Half-Life & Portal series, general discussion (v3) - Games

[QUOTE=nightlord;39271161]I don't remember it ever being said when Black Mesa was founded. Besides, that's what Retcons are for. It wasn't said if any of the War Heroes and Olympians died, was it? They didn't have to know what DNA did to be able to inject people with it and hope it did something (and it obviously worked), Aperture didn't really care too much about safety which is also the most likely reason they lost the teleportation contract and always came 2nd. GLaDOS wasn't powering miles of infrastructure, that was separate reactors. Aperture also had Nanobots, which were even smaller than the Potato and seemed to be just as much an AI as she was - it was only her personality that was powered by the Potato. Is there any proof about them being separate universes other than speculation because it's sillier?[/QUOTE] except we're not saying they're in separate universes, except maybe that one guy who's wrong. we're saying, as mentioned above, the tech and borealis you'll find in half life will be nothing like the ones in portal 2, more like the things you'll find in portal 1. Portal 2 separated itself as much as it could by literally taking place thousands of years in the future. Portal 1 fits nicely into the half life timeline and universe, portal 2, not so much. its still there, but when discussing half life canon, most people will ignore portal 2.

[QUOTE=WillerinV1.02;39273455]except we're not saying they're in separate universes, except maybe that one guy who's wrong. we're saying, as mentioned above, the tech and borealis you'll find in half life will be nothing like the ones in portal 2, more like the things you'll find in portal 1. Portal 2 separated itself as much as it could by literally taking place thousands of years in the future. Portal 1 fits nicely into the half life timeline and universe, portal 2, not so much. its still there, but when discussing half life canon, most people will ignore portal 2.[/QUOTE] I never said they were separate universes, I said it branched off. It distances itself from the HL2 universe. As in stuff we learn in portal 2 becomes an unreliable source of information because of things like [I]A PORTAL TO THE MOON[/I], Combustible Lemons? Mantis Men? Experiments that turn your body inside out? It just get's sillier and sillier, and less believable. That said, Laidlaw has stated that Portal isn't written by him, but he trusts the writers that any references will be meaningful and correct (So far only Eli's/Kleiner's speech in EP2) He has also stated that the Combine has unsuccessfully attempted to enter Aperture Science yet he can't give more details and that while their tech shares many things in common, it is "unlikely" that their tech is based off of Aperture Science's given the relatively short period of time the Combine have been occupying earth.

[QUOTE=Ereunity;39274219]I never said they were separate universes, I said it branched off. It distances itself from the HL2 universe. As in stuff we learn in portal 2 becomes an unreliable source of information because of things like [I]A PORTAL TO THE MOON[/I], Combustible Lemons? Mantis Men? Experiments that turn your body inside out? It just get's sillier and sillier, and less believable. That said, Laidlaw has stated that Portal isn't written by him, but he trusts the writers that any references will be meaningful and correct (So far only Eli's/Kleiner's speech in EP2) He has also stated that the Combine has unsuccessfully attempted to enter Aperture Science yet he can't give more details and that while their tech shares many things in common, it is "unlikely" that their tech is based off of Aperture Science's given the relatively short period of time the Combine have been occupying earth.[/QUOTE] There weren't actually combustible lemons, Cave was just ranting a crazy rant, seeing as how he was about to die and he was pretty angry about it. And Half Life has plenty of ridiculous ways to die.

If they go on the borealis in hl3, it'll have more of a portal 1 feeling. Portal was a half-life spinoff, and portal 2 made it into its own story. Personality cores are unlikely to be on the borealis, as it was built in the 70's. if anything, it'll look like the old aperture labs, only preserved more properly and occupied by the combine.

You know, going through Ravenholm blind [sp]All I know is it's reputation for being creepy as fuck[/sp] makes me feel that I'm really late to the party on this game, nine years to be exact.

[QUOTE=TectoImprov;39274639]You know, going through Ravenholm blind [sp]All I know is it's reputation for being creepy as fuck[/sp] makes me feel that I'm really late to the party on this game, nine years to be exact.[/QUOTE] Still not nearly as creepy as beta Ravenholm.

[QUOTE=krassell;39275437]Still not nearly as creepy as beta Ravenholm.[/QUOTE] Man, those fast zombies where freaky.

