To me there's something so eerie and creepy about a compound being so impossibly gigantic that you'd need thousands upon thousands of people not just to build, but to employ. And then there's the extra layer of it being abandoned. Probably one of my favorite things about Portal and HL1.
That what I found the charm in portal that everything that sounds ridiculous is cranked up to 1000 when you find old aperture and just the implication they just built on top of everything and just how much work went into building 1950’s to the 70’s till the 80’s
Something i dont understand is why the 1950s is at the bottom. Why the fuck did they dig that deep to start with? Youd think itd be actually the newest stuff at the bottom
@@sparkie1j they never dug the cave, yes they probably expanded them but never actually dug them out. Cave bought them because they were abandoned salt mines up for grabs, and were perfect for use
I do love how old aperture looks , really gives off a foreboding scary vibe but without anything active threat or monster it's just empty which I think is much scarier.
its also how modern aperture looks as well when you get outside the panel arms and pre-panel rooms its just a huge open room filled with stuff that can moved at any second and everyone is one button away from falling multiple floors but yeah there is something about just always seeing the emptiness of the room and not have it covered up
It's hilarious to think that Eli and Dr. Kleiner might remember some of Aperture's products, to think that such wacky things existed in Half Life's bleak universe.
And the entire time, for decades before Black Mesa achieved teleportation with giant machines and using Xen as a "slingshot", Aperture had perfected portal technology using a handheld gun, but due to Cave's obsession with testing and perfection it never saw the light of day (yet another cheeky reference to Valve themselves).
@@justan324 Same. Maybe we might see it in Half-Life 3? I mean, I doubt it and I don't genuinely believe that we would, but you know. Maybe some pictures or references to it at least would be nice and have characters go "What the hell is that?! ..Wait.. It can make teleporting holes in the wall too?! Magnusson, get here, quick! This is AMAZING! It's far beyond anything we have ever achieved or even dreamed of achieving! The Zero-point Energy Field Manipulator IS a toy compared to THIS!" - Just my small idea of how that could go, best as I can speak in-character for the NPCs we know from the game.
Not a single person-streamer, TH-camr, nor forum has ever made mention of the bizarreness and absurdity of the Borealis dry dock being UNDERGROUND. They just mention it being underground like it’s a normal place people build ships! Or that the Borealis is at roughly the same depth as the Titanic… I get that a dry dock 3800 meters into the Earth’s crust (far far away from the Arctic Ocean I should add) is not really high on the list of “Oddities in the HL/Portal Universe,” but it’s even more odd to me that nobody ever acknowledges that there’s a fucking dry dock for a ship UNDERGROUND.
> far far away from the Arctic Ocean last i checked the facility was in the UP of michigan, probably near the shores of a great lake. Perfectly reasonable to have a dry dock there. just not that far underground.
"just realized $60 is an unprecedented windfall for most of you, so dont go spending it all on... Caroline, what do these people buy? Tattered hats? Beard... dirt?"
I have a "when life gives you lemons" aperture poster on my desk in office. One fine day someone came and put up an aperture logo desk magnet on top of it. Best surprise of my life. Still don't know who did that.
That opening quote PERFECTLY defines Aperture's style of genius unbound by wisdom. Their creativity is unparalleled because they refuse to work within the bounds of convention, but this ALSO means nothing they do is EVER practical. They're basically outsider artists, but for science.
I watch your Portal 2 lores on loop everytime I eat my dinner, or clean my apartment. A week ago, I was telling the story of Portal 2 to my girlfriend so that she falls asleep (she likes me to recite something I love so that she is able to sleep) and I was telling her about the reign of Cave Johnson and about Test Chamber 9. And tonight I will have a chance to tell her more through this video
Crazy thing is, the lore for the first game was actually even more absurd: Aperture originally designed shower curtains until Cave Johnson decided to dedicate the company to scientific research. Their most successful projects were the "Take-A-Wish Foundation" (a method to deprive sick children of their wishes), the "Reverse Heimlich Maneuver" (a way to ensure choking) and a technology to generate wormhole portals through space-time which Cave apparently wasn't sure would be as useful as the other two, but thought might have potential applications as a sort of shower curtain.
It’s so weird how much the game changes in other languages The whole “when life gives you lemons” joke being replaced with “Bad weather, Good face” and he told the scientists to make a fuel made from isobars
Maybe not what you had in mind for other living things, but if you ever complete the co-op game of Portal 2 you learn there are many more survivors sheltered away from Glados. I think they’re being kept in some form of stasis. She sends the robots on a series of trials that ultimately gives her access to the protected area and the dozens or hundreds of additional test subjects. The science must continue!
_People always say hundreds or thousands of years passed between Portal 1 and 2, but that's EASILY disproven by looking at plant growth and water damage._ Aperture famously used the cheapest possible building materials for their testing tracks to offset other expenses. More than this, testing chambers were specifically built using modular parts to be maintained by GLaDOS. Knowing this, the level of decay and contamination we see within the surface-level chambers couldn't have taken more than 20-30 years AT MOST. Yes, there's some cut dialogue that says it's been thousands of years, but there's a REASON why that was CUT. Even accounting for sci-fi tech, the facility's doors, elevators, and buttons would've rusted well beyond usability after 30-40 years. We even see this beginning to occur in-game, with some doors being broken or unable to fully open.
Ah! but aperture does have nanobots as mentioned by Wheatley, perhaps even with GLaDOS offline they were able to effectively keep the building from collapsing? i dont know its a bit of a stretch but it could explain why aperture isnt a pile of dust after thousands of years
Aperture Science was built inside an abandoned salt mine, and salt mines have been known to create a dry environment that can preserve stuff almost indefinitely. You could also say the surface level chambers aren't actually surface level, just the places where the water and plant life have finally worked their way down.
