Portal

If you haven't played Portal, you should! Most def. Smile

And now, for a trailer to peak your interest:

Portal: Still Alive

Awesome? Oh, yeah. Cool

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"It's not about the legacy you leave, it's about the life you live." ~Mara Jade Skywalker

wow. That's all I have to say about my initial reaction. Some of those puzzles look like they would drive me insane.
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Oh, don't worry...they will. And if that's not bad enough, the Advanced levels will have you exclaiming, "How in the...?!" But of course they're all defeatable. It just takes genius minds with solutions beyond my comprehension.

And you know...those turrets in the game give me the creeps. If they were some big bad turrets that talked in deep voices, I would be excited to mow them down. But the way they use those placid, high-pitched voices...scares me to death. "Where are you? I can hear you." Confused

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"It's not about the legacy you leave, it's about the life you live." ~Mara Jade Skywalker

Knight Joined: 02 Feb 2008 Posts: 150

puzzles? sounds interesting....
i've heard about it lots, but never gotten to play or even see it

lol...yeah...forgot abt the turrets...hahaha...I luv the part where you hav picked them up and they promise not to hurt you if you put them back down.... Razz

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Well...you know. Just levels that you have to figure out how to get to the exit. Not a puzzle in the sense of a jigsaw puzzle, but what seem like insurmountable objectives. And you have to figure it out.

Oh, I know. When they catch you, they're like, "There you are." And if you pick them up, "Put me down. I don't hate you. Shutting down. It's alright." And when you drop them, "Ow, ow, ow, ow, ow."
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"It's not about the legacy you leave, it's about the life you live." ~Mara Jade Skywalker

Okay...fun as the game is, it drives me crazy because I want to know the story behind it. When you're on the last level, and you're escaping, you see written all over the walls, "The cake is a lie", "Help", "Over here", "This way". And then the little exit logos, but written in blood or something else. In other words, not written by GLaDOS. So others have tried to escape, and have (I assume) failed. But they've tried to leave clues behind for others. And you can see where they holed up, trying to hide out. The empty cans of beans, the radio, the notes on the walls.

Sooo...how did it all happen? GLaDOS couldn't have built herself. Where are all the people? How did she take over? I want to know! Here are pictures of a room I discovered on Level 17 (the Companion Cube level). Someone was obviously hiding here, with security cameras they had broken off of the walls. I'll do my best to translate the writing on each wall from left to right:

"Help." "Where are you? I will find you." "Companion Cube. You said to take care of it. How can I? You wouldn't let me. I should disregard your advice. Leave me alone!" "Stop watching!" "Though earth and man are gone, I thought the Cube would last forever. I was wrong."

"Because I could not stop for Death, he kindly stopped for me. The Cube had food and ??? ammo ??? ??????." "Why? x18" "Not in cruelty, not in wrath. The reaper came today. An angel visited this gray path, and took the cube away."

"She's watching you." "The vital apparatus vent will deliver. Oh, it will. WILL." "The weighted Companion Cube does ???." "Superstitions perceiving inanimate objects as alive, and hallucinations. I'm not hallucinating. You are the Companion Cube ?? ??? never desert me. Dessert. So long...Cake. Ha-ha. Cake. A lie. The Companion Cube would never lie to me." "Login: cjohnson. Password: tier3." "Trust me." "Never."

So what does it all mean?! Was he an employee gone insane trying to hide from GLaDOS? What happened to him? I suppose she finally caught him. But I want to know the secrets behind it all! Maybe in a sequel...
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"It's not about the legacy you leave, it's about the life you live." ~Mara Jade Skywalker

haha...cmonn...u wudnt hav luved the game that much if they gave u a five-min lame narrator explaining wat and how=p...i like it when as u progress into the game, the story tells itself...but yea..I think they are coming up with portal2(fingers crossd) and they just might be discussing the past of Glados.. Cool

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Well with all the hearts drawn in and the fact that all the faces in the photos are replaced by this "Companion Cube" I would say there is some sort of schizophrenic thing going on as apparently this person fell in love, possibly with his captor.

