No New Portal for 2008

[CSN NewsBot]

Sorry cake fans, there won't be any new Portal release this year.

"In typical Valve tradition, it won't be Portal with different colours," said Lombardi, dressed as a companion cube. "I think that when you hit something like that, you have two choices: you can quickly replicate it and stick it out there - do the opportunistic thing and cash in on it; or you can do the crazy thing like we did after Half-Life was so successful and go off and try and say, 'Okay, that was revolutionary, so its successor has to be equally as revolutionary.'



"That's the spirit I think we're approaching it in," he added. "You won't see a new Portal at retail this Christmas because of that. That's the trade off. People want more, but we don't want to give them more of the same right away because that would just be boring."

This isn't entirely unexpected given how Valve really doesn't churn out sequels at the drop of a dime. I think the bigger question here is, what does "dressed as a companion cube" even mean?!

[Admz]

Wish all sequels had this ethic. Wonder what new things Portal 2 will have... pie? ¦-D

[-:Nighthawk:-]

No... "the pie is a lie" sounds like a 1st grade reading primer written by Dr. Seuss, not a video game.



In Portal you made it out of the underground AS complex with the portal gun... so the question is, do you continue the story from there (applying the game mechanics of Portal with a totally different type of environment), or do you focus on a different character in a similar environment (a la Blueshift and OpForce) that possibly has to face additional challenges and enemies?



Historically, despite Doug Lombardi's claims, Valve has followed the standard "more of the same" approach to hold players over between revolutionary titles. Op4, BS and CS:CZ are obvious examples of this. So from that perspective, I find it somewhat surprising that they're not releasing some sort of expansion or alternate take to bridge the gap.

[Thortok2000]

I'd love to see the Portal gun taken outside somehow. Like Portal: Episode 2.