Portal 2

[neshcom]

First off, the big news. Portal 2 has been officially announced. A press release was distributed earlier today. Game Informer will also be running a feature on Portal 2 in their next issue. GI will be releasing new information about P2 every 2 days from this page.



Before the announcement, Valve kicked off a strange, still-unfolding ARG (alternate reality game) campaign. Earlier in the week, Valve updated Portal to include a new Steam Achievement. Getting the achievement required taking the radios in the various game levels and waving them around to find a certain 'sweet spot' in each level. The next day, Portal was updated again. If you had earned the achievement and beat the game, the ending was slightly altered (spoiler: At the end, after defeating GlaDOS and witnessing the flaming wreckage in the parking lot, you are dragged away while a male robotic voice announces 'Thank you for assuming the Party Escort Submission Position.'). Along with the first update and achievement, a number of new sound files were added with the prefix 'dinosaur.' Some of the files were morse code messages and some has SSTV images embedded in them showing parts of stock images of a satellite and other machinery as well as numbers. The numbers were put together and were found to be a number to an old dial-in BS server. Since then, the server has been updating with ASCII images. Some appear to be security camera shots, some are images of what could be Chell, some are of chemical compounds. When Portal 2 was announced today, a number of letters in the press release were underlined reading "drattmannh0nee," which has been interpreted as the Rat Man from Portal who wrote in the hidden pockets of the chambers. The underlined message was interpreted into a login for the BBS and this screen appears after login: this one. Right here. Clickit! The old login for the BBS server has given up a "tool to decrypt the "Aperture Image Format", which allowed us to unveil what kind of things were hidden deep beneath the binary code that the new Drattman login gave us." This is very recent info and more is developing.



[upd] New image converted from Aperture Image Format: Clicking here please. Co-op mode?

[november]

Excited <img src='http://mm-bbs.org/public/style_emoticon ... /smile.gif' class='bbc_emoticon' alt=':)' /> cannot wait - I gotta run through portal again to get that achievement hehe.



Did you do the achievement?

[Ap2000]

Of course I hoped it was going to be Episode 3 primarily, but at least Valve is doing something and isn't just putting out generic zombie shooters. I liked Portal a lot, hopefully this will tie in with a Episode 3 including new Orange Box.



The stuff they did with the ARG was pretty cool I have to say.

[neshcom]

GI has confirmed P2 for PC and X360. There will be 2-player co-op in a seperate campaign. GlaDOS will be making a comeback in some form and there will be new characters introduced.



@november: No, I have neither the connection nor the space to re-download Portal, but I have beaten it multiple times.

[Ap2000]

[quote name='neshcom' post='76712' date='Mar 5 2010, 11:16 PM']GI has confirmed P2 for PC and X360. There will be 2-player co-op in a seperate campaign. GlaDOS will be making a comeback in some form and there will be new characters introduced.



@november: No, I have neither the connection nor the space to re-download Portal, but I have beaten it multiple times.[/quote]



"at full retail price"... I'm not sure if that's a good or a bad thing.

While Portal was worth the <5€ I paid for it, I don't know if they can put enough content in it to make me think it's worth paying 10 times as much.



Hopefully there will be at least a few Episode 3 references, because, Valve has been keeping us HL2 fans waiting long enough now...

[neshcom]

[quote name='Ap2000' post='76713' date='Mar 5 2010, 04:24 PM'][quote name='neshcom' post='76712' date='Mar 5 2010, 11:16 PM']GI has confirmed P2 for PC and X360. There will be 2-player co-op in a seperate campaign. GlaDOS will be making a comeback in some form and there will be new characters introduced.



@november: No, I have neither the connection nor the space to re-download Portal, but I have beaten it multiple times.[/quote]



"at full retail price"... I'm not sure if that's a good or a bad thing.

While Portal was worth the <5€ I paid for it, I don't know if they can put enough content in it to make me think it's worth paying 10 times as much.



Hopefully there will be at least a few Episode 3 references, because, Valve has been keeping us HL2 fans waiting long enough now...

[/quote]

The GI information that was released seems to imply heavily that the game will be much longer than Portal. There were rumors earlier that Ep3 won't be coming out this year, but those have been shaky so far. I don't know that we'll see Ep3 this year, and I think another Orange Box-like release probably won't happen.

[al kusanagi]

Pretty sure Valve said either late last year or early this year that Episode 3 would not be brought up at all in 2010.

[aine]

I can imagine this is pretty exciting. Portal is on my list of Games I Missed Out But Absolutely Must Play Regardless Of Their Age and this looks like a good occasion to finally go with it. Although I'm kinda miffed that they have changed the ending now. Gonna have to obtain the original version somehow first.

[neshcom]

[quote name='aine' post='76720' date='Mar 5 2010, 06:13 PM']I can imagine this is pretty exciting. Portal is on my list of Games I Missed Out But Absolutely Must Play Regardless Of Their Age and this looks like a good occasion to finally go with it. Although I'm kinda miffed that they have changed the ending now. Gonna have to obtain the original version somehow first.[/quote]

Beat the game without getting the achievement. No achievement =original ending. The alteration to the ending is slight; it's probably more of an addition if anything.

[Sabaku Ika]

Valve has also recently given hints that they might do something with Macs. Hopefully this means Portal 2 (or all Source games).

[Ap2000]

[quote name='neshcom' post='76721' date='Mar 6 2010, 12:27 AM'][quote name='aine' post='76720' date='Mar 5 2010, 06:13 PM']I can imagine this is pretty exciting. Portal is on my list of Games I Missed Out But Absolutely Must Play Regardless Of Their Age and this looks like a good occasion to finally go with it. Although I'm kinda miffed that they have changed the ending now. Gonna have to obtain the original version somehow first.[/quote]

Beat the game without getting the achievement. No achievement =original ending. The alteration to the ending is slight; it's probably more of an addition if anything.

[/quote]



Indeed, the change is so small, there's no reason to try to get an "old" version of the game.

[neshcom]

Game Informer's article has made its way onto teh interxgnatszz (TOTAL spoilers, but it's just a magazine article...).

[writerserenyty]

I'm pretty excited; I haven't played Portal (yet), but I've always wanted to. I might just have to go for it and get it now, so I can play Portal 2.