An Inside Look At Valves Abandoned Portal Prequel

It would seem that at the end of the decade, Valve is entering a new age.  As the former titan begins to reawaken, they are beginning to release little tidbits about what they were working on while out of the public eye.  The biggest of these announcements was, of course, the forthcoming release of Half-Life: Alyx, the interquel VR only continuation of the long-dormant series.  Now, in addition to that, we are getting a look behind the curtain at the fate of the Portal franchise.

In an officially sanctioned video released by LunchHouse Software, we get our first look at the potential Portal prequel F-Stop, also known as Aperture Camera.  In the video, we see that rather than continue with the portal concept; Valve decided to take a look at another type of impossible manipulation via a “scientific” polaroid camera.  Instead of using portals to solve puzzles in Aperature Camera, you would be tasked with taking a picture of any object in the environment and then using the polaroid to put a copy of it back into the environment only at whatever size you choose.  The video is pretty short; if it sounds interesting to you, give it a gander.

This video is only the first of many LunchHouse intends to create.  The series is going to be called Exposure and will be focusing solely on F-Stop, what it was, and what it was like.  They can do this because not only do they have Valve’s permission, but the source code for the unpublished game as well.  How this agreement came about is unclear at this time, but it is, admittedly, neat to get a look at some of Valve’s canceled projects.  Who knows?  Maybe this really does signal a shift in how Valve handles transparency.  If we are lucky, maybe we will get a look at some of the canceled Half-Life 3 prototypes.