Portal 2

[GrahamZA]

Portal is one of the best, and innovative, games I've played and now...Portal 2!

Portal 2

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Kotaku

Today's Game Informer cover is just the latest in a year and a half's worth of Portal 2 news that has been steadily leaking about the Valve game since 2008.

The cover hints at a chance to leave the labs, and GLADOS, behind, but we've known plenty more than that for quite awhile. Be warned, if you proceed through our Insider's Guide to Portal 2 surprises, plot-lines, characters will be SPOILED.

[An Insider's Guide to Portal 2] Cave Johnson, the boss of Apeture who was dead in Portal, will be the principle antagonist of this sequel. How? We'll get to that.

In the game, Johnson, described as an amiable self-made billionaire who refuses to accept the responsibility of his power, starts off as a sort of sidekick to the player but then he starts to lose his grip on humanity as the story progresses. According to an open casting call we received in 2008, at some point in the game, after Johnson has isolated himself from the people around him and lost touch with reality, he becomes the main bad guy.

But how does a dead man get a leading role in Portal 2?

Enter our second major Portal 2 scoop of 2008: Leaked script samples.

Turns out that Johnson will be portrayed in the game as a simulated computer version of himself. Resurrected inside a computer, Johnson will urge the player to continue testing as he discusses his take on the afterlife.

We also get a bit of insight into Johnson through this week's Valve update of Portal which included plenty of buried hints all of which led to some fantastic quotes from Johnson:

"Science isn't about why, it's about why not. You ask: Why is so much of our science dangerous? I say: Why not marry safe science if you love it so much. In fact, why not invent a special safety door that won't hit you in the butt on the way out, because you are fired."

"Plus, in the event of your death, I personally guarantee that, thanks to the form you were required to sign this morning, your family will not suffer the indignities of a prolonged and costly legal battle against Aperture Science. Trust me, I am rich, and it is a burden I would not wish on anyone."

So we've got an unhinged, debodied billionaire acting as friend and protagonist. We've got all of the tech of Aperture Science, like that spiffy Portal gun and maybe some new toys. And what else?

The final piece of the puzzle may be revealed on the Game Informer cover, which seems to hint at the possibility of the game leaving the stark confines of the lab and going abroad.

So when is this dark comedy coming out?

This coming holiday season, according to Steam's announcement today, just like Plunkett guessed in 2008.

One final clue? Why are there certain letters underlined in the official Portal 2 announcement? Here are the underlined letters, and one number: drattmannh0nee.

What now?

[GrahamZA]

Portal 2

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Kotaku

Officially released details on Valve's sequel to Portal were scant. Fortunately, retailer GameStop comes through with some major details, including the addition of a two-player cooperative campaign mode and all-new characters.

GameStop's description of the PC and Xbox 360 game indicates that Portal 2 is due later this year—the online retailer lists an October 26 release date—bringing with a cast of "dynamic new characters" and "never-before-seen areas of the Aperture Science Labs." And yes, as hinted at earlier, players will be reunited with GLaDOS.

The only details on Portal 2's multiplayer mode from GameStop are that it will feature its own unique story-driven campaign. The "new mode forces players to reconsider everything they thought they knew about portals," requiring players "to not just act cooperatively, but to think cooperatively."

Here's the full product description.

Coming this holiday. Portal 2 is the sequel to 2007's Game of the Year and draws from the award-winning formula of innovative game play, story, and music that earned the original over 70 industry accolades. Features single and multiplayer co-op modes. The single-player portion of Portal 2 introduces a cast of dynamic new characters, a host of fresh puzzle elements, and a much larger set of devious test chambers. Players will explore never-before-seen areas of the Aperture Science Labs and be reunited with GLaDOS, the occasionally murderous computer companion who guided them through the original game. The game's two-player cooperative mode features its own entirely separate campaign with a unique story, test chambers, and two new player characters. This new mode forces players to reconsider everything they thought they knew about portals. Success will require them to not just act cooperatively, but to think cooperatively.

Triumphant.

I see the Valve is sticking to their PS3 hatred so this will only be released on PC and Xbox360.

