Portal ARG



"Thank you for assuming the party escort submission position."

- ?

On March 1st and March 3, 2010, Portal was updated to feature parts of an alternate reality game to promote its sequel, Portal 2, leading gamers and journalists to postulate that an announcement for Portal 2 or Half-Life 2: Episode Three might soon be made, until Portal 2 was announced for release in Q4 2010 on March 5, 2010. It has been speculated that the updates and what they unveiled were helmed by Adam Foster, creator of the mod MINERVA later hired by Valve.

March 1st, 2010 update


At 2:33 pm PST on March 1st, 2010, the first update was made, with the description "Changed radio transmission frequency to comply with federal and state spectrum management regulations". It consisted of an additional Achievement, "Transmission Received". Playing Portal reveals the game now has a total of 26 radios (including the ones already present before the update) playing in the Test Chambers, always in an area more or less difficult to reach (but given to the player by the music playing), and with a red sprite added to the switch. The radio transmission frequency is also said to have been changed, "to comply with federal and state spectrum management regulations", as said in the update. In-game, the radio must each time be moved in a particular spot of the Test Chamber. When doing so, the music will be scrambled by interferences, then Morse code or data transmission sounds will be heard, and the red sprite will turn green. To be made in each Test Chamber, finding all radios and jamming the transmission will unlock the new Achievement, "Transmission Received", although its description is simply "..?". The presence of these new radios seen through the Enrichment Center are likely non canonical, as they only serve the ARG. They may even be removed later.

The 26 radio sounds
The sounds added in the March 1st, 2010 update can be found in the folder "ambient" in the Portal sound files. They all bear the prefix "dinosaur". They include "dinosaur1" to "dinosaur26", used for each changed transmission, "dinosaur_noise.wav", for when the music is scrambled, and "dinosaur_fizzle.wav", as well as "dinosaur_fizzle2.wav" and "dinosaur_fizzle3.wav" (added in the March 3, 2010 update ), when the radio goes through a Material Emancipation Grid. Most sounds from "dinosaur1" to "dinosaur26" contain a hidden image that can be viewed in an SSTV software (similar to Judith Mossman's transmission), the others contain Morse code (some of them also reveal voice chatter and music after clean up, possibly contained in a second layer). The name "dinosaur" may be a reference to the book Dinosaur Alphabet, by Harry S. Robins, notable voice actor for the Half-Life series, emphasized by the fact that there are 26 main sounds, which is also the total number of the alphabet letters, or a reference to the "dinosauric" (archaic) nature of the technology used (the Morse code and SSTV technologies) compared to today's standards.

When the update was applied, many players launched Portal to see what it was about, and slowly discovered how it consisted in-game, then soon began to investigate the radio sound files on the Steam forums, which led to many intriguing finds.

(425) 822-5251


The "dinosaur" images 2, 4, 7, 13, 16, 18, 20 25 are each cut into four images, each containing an alphanumeric highlighted or circled, and each with a number from 1 to 32 in the bottom right. Put in the order given in the bottom right numbers, these images will give: "9459 C6CA C8C2 03B8 128B 7CC6 3068 D4FD". This string is the MD5 hash of a BBS number, "(425) 822-5251", registered to an unpublished landline at 123, 5th Avenue in Kirkland, a Seattle suburb where Valve was founded.

Upon calling the number using a BBS software and entering the username ("backup") and password ("backup" again) given in "dinosaur12.wav"’s Morse code, what appears to be a database dump will appear, starting with "Aperture Laboratories GLaDOS v3.11", followed by "Copyright (c) 1973-1997 Aperture - all rights reserved", while GLaDOS' most recent version found on ApertureScience.com is v1.09, dated 1982. What follows are several ASCII art images and texts, most of the time being separated by the words "begin record", and "record ends" and other text. Overall, it appears like some sort of system reboot, with random backed up files showing up.

Strangely enough, at 123, 5th Avenue can be found a large building, the Kirkland City Hall, but it does not reveal anything else.

ASCII art and texts list
These images have been obtained by a large amount of different Steam forums users, with different programs and resolutions. They are not presented here in any relevant order, and some are turned in their proper orientation when known. Most images have been modified by gamers in image editing programs to help identify them, with noise reduction or added colors; the images provided here are unedited.

ASCII art
Note that what most of these images contain is open to speculation. However it can be surmised that several appear to be screenshots of a possible damaged Enrichment Center, likely to appear in Portal 2.

March 3, 2010 update


At 2:24 pm PST on March 3, 2010, Portal was again updated, with the description "Added valuable asset retrieval". making further changes to the game. The game's original ending was altered, having now Chell being dragged away by what seems to be a robot, with a robotic voice saying "Thank you for assuming the party escort submission position.", thus hinting it might be an Military Android. Two new "dinosaur_fizzle" sounds, "dinosaur_fizzle2.wav" and "dinosaur_fizzle3.wav", were also added. When viewing the map where Chell is dragged away, a cube model named "GhostAnim.mdl" and using the texture files of the can of beans found several times in the game can be found (likely used as a placeholder) at the camera location. It can be found in the folder "props/camera" in the Portal game files. The game will crash if one shoots it with the ASHPD. The radio that is found there was already present when the game was released.

March 3 also saw changes made to the database dump accessed with (425) 822-5251: a progress bar was added, counting down to approximately 10:00 am PST on March 5. Portal 2 was announced on March 5, at 9:44 am PST. The progress bar often showed humorous but seemingly random ETA's such as "2797 millennia", "Early December, Furongian Epoch", "43 femtoseconds (or smaller)", "last Thursday (except on weekends)", or "Late Eocene".

March 5, 2010 announcement
At 9:44 am PST on March 5, 2010, Portal 2 was officially announced on Steam, with several alphanumerics underlined in the text:

When reorganized together, these letters give the words "drattmann" and "h0nee", which are a second set of username and password for the BBS number (425) 822-5251. Upon entering them, one has access to the Aperture Image Format program, created by Aperture Laboratories in 1985 and maintained by a Doug Rattmann, who might be the Ratman introduced in Portal.