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Valve Expands Portal 2 Lore With Comic And ARG
Valve's Portal universe is one of the most intriguing in all of video games, and recent developments have made it all the more interesting. With Portal 2 on the horizon, Valve has released two new pieces of Portal lore, a webcomic and a mysterious alternate reality game that appears to have ties to the franchise.
The webcomic, entitled Portal 2: Lab Rat, fleshes out some of the Portal series' storyline, and was created by acclaimed comic auteur Michael Avon Oeming, who has won praise for his series The Mice Templar. While we won't spoil the story, which you can read here for yourself, it's very enlightening and will provide fans new information about both the creation of GLaDOS and that mysterious graffiti we saw in certain areas of the first game.
The alternate reality game Valve has been conducting is a little more ambiguous, but it also appears to be tied to the upcoming Portal 2. The game started with the launch of the Potato Sack Bundle on Steam, with mysterious clues being doled out to various members of the media. Recently, a series of images sent out via email were combined to form the image you see below.
Members of the Portal community have started a wiki page that details all the clues in the ARG, but the most telling link to Portal has come from a decoding of the numbers embedded in the above image. The translation reads: "[T]he system is in lockdown. I still have access to thirteen off-site chambers and am installing a test in each one. I am going to need a lot more test subjects to move forward." That sure sounds like GLaDOS to us. Either way, these are both some very cool examples of marketing from Valve.
Portal ARG Information and Translation via 1UP
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