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[Nessus]

That doesn't really make sense, given how old Chell is in the games and how old she likely was for the Take Your Daughter To Work thing with her potato display.

How doesn't that make sense?

Chell is about 8 years old on Bring Your Daughter To Work Day, which happens just before the resonance cascade at Black Mesa in "200-".

Portal 1 takes place about 20 years later when Chell is grown up and in her mid to late 20s (the Portal 2 comic hints that she grew up in the Aperture facility, showing a teddy bear next to her sleeping pod).

And Portal 1 likely occurred shortly before Half-Life 2 (before Gordon disrupts the Combine stranglehold over the planet) which also takes place about 20 years after Half-Life 1.

And then Portal 2 takes place hundreds (or thousands) of years after that.

 

[beelzebozo]

chell has to be so socially maladjusted.

 

[jim-jam bongs]

 

[Gram Negative Cocci]

Very good work, Mama and I appreciate it.

A tingling sensation runs through my body when I think about the possibilities Valve has with Episode 3 and The Borealis. God I wish they would hurry the fuck up and announce/ tease it. I was one of the people who firmly believed the Potato ARG would be somehow connected to EP3, then I thought we would find some clues in Portal 2... yeah.

E3 2011 is my last chance

 

[JAVK]

.

 

[Foliorum Viridum]

I really don't like how people try to force characters from the HL series into the Portal universe. I love the tie-ins between the two games, but they're cool cos they're low key and subtle. If Gman was Cave or Alyx went to a BYDTWD then it would be OTT and completely against what Valve is trying to do.

 

[Scrow]

Like you don't even find that a little bit implausible?

like, of course it does. but it doesn't break my suspension of disbelief in that universe Valve have constructed for it to exist in and the progression of science/technology/theoretical physics of the time (in reality).

 

[Medalion]

chell has to be so socially maladjusted.

I dont see how Chell can trust robots ever again

 

[nli10]

Great read, thanks!

 

[SpacePirate Ridley]

How doesn't that make sense?

Chell is about 8 years old on Bring Your Daughter To Work Day, which happens just before the resonance cascade at Black Mesa in "200-".

Portal 1 takes place about 20 years later when Chell is grown up and in her mid to late 20s (the Portal 2 comic hints that she grew up in the Aperture facility, showing a teddy bear next to her sleeping pod).

And Portal 1 likely occurred shortly before Half-Life 2 (before Gordon disrupts the Combine stranglehold over the planet) which also takes place about 20 years after Half-Life 1.

And then Portal 2 takes place hundreds (or thousands) of years after that.

Thats the only thing Im hating about what the designers of the game are trying to do. Yes, they are trying to separate as much as possible Half Life and Portal, but making it becuase of years is a total fuck up.
Hundreds of years? plausibble. Thousands of years? Come the fuck on, thats fucking impossible. How the old and new aperture labs, posters and furniture remain with little change (a change that would be only possible if the difference of years was something like a 100-200 max). Not even mentioning the fucking sack when you go outside or the field. There would have mean major changes and erosion if more than a 1000 years had passed.
Saying that Chell has gone outside after thousands of years after the events of Portal 1, is a total fuck up.

Wait to see this dates being retconned to only 100 something years in future games with them saying they never said exactly more than a thousand years (it was only vaguely implied or exageratted to try to take focus of future connections). Mark my words, Im pretty sure that will happen. It happened with some of the Aperture dates they gave before making Portal 2.

 

[EatChildren]

I dont recall Valve ever implying Portal 2 was more than a couple of hundred years in the future, but please correct me if I'm wrong. I seriously doubt it's 'thousands'.

 

[DarkKyo]

I dont recall Valve ever implying Portal 2 was more than a couple of hundred years in the future, but please correct me if I'm wrong. I seriously doubt it's 'thousands'.

I think there has been evidence for both cases. People cite the "time in preservation sleep" countdown when you wake up in Portal 2 as a case for a much longer period of time.

 

[EVIL]

I dont recall Valve ever implying Portal 2 was more than a couple of hundred years in the future, but please correct me if I'm wrong. I seriously doubt it's 'thousands'.

the "the last hours of potal 2" mentioned 50.000

 

[JaseC]

the "the last hours of potal 2" mentioned 50.000

They've thrown around different figures in virtually every interview. When Portal 2 was first unveiled in GI last year, the number was "several hundred", and now with Final Hours it's 52k or so.

The point they're trying to make is that it doesn't matter when in particular the game takes place, just that it's a long time after the original.

