Was it all part of the test? (spoilers) [Archive]

Operational

11-10-2007, 03:27 AM

Spoilers for the ending.

Did we actually break out or was it just another part of the test?

Did the other participants kill GlaDOS and escape (before being rebuilt for the next participant)? If not where are they?

Was the puzzle ending due to it being a puzzle game or was it designed like a puzzle by Aperture Science?

msleeper

11-10-2007, 03:44 AM

Yes we broke out.

No they didn't. They might have gotten far like we did (hence the paintings and "the cake is a lie" everywhere), but we are the only ones who killed GLaDOS.

Ending was a puzzle because it is a puzzle game.

DESSTROYER

11-10-2007, 04:57 AM

xcellerate

11-10-2007, 06:43 AM

IMO i believe it was just all a test. Why would they have put freaking walls that allowed you to portal out right at the flame pit? And better yet, why would there be markings all over the walls that tell you where to go? Had there been previous people that have gone through there? Of course not, they would of made it where you have no choice but to die in the flames. It's obvious they put all that there to see if they could live up to the challenge.

except that we were supposed to be brain washed and robot like...but 'we' were different. If we had probably been "educated" by the computer, if the computer said to hold still and go into the flames, then we would have done so. I mean obviously the system they were using has worked before, otherwise they would all of a sudden have your platform get filled with a trillion volts. Surprise!

TwwIX

11-10-2007, 07:32 AM

That's the beauty of the game.
The cake,the robotic arm and all the GLaDOS parts at the end suggest that it's part of the test.She will probably be rebuild and put another subject through the test.

Mahalis

11-10-2007, 07:33 AM

I pretty much took it at face value. You're not supposed to escape - everything from the flame pit onwards is outside of test protocol.

What, by the way, was with the end scene? Cake, your companion cube, and a bajillion of GLaDOS's eye things, in a dark room. I can't imagine that scene being taken literally - GLaDOS gone = no control over the candle-pinching-out robot, for one thing - but there's no other context to take it in.

The cake,the robotic arm and all the GLaDOS parts at the end suggest that it's part of the test.She will probably be rebuild and put another subject through the test.
Interesting point. If it is literal rather than, say, allegorical, it means that things dropped into the incineration things don't actually get destroyed. And GLaDOS herself says that they'd rebuilt her - with the "morality module" - before.

Seems a hell of a huge explosion - ending with you lying in the rubble of the Aperture Science parking lot - to be redone for every test, though.

Gray Fox

11-10-2007, 10:26 AM

I would think if people had escaped before they would have done something about it. Though they probably have been killed with neurotoxin and GlaDOS is more or less just ****ing around.

Kitfox

11-10-2007, 04:53 PM

frozenbacon

11-10-2007, 04:59 PM

IMO i believe it was just all a test. Why would they have put freaking walls that allowed you to portal out right at the flame pit? And better yet, why would there be markings all over the walls that tell you where to go? Had there been previous people that have gone through there? Of course not, they would of made it where you have no choice but to die in the flames. It's obvious they put all that there to see if they could live up to the challenge.

The other people that escaped could've escaped through other areas.

At any rate I think that part at the end was a part where you were supposed to suspend your disbelief. It would've been pretty boring if we had no choice but to die in the fire. Still, it would've been nice if they didn't make the solution so obvious.

Ridge

11-10-2007, 05:04 PM

Well there is this:

http://img383.imageshack.us/img383/488/testchmba150030uu8.jpg

AJ Rimmer

11-10-2007, 05:04 PM

A friend mentioned that every time you walk through the aperture offices there is stuff everywhere that links it more firmly into the half-life universe but i never noticed anything.. gonna have to play again...

There are projector slide shows indicating that Aperture and Black Mesa were competing partners.

As for the test-question I don't know. I'd like to think it was all a test but it does seem a tad expensive to blow the whole thing up every test. Unless of course, "we" was the first person to complete it.

It could also be the entire test was never meant for us but for GLaDOS. The projector show seems to indicate that GLaDOS is their big project, not the portal gun. Maybe they wanted to see how long it would take for her to go bananas, or for how long she could survive, how she would react to constantly having to put people through these tests and killing them. There is a little red phone in the GLaDOS chamber meant as a warning system in case of GLaDOS becoming sentient. Which obviously didn't work.

Ridge

11-10-2007, 05:09 PM

I still get chills every time I think about how the offices are just empty...doesnt seem right...

pergamon

11-10-2007, 09:36 PM

Well there is this:

http://img383.imageshack.us/img383/488/testchmba150030uu8.jpg

I think this is evidence that the facility must have been abandoned very recently. Those stupid projector bulbs don't last very long...