I have this suspicion that the Borealis is filled with scientists that used it as a backdoor out of the facility. The reason is because, despite the dry dock being in the 70s aperture, it has the 90s logo on it. The door to the room the Borealis' drydock was in was ripped off the wall, meaning that it was used after the area was sealed. The bottom of the shaft was sealed in 1961. If scientists were smuggling technology into the Borealis, then I'm pretty sure all the excessive signs outside the main entrance to the shaft were placed by them. [thumb]http://i.imgur.com/Ictgdlt.jpg[/thumb][thumb]http://i.imgur.com/vrnxXM5.jpg[/thumb] The signs near the top don't look like they are very old, nor usable to any employee that isn't using a portal gun because of the complete lack of footing. This means that Chell isn't the first to ascend through the this shaft using a portal gun.

[QUOTE]Still not nearly as creepy as beta Ravenholm. [/QUOTE] Yeah, the way Gman sees you in beta Ravenholm, then runs off the way he does, yeah, very creepy. I found that part amusing, but I hated the times when the enemies were not there, then all of a sudden spawn behind you right after you step in front of their point. I lost all my SMG rounds, because of how I reacted in fear to the zombie's unexpected spawning. I'm sure the ship will have those pop out at your face moments in the next one. On another topic, this guy was boasting on this GM server unrelated to HL2, that Alyx's voice actress is the best reference, but then said he didn't think spoiling was a good idea, not giving me a link, I didn't know if I could trust his word or not, or if he was just trying to distract the rest of us on there.

Portal 1 had a strange feeling of "cold and alone" that I found was very synonymous with what it felt like to play Half-Life 1, while Portal 2 almost felt like a parody of itself, in a sense.

[QUOTE=A_Pigeon;39273359]I always though the potato thing to be more believable. It was stated that she was vastly stripped down to basic thinking processes by Wheatly. Which would probably be how she found Caroline. Her AI is designed to watch over and analyze the center, being unhooked from it she probably started monitoring herself and dedicating more to personality. As for powering miles of infrastructure, I doubt Glados supplied the power herself. She was really just a more advanced personality core judging by the "core replacement" shit. Seems more likely that she was just like an SD card. In fact, it is at multiple times stated that there are reactors powering the facilty. I don't know how much attention you paid but the reactors being rebooted and running hot because Wheatley is stupid was a [B]major part of the plot.[/B] The portal devices of 1950 were probably extremely dangerous and inefficient. The portals that an ASHPD creates modern day are small, they were probably smaller and more unstable back. The government would be looking for teleportation of weapons and resources. Tanks for example. The wormholes of aperture simply aren't big enough to put military hardware through. Plus their reckless behaviour and unsafe testing compared to black mesa's fully thought out safety routines and highly educated staff. Aperature did a lot of undisclosed and confidential testing. The mantis men were probably covered up afterwards and any DNA experimentation papers etc. destroyed to rid proof and liability. The borealis was probably built underground as a way of proving to the government that aperture could teleport large vessels reliably and a way to steal the contract back from Black Mesa. It's fairly obvious that the test failed and the vessel was teleported to an unknown location. Even the theory of the combine invading aperture is possible, and might explain why the facility is in such bad shape despite being out of the way of any dangers.[/QUOTE] The potato thing is unbelievable because we see in Portal 1 that it requires what appears to be a very large nuclear reactor to power GlaDOS. Even stripped down to basic thinking processes, it's still a self-aware AI with enough processing power to invent snarky and sarcastic remarks. Powered by a potato. I liked that part in the game (I liked Portal 2 a lot, on its own), but I don't see how it's believable, or why it has to be when it's not meant to. This is why we're talking about Portal 2 being separated from Half-Life, the shit that happens, and is, in the game makes no sense because there are no rules. The developers acknowledged this. Also, you would think that Aperture came first just once in their history, if they managed to not only manipulate DNA, but actually created human-insect hybrids, a year before the DNA structure was even discovered, and decades before the human genome sequence (let alone that for the praying mantis) was known. The portal issue is stupid because Aperture would clearly have a technological advantage over Black Mesa if they had working portal devices in the 50's, which would lead to more funding; safety practices or not. As you said, documentation of their murderous ways was probably destroyed. This didn't matter in the pre-Portal 2 release timeline, however. Cave dies in 1976, having a vision of the portal project, and Aperture starts research on portals. Ten years later they find out that Black Mesa is also making portal technology, so they begin work on GlaDOS to assist in the research. GlaDOS is activated sometime in the 2000's and all that jazz. She begins murdering test subjects, but loses the race to portal technology when Black Mesa successfully develops a working teleporter; which at the same time establishes a link to Xen and sets in motion the events that lead to the resonance cascade and the portal storms. GlaDOS, being sheltered from all of this, continues her testing cycles and eventually makes a functioning, handheld portal gun. Some time during all of the above, work proceeded on the Borealis, shown in EP2 to be above ground, as there is no need to disguise it as an icebreaker if you already have the ship underground. [url=http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1841967]The icebreaker disguise was purely to get materials on board easier, as was mentioned during the ARG.[/url] How did they get the ship 4 km below ground if they didn't have the technology to teleport it there in the first place? Did they make the ship there? How did they get the materials to make a ship underground if there wasn't even a maintenance elevator near the drydock? Why was it photographed above ground if it teleported from its drydock underground and somewhere into the arctic, and if so why did Black Mesa scientists know about it? Did it first successfully teleport from underground to a drydock above ground, and if so why did Aperture displace it in a rush to get funding if it was clearly working? The drydock is an easter egg. It's not meant to have any implications except for "hey, here's this ship that is slightly related to half-life, cool right, have an achievement". Which is why it was hidden, you know, like easter eggs are. There is a computer with the numbers from Lost in Episode Two. Does that mean they share the same universe? It's a pretty big implication, following the logic of interpreting everything literally, as is apparently the custom for most people in this thread. Edit: Also, because this post just wasn't long enough, let me say that Portal 2 isn't science fiction, unlike Half-Life. They're incompatible that way. Marc Laidlaw goes to some length to try and explain the science behind the things that we see in the Half-Life games, much of it being implicit in the nature and names of the objects (stuff like anti-mass spectrometers, zero-field manipulation, calabi-yau models). Even made up on the spot things like Xen crystals have reasoning behind them. In Portal 2 they mention a long range of experiments with no scientific explanation, such as humans shitting coal, blood turning to gasoline, etc., because funny and something something science