 

[beelzebozo]

I dont see how Chell can trust robots ever again

what a luddite

 

[Mechanical Snowman]

Okay I'm probably an idiot but did they ever say the portal gun existed back then? I played through chapter 6 at like 5am so it's a bit of a blur. Yea, there are the gel experiments and later the moon rock stuff but I just assumed the gel experiments involved, I don't know, buckets instead of the portal gun.

All the aperture science tests you're involved in in Portal 2 required the Portable Quantum Tunneling Device which later became the Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device.

If I understand correctly, after it was invented, everything in the Aperture Science facility revolved around testing the Portal Gun's military potential.

 

[KarmaCow]

All the aperture science tests you're involved in in Portal 2 required the Portable Quantum Tunneling Device which later became the Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device.

If I understand correctly, after it was invented, everything in the Aperture Science facility revolved around testing the Portal Gun's military potential.

Oh okay, thanks for clearing that up.

 

[levious]

1975 - Aperture’s scientists propose that Moon Rocks could have similar cosmic properties to the materials found beneath the salt mine, and Cave pays the US Government at least seventy million dollars to recover these rocks during their various moon landings.

Apollo missions were done by this point, not sure if you're trying to say he paid for the further recovery of materials or just paid for materials already recovered.

 

[XiaNaphryz]

How doesn't that make sense?

Chell is about 8 years old on Bring Your Daughter To Work Day, which happens just before the resonance cascade at Black Mesa in "200-".

Portal 1 takes place about 20 years later when Chell is grown up and in her mid to late 20s (the Portal 2 comic hints that she grew up in the Aperture facility, showing a teddy bear next to her sleeping pod).

And Portal 1 likely occurred shortly before Half-Life 2 (before Gordon disrupts the Combine stranglehold over the planet) which also takes place about 20 years after Half-Life 1.

And then Portal 2 takes place hundreds (or thousands) of years after that.

You're right, for some reason I had the dates in my head mixed up and for some reason kept thinking Portal 1 happened shortly after HL1 instead of HL2.

 

[Mama Robotnik]

The feedback asking me to highlight evidence presented in the game, show sources, and mark clearly the bits where I've filled in the gaps is absolutely right. I'm going to revise some dates, and begin to source the statements to screenshots or dialogue. I'll also highlight the portions where I have bridged a gap.

I also remember this crazy story that people were assuming Chell to be Caroline's descendant.

I agree that there is no basis for this - the excerpts we hear of Mr Johnson and Caroline are of two colleagues who highly respect each other. The assumption that there was a relationship that produced Chell is completely unfounded and like you I'm baffled that it keeps coming up.

I imagine the "Shower Curtain Salesman of the Year" award being something Cave dreamed up on his own and honored himself with.

I could see this easily being the case!

So was Alyx.

http://i.imgur.com/JJnDr.jpg

Alix =/= Alyx. All evidence in the Half-Life 2 games supports the idea that the Vance family worked and lived at Black Mesa up until the Resonance Cascade. Alix was another child who attending BYDTWD, was captured by GlaDOS, suspended, and presumably tested to death upon maturity.

I am not one of those who believed Chell to be Caroline's daughter, biological/adopted or otherwise. Cave Johnson was not married to Caroline either, at most they may have had an affair on the side but that's it, and no Caroline didn't give birth to Chell and not tell Cave about it.

I don't like this idea and am glad there is no evidence to support it. Cave was in it for "the Science", and admired and respected Caroline for her commitment to the cause ("she's married... to science!") and for her competence. They are respected colleagues and (from their affectionate banter) probably friends, but I don't see a relationship here.

Listening to some hidden dialogue on the Portal 2 game that never played during the game, Caroline kept calling Cave Johnson by his formal name Mr.Johnson... if they were married or even in a relationship she would call him Cave or a pet name.

I'm glad even the deleted material doesn't hint at a relationship between them. I'm actually purposefully ignoring deleted material because (a) it was deleted for a reason; and (b) the SPACE CORE was fucking happy in space, happiest ending for a character in a Valve game ever, and did not want to return no matter what the unused content proposes.

There's a detailed timeline up on the Half-Life wiki.

http://half-life.wikia.com/wiki/Timeline

Its also massively inaccurate now, as it still includes a significant portion of retconned content. It contradicts a significant portion of the Portal 2 story, and was one of the reasons I resolved to make my own timeline.