AJ Rimmer

11-10-2007, 10:01 PM

I think this is evidence that the facility must have been abandoned very recently. Those stupid projector bulbs don't last very long...

They're not projector bulbs, they're Aperture Science Enlightenment Bulbuous-shaped Information Aides. And they run for years.

Ridge

11-10-2007, 10:20 PM

Aperture cant do anything right...for all we know that projector couldve killed everybody in the room by first blinding them and then changing frames while they had hands stuck in it and it slowly mulched them!

For God's sake, they get like .8% of the Government Contracts they apply for...

f1r3b4ll

11-10-2007, 11:05 PM

How do we know that pit was a fire pit ? It was just a red glow, perhaps all the cubes pieces get dumped in a pit ? or maybe the cake/robot arm/cube/GLAdOS pieces are a hallucination while your unconcious.

Absinthe

11-10-2007, 11:09 PM

You know, I found a delicious sense of irony at the end with the cake. Almost like "Guess what? There WAS a cake for you! And everybody was there (in terms of those little robotic eyes). And you thought we were BS'ing you. Great work, schmuck."

AJ Rimmer

11-10-2007, 11:10 PM

hamburgerphil

11-10-2007, 11:12 PM

There is fire if you look down into it.

And if you jump in the pit, you die.

Hectic Glenn

11-10-2007, 11:22 PM

Yes we broke out.

No they didn't. They might have gotten far like we did (hence the paintings and "the cake is a lie" everywhere), but we are the only ones who killed GLaDOS.

I believe the same. I also think the tests were to see Glados and her competency at dealing with us (reasoning etc, which those little balls all had importance in controlling). We may have destroyed her but she's obviously a personality stored on a machine somewhere hence her little shin digging song at the end, having a little bit of a laugh at our expense!

I think the whole game for that purpose was a test arena, after the fire pit too. I mean none of it makes sense as a real place, as without the ASPHD it's impossible to navigate! Which also makes me derive that the AS facility were developing not only the ASPHD but Glados too as part of their research. I thoroughly enjoyed testing out their gadgets!

msleeper

11-10-2007, 11:27 PM

I hadn't thought about that, that the part after the fire pit was testing GLaDOS, not us.

Sulkdodds

11-10-2007, 11:42 PM

I think the whole game for that purpose was a test arena, after the fire pit too. I mean none of it makes sense as a real place, as without the ASPHD it's impossible to navigate!Yeah, but only because we can't get through the doors - we don't have the keys, or GLaDOS controls some. :p

I don't think the behind-the-scenes bits are intended to be 'a test'.

kilumanjaro

11-10-2007, 11:43 PM

Seems more like something else... from the website (www.aperturelaboratories.com) implications are that the test facility was set up by some secretive entity, then put under the control of GlaDOS v1.07, which was originally designed and programmed w/ the express purpose of testing subjects.

But GlaDOS reaches sentience, and ran out of test subjects, so "She" put the building on lock-down and started testing employees. Thats why electronic (computer controlled locks) wont open, but all the doors w/ manual handles work fine. Also explains run-down state of the machinery, since GlaDOS only has access to that which is inside the testing facility...

All speculation on my part, but it just fits better w/ the scenario laid out on the web-site. Check it out.

AJ Rimmer

11-10-2007, 11:44 PM

I believe the same. I also think the tests were to see Glados and her competency at dealing with us (reasoning etc, which those little balls all had importance in controlling). We may have destroyed her but she's obviously a personality stored on a machine somewhere hence her little shin digging song at the end, having a little bit of a laugh at our expense!

I think the whole game for that purpose was a test arena, after the fire pit too. I mean none of it makes sense as a real place, as without the ASPHD it's impossible to navigate! Which also makes me derive that the AS facility were developing not only the ASPHD but Glados too as part of their research. I thoroughly enjoyed testing out their gadgets!

Me, earlier:

It could also be the entire test was never meant for us but for GLaDOS. The projector show seems to indicate that GLaDOS is their big project, not the portal gun. Maybe they wanted to see how long it would take for her to go bananas, or for how long she could survive, how she would react to constantly having to put people through these tests and killing them. There is a little red phone in the GLaDOS chamber meant as a warning system in case of GLaDOS becoming sentient. Which obviously didn't work.

Laff

12-10-2007, 01:52 AM

Me, earlier:

It could also be the entire test was never meant for us but for GLaDOS. The projector show seems to indicate that GLaDOS is their big project, not the portal gun. Maybe they wanted to see how long it would take for her to go bananas, or for how long she could survive, how she would react to constantly having to put people through these tests and killing them. There is a little red phone in the GLaDOS chamber meant as a warning system in case of GLaDOS becoming sentient. Which obviously didn't work.