Dark you say, I think that's an understatement. The radioactive isotope in a chair is absolutely terrifying, if put into context of actual radioactive disasters and accidents. The amount of lore that can be dredged up is so amazing, that a Portal 3 would be rather easy to follow through with; if they didn't want to touch the HL3 name anytime soon.
It actually me wonder what other experiments were going down in the other eight test tubes. I wonder if one of them were used to make those explosives lemons.
This was by far my most favorite area in any game I've ever played. I've been gaming since the 80s. It's just such a creepy abandoned science horror level that raises more questions than it answers and really captures the "can not should" attitude of science from the 50s through the 90s. I just really wish I had a cutting torch. I would be everywhere off-rail. I'd be playing it again now if HL2 v.29 super-extra directors release hadn't already beaten it to my to-play list first. And yes, we do need P3. Glados is... still alive.
i would LOVE for just a walkthrough type game or maybe an extremely large map that is the ENTIRETY of the Aperature Science Labs. it would be so cool to just go around and explore the facility.
3:29 - I wonder how many people pick up on the secondary meaning of this kind of description of Aperture while just playing through the games, hearing you describe it this way it's hard not to draw a parallel between Aperture and Valve (in some alternate universe blabla), extremely high standards and vigorous testing is exactly how Valve got their many successes 🤔
But Cave doesn't hesitate to try anything, while Valve constantly perfects. One of theories why we have no HL3 is because Valve was never happy with what they had and wanted yet another unprecedented leap
I'm also a huge portal fan, mostly for all that's hinted at that is just all left to speculation, like the other 8 test shafts. It's such a well written series!
These deep dives into the lore of HL/Portal are absolutely fascinating.... exceptional work. Please keep it up, I really enjoy going down these rabbit holes and your story telling style keeps it interesting.
The thing about repulsion gel not liking the human skeleton is simply they got covered in the gel and bounced uncontrollably all around the room. Since unlike Chell they don’t have long fall boots, they broke their bones landing on every bounce until someone washed the gel off.
It's your lore videos like this on Aperture Science and Portal games in general that makes me incredibly sad when I see people _still_ bashing Portal 2 just because it dared to have good humor that covered up a lot of the dark elements - And all that, after over a decade since the game has released. Not only the story itself was dark and messed up, as in, the storyline that we, as the player play through in Portal 2, but so was the lore - Arguably, even moreso than the story of Chell, Wheatley and GLaDOS going through what they did together. A woman forced into an computer against her will, these kinds of horrible human experiments. And you tell me that the first Portal game is darker and Portal 2 is worse when it comes to that, just because humor?
Portal story ended with Portal 2, I don't know where you can go from that.. Chell has escaped Aperture and GLados is back on charge of the facility, meanwhile Gordon and Alyx were supposed to go to borealis using the helicopter but Eli died.. and now Alyx is gone to be G-man's puppet and Eli is alive and they need to save her from Gman
@@Ivan.ko88 that's cool.. but I think we already have the Portal Stories Mell for that or is it just the game before portal 2 starts, I love these fan made mods. I still have them on steam
man, Aperture's experiments make no sense. while the other facilities have a sort of a goal (i. e. Black Mesa studying the cross-world transfer), the Aperture Science was like: "why? better ask yourself "why the hell not?", participant! wait, don't make any sounds, as we might've replaced your vocal cords with ultrasonic emitters! but don't you worry, while you were sleeping, our scientist have replaced your frontal lobe with that of a gorilla. if you have any unintended side effects, such as hair growth, desire for bananas or sudden increase in mass, please contact one of the Aperture Science personnel." It's just all over the damn place and it's hilarious
Man, you have no idea of how your vídeos are giving me such inspiration and vibes to writte a new version of half life story, with new characters, a new ending, a new chain of events etc, like, really, your videos are awesome and don't stop making them EVER ❤.
i wonder if playing The National - Exile Vilify instead of Triage at Dawn would have gotten you copyrighted. it's a song from one of the Ratmann dens close to the beginning of the game and imo one of the best songs mankind has ever produced. encapsulates the atmosphere of the game *perfectly*
I played Portal 2 only recently, having heard little miscellaneous bits and pieces of lore prior. And to be honest, I never really felt it was creepy or scary - the primary emotion I felt was sadness. It was just extremely sad to walk through the old Aperture and observe the ambition that was fused into it slowly die out as time progressed. Sure, Cave Johnson might not be the best person when it comes to safety, but I couldn't help but feel really sorry for him, especially when observing how his tone in the pre-recorded messages changed from an optimistic and confident to a bleak and disappointed one. Another thing that adds to that is the fact that I believe he wasn't harming the test subjects because he intended harm to them - rather, he might've just not been knowledgeable enough to realize the risks of the experiments and was simply excited about contributing to the progress for the sake of humanity's brighter future, kinda like how humans became fascinated by radiation in the early twentieth century while being completely unaware of the dangers it concealed (just a fun little reminder - radiation was considered a health benefit and radioactive substances were put in food and medication and sold as wonder drugs).
On a real note tho, if someone from the surface was ever able to go down and retrieve glados' lexicon of research knowledge. The actual amount of things they'd be able to progress in.
I used to watch you way back when you did: ‘The Lore Behind’ videos for the Portal games. I’ve recently gotten back into Portal and hearing your voice again jogged tons of memories. Thanks for all the good times!
Someone needs to make a detailed render of the enrichment center of what it is thought to look like in its entirety. Portal 2 makes the map bigger in memory but I've never thought of its actual layout.
The Borealis is also a shoutout to a real world urban myth called the Philadelphia Experiment. Its also funny that their portal gun technology could probably have made them into a trillion dollar market cap operation. And they only used it for testing.
I can not imagine these test in portal 2. The game style not that scary nor brutal. These test fit better in games, like portal 1, portal prelude. Portal 2 is not serious enough. I always thought about these tests as jokes.
