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Chet Faliszek On Fake Black Aperture Website: “You Are Being Trolled, There Is No ARG, There Has Been No Directive From Gabe To Leak Anything”

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While the bizarre Half-Life 3 hintstorm was brewing, yet another one of the trolling community’s signature fake websites popped up.

“Black Aperture” was its name, and it had not only a cool-looking Half-Life 3 lambda logo, but also some fancy legalese under it, which apparently, in the world of the Internet, translates to “completely legit”. Chet Faliszek of Valve posted on the Steam forums in an attempt to disspell the “Black Aperture”-related rumors in a thread about it, and also touched on some of the other stuff we’ve been hearing about lately.

Chet Faliszek On Fake Black Aperture Website: “You Are Being Trolled, There Is No ARG, There Has Been No Directive From Gabe To Leak Anything”

Let’s now take a look at Chet’s post, which you can find here:

You are being trolled.

There is no ARG.

Wheatley’s speech was set in Portal 2 fiction – that is all.

There has been no directive from Gabe to leak anything. That is all false.

I just want to say this so there is no confusion. This is the community trolling the community nothing more. While it is nice to see people excited about anything HL, I hate seeing people be trolled like this.

Most of you might already know Black Aperture was completely fake – so “You are being trolled” and “This is the community trolling the community” should come as no surprise, since he is posting in a thread ABOUT that fake website. However, there are a few really interesting tidbits here.

First off, Chet mentions that “There is no ARG”. I can’t tell if he’s referring to those weird HL3 hints we dug up, or those rumors of an ARG we started hearing about after the VGA’s. Because those HL3 references are not actually an ARG. This is an extremely common misconception: that hints or teases of any sort, somehow constitute an “ARG”. An Alternate Reality Game is, as the name suggests, a game, and an extremely complex one at that. It’s not just a bunch of hints you find online, so I’m not sure if we can apply that here.

However, the interesting one is: “Wheatley’s speech was set in Portal 2 fiction”. I assume he might be referring to our interpretation of Wheatley’s last words in his VGA acceptance speech. In which case, I don’t entirely understand what he means by “Portal 2 fiction”. Not only did we previously assume the speeches were set in their own, completely non-canon fiction (because I don’t think the Combine launched an award at Wheatley), but this statement appears to imply the speeches actually were set in the Portal 2 universe. So… Wheatley is coming back next year? Or… one year… until he returns… in the Portal 2 continuum? Or is he just saying that there’s no point looking into the video for an actual ARG, because the speech has nothing to do with the Half-Life universe? I have no idea, but I still keep by my original statement: If Valve isn’t releasing a singleplayer title in 2012, then why would they have implied they’d win a VGA award for a singleplayer character in 2012?

But the most intriguing part is “There has been no directive from Gabe to leak anything”. He is, of course, talking about this. The thing is that Leveraged had already stated it wasn’t Gabe giving the “directive”. And I don’t think the informant ever talked about a leak, because a leak is an unauthorized and unsanctioned disclosure of information.  Leveraged’s informant was talking about a deliberate release of hints and teasers from Valve as a whole. Still, Chet does say that “That is all false”, though, which we can assume refers to the whole thing, so… yeah.

So… what’s our verdict? Honestly, I don’t know. Since things have toned down, and Marc Laidlaw has debunked some of theories behind the mysterious HL3 references, I’d say it’s time to bring the hype down by a few notches. While Chet’s statement does seem to be a bit vague, we can still understand exactly what he means, and while Leveraged’s informant might still be trust-worthy yet, a HL3 reveal isn’t imminent, as some would have you believe. Keep on the lookout, don’t forget about what we’ve seen this past month, but do not go overboard, and always have a truckload of salt at the ready. Remember that Valve is hard at work on the next Half-Life, and they have a reason to keep everything under wraps. Don’t just blindly take their statements at face value without proper research, as some sadly do.

An HL3 reveal might be some time away, but you can bet that if these bizarre references imply anything, it’s that HL3 is alive and kicking somewhere in the bowels of Valve HQ.

And I’ll tell you one thing: you can expect to see it next year, because that will be the year the current generation of consoles may be coming to an end, with details almost surely released on Sony and Microsoft’s upcoming eighth generation consoles. With Nintendo’s successor already revealed and set for a 2012 release, if Valve wants a multi-platform HL3 to not be overshadowed by bigger and more advanced games on consoles they won’t be developing it for, they will almost surely be pushing for a release some time in the New Year. And even if they don’t care about newer consoles – come on, folks. In October 2012, it’ll have been 5 years since the last time we played a new Half-Life game. Believe it or not, this wall of silence won’t last forever.

So, again, do heed Chet and Marc’s words. But stay vigilant! The truth is out there. God, that reference was sooooo corny. Can we edit that out? “No”? Okay.

5 Comments

  1. is this some kind of a brilliantly made horse-dung ? valve has a long history of trolling that i dont trust em anymore , sorry valve but i am sticking with lev and the informant.

  2. I have complete full confidence they’ll mention something valid next year, even announce it finally.
    But the release date will probably be somewhere around the end of 2012 to 2013.

  3. That “Portal 2 fiction” line must have been a mistake. Why would, in universe, a character make an acceptance speech for an reward that doesn’t exist anymore (if it ever did)? THAT DON’T MAKE NO SENSE.

  4. I don’t like how there’s been no word whatsoever on that confounded T-Shirt. That’s what started it all, and I havea feeling that that’s what will finish it all.

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