For those anticipating HL2 EP3?

[vale]

I first read about this on the eve forum yesterday but this morning one of the guys on my forum posted a summary. I must say Valve certainly have a flare for exciting there nerd fan base.

Dunno if any of you guys are following this but

http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2010/03/portal-viral/

personally i think valve have TOO MUCH FUCKING TIME ON THEIR HANDS AND SHOULD FINISH HL2 EPISODE FUCKING 3 NAO

but the story so far is...

-Portal gets surprise update yesterday afternoon
-People see new mystery achievement
-People play and see the radio in the beginning room now has a green light
-Carry it around and notice it makes strange broadcast interference noises in certain places
-Locate and place all 26 of these mystery radios for achievement
-Smart people yank wav files out of game content folders and run them through steganography programs
-Produces 26 weird cryptic image files in a numbered sequence
-Some dude runs the number string through an md5 hash translator and gets a landline number
-Internet traces it to Kirkland, WA (near Valve HQ)
-People find out its not a phone/fax line but a data line hosting a BBS and telnet it
-Use a clue from one of the files to figure out the BBS user/password login info
-End up with a bunch of weird ASCII artwork

-A collection of the ASCII artwork is posted: http://img341.imageshack.us/img341/6278/portalascii.png
-People get to work on the ASCII and an ingame screenshot may very well have been found by turning one of the ASCII artworks: http://cdupload.com/files/123623_btxvo/rotate1.jpg


soo ... an elaborate game to announce portal 2 , something edging towards episode 3 and portal 2 or just some valve nerds bored and fucking with other nerds

[Maveric]

hehe thats awesome :)

[SlyDave]

Been following this, its rather epic :)

The Games Division of Valve are and have always been on the ball with the community, everything from the ease of use of Hammer, the support and adoption of Mods, to the constant updates of TF2 are all excellent; stuff like this reinforces that behaviour.

It also shows how well they've matched their user base - this "puzzle" isn't simple, and some of the steps that have been taken to work stuff out, wouldn't have even entered my mind!

Steam is also great, and although changes are very slow, they are mostly welcome. - We wont mention Steam prices slowing creeping up, but I blame the money honey investors for that, not the Game Devs.

Will be interesting to see what this is all in aid of - they've done vial advertising perfectly.

[Gh05t]

Didn't realise this would even pop up on these forums, however there has since been another update:

At the end of Portal a robot no walks up behind you (out of your vision), thanks you for taking up the recovery position, and drags you away.

[putty_thing]

So does this mean we're going to actually get episode 3 in the foreseeable future?

[Gazzaridis]

quite possible, however on the 5th of march valve announced that portal 2 is in the pipeline

[vale]

So does this mean we're going to actually get episode 3 in the foreseeable future?

I damn well hope so I have been waiting too long dammit!