[QUOTE=Im Crimson;39270565]Portal 1 and 2 takes place in the same universe as Half-Life, but it seems pretty clear to me that they added the massive time difference (how many hundreds of years was it?) to clearly distance the events in Portal 2 from Half-Life. So that leaves us knowing that Earth as we know doesn't end with HL/Episode 3 (since Chell, Aperture and (some) land above ground is intact by the time of Portal 2), but not much more than that.[/QUOTE] If I recall correctly, from The Final Hours of Portal 2, its states that the time distance is 50,000 years (note it's been a while since I read that part, it was probably longer. Definitely in the "10,000s" or longer.)

[QUOTE=Chrille;39275953]Some time during all of the above, work proceeded on the Borealis, shown in EP2 to be above ground, as there is no need to disguise it as an icebreaker if you already have the ship underground. [url=http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1841967]The icebreaker disguise was purely to get materials on board easier, as was mentioned during the ARG.[/url] [/quote] I'm pretty sure we proved that fake. Dougley or whatever his name was faked the thing about the Borealis, he admitted it himself. [quote] How did they get the ship 4 km below ground if they didn't have the technology to teleport it there in the first place? Did they make the ship there? How did they get the materials to make a ship underground if there wasn't even a maintenance elevator near the drydock? Why was it photographed above ground if it teleported from its drydock underground and somewhere into the arctic, and if so why did Black Mesa scientists know about it? Did it first successfully teleport from underground to a drydock above ground, and if so why did Aperture displace it in a rush to get funding if it was clearly working? [/quote] They probably made the ship on a drydock above ground, and when they started the teleportation process, it teleported to the middle of Aperture's underground lab with the drydock. Then they tried to get it out, and then it teleported to the Artic and left the drydock behind [quote]. The drydock is an easter egg. It's not meant to have any implications except for "hey, here's this ship that is slightly related to half-life, cool right, have an achievement". Which is why it was hidden, you know, like easter eggs are. There is a computer with the numbers from Lost in Episode Two. Does that mean they share the same universe? It's a pretty big implication, following the logic of interpreting everything literally, as is apparently the custom for most people in this thread.[/QUOTE] We've already had this discussion. First off, what even classifies the Drydock as an easter egg? The fact that you get an achievement? The fact that it's kinda sorta hidden? Secondly, even if it is an "easter egg" by defintion, that doesn't automatically make it non-canon and completely irrelevant to everything and anything, ever. Why can't it be both an easter-egg and a canonical object that may or may not be foreshadowing?