I love how the way this is framed feels like a deep dive video essay into a real corporations wrongdoings, leading up to a "don't support this business if you can avoid it" disclaimer. I could be watching this from the portal/half life universe easily, it's immersive and fun
I've been wondering for a while now if Portal's lore fits with the rest of the Half-Life universe. The stuff Aperture does is so zany and wacky that it's almost TF levels of cartoonish. The regular Half Life games aren't super duper cereal by any means but still. It'd be like if during District 9 and Rick and Morty shared the same continuity. I still love Portal but I'm not sure how I feel about it being canon in HL.
What I'm trying to figure out is how Aperture Sciences still had the money to construct these ridiculously cost-prohibitive experimental chambers even after they were bankrupt. Aperture definitely didn't find a way to duplicate money in all their experiments otherwise they wouldn't be cutting so many corners as time passed. My guess is among all the illegal things Aperture did, they decided to bribe someone in Congress so they could still take out loans and receive grants to conduct all these wacky experiments, which could also explain how Aperture was just barely able to stay open despite these unethical experiments costing so many lives.
Yes I'd take the 60 dollars. I ate puzzle games for every meal as a kid. Granted, this is 1970's, there's not gonna be these digital puzzles. Counterpoint. I don't really think I'd change much as a kid regardless of what era you put me in. So 60 dollars, which is equivocally 500 in 70's economy, for what could easily be 2 to 5, maybe 10 minutes of work? And my privileged post-woodstock white boy perception of god is utterly shattered with black hole guns, blue that hates bones, and mantis people? Sign. Me. The fuck up. And then sign me up again. And you might be all like "Oh, but what about the glowing calcium water that calcifies your brain?" Heh, we get that in REAL life, except it doesn't glow, and WE PAY FOR IT. Imagine walking up to a guy, he gives you an unassuming cup of coffee, hey, free joe! And then he fucking gives you 500 dollars cash in THEIR current money and tells you parts of your brain MIGHT turn to stone. That wasn't even 2 minutes, that was 5 seconds and you're making paper. Yeah, brain damage. But this is essentially gambling, except you put no money in and get paid, and if you're lucky enough, YOU WILL come out with superpowers. IF you're lucky enough. It's not guaranteed, but it COULD happen. They have multiverse technology, it very well could happen.
I fundamentally disagree with your assessment of Aperture's reputation and furthermore believe it to be directly contradicted by the text. They're not MIT or CERN, they're SpaceX - the boondoggle brainchild of one unfathomably-rich, misguided eccentric. They didn't even export the portal gun; every single other venture they initiated, like the mantis-men and reaction gels, was a colossal loss that ultimately bankrupted the company and cost Cave his life. Their biggest canonical contract was producing asbestos-lined shower curtains for the military, ffs.
Noted! It may have been Ghost of Rattmann. You can hear him in the background. I was hesitant to put it in the video for that reason. Won't do it again
i really liked it, made the video so unsettling. perhaps have it slightly quieter, it feels like white noise thats just barely audible under your own voice and really makes you feel unsettled and like your going crazy.@@Skyrionn
Can we cover the lore of quantum science energy research facility? Edit: there's a lot of lore with the facility directors like really really bad experiments on people like : turning blood to ice, making people easily manipulative and some secret laboratory ( which ain't secret anymore but oh well) and it's a cool game itself, and also there's a ton of details in that game:]
I thought I was going Schizo for a second too xd Thought a random tab or so was playing but when it stopped when pausing the video I got more confused what it might be :D
Yo Skyrionn, apparently you're my most watched gaming channel on TH-cam this year, i've watched you 43 times more than your average viewer and when i've realized i actually never commented any of your videos, i felt kinda guilty, so here i am. Great video as always, Portal has such big potential for more chapters under a narrative point of view, even without considering its shared world setting with Half Life
Cave Johnson here, all you've said here is a lie, and Aperture will be taking legal action on you. Well, I don't really know what you've said, because this is a pre-recorded message, but the Aperture Legal Team will be contacting you soon.
As I’m watching this video, I’m walking downstairs, thinking about the episode of Rick and Morty when Rick infects everyone with mantis DNA. What do I see on the tv screen? That exact episode.
Do you add any clarification to the lore that the player doesn't figure out on their own just by playing the game? Is this entire video just a paraphrasing of Cave's recordings and the various signs around the facility?
Hi hello, I wanted to ask if you think it's possible to make a stretched theory regarding Aperture as an origin point for the combine? I've made a loose theory on my own with the knowledge I've been able to gather, but was wondering if it'd be possible to link ideas better with the extended knowledge you have? I could write things out and get it more legible instead of fringe if you'd be interested in a small discussion
for one thing, the energy ball or the turret almost certainly weren't made by aperture or stolen and repurposed by the combine, they just made it themselves - it's like people building pyramids all over the world: certain things look similar even though people didn't communicate with each other plus, the combine most likely didn't enter aperture, we would've seen signs of their presence my headcanon is that the facility is full of unseen scientific horrors, and we know that it had military grade androids and robots (sentry turret and its variants such as the primadonna or animal king, and rocket sentry being the main examples) and because the place was prepared for an apocalyptic event, some robots might've pushed back against the combine, which eventually gave up, because freeman was causing problems in and around city 17 who knows, maybe some metrocops were taken and forced to participate in tests before eventually dying and then freeman and the resistance defeated the combine, and eventually chell left the facility, unaware of the horrors the world went through she probably doesn't even know what year it is
I think Chell left Aperture years after the events of HL. Also we have to make difference between Aperture and Borealis. In HL they were looking for Borealis, not Aperture.
