need to stop posting without knowing about it

I said she designed it, nothing more. And I may be completely wrong!

Fair point, no you didn't say she built it, however I just assumed that that is what you meant since no human would ever blindly follow and build what a crazy computer hell bent on making the most dangerous environments she possibly could told them to.

Fried, While I agree valve would probably never bring those levels into HL, if the game is to be considered totally canon then you have to assume that those maps do indeed exist in the HL universe, something which I really dont like the sound of.

 

[Psychanalysis05%]

To be honest, GLaDOS' test chambers are really no different from the pit that guy threw women into in The Silence of the Lambs.

 

[Apocalypse89]

GLaDOS already exists in the HL universe, her name appears in the "designer" field when the Borealis' blueprints are shown in Ep. 2. Whether she will actually appear in a future game or not is debatable. Personally I wouldn't mind seeing a slightly more serious and sinister form of her.

 

[Thesheep]

AS is a testing laboratory designed to test the capabilities of the portal gun as well as the ability of those chosen to use it. Its not completely out of the realms of possibility to believe that somewhere in the world such unethical testing is going on.

I do think however that portal must be set around the time of 2020 due to the Borealis having been designed by GLaDOS and had time to dissapear and for AS to be abandonded.

 

[Stene]

I don't understand what is so great about Companion Cube, that level was too hard for me. I basically took all the cameras and cube to one big pile, and then climbed to the end. Then I just threw the cube to that remover and that's it. I never understood what I was supposed to do in that level.

 

[mastapenguin]

I'm gonna agree to the sentiments of the OP. While the HL2 series and portal are both excellent games, they're both excellent in different ways. Portal is defined by its black humor as provided by GlaDOS, but Half Life is defined more by the far more serious theme of survival against all odds.

I mean, would Half Life be the same game if Gordon Freeman, theoretical physicist with a will to survive and a surprising familiarity with firearms, ran around a glorified maze with a (different) magic gun? Would Valve's penchant for decomposed bodies in wonderful bits of narrative fit that well in the clean environs of the Enrichment Facility?

Like all the posters before me, I can not stress how much I love both games. However, I'm not sure if they should be any closer than they are now; arms length with various bits of inter-referential easter eggs and otherwise. Combining the two would, in my opinion, work out rather like that Archie/Punisher crossover back in the day.


Even so, if we were to find a Weighted Companion Cube near the beginning of the game, and have the option of bringing it with us ala the traveling gnome, I might just forgive Valve all their transgressions.

 

[FriedchikenCamo]

Fried, While I agree valve would probably never bring those levels into HL, if the game is to be considered totally canon then you have to assume that those maps do indeed exist in the HL universe, something which I really dont like the sound of.

Well, if you put it like that, I really doubt that Valve ever intended Portal to be fully canon. I'm not sure, but the fact that the Portal team had their very own writer suggests that they made a ton of literary liberties with the Half Life 2 universe. I'm just not sure whether the writer also worked on the original storyline, or if the Portal story was his primary work and he was getting suggestions from the main writer.

 

[Tuskin]

Marc Laidlaw, Co-writer of HL2 and Only Writer of HL1 supervised the Portal story.

 

[Stigmata]

If you understand why GLaDOS and the Turrets and so forth have funny dialogue, you understand how easily Portal can fit into the Half-Life universe.