[QUOTE=TurtleeyFP;39276092]Why can't it be both an easter-egg and a canonical object that may or may not be foreshadowing?[/QUOTE] I liked this in GTA IV, on the radio shows / random pedestrian conversations you can hear people talking about the Statue of Happiness making this weird beating sound, and if you go inside there's a giant heart in it

[QUOTE=TurtleeyFP;39276092]I'm pretty sure we proved that fake. Dougley or whatever his name was faked the thing about the Borealis, he admitted it himself. They probably made the ship on a drydock above ground, and when they started the teleportation process, it teleported to the middle of Aperture's underground lab with the drydock. Then they tried to get it out, and then it teleported to the Artic and left the drydock behind We've already had this discussion. First off, what even classifies the Drydock as an easter egg? The fact that you get an achievement? The fact that it's kinda sorta hidden? Secondly, even if it is an "easter egg" by defintion, that doesn't automatically make it non-canon and completely irrelevant to everything and anything, ever. Why can't it be both an easter-egg and a canonical object that may or may not be foreshadowing?[/QUOTE] Alright, it makes sense that it was fake. It seemed weird that it wasn't ever mentioned anywhere else again. All I remember is that I posted it and was banned because a mod thought it was Portal spoilers. Anyway, if the ship was built above ground, and then accidentally teleported underground and [i]then[/i] into the arctic (bit of a coincidence, but okay), I don't really see that it contradicts what I said. That it was built above ground and not in any way manufactured 4 km below the surface. And while I'm not one to determine whether an easter egg is canon (nor would I say anybody else here is), it's still an easter egg, as in it's an intentionally hidden message that you're rewarded for finding.

[QUOTE=TurtleeyFP;39276092]They probably made the ship on a drydock above ground, and when they started the teleportation process, it teleported to the middle of Aperture's underground lab with the drydock. Then they tried to get it out, and then it teleported to the Artic and left the drydock behind[/QUOTE] I don't think it teleported twice, it might have been a prototype or a test to see how large they could open portals, then they discovered it wasn't very useful and sealed it off. And some of its drydock was taken with it, but not cut like how most people think. Apeture's portals are planar, in comparison to Black Mesa's Spherical portals. It could have been teleported away using an enormous portal device. [thumb]http://i.imgur.com/OV04gNp.jpg[/thumb] Just for comparison, this is a portal of identical size somewhere else. [thumb]http://i.imgur.com/IfEdRWN.jpg[/thumb] [editline]19th January 2013[/editline] I just realized, F-Stop for a camera is a function of its shutter size. Gabe said that "F-STOP" was a really fun game mechanic, but I'm not sure how they could pull it off using variable portal sizes.

What's to say that Aperture didn't create planar and spherical portals? If the Borealis teleported to the arctic through a planar portal then they would need something to put the portal on. This is also assuming that they didn't use something like the portal gun because they hardly placed one portal beneath the Borealis and then trekked to the arctic to place the other one (although it does sound wacky and that does fit in with Aperture's attitude).

[QUOTE=A_Pigeon;39273359]Even the theory of the combine invading aperture is possible, and might explain why the facility is in such bad shape despite being out of the way of any dangers.[/QUOTE] I keep thinking that the images that you see on the cooperative part like the following maybe can be related to they: [video=youtube;GyfJ2YUFL1A]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GyfJ2YUFL1A&t=14m18s[/video] Hmm, looks like now i´m unable to make the video start here at a determinate moment. Go to 14:18.

[QUOTE=Copperbotte;39276204]I just realized, F-Stop for a camera is a function of its shutter size. Gabe said that "F-STOP" was a really fun game mechanic, but I'm not sure how they could pull it off using variable portal sizes.[/QUOTE] F-stop for camera is actually a ratio of the lens's focal lenght to the diameter of the entrance hole, it has nothing to do with shutter