Some people theorize that, due to the announcer’s dialogue when you wake up, and the decay in portal 2, portal 2 takes place thousands of years in the future after portal 1
I think you got this one wrong. In short: Many of Cave's recorded warnings were just guesses and CYAs. With the really weird warnings, like the mantis hybrids, or the ones about time travelers, I don't think that we're supposed to interpret those as things that actually happened. They were trying a bunch of random stuff, and they had no idea whatsoever what could happen, so they tried wild-ass-guessing. Otherwise, are we to believe that Aperture figured out time travel and arbitrary hybridization of already grown adult humans with mantises, and that nothing happened with that? Both of those things would have had serious implications, like, say... giving Cave the ability to go back in time and warn himself about exposure to moon dust, or having sufficient medical understanding to cure his illness simply as a prerequisite of being at the level of development necessary to hybridize wildly different species. To support this, you can look at theoretical subjects like "xenolinguistics" or "xenobiology," or first contact procedures in case of encounters with extraterrestrial life. We haven't met aliens. We're just trying to be prepared to do so responsibly and anticipate the difficulties and consequences that could arise.
Yea, if I recall right, he starts many of these messages with "in case" and similar. So I'm guessing he's just giving you heads-ups for what he and his science team may think happens e.g. "In case of this nuclearn weapons test, igniting the whole atmosphere, duck behind cover and hold your breath"-type shit
@@NoFlu I would say he probably doesn't care what his scientists think, or interprets everything they say to him through his own filter, where things mean whatever he wants them to mean, but yeah, I agree otherwise.
Aperture invented reliable portal technology and sentient AI. Nothing happened with that. In fact I can’t think of any Aperture products that were sold.
3:52 I would like to point out that I’m pretty sure it was condemned because of the moon dust(time tags not important it’s just how far I am when I’m commenting this)
Do we need a Portal 3?
Yes well not really
They need to milk the series dry I want at least 12 more games
To be honest, it's not needed. I feel Chell's story ended well. There should be spinoffs.
No, we need to get Gordon that beer I owe him.
Yessir
Aperture Science in 1950 when they discover that pouring 3 tons of cement down a man's throat kills him: ☝️ 🤓
This is the one
Ureka!!!!!!!!1!1!1!1
Well someone needs to find out
Ironically, a lot more realistic to historical experiments of different nations than we'd hope.
Huge success
The idea that aperture can just go: “I don’t like you your blood is gasoline now” is beyond terrifying to me
Or peanut butter :)
@@ChocoRainbowCorn “you’ve yeed your last haw.” *turns you into a mantis man abomination to nature*
Aperture just deciding to turn unknowing participants blood into gasoline is making me laugh 🤣
Makes me wonder if the method to do so was too cumbersome to be made into weaponry to sell to the military
To me there's something so eerie and creepy about a compound being so impossibly gigantic that you'd need thousands upon thousands of people not just to build, but to employ.
And then there's the extra layer of it being abandoned.
Probably one of my favorite things about Portal and HL1.
That what I found the charm in portal that everything that sounds ridiculous is cranked up to 1000 when you find old aperture and just the implication they just built on top of everything and just how much work went into building 1950’s to the 70’s till the 80’s
Something i dont understand is why the 1950s is at the bottom. Why the fuck did they dig that deep to start with? Youd think itd be actually the newest stuff at the bottom
@@sparkie1j they never dug the cave, yes they probably expanded them but never actually dug them out. Cave bought them because they were abandoned salt mines up for grabs, and were perfect for use
Such things exist today, mines for example. Especially in China.
Note: The repulsion gel isn't slightly non-toxic. It's "slightly _less_ non-toxic" than fiberglass insulation.
Read: slightly more toxic than Asbestos.
So it is MORE toxic than fiberglass insulation?
@@colekrueger52 Yes. Slightly.
I do love how old aperture looks , really gives off a foreboding scary vibe but without anything active threat or monster it's just empty which I think is much scarier.
The whole style is amazing.
Neurotoxin go brrr
its also how modern aperture looks as well when you get outside the panel arms and pre-panel rooms its just a huge open room filled with stuff that can moved at any second and everyone is one button away from falling multiple floors
but yeah there is something about just always seeing the emptiness of the room and not have it covered up
It's hilarious to think that Eli and Dr. Kleiner might remember some of Aperture's products, to think that such wacky things existed in Half Life's bleak universe.
And the entire time, for decades before Black Mesa achieved teleportation with giant machines and using Xen as a "slingshot", Aperture had perfected portal technology using a handheld gun, but due to Cave's obsession with testing and perfection it never saw the light of day (yet another cheeky reference to Valve themselves).
I wonder what Eli and kleiner would say if they found out about that portal gun
@@justan324 Same. Maybe we might see it in Half-Life 3? I mean, I doubt it and I don't genuinely believe that we would, but you know. Maybe some pictures or references to it at least would be nice and have characters go "What the hell is that?! ..Wait.. It can make teleporting holes in the wall too?! Magnusson, get here, quick! This is AMAZING! It's far beyond anything we have ever achieved or even dreamed of achieving! The Zero-point Energy Field Manipulator IS a toy compared to THIS!" - Just my small idea of how that could go, best as I can speak in-character for the NPCs we know from the game.
@@ChocoRainbowCorn that's def kleiner 😆
Cave Johnson: “you ain’t from michigan if you ain’t ever done this before” *commits horrific crimes against humanity in the name of science*
Kinda based of him ngl
sounds like Michigan
As a michigan native I can confirm.
as a michigan resident i can confirm
Not a single person-streamer, TH-camr, nor forum has ever made mention of the bizarreness and absurdity of the Borealis dry dock being UNDERGROUND. They just mention it being underground like it’s a normal place people build ships!
Or that the Borealis is at roughly the same depth as the Titanic… I get that a dry dock 3800 meters into the Earth’s crust (far far away from the Arctic Ocean I should add) is not really high on the list of “Oddities in the HL/Portal Universe,” but it’s even more odd to me that nobody ever acknowledges that there’s a fucking dry dock for a ship UNDERGROUND.
It's Cave Johnson... He probably put it there because he wasn't going to let some fancy-pants shipwreck outdo him on below-sea-level boating.