I don't think Chell was from BYDTW. There is a poster in the 1981 lab area with her and a robot.
http://cloud.steampowered.com/ugc/541766829697792914/227505C022090A28C94B9B62D9B7C1EE58EB8B93

Not Chell. If it was then she'd be significantly older by the time or Portal 2. I'm not confident even assuming that she's a parent/relative in some way. What the poster does confirm is that Aperture had crude human form robots at some point, and influenced the related section of my timeline.

Apollo missions were done by this point, not sure if you're trying to say he paid for the further recovery of materials or just paid for materials already recovered.

Really good point. We know that Aperture had significant quantites of Conversion Gel, but we don't know the proportions of moon rocks were needed to produce it. If we assume that the only opportunity to gather these rocks were the Apollo missions, and that the spacecraft could not carry any significant extra weight, then we must assume that the rocks were brought back on seperate missions, studied, and then sold onto Aperture. The volume of rocks could not have been too significant.

As tempting as it is to assume that, in a universe in which scientists can create wormholes in the 1940s, they had their own space program gathering the rocks in secret, there's no evidence that suggests at this.

How many Apollo moon missions were there?

 

[levious]

Apollo 11, 12, 14, 15, 16, and 17 all landed on the moon and returned to earth.

There's also meteorites that contain moon material. So the apollo missions don't have to be the sole source, even if we don't allow for other unknown moon missions.

I'm glad even the deleted material doesn't hint at a relationship between them. I'm actually purposefully ignoring deleted material because (a) it was deleted for a reason; and (b) the SPACE CORE was fucking happy in space, happiest ending for a character in a Valve game ever, and did not want to return no matter what the unused content proposes.

what deleted material was about the space core?

 

[XiaNaphryz]

How many Apollo moon missions were there?

Apollo 11 to 17 (sans 13, obviously) all landed on the moon, 18-20 were scrubbed. 17 returned to Earth December 19, 1972.

 

[Hylian7]

Apollo 11, 12, 14, 15, 16, and 17 all landed on the moon and returned to earth.

There's also meteorites that contain moon material. So the apollo missions don't have to be the sole source, even if we don't allow for other unknown moon missions.




what deleted material was about the space core?

Spoiler

"Getting bored of space"
"Don't like space anymore, it's too big."
"Wanna go home. Wanna go to earth."

 

[webrunner]

Is the use of nanotechnology previous to the inventions of regular-sized robots really feasible as an explanation?

There's no evidence Aperture was fiddling with computers and robots prior to the 80s.

 

[Mama Robotnik]

Apollo 11, 12, 14, 15, 16, and 17 all landed on the moon and returned to earth.

There's also meteorites that contain moon material. So the apollo missions don't have to be the sole source, even if we don't allow for other unknown moon missions.

Apollo 11 to 17 (sans 13, obviously) all landed on the moon, 18-20 were scrubbed. 17 returned to Earth December 19, 1972.

Great information, thanks guys.

Given the cost of the Moon Rocks, I'd previously assumed that they'd been gathered in small amounts over the six missions, but given the small size of the spacecraft, the maximum possible number of rocks they could have carried, and the sheer volume of gel pumping through the facility, it doesn't add up.

Also Cave's infection by moon rock dust would suggest (to me) that they had pretty subtantial quantities, lending credence to the meteorite theory.

Perhaps Cave was trying to outbid Black Mesa for rights to mine a site where a moon-rock-containing meteorite had previously crashed? The mining process would support the release of the dust and the eventual poisoning of Cave.

Is the use of nanotechnology previous to the inventions of regular-sized robots really feasible as an explanation?

There's no evidence Aperture was fiddling with computers and robots prior to the 80s.

Cave explicitly says in the second 1950s test chamber that they've introduced nanobots into the gel. After describing them as nanobots he explains they are hundreds fo gizmos, or something like that. I need to find an exact quote, but suffice to say. Aperture has had advanced nanotechnology for a long time.

 

[Mechanical Snowman]

If the quantum tunneling device could portal the Moon then Aperture could have just gone there themselves, why pay 70 million!

Cave was an idiot to go bankrupt.

 

[Bregor]

You guys are trying way to hard to apply logic and sense to a setting that is deliberately silly, over the top, and illogical.

 

[Hylian7]

You guys are trying way to hard to apply logic and sense to a setting that is deliberately silly, over the top, and illogical.