[QUOTE=Chrille;39275953]The potato thing is unbelievable because we see in Portal 1 that it requires what appears to be a very large nuclear reactor to power GlaDOS. Even stripped down to basic thinking processes, it's still a self-aware AI with enough processing power to invent snarky and sarcastic remarks. Powered by a potato. I liked that part in the game (I liked Portal 2 a lot, on its own), but I don't see how it's believable, or why it has to be when it's not meant to. This is why we're talking about Portal 2 being separated from Half-Life, the shit that happens, and is, in the game makes no sense because there are no rules. The developers acknowledged this. Also, you would think that Aperture came first just once in their history, if they managed to not only manipulate DNA, but actually created human-insect hybrids, a year before the DNA structure was even discovered, and decades before the human genome sequence (let alone that for the praying mantis) was known. The portal issue is stupid because Aperture would clearly have a technological advantage over Black Mesa if they had working portal devices in the 50's, which would lead to more funding; safety practices or not. As you said, documentation of their murderous ways was probably destroyed. This didn't matter in the pre-Portal 2 release timeline, however. Cave dies in 1976, having a vision of the portal project, and Aperture starts research on portals. Ten years later they find out that Black Mesa is also making portal technology, so they begin work on GlaDOS to assist in the research. GlaDOS is activated sometime in the 2000's and all that jazz. She begins murdering test subjects, but loses the race to portal technology when Black Mesa successfully develops a working teleporter; which at the same time establishes a link to Xen and sets in motion the events that lead to the resonance cascade and the portal storms. GlaDOS, being sheltered from all of this, continues her testing cycles and eventually makes a functioning, handheld portal gun. Some time during all of the above, work proceeded on the Borealis, shown in EP2 to be above ground, as there is no need to disguise it as an icebreaker if you already have the ship underground. [url=http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1841967]The icebreaker disguise was purely to get materials on board easier, as was mentioned during the ARG.[/url] How did they get the ship 4 km below ground if they didn't have the technology to teleport it there in the first place? Did they make the ship there? How did they get the materials to make a ship underground if there wasn't even a maintenance elevator near the drydock? Why was it photographed above ground if it teleported from its drydock underground and somewhere into the arctic, and if so why did Black Mesa scientists know about it? Did it first successfully teleport from underground to a drydock above ground, and if so why did Aperture displace it in a rush to get funding if it was clearly working? The drydock is an easter egg. It's not meant to have any implications except for "hey, here's this ship that is slightly related to half-life, cool right, have an achievement". Which is why it was hidden, you know, like easter eggs are. There is a computer with the numbers from Lost in Episode Two. Does that mean they share the same universe? It's a pretty big implication, following the logic of interpreting everything literally, as is apparently the custom for most people in this thread. Edit: Also, because this post just wasn't long enough, let me say that Portal 2 isn't science fiction, unlike Half-Life. They're incompatible that way. Marc Laidlaw goes to some length to try and explain the science behind the things that we see in the Half-Life games, much of it being implicit in the nature and names of the objects (stuff like anti-mass spectrometers, zero-field manipulation, calabi-yau models). Even made up on the spot things like Xen crystals have reasoning behind them. In Portal 2 they mention a long range of experiments with no scientific explanation, such as humans shitting coal, blood turning to gasoline, etc., because funny and something something science[/QUOTE] It took a nuclear reactor to power GlaDOS' Chasis - not the core itself. The chasis is what linked her to the rest of the facility and allowed her to control it. Her actual core was nothing special, it was the main body that was important. I don't see anyone questioning how Wheatley is powered, the only difference between GLaDOS and Wheatley's personaility core is the shape (and GLaDOS was based on a person). Aperture had nanobots, which judging from the way Whealey talks to them, are just as much an AI as GLaDOS was. Besides, the Potato wasn't actually enough to power GLaDOS, she kept shutting down. We don't know if she had some sort of backup power source in the potato with her either. Aperture always coming second was pretty much the whole point of them. No matter what they did it wasn't good enough, even though many of their things would of been perfectly usable with the right precautions. They didn't care too much about safety and were trying pretty much everything, they didn't need to know what they were doing to try something and hope it worked. Like Cave said "we're throwing science at the walls here to see what sticks". Aperture having some form of portal gun in the 50s is not an issue. All we know about it is that is a large, bulky device that we see in a picture ingame. That's it. We don't know if it works properly, we don't know if there's a chance of it blowing everything up when it's used, we don't know if there was a chance of it horrifiying mutating people that use it. We know nothing about their 50s portal gun other than it worked in SOME form and what it looks like. There are plenty of possible explanations for why it didn't gain them any funding. It makes me wonder if something like Aperture was ranking second among scientific companies in 1949 then just how bad were the other companies? The pre-release portal 2 timeline has been retconned. All that is changed. [QUOTE=TurtleeyFP;39276092] We've already had this discussion. First off, what even classifies the Drydock as an easter egg? The fact that you get an achievement? The fact that it's kinda sorta hidden? Secondly, even if it is an "easter egg" by defintion, that doesn't automatically make it non-canon and completely irrelevant to everything and anything, ever. Why can't it be both an easter-egg and a canonical object that may or may not be foreshadowing?[/QUOTE] If people think the Borealis Drydock is non-canon because it's an easter egg, then that must mean the two tests next to it are also non-canon. They are hidden as well, but no one questions the canonicity of those.