> far far away from the Arctic Ocean
last i checked the facility was in the UP of michigan, probably near the shores of a great lake. Perfectly reasonable to have a dry dock there. just not that far underground.
The borealis is a teleporting ship. They wanted it secret.
They had a ship sized portal gun :)
@@PALMA06portal canon.
Offering $60 in the 1970's would be equivalent to offering $500 today when adjusted for inflation. Hard to turn down if you're struggling
A good amount
"just realized $60 is an unprecedented windfall for most of you, so dont go spending it all on... Caroline, what do these people buy? Tattered hats? Beard... dirt?"
Not worth dying for
@@TimSlee1 might be to someone starving
@@andyghkfilm2287 Starving VS Dying from having your blood turned to peanut butter
I have a "when life gives you lemons" aperture poster on my desk in office. One fine day someone came and put up an aperture logo desk magnet on top of it. Best surprise of my life. Still don't know who did that.
Love to hear it.
It was Doug.
@@Lydia-l7m He told me he'd get me home made cake, but never did. It was a lie. Maybe he wanted to make up for that.
@@panicpowerhouse8158 What the poster looks like? :)
I live that by that speech anytime someone tells me to “suck it up” I tell them “I’m gonna blow life’s house up”
That opening quote PERFECTLY defines Aperture's style of genius unbound by wisdom. Their creativity is unparalleled because they refuse to work within the bounds of convention, but this ALSO means nothing they do is EVER practical.
They're basically outsider artists, but for science.
I watch your Portal 2 lores on loop everytime I eat my dinner, or clean my apartment. A week ago, I was telling the story of Portal 2 to my girlfriend so that she falls asleep (she likes me to recite something I love so that she is able to sleep) and I was telling her about the reign of Cave Johnson and about Test Chamber 9. And tonight I will have a chance to tell her more through this video
I love this.
You’re a lucky man. Hold her close my friend. Never let go.
You just gave me a new type, someone to read lore to me so I can sleep
@@zannyrt don't turn her into an AI
Crazy thing is, the lore for the first game was actually even more absurd: Aperture originally designed shower curtains until Cave Johnson decided to dedicate the company to scientific research. Their most successful projects were the "Take-A-Wish Foundation" (a method to deprive sick children of their wishes), the "Reverse Heimlich Maneuver" (a way to ensure choking) and a technology to generate wormhole portals through space-time which Cave apparently wasn't sure would be as useful as the other two, but thought might have potential applications as a sort of shower curtain.
2014 Portal: The cutest turrets opera 🥰
2024 Portal: Chell has terminal asbestosis 💀
That's good!..
That's bad...
It’s so weird how much the game changes in other languages
The whole “when life gives you lemons” joke being replaced with “Bad weather, Good face” and he told the scientists to make a fuel made from isobars
In the french dub, he makes analogies based off the Three Little Piggies ("I'll come to your houses and blow them down to pieces" type shit).
After playing other Valve games, the creepiest thought was what if Chel wasn't the only thing living down there
Maybe not what you had in mind for other living things, but if you ever complete the co-op game of Portal 2 you learn there are many more survivors sheltered away from Glados. I think they’re being kept in some form of stasis. She sends the robots on a series of trials that ultimately gives her access to the protected area and the dozens or hundreds of additional test subjects. The science must continue!
There was also at least one bird /lh
I guess ratman was there, kinda creepy
$60 in 1960 is worth roughly $639 dollars today. Sounds generous, until you realize what you're getting yourself into..
Yeah, and that money will last a homeless person maybe a month or two.
@@TimSlee1 a dude's gotta eat
_People always say hundreds or thousands of years passed between Portal 1 and 2, but that's EASILY disproven by looking at plant growth and water damage._
Aperture famously used the cheapest possible building materials for their testing tracks to offset other expenses. More than this, testing chambers were specifically built using modular parts to be maintained by GLaDOS. Knowing this, the level of decay and contamination we see within the surface-level chambers couldn't have taken more than 20-30 years AT MOST.
Yes, there's some cut dialogue that says it's been thousands of years, but there's a REASON why that was CUT. Even accounting for sci-fi tech, the facility's doors, elevators, and buttons would've rusted well beyond usability after 30-40 years. We even see this beginning to occur in-game, with some doors being broken or unable to fully open.
So, Portal 2 takes place at about the same time the lambda resistance is destroying the Combine?
Ah! but aperture does have nanobots as mentioned by Wheatley, perhaps even with GLaDOS offline they were able to effectively keep the building from collapsing? i dont know its a bit of a stretch but it could explain why aperture isnt a pile of dust after thousands of years
Aperture Science was built inside an abandoned salt mine, and salt mines have been known to create a dry environment that can preserve stuff almost indefinitely. You could also say the surface level chambers aren't actually surface level, just the places where the water and plant life have finally worked their way down.
@@DoggosGames It depends on if the Resistance is done fighting by 2030.
@@battlesheep2552they are surface level. Before Glados wakes up, it’s in the same place as the first game, which took place near the surface
Dark you say, I think that's an understatement. The radioactive isotope in a chair is absolutely terrifying, if put into context of actual radioactive disasters and accidents. The amount of lore that can be dredged up is so amazing, that a Portal 3 would be rather easy to follow through with; if they didn't want to touch the HL3 name anytime soon.
It actually me wonder what other experiments were going down in the other eight test tubes. I wonder if one of them were used to make those explosives lemons.
Bet there's a civilization of mantis men in at least one of them!
something ive always wanted is a mod that takes place during the like 40s-60s+ era of aperture
There is one planned called "Aperture Salt Mines" on steam however i dont know when it will release :/
@ i saw that one but it takes place in the 90s era
Have you played Portal Stories: Mel?
@@zerotwo6903 that would be the modern era for Aperture until the facility was gassed.