BOREALIS

Seriously, probably the main reason people are trying this hard is simply because of the Borealis. We all want a connection to Half-Life so badly, so we have this entire backstory theory around Aperture Science. All of us that have finished Episode Two really badly want Episode Three. I don't know if you've played it yet, but if you have, you would certainly understand why. Episode Two spoilers below:

Spoiler

First of all, where THE FUCK are they going to go from having Eli FUCKING Vance die?! Especially after he told you he's aware of the G-Man. Alyx won't be the same after that event, that's for sure. The helicopter was still intact, and among Eli's last words were "Gordon, destroy that ship!" I sure as hell want to know even more what was on it and why Eli even gave his own life (hitting an Advisor with a lead pipe) to make sure Gordon and Alyx got there. It's been bothering me for the last (almost) four years! Every time I replay that game it makes me wonder even more. God dammit, every time I think about this it makes me wonder why the hell we haven't heard a damn thing about Episode Three/HL3. We really need to hear something at E3!!!!

 

[Numpt3]

You see what you have done by being vague with your back story Valve!?

 

[Mama Robotnik]

If the quantum tunneling device could portal the Moon then Aperture could have just gone there themselves, why pay 70 million!

Cave was an idiot to go bankrupt.

Given that every testing facility was kilometers underground, they may never have even considered the possibility of doing this.

The Portal technology was massively misused in continuous, pointless puzzle testing rather than applying logic and using the wormholes to, say, create perpetual motion machines for infinite energy, or to pioneer new methods of transport.

By the time they established that moon rocks were a portal conductor, Aperture was so wrapped up in their mania that they were sacrificing themselves in pointless, deadly testing. I can't imagine anyone was sane anymore, and would consider an idea like opening a portal on the moon for cheaper and efficient mining.

You guys are trying way to hard to apply logic and sense to a setting that is deliberately silly, over the top, and illogical.

So why ruin our fun?

 

[webrunner]

Given that every testing facility was kilometers underground, they may never have even considered the possibility of doing this.

The Portal technology was massively misused in continuous, pointless puzzle testing rather than applying logic and using the wormholes to, say, create perpetual motion machines for infinite energy, or to pioneer new methods of transport.

By the time they established that moon rocks were a portal conductor, Aperture was so wrapped up in their mania that they were sacrificing themselves in pointless, deadly testing. I can't imagine anyone was sane anymore, and would consider an idea like opening a portal on the moon for cheaper and efficient mining.



So why ruin our fun?

I wonder about the "free energy" thing.

The portals are obviously linked to and constantly sustained by the portal device (otherwise you couldn't fizzle them through emancipation, and having a coop bot die wouldn't reset the portals) so it's quite possible that the portal device itself uses a lot of energy.. of course the portal device is powered by a miniature black hole so why they dont just use THAT to generate energy I couldn't say.

 

[Summary Man]

You guys are trying way to hard to apply logic and sense to a setting that is deliberately silly, over the top, and illogical.

Basically what I came in here to say. The game doesn't take itself as seriously as you guys do. The history of Aperture Science in Portal 2 is deliberately written to be "jokey" and unrealistic; taking the information and attempting to have everything "make sense" in a real-life setting is a lost cause. Too much vagueness and contradictions.

Nice summary, though.

 

[levious]

Nice summary, though.

high praise!


Is the non-portal Half Life universe that much more realistic and non-over the top than what we see in Portal?

 

[Summary Man]

high praise!


Is the non-portal Half Life universe that much more realistic and non-over the top than what we see in Portal?

Well, to be fair, I should have said "semi-realistic real-life setting" in regards to Half Life 2. Yeah, some crazy stuff happens, but I think that HL2 takes itself more seriously than either Portal game.

The tone and atmosphere of the two franchises couldn't be more disparate. HL2 is a (relatively) sober trek through a dystopian police state while Portal 2 is basically a romp through a crazy funhouse filled with jokes and over-the-top characters. Each franchises succeeds in the tone it's trying to set, but attempting to fit Portal into the HL2 universe (and vice versa) just seems like an attempt to jam a square peg through a round hole. Sure, you can make it work, but it's not gonna look very nice.

 

[The Technomancer]

Mentioning that the test facilities were miles underground sparks another bit of speculation in me: maybe the original Portal device didn't work too close to the surface. A lot of the more precise high-energy experiments in the real world have to take place underground because of all kinds of factors.

 

[Ferrio]

All of this reads of bad fan fiction.

From the developer interview it really seems they haven't put too much thought in the overall story and you people are going waaay beyond anything they've come up with.

 

[Mechanical Snowman]

From the developer interview it really seems they haven't put too much thought in the overall story and you people are going waaay beyond anything they've come up with.

That's the point.

There's nothing wrong with filling in the gaps, it's all in good fun. Feel free to disregard anything that's not made canon by Valve, but some people just like speculating.

 

[Deleted member 22576]

Great read.