[QUOTE=Ereunity;39274219]I never said they were separate universes, I said it branched off. It distances itself from the HL2 universe. As in stuff we learn in portal 2 becomes an unreliable source of information because of things like [I]A PORTAL TO THE MOON[/I], Combustible Lemons? Mantis Men? Experiments that turn your body inside out? It just get's sillier and sillier, and less believable. That said, Laidlaw has stated that Portal isn't written by him, but he trusts the writers that any references will be meaningful and correct (So far only Eli's/Kleiner's speech in EP2) He has also stated that the Combine has unsuccessfully attempted to enter Aperture Science yet he can't give more details and that while their tech shares many things in common, it is "unlikely" that their tech is based off of Aperture Science's given the relatively short period of time the Combine have been occupying earth.[/QUOTE] Where was it stated that the combine tried to get into aperture science? Also I personally imagined the borealis's portal technology to be similar to the portal gun, but rip the hole suspended in mid-air, so no need for a surface.

[QUOTE=nightlord;39276901]It took a nuclear reactor to power GlaDOS' Chasis - not the core itself. The chasis is what linked her to the rest of the facility and allowed her to control it. Her actual core was nothing special, it was the main body that was important. I don't see anyone questioning how Wheatley is powered, the only difference between GLaDOS and Wheatley's personaility core is the shape (and GLaDOS was based on a person). Aperture had nanobots, which judging from the way Whealey talks to them, are just as much an AI as GLaDOS was. Besides, the Potato wasn't actually enough to power GLaDOS, she kept shutting down. We don't know if she had some sort of backup power source in the potato with her either. Aperture always coming second was pretty much the whole point of them. No matter what they did it wasn't good enough, even though many of their things would of been perfectly usable with the right precautions. They didn't care too much about safety and were trying pretty much everything, they didn't need to know what they were doing to try something and hope it worked. Like Cave said "we're throwing science at the walls here to see what sticks". Aperture having some form of portal gun in the 50s is not an issue. All we know about it is that is a large, bulky device that we see in a picture ingame. That's it. We don't know if it works properly, we don't know if there's a chance of it blowing everything up when it's used, we don't know if there was a chance of it horrifiying mutating people that use it. We know nothing about their 50s portal gun other than it worked in SOME form and what it looks like. There are plenty of possible explanations for why it didn't gain them any funding. It makes me wonder if something like Aperture was ranking second among scientific companies in 1949 then just how bad were the other companies? The pre-release portal 2 timeline has been retconned. All that is changed.[/QUOTE] All of that information is from Portal 2, though. Which means that they retconned it from the slightly plausible explanation from the first game, to something that fit what they wanted in the second game. And all that just serves to prove the point. In Portal it took a giant reactor to power GLaDOS, while in Portal 2 she and other AI (especially the nanobots if we count them) barely needed any power at all. Powering a self aware AI with a potato even for five seconds is pretty fantastic. It just became super science that didn't need to be plausible, or explainable. All of it. In the first game, there were the disintegration fields and a gun that creates wormholes, that didn't really seem possible right off the bat, but okay, we can suspend our disbelief for this. Mostly we weren't supposed to believe that the tech behind it had been around for 60 years. In Portal 2 suspension of disbelief also comes quite easy because it's an immersive game, until you remember that it's supposed to fit into the already existing and serious universe we see in the Half-Life games. Aperture has portable portal devices that works even to a degree (they build test courses around it) and also has involuntary time travel in 1952, while Black Mesa needs a nuclear reactor to do it in the 21st century? It defeats the point of Aperture being the second place because their science is simply too fantastic. Black Mesa must have had some serious shit back then to come out on top. Also makes you wonder why and if Aperture hadn't been able to develop the technology further in all that time space. So, feel free to disagree, but I don't consider a spin-off, comedy game, as more important than the main series when establishing the canon. To me it has branched off into it's own thing. And being the fanboy that I am, I tried writing Marc Laidlaw of course, but he probably doesn't give a shit and he didn't reply. [QUOTE=nightlord;39276901] If people think the Borealis Drydock is non-canon because it's an easter egg, then that must mean the two tests next to it are also non-canon. They are hidden as well, but no one questions the canonicity of those.[/QUOTE] If something progresses the game then it can't be an easter egg.