This was by far my most favorite area in any game I've ever played. I've been gaming since the 80s. It's just such a creepy abandoned science horror level that raises more questions than it answers and really captures the "can not should" attitude of science from the 50s through the 90s. I just really wish I had a cutting torch. I would be everywhere off-rail. I'd be playing it again now if HL2 v.29 super-extra directors release hadn't already beaten it to my to-play list first.
And yes, we do need P3. Glados is... still alive.
I swear to God, if this franchise doesn't conclude before my demise, I'm gonna haunt Gabe Newell and his family for all time
We know how Valve roll
It's honestly INSANE how this community is Still Alive.
But this franchise has already concluded
@@Lydia-l7mstill alive?
@@Lydia-l7m nice pun
i would LOVE for just a walkthrough type game or maybe an extremely large map that is the ENTIRETY of the Aperature Science Labs. it would be so cool to just go around and explore the facility.
Bro is talking about lore I never knew existed, and makes it in the best way possible. Love the content man.
I think it’s so interesting that they built from down to up. I wonder what the thought process for that was.
I love how you made many of Cave’s messages sound more dark and sinister than how they were presented in the game.
3:29 - I wonder how many people pick up on the secondary meaning of this kind of description of Aperture while just playing through the games, hearing you describe it this way it's hard not to draw a parallel between Aperture and Valve (in some alternate universe blabla), extremely high standards and vigorous testing is exactly how Valve got their many successes 🤔
But Cave doesn't hesitate to try anything, while Valve constantly perfects. One of theories why we have no HL3 is because Valve was never happy with what they had and wanted yet another unprecedented leap
I'm also a huge portal fan, mostly for all that's hinted at that is just all left to speculation, like the other 8 test shafts. It's such a well written series!
These deep dives into the lore of HL/Portal are absolutely fascinating.... exceptional work. Please keep it up, I really enjoy going down these rabbit holes and your story telling style keeps it interesting.
The thing about repulsion gel not liking the human skeleton is simply they got covered in the gel and bounced uncontrollably all around the room. Since unlike Chell they don’t have long fall boots, they broke their bones landing on every bounce until someone washed the gel off.
I love that the test subjects sent in to combat the mantis hybrids were not told when the test would begin, but that they would know when it does. 😂
The mantis man bit has always intrigued me. I wanna see em
It’s a good time to be a valve fan these days
It is
It's your lore videos like this on Aperture Science and Portal games in general that makes me incredibly sad when I see people _still_ bashing Portal 2 just because it dared to have good humor that covered up a lot of the dark elements - And all that, after over a decade since the game has released. Not only the story itself was dark and messed up, as in, the storyline that we, as the player play through in Portal 2, but so was the lore - Arguably, even moreso than the story of Chell, Wheatley and GLaDOS going through what they did together. A woman forced into an computer against her will, these kinds of horrible human experiments. And you tell me that the first Portal game is darker and Portal 2 is worse when it comes to that, just because humor?
science boys: how dangerous
and horrendous do you want these experiments to be?
Cave Johnson: Yes.
The environmental storytelling of Portal 2 is absolutely insane.
the old underground section of aperture was always my favourite section of portal 2
Portal series: done, possible spin offs.
Half-life series: *NEED HL3!*
I just think we need more of both
AGREEEED
Portal story ended with Portal 2, I don't know where you can go from that.. Chell has escaped Aperture and GLados is back on charge of the facility, meanwhile Gordon and Alyx were supposed to go to borealis using the helicopter but Eli died.. and now Alyx is gone to be G-man's puppet and Eli is alive and they need to save her from Gman
@@Omega-jg4oq They can make a prequel about old Aperture
@@Ivan.ko88 that's cool.. but I think we already have the Portal Stories Mell for that or is it just the game before portal 2 starts, I love these fan made mods. I still have them on steam
the dark and mysterious vibe of the video while he talks about stuff like mantis-men is really funny to me
man, Aperture's experiments make no sense. while the other facilities have a sort of a goal (i. e. Black Mesa studying the cross-world transfer), the Aperture Science was like: "why? better ask yourself "why the hell not?", participant! wait, don't make any sounds, as we might've replaced your vocal cords with ultrasonic emitters! but don't you worry, while you were sleeping, our scientist have replaced your frontal lobe with that of a gorilla. if you have any unintended side effects, such as hair growth, desire for bananas or sudden increase in mass, please contact one of the Aperture Science personnel." It's just all over the damn place and it's hilarious
Man, you have no idea of how your vídeos are giving me such inspiration and vibes to writte a new version of half life story, with new characters, a new ending, a new chain of events etc, like, really, your videos are awesome and don't stop making them EVER ❤.
We getting shafted with this one!🔥🔥🔥
i wonder if playing The National - Exile Vilify instead of Triage at Dawn would have gotten you copyrighted. it's a song from one of the Ratmann dens close to the beginning of the game and imo one of the best songs mankind has ever produced. encapsulates the atmosphere of the game *perfectly*
I played Portal 2 only recently, having heard little miscellaneous bits and pieces of lore prior. And to be honest, I never really felt it was creepy or scary - the primary emotion I felt was sadness. It was just extremely sad to walk through the old Aperture and observe the ambition that was fused into it slowly die out as time progressed. Sure, Cave Johnson might not be the best person when it comes to safety, but I couldn't help but feel really sorry for him, especially when observing how his tone in the pre-recorded messages changed from an optimistic and confident to a bleak and disappointed one. Another thing that adds to that is the fact that I believe he wasn't harming the test subjects because he intended harm to them - rather, he might've just not been knowledgeable enough to realize the risks of the experiments and was simply excited about contributing to the progress for the sake of humanity's brighter future, kinda like how humans became fascinated by radiation in the early twentieth century while being completely unaware of the dangers it concealed (just a fun little reminder - radiation was considered a health benefit and radioactive substances were put in food and medication and sold as wonder drugs).
On a real note tho, if someone from the surface was ever able to go down and retrieve glados' lexicon of research knowledge. The actual amount of things they'd be able to progress in.