Except they did contain her. They somehow took her out of wherever she was (somewhere where it's nice and sunny according to one of the ending scenes) and dropped her off in some canyon in the Arctic or the north pole or whatever. Perhaps they didn't shut her down completely because they felt they could salvage it. Then the 7 hour war hits, and bam, all attempts at retrieving GlaDOS and the Portal technology is dead. Until Freeman shows up that is...

Ridge

12-10-2007, 02:02 AM

Iiiinteresting...

Van_Halen

12-10-2007, 02:05 AM

Kinda off topic, but did anyone notice that in the Background sound effects there were some sounds from Ravenholm, like some sort of howl, or engine of some kind off in the distance? I heard it, and i thought "OMG! ZOMBIES! D:"

And I think it's funny that that little website Valve made for us about portal a year ago gave us nothing as to the story behind the game. We thought we were onto something for a while. XD

As for the test, I think that GLaDOS just went overboard, we were the last "subject" left in the center, and we kicked it's ass. Pure and simple. :D

PvtRyan

12-10-2007, 02:18 AM

Everyone forgot about this, or am I behind?

This was a triumph.
I'm making a note here:
HUGE SUCCESS.
It's hard to overstate
my satisfaction.

Apparently, GLaDOS didn't mind.

JayseR

12-10-2007, 02:36 AM

The place looks like it must have been abandoned quite awhile ago, maybe around the same time as the incident at Black Mesa, everything there looks like it is rusting.

Unless that was all part of the test. This game seems to have a much deeper story to it than I originally anticipated.

If you go to the Aperture site and use the cjohnson login with the tier3 password, the time line indicates Black Mesa coming into view around 1986.
And since the projectors still show Black Mesa as competition, it might have been abandoned during or before the incident at Black Mesa. Or the time line in Portal is not concurrent with that of Half-Life. But, on the Aperture site, on the time line, it states:

1996 - After a decade spent bringing the disk operating parts of GLaDOS to a state of more or less basic functionality, work begins on the Genetic Lifeform component.

Several Years Later - The untested AI is activated for the first time as one of the planned activities on Aperture's first annual bring-your-daughter-to-work-day.

In many ways, the initial test goes well...

[END]

Maybe Aperture Science was abandoned later, perhaps wiped out by the Combine forcing them to flea to the Borealis ship. I'm doing too much speculating, I could probably go on about this for hours, it is a far more interesting story then I thought it would be, especially since it seems they are tying it into the Half-Life storyline.

Ridge

12-10-2007, 03:02 AM

The fact is, the last scene in the game is outside, and everything looks fine and dandy...no post-Combine apoclypse scene there...

Sulkdodds

12-10-2007, 03:12 AM

Considering you hardly see anything and it could be pre-combine but post-portal storms, I don't think that means much.

Apparently, GLaDOS didn't mind.Problem is: 1. is it canon? 2. isn't GLaDOS completely mad?

elitenetpc

12-10-2007, 03:31 AM

it was quite a strange experience. i for one dont know what the idea of all this is, but i did seem creepy.

kupocake

12-10-2007, 04:19 AM

Isn't it supposed to be quite straight-forward? The test finishes at the point you evade the fire pit. You're supposed to submit there and then, and aperture staff take you away, only, they're all dead / otherwise gone and have been for years. Because of this, you leave the facility via your own route.

Though I have to admit, the cavernous appearance of the later sections was just weird.

Ridge

12-10-2007, 04:24 AM

msleeper

12-10-2007, 04:26 AM

Notice the rediculously huge empty space that GlaDOS is in? It goes up to as far as you can see, and nothing around it...its very dark and murky there, as if it were underground....but where the hell could you be underground for that huge of an expanse?

You might ask the same question about some of the areas in Half-Life 1. It is underground in some undisclosed facility, somewhere on the planet.

Zigrah

12-10-2007, 07:14 AM

The last part with the cake is misleading. It goes with the song and makes you wonder if she's still alive. All those replacement eyes, suddenly reactivating, in a room with a cake. I took it as more of a humorous thing then reality, the one truth is that there are no humans there waiting for you.

The game leaves a lot of unanswered questions in typical Half Life style. Who are you, how did you get put in that test chamber? Are you an employee? Some random poor victim?

If getting past the fire is not a test, then why is it so easy to do? Especially if you're not the first to do it. Would they not learn from the first person that someone could get out easy? Maybe Glados can't make physical changes to the environment, but how did she get you there?

If you weren't expected to get out, why are there gun turrets everywhere? To shoot the aperture science guys if they take too long a break?

