Potatwo? The Valve ARG Ain't Over
While the GLaDOS@Home distributed potato-collecting event is still ongoing, hints are emerging that there may be even more to come following its conclusion. Portal 2 being released early is the apparent plan, but could there be something more?
The latest Steamcast (an unofficial fan radio show) apparently aired with a brief Morse Code signal playing over the chatter, which the hosts claim to have been unaware of. You can hear it for yourself below and ponder upon its authenticity, but if it's real this is what it says:" it's not over the others have been compromised."
Ah.
Others? As in dear GLaDOS will show up in other indie games still? Or is there some link to other Valve games? Or other... others? Don't trust anyone, basically. Here's how it originally sounded:
Meanwhile, the GLaDOS rebooting project has not yet resulted in an earlier launch of the game, but the indie games required to make this happen are changing in priority all the time. RUSH, A Reckless Disregard For Gravity, 1...2...3... Kick It and The Wonderful End of the World have already done all they're going to, so the current focus is on arguably harder games, such as Cogs, Toki Tori and Audiosurf.
Meanwhile, the ValveARG site was sent an encrypted file, apparently from Valve. When accessed, it had this to say:
---LOG FROM [ REDACTED ], BY J.H. TO C.J.---
1. We designed the entire thing to be very, very durable. It was easy to get the materials since everyone's been thinking
it's a simple icebreaker ship. Ha.2. We have made sure to strip it of anything not necessary, so that we have plenty of space for it. It doesn't have any
backup supplies in the event the crew runs out of food, though. And there isn't much food onboard in the first place.3. In the event you need to send it off all of a sudden, use the OR box with code 'hb1'.
That's all, C.J. Not much else I can tell you other than this won't leave a blight on our record. Mesa is going to be sore
when they see what we've done.
Eep! C.J. is presumably Aperture's Cave Johnson. The 'hb1' thing sounds like it could go somewhere too. But everyone's obviously muttering about the apparent nod to the Borealis, the icebreaker ship referenced in Half-Life 2: Episode 2. We're being openly toyed with, I'm sure- but to what end? With Portal 2's release (if an earlier one isn't obtained) just two days off, we can't be far from answers now...