I'm fairly certain the line "because I could not stop for death, he kindly stopped for me" is the opening lines from a poem "Death" by Emily Dickinson

""Though earth and man are gone, I thought the Cube would last forever. I was wrong." is a modification of the poem "Funeral Blues" by W.H. Auden (if anyone has seen the movie Four Weddings and a Funeral the poem appears in that movie)

All that writing seems to be a riddle and I suspect it is not coincidence that at least two of the lines are modified from actual poems.
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Ok././sry No portal2...Portal:Still Alive was released...but that only had 14 new maps...really short ones...no story....Glados will always be a mystery=c...
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Knight Joined: 02 Feb 2008 Posts: 150

sounds like this cube thing manipulates people with their own lonelyness and makes them become obsessed with it.

all i know is that line "the cake is a lie" has become an internet meme. i have no idea how or why, but, it has.

Upon reexamining the screenshots provided by Mara Jade I think I can read the rest of this quote"The Cube had food and ??? ammo ??? ?????" What it looks like is "The Cube had food and maybe ammo and[?] immortality"

For people who have played the game aside from the images of the cube in this area of the game are there any other times such an object appears as an important object (possibly with some form of consciousness)?
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Salaris, you are correct about the Emily Dickinson poem. I believe you're right about the other, as well. And I have discovered the meaning of the 'login' and 'password'. Cjohnson would be Cave Johnson, the CEO of Aperture Science (the company you are a test subject for). Tier3 refers to the complex itself. Johnson built a 3 tiered research building for his different enterprises, and Aperture Science was on the third tier. Underground, mind you. So probably the deepest underground, if we're counting the first level below as Tier 1 and so on.

And I think you're right, SV, about the line I couldn't figure out. The more I've studied it, the more I think this guy was practically in love with his Companion Cube. But I also think it was originally created as a help, a guide. Before GLaDOS came along, your Cube told you what to do, and supplied you with food, ammo, and perhaps immortality as long as it was around. Or either it was immortal. GLaDOS, however, didn't like this idea. So she has you incinerate it at the end of the Companion Cube level. She also tells you to disregard anything it tells you. Apparently, it speaks. Or it used to.

Other than the Companion Cube, I think the only object of significance is the Cake. GLaDOS constantly promises you cake once you finish the test chambers. Except you find 'the cake is a lie' written all over all the walls. There's text scrolling on different screens in the absent employee's offices, and if you take a screenshot and attempt to decipher the 'code' within the text, it's the ingredients for a cake. Also, at the end when you're blowing up GLaDOS, one of her pieces keeps speaking at you as you attempt to toss it into the incinerator. If you listen closely, it's rattling off the recipe for a cake. Pictures of cake also flash constantly across GLaDOS's monitors. At the very end of the game, the Cake and the Companion Cube appear in a dark room. An arm comes down and extinguishes the candle on the Cake, throwing the room into darkness. The credits then roll.

Sooo...I'm not sure if the Cake is just a joke by the designers, or if it has significance. And there is going to be a Portal 2. People are speculating that it may be a prequel, because they're voice casting for a Cave Johnson, the CEO of Aperture Science. The guy holed up in the room I included pictures of. Or so I assume, what with the login name.

Nother note, you're a girl in the game. Name is Chell, though I'm not sure where that information is divulged in the game, cause I never noticed it. But anyway, it is later learned that GLaDOS was activated on the annual 'bring your daughter to work day'. Perhaps you're a daughter that was brought to work? GLaDOS tells you you were adopted, but I don't know if that's true. She lies a lot.

Anyway, I certainly hope Portal 2 is a prequel! Cause the whole story behind your predicament is almost as fascinating to me as the gameplay. Smile

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"It's not about the legacy you leave, it's about the life you live." ~Mara Jade Skywalker

Quite the complex scenario then. Definitely sounds like they need to make another game to tie up some lose ends.

I don't know if this is an additional clue that you haven't considered yet but one of the photos of a person in a suite with a cube taped over the face has "R.I.P." next to it indicating the person is dead. But by whose hands?

It just occurred to me but in the trailer you linked to in your original post one of the tests is to bring a cube across a gap to you. The interesting thing about it is in the introduction to that demo (the 2D animated part) shows the figure spot the cube at which point a heart appears over the figure's head. This may indicate that falling in love with the cube is not a unique occurrence, perhaps even intentional.

As for "cake" is it possible its part of one of those word scramble games? For example, if it only occurs in context with another specific word maybe the letters of those two words reorder to spell something else?

I don't know if this is just coincidence but it seems the letter C is used an unusual amount of times for names or significant things. Companion Cube, Chell, Cave Johnson. Just a very curious occurrence.

This is a little nitpicky but you called me "Skuldren" in your post Since we both have an S in our screen names its an understandable mistake though. Just didn't want DS to get credit for my ideas.

Anyway back to Portal....
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