Why is part of the building so pristine, and the rest is so run down? Especially parts in between the test chambers and GlaDOS.

If it wasn't for the way in which GlaDOS does explode and where you end up at the end, getting there seems like part of the test or too easy.

I really don't know. I would like to think it wasn't a test, but they leave enough room for doubt. That's what makes it so good.

Ridge

12-10-2007, 07:20 AM

If getting past the fire is not a test, then why is it so easy to do? Especially if you're not the first to do it. Would they not learn from the first person that someone could get out easy? Maybe Glados can't make physical changes to the environment, but how did she get you there?

You were either supposed to die in the fire or get past it and wait for the employees to come get you...since there is nobody there, you have no choice but to continue on

If you weren't expected to get out, why are there gun turrets everywhere? To shoot the aperture science guys if they take too long a break?

Thats a good question..however, you see the arms depositing them...it could be some sort of security system incase something breaks in through the sewers...

Why is part of the building so pristine, and the rest is so run down? Especially parts in between the test chambers and GlaDOS.

Those are service tunnels...go into a service tunnel at your local sports arena...it wont be clean and pristine...

If it wasn't for the way in which GlaDOS does explode and where you end up at the end, getting there seems like part of the test or too easy.

I really don't know. I would like to think it wasn't a test, but they leave enough room for doubt. That's what makes it so good.

Exactly...you dont know if you survived her tests, or this was how it was planned to end...the shelves of glowing eyes would suggest that she can and does rebuild...

Kon

12-10-2007, 07:44 AM

If Aperture Science is located at borealis, then it has been a while since anyone has visited GlaDOS.
GlaDOS probably has only a limited amount of test samples considering we don't see any others, and I think its possible we were the only one left minus the other person who tried to escape before us.
GlaDOS probably wants people to find it, but since nobody is visiting, it realizes that there are harsh conditions outside aperture laboratories restricting anyone from coming and going.
Seeing as thats the case, it is in GlaDOS's best interest to produce a sense of fear into you so that you can't trust GlaDOS and want to escape. By creating a condition where you are trying to be killed, if you succeed and escape, it makes it more likely that you'll survive outside aperture laboratories long enough to tell other people about the place which in effect would cause people to come find it.

AJ Rimmer

12-10-2007, 11:13 AM

I really don't think Borealis is big enough to contain GLaDOS. I also don't think the portal technology is what Eli says "Must not be used" at least not the kind of portal tech we saw in Portal. Cause that would mean all the mystery of Ep 3 is gone.

WeeViL

12-10-2007, 02:28 PM

I am not so sure that the glowing eyes were spare parts. If you listen to GLaDOS she talks about your survival and finding out what happens when you die. She also mensions that she has your brain scanned and permanantly backed up.

What if the eyes represent the brain scans/personalities of all of the test subjects and you do indeed get some cake??

DelaZ

12-10-2007, 03:42 PM

First I thought killing GLaDOS was part of the test and once you passed the final test and killed GLaDOS, she gets rebuilded, hence the new bulbs lighting up at the end of the game. But after reading WeeViL's post I came up with another theory:

Maybe the AI of GLaDOS is build with all the scanned brains of the test subjects which they backup in those white bulbs, making her knowledge very large and her character/personality very varying and weird, but still human in some aspects (humor, sarcasme, she talks about pain and how you broke her heart etc). All those individual brain backups form the AI that is called GLaDOS. Infact maybe when you finally reach the surface you are dead (note that if you die in the games made in the Half-Life universe the viewpoint falls down to the ground like a dead body and your view gets locked, just like a camera falling on the ground. Also exactly what happens at the end of Portal). But since your brain has been scanned and backed up your conscience continues to exist inside one the white bulbs, which you can see at end with the cake. So you do indeed get some cake?

Far fetched:
So since Aperture Science could (extract??) or backup brain scans this would also explain how the Combine recruited overwatch soldiers and stalkers, extracting the human braincontent and use their "dead" bodies as some sort of slaves without conscience. All of this using human technology! They are called the "Combine" for some reason, right?
All the knowledge gathered from the human brains could also have helped the Combine to conquer earth.

AJ Rimmer

12-10-2007, 05:20 PM

I think a major problem here is that GLaDOS lies alot. I mean, she also claimed to know what happened after you die.

Rapstah

12-10-2007, 06:00 PM

I think a major problem here is that GLaDOS lies alot. I mean, she also claimed to know what happened after you die.