[5NAKE]

Thats great news. Really loved Portal! Looking forward to this one!

I see the Valve is sticking to their PS3 hatred so this will only be released on PC and Xbox360.

Doesnt matter really. Orange Box on PS3 was horrible and im actually glad they stopped it. Dont want to see another bad port from Valve. This game was made for PC since the game renders the Source Engine to its full performance.

[Satosan]

Oooh, more Portal . And the multiplayer intrigues me, would be awesome to see how that works.

[GrahamZA]

Doesnt matter really. Orange Box on PS3 was horrible and im actually glad they stopped it. Dont want to see another bad port from Valve. This game was made for PC since the game renders the Source Engine to its full performance.

Gabe said a few days ago that while they're not doing anything PS3 now, they're still looking into it and want to do it in the future.

[GrahamZA]

- Doug Lombardi: "Portal was a testbed. Portal 2 is a game." They won't yet indicate the new game's length, only that it is "significantly longer than the original".
- More time, money and risk being invested in it than with the first game. Size of the Portal team's gone from 8 to 28, and they've already put about 2 years into the sequel.
- Chell and GlaDOS are again the central characters.
- "Oh, it's you. It's been a long time. How have you been? I've been really busy being dead. You know ... after you murdered me? Okay, look, we both said a lot of things that you are going to regret. But I think we should put our differences behind us. For science. You monster."
- Portal 2 takes place "hundreds of years" after the first game, and by extension also quite some time after the events of Half-Life 2. They will not elaborate on the connections between the events of Portal and the Half-Life games in the sequel.
- The test facility has decayed and been overgrown since the first game. However, it's now populated with awakened personality cores which function as extra characters. Some of them will be Chell's allies.
- There are many new elements and gameplay mechanics, but they're not trying to make a harder game. They want to retain the first game's tendency to reward players by making them feel smart as they progress.
- Their approach to environmental design: "The world was a series of constraints telling you what you couldn't do in Portal - you could place a portal here and couldn't place a portal there. In a lot of ways it was a very binary interaction with the world. In Portal 2 the surfaces and objects in the world have a bunch of different states. The surfaces themselves can be changed to alter the way you can navigate through the world. And then there are other physical forces that you can use as well. To put it simply, you can send physics through the world."
- They give an example of putting a portal beneath a suction tube and another near a turret, which causes the turret to be sucked up and destroyed. When the second portal is instead placed in the centre of a room littered with objects and junk, it causes a swirling vortex of debris.
- There's also a tractor beam which, when combined with portals, can get Chell to otherwise unreachable spots. The game also features projected bridges -- solid bridges made of energy -- which can be redirected using portals. The writer comments that it looks like flinging will be "less of a crutch" in the game.
- A significant new element is paint. Different paints on surfaces imbue it with different qualities. For example, orange paint will greatly raise Chell's movement speed when she moves across that surface, and blue paint gives a surface a trampoline-like quality. Paints and portals are used in conjunction, so you can use portals to coat specific surfaces or objects with the right paint in order to solve puzzles and progress.
- Other new objects include cubes which redirect laser beams and platforms which shoot you high into the air.
- They say that the various labs will be rebuilt and reconfigured by GlaDOS as the game progresses, and this will play a big role in the game.
- The co-op mode promises a "full-length" campaign which fits logically into the Portal 2 narrative. The two co-op characters are bipedal robots, one made from a personality core and the other from a turret. They look adorable. They like to hold hands, but this is a gesture of "innocence" rather than romance. They're considering making one male and one female. Each character has a portal gun, and they can move through one another's portals. The co-op campaign will feature more complicated and challenging puzzles and obstacles than the single-player one. It sounds like the co-op specific GlaDOS dialogue lines will be a treat.
- Jonathan Coulton is involved again, and Valve promise that music will play a bigger part this time. There will be ways in which new songs can be found and discovered in the game. They're trying hard to come up with ways to have the music surprise players.

[Cybernet]

Man i need to finish that game.

Well i guess 1st i'll updated it = more bandwidth 

btw very informative posts graham 

Good stuff.