[QUOTE=Chrille;39277121]All of that information is from Portal 2, though. Which means that they retconned it from the slightly plausible explanation from the first game, to something that fit what they wanted in the second game. And all that just serves to prove the point. In Portal it took a giant reactor to power GLaDOS, while in Portal 2 she and other AI (especially the nanobots if we count them) barely needed any power at all. Powering a self aware AI with a potato even for five seconds is pretty fantastic. It just became super science that didn't need to be plausible, or explainable. All of it. In the first game, there were the disintegration fields and a gun that creates wormholes, that didn't really seem possible right off the bat, but okay, we can suspend our disbelief for this. Mostly we weren't supposed to believe that the tech behind it had been around for 60 years. In Portal 2 suspension of disbelief also comes quite easy because it's an immersive game, until you remember that it's supposed to fit into the already existing and serious universe we see in the Half-Life games. Aperture has portable portal devices that works even to a degree (they build test courses around it) and also has involuntary time travel in 1952, while Black Mesa needs a nuclear reactor to do it in the 21st century? It defeats the point of Aperture being the second place because their science is simply too fantastic. Black Mesa must have had some serious shit back then to come out on top. Also makes you wonder why and if Aperture hadn't been able to develop the technology further in all that time space. So, feel free to disagree, but I don't consider a spin-off, comedy game, as more important than the main series when establishing the canon. To me it has branched off into it's own thing. And being the fanboy that I am, I tried writing Marc Laidlaw of course, but he probably doesn't give a shit and he didn't reply. If something progresses the game then it can't be an easter egg.[/QUOTE] It's supposed to be a little easter egg the way it's hidden away for the player to find it, that's the point of easter eggs. It doesn't progress the story much other than show the player that they actually did have the Borealis in there like the game plot suggests, if the player finds it. Just like [sp]Caroline being GlaDOS[/sp] when you approach the "Portrait of a Lady" painting, it's somewhat of an easter egg because it's hidden away and it's optional to find?

It would probably be safe to assume that the Borealis was used as an escape vessel for the Aperture employees that escaped the neurotoxication incident of the GlaDos boot. seeing as Wheatley couldn't find you in the old aperture chambers, it would be safe to say that they are a deadzone on the monitoring and control systems of the facility. Thus it would make a great place for the survivors to take a temporary shelter until they could find a means of escape. The scientists probably lived off the potatoes and crows that lived in the abandoned chambers. It would also be safe to assume that the scientists nabbed any and all of Aperature's unused technology. Portal devices, long fall boots, anything that could have an application. They probably used the Borealis as an ark. Loading as much technology, potatoes and crows onto the boat as they could before launching the untested vessel to an unknown location. They probably activated a distress signal to the world to try and coax a rescue effort for the ship, this is where the rumour of the Borealis came from. The incident was never explained because, without any scientists left alive and the unknowing GlaDos the only one left, there never was an explanation for the incident.

[QUOTE=Chrille;39277121]In Portal it took a giant reactor to power GLaDOS, while in Portal 2 she and other AI (especially the nanobots if we count them) barely needed any power at all. It just became super science that didn't need to be plausible, or explainable. All of it. In the first game, there were the disintegration fields and a gun that creates wormholes, that didn't really seem possible right off the bat, but okay, we can suspend our disbelief for this. Mostly we weren't supposed to believe that the tech behind it had been around for 60 years. In Portal 2 suspension of disbelief also comes quite easy because it's an immersive game, until you remember that it's supposed to fit into the already existing and serious universe we see in the Half-Life games. Aperture has portable portal devices that works even to a degree (they build test courses around it) and also has involuntary time travel in 1952, while Black Mesa needs a nuclear reactor to do it in the 21st century? It defeats the point of Aperture being the second place because their science is simply too fantastic. Black Mesa must have had some serious shit back then to come out on top. Also makes you wonder why and if Aperture hadn't been able to develop the technology further in all that time space. So, feel free to disagree, but I don't consider a spin-off, comedy game, as more important than the main series when establishing the canon. To me it has branched off into it's own thing. And being the fanboy that I am, I tried writing Marc Laidlaw of course, but he probably doesn't give a shit and he didn't reply. [/QUOTE] Did you forget about the personality cores in Portal 1? They were AI as well. Eli managed to build a semi-sentient robot from scraps, Aperture was a massive company with lots of money (at one point) who knew what they were doing - it's likely the Personality cores are people uploaded into them, just like GLaDOS was (Rick could of been a War Hero, the Space Core an Astronaut etc). Powering an AI with a potato is pretty silly, but we don't know exactly how it works. Portal 2 is canon in the Half-life universe. The only reason you think it isn't is because some of it is silly, but we don't have actual explanations for how anything works and we've only been given a vague sentence for how the technology functions. Many of Apertures experiments we have no idea if they actually worked, and they were so crazy it seems obvious that they didn't. Cave wasn't a scientist, he was a just someone with too much money so he had no idea if the 'science' they were doing would actually work. The characters in Portal 2 are silly, but they do not have any direct relevance to Half Life. I don't remember time travel being confirmed either, just a random line from Cave. The whole point of Aperture is that despite having all this technology that seemed to be more advanced than some of the things Black Mesa was capable of, they still ended up coming second everytime. If Valve didn't intend Portal 2 to be canon they wouldn't of put references to Half-life in it, and would of mentioned that it doesn't take place in the same universe anymore. [quote]If something progresses the game then it can't be an easter egg.[/QUOTE] I meant the two vitrified test chambers right next to the Borealis drydock. They are hidden in the same area. If the Borealis is an Easter Egg because it is a hidden, then those two messages from Cave about what's in the rooms next to them must be as well. hey don't progress the game at all.