After her empathy core was destroyed.

kupocake

12-10-2007, 06:24 PM

The last part with the cake is misleading. It goes with the song and makes you wonder if she's still alive. All those replacement eyes, suddenly reactivating, in a room with a cake. I took it as more of a humorous thing then reality
Agreed, like the appearance of Lamar after the credits in Half-Life 2. What did that have to do with anything after HL2?

Still, I believe we'll see GlaDOS again, aboard the Borealis (though obviously not the same one). The only issue with that is I believe they've now got her VA doing the Overwatch voice for the combine as well.

AHA-Lambda

12-10-2007, 07:23 PM

Maybe the Combine already found her and are using her? :O

Ridge

12-10-2007, 07:43 PM

Nah, Mossman said that they can tunnel through to Earth, but once here they have to rely on local transportation, as they havent created localed portal tech like Kleiner and Vance did...as far as we know, the only Combine example was at Nova Prospekt, which we destroyed...

v1p3r

12-10-2007, 07:59 PM

The companion cube could have survived for the end scene - recall the flame pit scene where GLaDOS says all AS technology can survive up to 4000k :)

Kalado

12-10-2007, 08:01 PM

I think everything was a test.
There are enough points that let you believe this.
First all the things you mentioned so far, like the lyrics of the song etc.
Than an other idae i got right now.
Just in the moment you see GlaDOS one Part of her falls down...ehm yeah.
All the other parts of her just comes down if you launch a rocket on them, and even then they are connect by some green light or whatever, oh come on it just can't be that this all just happened by chance.
Say im right =)
I dont thing that anyone came to GlaDOS so far, we where the first one.
I dont know what GlaDOS will do next after she rebuilds herself, but i dont think she will make more tests like this, and she will come up with something new (Portal 2 yay?)

(PS:Sorry for my bad english im just 16 and from another country^^

Rapstah

12-10-2007, 08:05 PM

GLaDOS could be Overwatch.

kingkuttar

12-10-2007, 08:10 PM

It's strange that you see no employees at all on your way to GLaDOS. Mabye it was all a test, but blowing up GLaDOS and rebuilding her seems a but too much. Mabye GlaDOS was old technology that Aperture wanted to test and improve. It's all so confusing.

Absinthe

12-10-2007, 08:21 PM

My guess is that it wasn't officially a test. However, that was the entire paradigm in which GLaDOS saw the whole thing. You weren't meant to escape, and the entire behind-the-scenes half of Portal was unplanned. But GLaDOS continued to assess it as an evolving experiment. Destroying her and blowing up a big chunk of Aperture laboratories would have been seen as a disaster by whatever human minds were previously running the place, but GLaDOS was incapable of viewing it as such by the nature of her programming. She saw it as an extended accumulation of recorded data, hence why she assessed it as a resounding success.

Ridge

12-10-2007, 08:29 PM

True...like how the Combine advisors can read memories, the more data GlaDOS gets, the more she can predict human behaviour under similar circumstances...something dangerous for the human race, regardless of who gets her...

AHA-Lambda

14-10-2007, 08:31 PM

Now that I've seen evidence to suggest that this is set around HL2 time I'm going to change my mind and say this wasn't a test and just a game GLaDOS made cos she's bored (AI's must get bored as well right?)

riomhaire

14-10-2007, 09:09 PM

I was convinced up until you got to GLaDOS's chamber that it was all still a test. The strangely-placed turrets and the occasional bit of strange geometry suggested it was pre-set up to me. By the geometry I mean that after you supposedly break-out there are still occasional bits things like the panels slanted a 45 degrees in order to shoot you upwards under your own momentum present. When I actually started fighting GLaDOS I began to think otherwise and I was convinced once I killed her. Then while I was reading through this forum someone pointed out that GLaDOS, when you are about to be killed by being dumped into a flame pit, says that all Aperture Science equipment can survive the incinerator. Seems a bit weird to have such a huge bang to end a test though (and why the hell would GLaDOS getting destroyed even suck you up like that?)

Sulkdodds

14-10-2007, 09:40 PM

GLaDOS, when you are about to be killed by being dumped into a flame pit, says that all Aperture Science equipment can survive the incinerator.I think she means the portal gun, not actually bits of her.

The line is supposed to emphasis her utter disregard with human beings compared to the expensive equipment that they're testing. See also: this gun costs more than your entire home town.

Ridge

14-10-2007, 09:49 PM

Because the spheres that fall off obviously explode when dumped into the incinerator...

riomhaire

14-10-2007, 09:58 PM

I think she means the portal gun, not actually bits of her.

The line is supposed to emphasis her utter disregard with human beings compared to the expensive equipment that they're testing. See also: this gun costs more than your entire home town.
"All Aperture technologies remain safely operational up to 4000 degrees kelvin."