And I mean, Valve has always failed to impress and be original/groundbreaking in any way shape or form. And I mean if they want to add the portal gun, but they have traditionally used open areas, I can't think of a single thing they'd do other than just give up and trash the idea, I mean.... it only makes sense right?

-making combat work when the player can simply port enemies away from himself by just opening a portal over a chasm and then shooting the other end at enemy feet, just one of the many ways to make combat too easy/totally pointless

? quoting French Toast
And I mean, Valve has always failed to impress and be original/groundbreaking in any way shape or form. And I mean if they want to add the portal gun, but they have traditionally used open areas, I can't think of a single thing they'd do other than just give up and trash the idea, I mean.... it only makes sense right?

Do you actually read posts or just see one thing and just go off on it? Let's run a test: How's Fortress Forever doing? Pretty well huh? Just like you said it would?
The Portal commentary talks about all the fringe issues they had to work around to get portals to work to their satisfaction. None of which involved:
-conveying what is and isn't a suitable surface for portals in a 'real world' setting that is consistent and fits HL2 theme/visuals
-allowing portal usage without making the levels even more constrained and on rails than they already are
-having enemy AI that reacts to portals, uses them against you, knows how to avoid/work around them, etc etc
-somehow correctly animating npcs so they look natural when they fall upwards through a floor and all that
-making combat work when the player can simply port enemies away from himself by just opening a portal over a chasm and then shooting the other end at enemy feet, just one of the many ways to make combat too easy/totally pointless
And if they do all that s**t and do it right, great, but it'll probably hurt the core mechanics of the game which will only become apparent when the initial awe wears off. EDIT: What's more likely to happen is, if the portal gun is in Ep3, it'll be similar to the supergravgun, in that it's in its own contained series of levels as opposed to general usage like the gravgun (which is what I am assuming when I made the last two posts and the only way to not make the portal gun a pointless gimmick)

They're actually making a Portal 2. This was confirmed a few days ago.

All that arguing about portals in Episode 3. What if they didn't come in the form of a portal gun. What if they made the gameplay less linear and that it had a similar structure to the Zelda games eg. you can visit the coast, Ravenholm, City 17, Nova Prospekt etc. at any time during the game to achieve goals and unlock other parts of the game and entirely new areas AND later on you have access to portal technology but it comes in the form of stationary gates dotted around the entire game map and you can teleport from one gate to another by 'dialing' it's specified number and then simply walking through.