I used to watch you way back when you did: ‘The Lore Behind’ videos for the Portal games. I’ve recently gotten back into Portal and hearing your voice again jogged tons of memories. Thanks for all the good times!
Someone needs to make a detailed render of the enrichment center of what it is thought to look like in its entirety. Portal 2 makes the map bigger in memory but I've never thought of its actual layout.
I am *dying* for a Valve game that explores the sealed test chambers
There's always more to explore, with Portal lore. ;)
There's always more!
Ah, good ol’ Aperture Science.
We do what we must because we can.
The Borealis is also a shoutout to a real world urban myth called the Philadelphia Experiment. Its also funny that their portal gun technology could probably have made them into a trillion dollar market cap operation. And they only used it for testing.
Skyrionn, what is your favorite car prop/model from Half-Life 2 (like car005a?)
Also we need more fallout lore.
I can't say I have a favourite one really - I do like the Breencast monitors
@@Skyrionn did lungfish refuse to breathe air? It did not.
you know it's good when the Employees are no safer than the actual test subjects.
Chell really needed her own HEV suit and helmet.
I am quite excited to see what the planned timeline videos will be
They should make a game based on all of the tests aperature did.
I can not imagine these test in portal 2. The game style not that scary nor brutal. These test fit better in games, like portal 1, portal prelude. Portal 2 is not serious enough. I always thought about these tests as jokes.
I love how the way this is framed feels like a deep dive video essay into a real corporations wrongdoings, leading up to a "don't support this business if you can avoid it" disclaimer. I could be watching this from the portal/half life universe easily, it's immersive and fun
DANNO CAL DRAWINGS IS ONE OF YOUR PATREONS OR CHANNEL MEMBERS??? DUDE YOU GOT A POPULAR YTUBER SUPPORTING YA :0
'Cave Johnson' sounds like someone you don't want to meet in a dark place.
I've been wondering for a while now if Portal's lore fits with the rest of the Half-Life universe. The stuff Aperture does is so zany and wacky that it's almost TF levels of cartoonish. The regular Half Life games aren't super duper cereal by any means but still. It'd be like if during District 9 and Rick and Morty shared the same continuity. I still love Portal but I'm not sure how I feel about it being canon in HL.
What I'm trying to figure out is how Aperture Sciences still had the money to construct these ridiculously cost-prohibitive experimental chambers even after they were bankrupt. Aperture definitely didn't find a way to duplicate money in all their experiments otherwise they wouldn't be cutting so many corners as time passed. My guess is among all the illegal things Aperture did, they decided to bribe someone in Congress so they could still take out loans and receive grants to conduct all these wacky experiments, which could also explain how Aperture was just barely able to stay open despite these unethical experiments costing so many lives.
It does it goes..Portal 1, Portal 2, Black Mesa, Half-Life 1, Half-Life 2
@@johnsmith60nope lol. Hl1, portal 1, hl2 and episodes, then portal 2.
Yes I'd take the 60 dollars. I ate puzzle games for every meal as a kid. Granted, this is 1970's, there's not gonna be these digital puzzles. Counterpoint. I don't really think I'd change much as a kid regardless of what era you put me in. So 60 dollars, which is equivocally 500 in 70's economy, for what could easily be 2 to 5, maybe 10 minutes of work? And my privileged post-woodstock white boy perception of god is utterly shattered with black hole guns, blue that hates bones, and mantis people? Sign. Me. The fuck up. And then sign me up again.
And you might be all like "Oh, but what about the glowing calcium water that calcifies your brain?" Heh, we get that in REAL life, except it doesn't glow, and WE PAY FOR IT. Imagine walking up to a guy, he gives you an unassuming cup of coffee, hey, free joe! And then he fucking gives you 500 dollars cash in THEIR current money and tells you parts of your brain MIGHT turn to stone. That wasn't even 2 minutes, that was 5 seconds and you're making paper. Yeah, brain damage. But this is essentially gambling, except you put no money in and get paid, and if you're lucky enough, YOU WILL come out with superpowers. IF you're lucky enough. It's not guaranteed, but it COULD happen. They have multiverse technology, it very well could happen.
I fundamentally disagree with your assessment of Aperture's reputation and furthermore believe it to be directly contradicted by the text. They're not MIT or CERN, they're SpaceX - the boondoggle brainchild of one unfathomably-rich, misguided eccentric.
They didn't even export the portal gun; every single other venture they initiated, like the mantis-men and reaction gels, was a colossal loss that ultimately bankrupted the company and cost Cave his life. Their biggest canonical contract was producing asbestos-lined shower curtains for the military, ffs.
Quite peculiar technology… our benefactors would be interested in acquiring it
11:58 I have that sign in my kitchen! Ironically it is VERY sharp around the corners. -Faye⚓
Awesome ! I was waiting for Portal lore !! 😮
New portal lore video yayayayay!!!!
He sounds like cave Johnson without the charisma
Is the music playing of someone talking? You can hear it under your own voice. That was so distracting? Either that or im going nuts. 6:20 onwards
Noted! It may have been Ghost of Rattmann. You can hear him in the background. I was hesitant to put it in the video for that reason. Won't do it again
i really liked it, made the video so unsettling.
perhaps have it slightly quieter, it feels like white noise thats just barely audible under your own voice and really makes you feel unsettled and like your going crazy.@@Skyrionn
The facility is so massive 😵😵💫😵💫
"forced to shyt coal!" - Skyrionn 2024
Homestly, Black Mesa seemed more ethical in comparison, the worst they had was some OSHA violating infastructure though.
Can we cover the lore of quantum science energy research facility?
Edit: there's a lot of lore with the facility directors like really really bad experiments on people like : turning blood to ice, making people easily manipulative and some secret laboratory ( which ain't secret anymore but oh well) and it's a cool game itself, and also there's a ton of details in that game:]
Sounds like a good idea
I love how you can see their funding dropping through the years. From the best and brightest to whatever street urchins they could find
Hey I think I hear dialogue in the background in the middle of the video. It's atmospheric but admittedly distracting
Noted!