 

[OmniAvenger]

And now I want a Portal-themed shower curtain.

 

[Foliorum Viridum]

A lot of you might find it interesting to listen to the Giant Bomb Portal 2 spoilercast that they recorded whilst at Valve. They talk a lot about the backstory and their approach to how they created it (basically, if something was funny/cool, they found a way to shove it in) amongst lots of other things.

Well worth a listen if you haven't.

 

[Rapstah]

Why would they have needed to buy moon rocks from the government? Assuming the 50s backpack Portal Guns worked in the same way your one in the game does (and it's implied it did work that way, with the tests working the way they do) they could've just portalled there in space suits and collected tons of it. They'd just need an airlock to portal from somehow.

 

[Mama Robotnik]

And now I want a Portal-themed shower curtain.

This is a superb idea. I mean it, its such an obvious idea too!

Why would they have needed to buy moon rocks from the government? Assuming the 50s backpack Portal Guns worked in the same way your one in the game does (and it's implied it did work that way, with the tests working the way they do) they could've just portalled there in space suits and collected tons of it. They'd just need an airlock to portal from somehow.

Cave mentions spending at least seventy million dollars on the rocks, and it was only after the purchase that it "turns out" they were a potent portal conductor.

By this point in the timeline Aperture is approaching the height of its lunacy, with employees sacrificing themselves in pointless tests, robots taking over core functions, and its leader on his deathbed dreaming of living forever in a computer. An idea as logical as using portals to make lunar travel cheap and easy, probably didn't occur because any surviving Aperture employees were likely traumatised, severely injured from testing, and mad.

 

[AbsoluteZero]

I just read the wikia page on the ARG and the guys that had the dedication to pull out the dial-up modem and connect to a BBS have my utmost respect.

All of that shit, from the morse code coming from radios in the original game to the BBS nonsense would have flown way over my head otherwise.

 

[flsh]

I always assumed it was an "i", but is it possible that it was intended to be a "y"?

Dammit now crackpot theories are starting to run through my head connecting Portal to HL again. Best to not even think about it, it's not like we'll be seeing more of HL anytime soon......

I can't believe I just noticed this (and others probably did already), but it is definitely not a y (and now with proof). It is an i. Look at the two posters in the middle. One has "Yes" (capital y) and the other has "Totally" (lower case y), so she knew how to draw a regular y. Now if we look at the middle poster in the right side, the one with "Hypothesis" on it, we can see the same i as the one she used to write her name.
Now people can stop that silly Alyx - aperture link nonsense.

 

[Mama Robotnik]

I wonder about the "free energy" thing.

The portals are obviously linked to and constantly sustained by the portal device (otherwise you couldn't fizzle them through emancipation, and having a coop bot die wouldn't reset the portals) so it's quite possible that the portal device itself uses a lot of energy.. of course the portal device is powered by a miniature black hole so why they dont just use THAT to generate energy I couldn't say.

Is it mentioned in the games that the Portal Gun is powered by a black hole, or is it mentioned in the ARGs and other outside-game sources?

Just asking because this is honestly the first time I have heard this.

Its actually amazing that Aperture were able to create stable wormholes powered by contained black holes in the 1940s, and mass produce nanobots, artifically-intelligent computers, robot employees, and other incredible achievements that even 200X-era Black Mesa weren't remotely near perfecting.

If Aperture had been properly managed, by the time the Combine invaded, they'd find a world in which swarms of nanobots, robot soldiers armed with black hole guns, and artificially intelligent computers fight against them with insane precision. The war would have lasted for longer than seven hours, I imagine.

 

[dyergram]

I enjoyed this thanks.

 

[XiaNaphryz]

Is it mentioned in the games that the Portal Gun is powered by a black hole, or is it mentioned in the ARGs and other outside-game sources?

Just asking because this is honestly the first time I have heard this.

It was in one of the trailers showing off a cross-section of the gun. Not sure if the video itself was also played back in the game, I know several parts of the various trailers are used on the video walls in-game.

 

[Cth]

It's worth mentioning that the game guide has a detailed history/timeline as well as all sorts of other easter eggs.

Not sure how closely they worked with Valve on the guide, but I'd say that's the closest to canon you'll get.

 

[DarkKyo]

And now I want a Portal-themed shower curtain.

Oh man, shower curtain with massive, 1940's "Aperture Science Innovators" logo would be the best thing ever...

 

[NaughtyCalibur]

Eh, actually, this is probably better suited for this thread.

Really appreciate you taking the time to make the timeline though, OP. I found it extremely fascinating.