Valve writer Erik Wolpaw has had too much cake, and like any little boy with a sugar-induced tummy ache, he’s letting everyone know.
As one of the primary writers of Portal, Wolpaw told Gamasutra he’s fed up with the amount of three-year-old jokes spawned by his genius literary and gaming talent.
“If you thought you were sick of the memes, I was sick of it way ahead of you,” Wolpaw said. “For instance, cake. I’ve had enough cake jokes.”
Well if that doesn’t just take the cake.
According to Wolpaw, Portal 2 will steer clear of any rehashed Portal jokes, but the game’s icing on the cake will lie in its classic style of humor and inclusion of essential characters.
“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,” he said.
Wolpaw really is the (ice) cream (cake) of the crop when it comes to Valve-style writing, and we can expect plenty of fresh jokes and annoying memes to come out of Portal 2.
“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,” Wolpaw said, and to really cake it on, added, “It’s not a good idea.”
It seems that Wolpaw loves hating cake like a fat kid loves cake, though I would personally be surprised if the new Portal doesn’t at least mention any of its classic memes. Like “Who’s on first?,” Portal jokes are a core element of gaming and nerd culture. If you get it, you’re golden. If not, you’d better buy some shampoo, put down the Mountain Dew Code Red and start working out, because you’re not one of us.
As for Wolpaw, he was the man who created the jokes and it is his right to say when they’ve gone too far, but to claim that including a slice of delicious cake in the background of the Aperture Science lab would be “sad” seems overkill. I mean, what does he want for speaking out about his self-hatred? A medal? A cookie? Some cake?
Too bad for him, THE CAKE IS A LIE.
Eat it, Wolpaw.
I think you’re reading way too much into this. What’s sad to him is not the jokes themselves but it would be the fact of them (developers) having to linger on those old jokes to sell the product. That’s what would be sad to him: recycling writing material.
A joke’s only as good as the first time you hear it. Then it slowly fades from a chuckle to being annoying when everyone’s saying the same thing over and over. The internet made this happen alot faster.
Basically he’s saying that he wants to deliver new and creative stuff and not to linger on past jokes. By all means, he’s right and let’s let em do it and move along.
Yeah.
I’m pretty sure Wolpaw has some surprises for us. It might involve cakes, or not. “overjoke” the cake?
I don’t know.
That bloke is quite good with words
Sweet Jesus the puns in this article made me cringe, luckily i love them!
I am glad they are steering clear of cake, it suits the first game perfectly, but they are more then capable of making something just as good.
agreed … I myself would be proud If I had created fiction like that, and I’m sure he is proud of it too.
Well, at least now we know who to call when DK can’t make it for a future EBC skirmish. Good stuff
But seriously, it might be a good thing they don’t want to go that road again. Portal was great for it’s originality, so it’s one of those games that would be impacted a lot by repeating the same stuff. Really excited to see what they come up this time though!
Just remember:
The fake is a lie.
The cake is a pie.
US GAMERS, EH?
Do ho ho ho ho~
Personally I don’t agree with most of the comments, feels more like he’s whining about his joke’s being to good? Either way if there is no mention of cake and how it’s an obvious lie in the second game, I will feel betrayed.
Stay frosty ! (get it ?)
Of course they’ll use the cake joke,and why not,the game is just an add-on (sold as full version of course),so nothing completely new and non-related to the cake thing.
He’s a creative guy,that’s why he can’t understand decisions made by people on the money making business side of the game.Still no reason to act like a cry baby.
That cake is a spy !
there are so many cake puns dk could’ve wrote that (including comments liek the one before this)
Excellent……
I laughed this entire post at the cake jokes.
Darth Vader – Obi-Wan never told you what happened to the cake..
Luke – He told me enough… he told me YOU ATE IT!
Darth Vader – No.. the cake IS a lie…
Luke – No, no… that’s not true… THAT’S IMPOSSIBLE!
Darth Vader – Search your feelings, YOU KNOW IT TO BE TRUE!
Luke – NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
I think some other kind of pastry is going to rule Portal 2 jokes.
Cheers axeheads!
This article sounds so much like Daniel wrote it!
Jess tell DK money shizzle he needs to check out his new movie on GT, it’s excellent.
haha nice DK money shizzle! The cake is a lie!!! Nice =)
Hmm, from the E3 gameplay video there seems to be plenty of new stuff (not even mentioning the coop) … so in what way is this more an “add-on” than pretty much every game that has a 2 or higher digit in it’s name?
You know, with the steam-going-to-Mac and Portal on it I half-and-half expected it to be about Apple pie.
I just hope this one is a bit harder than the original one… which was a total cake walk :p