I thought I was going Schizo for a second too xd
Thought a random tab or so was playing but when it stopped when pausing the video I got more confused what it might be :D
I have never played portal or half life or doom but I just love your videos! Keep them coming please
I still go back and replay Portal 2 such a great day
Yo Skyrionn, apparently you're my most watched gaming channel on TH-cam this year, i've watched you 43 times more than your average viewer and when i've realized i actually never commented any of your videos, i felt kinda guilty, so here i am.
Great video as always, Portal has such big potential for more chapters under a narrative point of view, even without considering its shared world setting with Half Life
Thanks for watching the videos. I really appreciate you. No need to feel guilty but I do like the interaction.
portal where cake and crimes against humanity go hand and hand
Cave Johnson here, all you've said here is a lie, and Aperture will be taking legal action on you.
Well, I don't really know what you've said, because this is a pre-recorded message, but the Aperture Legal Team will be contacting you soon.
I didn't play Portal until 2024, it's a treasure
As I’m watching this video, I’m walking downstairs, thinking about the episode of Rick and Morty when Rick infects everyone with mantis DNA. What do I see on the tv screen? That exact episode.
I hope you would also do coverage on the L4D universe when the other Valve games have been exhausted
Do you add any clarification to the lore that the player doesn't figure out on their own just by playing the game? Is this entire video just a paraphrasing of Cave's recordings and the various signs around the facility?
Hi hello, I wanted to ask if you think it's possible to make a stretched theory regarding Aperture as an origin point for the combine? I've made a loose theory on my own with the knowledge I've been able to gather, but was wondering if it'd be possible to link ideas better with the extended knowledge you have?
I could write things out and get it more legible instead of fringe if you'd be interested in a small discussion
Aperture could potentially be an origin point, but personally I doubt it. Always love a good theory though!
for one thing, the energy ball or the turret almost certainly weren't made by aperture or stolen and repurposed by the combine, they just made it themselves - it's like people building pyramids all over the world: certain things look similar even though people didn't communicate with each other
plus, the combine most likely didn't enter aperture, we would've seen signs of their presence
my headcanon is that the facility is full of unseen scientific horrors, and we know that it had military grade androids and robots (sentry turret and its variants such as the primadonna or animal king, and rocket sentry being the main examples) and because the place was prepared for an apocalyptic event, some robots might've pushed back against the combine, which eventually gave up, because freeman was causing problems in and around city 17
who knows, maybe some metrocops were taken and forced to participate in tests before eventually dying
and then freeman and the resistance defeated the combine, and eventually chell left the facility, unaware of the horrors the world went through
she probably doesn't even know what year it is
I think Chell left Aperture years after the events of HL. Also we have to make difference between Aperture and Borealis. In HL they were looking for Borealis, not Aperture.
3:23 Is it just me or does Cave Johnson look like Rob Brydon
7:40 - So Aperture turned test subjects into ONI hatches? Cool
Do war hammer lore next please
Love your videos
Vitrify.
Definition: Convert (something) into glass or glasslike substance, typically by exposure to heat.
So, totally no subtext there.
20:14 thousands of years?
Some people theorize that, due to the announcer’s dialogue when you wake up, and the decay in portal 2, portal 2 takes place thousands of years in the future after portal 1
@@kittycoveSurprised there’s anything left of the old aperture facility, considering the amount of rust and water
I think you got this one wrong. In short: Many of Cave's recorded warnings were just guesses and CYAs.
With the really weird warnings, like the mantis hybrids, or the ones about time travelers, I don't think that we're supposed to interpret those as things that actually happened. They were trying a bunch of random stuff, and they had no idea whatsoever what could happen, so they tried wild-ass-guessing. Otherwise, are we to believe that Aperture figured out time travel and arbitrary hybridization of already grown adult humans with mantises, and that nothing happened with that? Both of those things would have had serious implications, like, say... giving Cave the ability to go back in time and warn himself about exposure to moon dust, or having sufficient medical understanding to cure his illness simply as a prerequisite of being at the level of development necessary to hybridize wildly different species.
To support this, you can look at theoretical subjects like "xenolinguistics" or "xenobiology," or first contact procedures in case of encounters with extraterrestrial life. We haven't met aliens. We're just trying to be prepared to do so responsibly and anticipate the difficulties and consequences that could arise.
Yea, if I recall right, he starts many of these messages with "in case" and similar.
So I'm guessing he's just giving you heads-ups for what he and his science team may think happens e.g. "In case of this nuclearn weapons test, igniting the whole atmosphere, duck behind cover and hold your breath"-type shit
@@NoFlu I would say he probably doesn't care what his scientists think, or interprets everything they say to him through his own filter, where things mean whatever he wants them to mean, but yeah, I agree otherwise.
Aperture invented reliable portal technology and sentient AI. Nothing happened with that. In fact I can’t think of any Aperture products that were sold.
@@MorMorGanGan and we should thank our lucky stars, lol
@@VitriolicVermillion I think the only product of theirs that was sold was the turrets
ME before: Borealis definately conting some better tools than portal gun
ME after: I don't want to know whats in there (But I still want, *paradox*)
Someone could definitely do a horror film about Aperture science, just like Fortress films did with Tf2.
I wonder if there’s a person out there who would make mods for the other test shafts instead of just 09, I’d freak out if someone did that
3:52 I would like to point out that I’m pretty sure it was condemned because of the moon dust(time tags not important it’s just how far I am when I’m commenting this)
Thinking like cave johnson: to catch a rat give them what they want become a test subject
love that portal content is still being made despite there still not being a 3rd game
Timeless classic
22:27 noo chickenguy791 is gone 😢
I hope they're okay.
Plz do part 2 of this about the experiments after the 1900's