[QUOTE=Maestro Fenix;39276725]I keep thinking that the images that you see on the cooperative part like the following maybe can be related to they: [video=youtube;GyfJ2YUFL1A]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GyfJ2YUFL1A&t=14m18s[/video] Hmm, looks like now i´m unable to make the video start here at a determinate moment. Go to 14:18.[/QUOTE] Those images that GLaDOS has you find is related to the locations of the remaining test subjects.

[QUOTE=ColossalSoft;39277764]Those images that GLaDOS has you find is related to the locations of the remaining test subjects.[/QUOTE] Really? I always thought that the radar was on the surface and the geography of what it looks a coast. My bad for not listening carefully GlaDOS (although anyway, if that was the location INSIDE, the Aperture Science complex is really chaotic).

[QUOTE=Chrille;39275953]The potato thing is unbelievable because we see in Portal 1 that it requires what appears to be a very large nuclear reactor to power GlaDOS. Even stripped down to basic thinking processes, it's still a self-aware AI with enough processing power to invent snarky and sarcastic remarks. Powered by a potato. I liked that part in the game (I liked Portal 2 a lot, on its own), but I don't see how it's believable, or why it has to be when it's not meant to. This is why we're talking about Portal 2 being separated from Half-Life, the shit that happens, and is, in the game makes no sense because there are no rules. The developers acknowledged this. Also, you would think that Aperture came first just once in their history, if they managed to not only manipulate DNA, but actually created human-insect hybrids, a year before the DNA structure was even discovered, and decades before the human genome sequence (let alone that for the praying mantis) was known. [/QUOTE] Pretty late here, but I think that if we had interdimesional teleportation travel and computer A.I's that are comparable to the human brain in the 1990's, it's pretty safe to say the might have discovered dna a bit earlier in this universe too, at least aperture did. And you never know about GlaDOS, her core just might be extremely energy efficient (Also it was powered by chells portal gun slightly aswell). Also black mesa was making interdimensional travel, something that could be more useful if they were discovering potential lifeforms. Apertures portal technology probably not only relied on moon dust (even though it could teleport onto normal walls, maybe glados made a modification? As crazy as aperture is, they wouldn't waste all their funds on that much moon dust if it wasn't important.), it wasn't capable of interdimensional. And while apertures handheld device could teleport within words, black mesas had one as well that could travel dimensions taking up only a little energy in the process.

[QUOTE=hogofwar;39276998]Where was it stated that the combine tried to get into aperture science?[/QUOTE] Marc Laidlaw stated it, it's in the Marc Laidlaw Vault.

[QUOTE=supersoldier58;39277903]Apertures portal technology probably not only relied on moon dust (even though it could teleport onto normal walls, maybe glados made a modification? As crazy as aperture is, they wouldn't waste all their funds on that much moon dust if it wasn't important.[/QUOTE] Aperture's portals aren't [I]only[/I] conductive on moon dust. The portal device was used before the 80's, which was when Cave discovered that it "makes an excellent portal conductor". Then they used that dust to make conversion gel. Portals conduct on most non-metal surfaces. I don't know where people got the idea that you need moon dust for portals to work.