Valve Cancels E3 Portal 2 Event In Favor of “Surprise”

Listen, we’ve played through Portal.  Multiple times.  We know more than enough to be highly skeptical of any “surprises” related to the Aperture Science Corporation because those surprises are usually full of fire.  Or deadly neurotoxin.

But this press release is quite charmingly written:

Aperture Science is pleased to inform you that we have partnered with Valve to announce the gala CANCELLATION of the June 14 Portal 2 Event at the Regal Theater.  The event will be replaced by a surprise.  And even though the cancellation of the event certainly counts as a surprise, we are pleased to further announce that the cancellation of the event is not THE surprise.  However, per International treaties regarding the definition of the word “surprise”, of which both Aperture Science and Valve are signatories, the time, date and content of the actual surprise will only become available as you experience the surprise.

If you’d like to ask fruitless questions about the E3 Portal 2 surprise or, more fruitfully, schedule an appointment to attend a Portal 2 screening at the Valve booth during E3, please contact Valve’s Special Envoy to Surprises, Doug Lombardi.

Thank you for <<RECORD SCRATCH!!!>>

PS: The surprising record scratch is also not the surprise.

Pic from Nickchester.

Fan speculation is running high on what the “surprise” will be: Something about Portal 2? Half-Life 3?  That Portal 2 IS Half-Life 3?  Flooding the room with deadly neurotoxin?

From the Reddit thread:

SilverChaos: The room, goes dark, a 3 appears on the screen. Crowd goes wild. The L4D logo appears. Crowd riots. Record scratch, trollface on screen. It’s actually Episode 3. Surprise.

frantk: The room, goes dark, a 3 appears on the screen. Crowd goes wild. The number changes. 2:59 … 2:58 … Crowd panics.

theyesteryear: The room goes dark and there is just a table with a cake, with the candles lit up. Crowd goes wild. Suddenly you hear a GLaDOS voice. Welcome to test chamber 0. Then her voice gets jumbled up into different messed up voices. Instantaneously you see a huge 3 smash the cake and the table. Mist comes out and Gordon Freeman costume walks out of the mist with a crowbar. Then he takes out his suit and people realize that in the costume is Gabe Newell, and starts dancing along with the song RICKROLL, with the two jumbo screens playing the music video. You have been tricked. Gabe Newell then picks up the 3 logo and flips it horizontally. The 3 becomes an E. “Welcome to the Electric Box. L4D3, Half Life: Episode 3, Team Fortress 3, and Portal:3pilogue.”

The language of the release is just so… Apeturian, that we can’t imagine it would be anything but connected to Portal 2.  After all, with E3 only two weeks away, it’s a little late to actually change the subject of your big kick-off event, if only to not annoy journalists.  On the other hand, these are the guys who gave us Portal.  It doesn’t pay to underestimate them.

(via many places.)