14 DAY TRIAL // The famous cake from Portal will not be making an appearance in the sequel, according to Erik Wolpaw, Valve writer. He says the company does not want to promote the Internet memes that appeared because of Portal, but it wants to take the game's story to a new level and present some fresh elements. While Portal 2 will see the return of some of the things that made the first one great, this will not happen because of Valve trying to cash in on its old success.
In an interview with Gamasutra, Erik Wolpaw said that, “If you thought you were sick of the memes, I was sick of it way ahead of you. For instance, cake. I've had enough cake jokes.” About the recurring elements, he commented that, “The cubes are in there because they're a gameplay element, and obviously, GLaDOS is back, but there's a bunch of new gameplay and we want to tell an interesting new story. We didn't jettison everything, but I absolutely do not want to try and resurrect a three-year-old meme. That seems like it would be kind of sad. It's not a good idea.“
The E3 demo that is circulating on the Internet clearly shows that Valve is trying to expand on Portal. What was a three-hour experiment before now has to become a full game that will be sold at a full price and not be part of another package like the well-known Orange Box and, for this, there need to be many new gameplay elements and features.
The diverse personality spheres that will accompany the player to some parts of Portal 2 are one piece of evidence that indicates Valve's approach in developing the title into a full-fledged retail release. Portal 2 will be released in 2011 on the PC, the Xbox 360 and, after Sony's press briefing during E3, on the PlayStation 3.