GLaDOS

GLaDOS (Genetic Lifeform and Disk Operating System) is a fictional character in the video game series Portal, created by Erik Wolpaw and Kim Swift, and voiced by Ellen McLain. GLaDOS is depicted in the first game as an artificially superintelligent computer system responsible for testing and maintenance in the Aperture Science Computer-Aided Enrichment Center in all titles. After betraying and almost killing the protagonist Chell, GLaDOS is revealed to be responsible for the desertion of the Enrichment Center after going rogue and killing the scientists who created her, before being defeated in a final boss fight. She is revived in Portal 2, but then disabled by Wheatley, who takes control from her over the facility and betrays Chell, forcing GLaDOS to join forces with the latter after being forcibly downloaded onto a potato battery nicknamed PotatOS. Recordings by Cave Johnson reveal GLaDOS to have been forcibly digitized from a human woman named Caroline. The inspiration for the character's creation extends from Wolpaw's use of a text-to-speech program while writing lines for the video game Psychonauts. Other game developers working on Psychonauts found the lines funnier as a result of the synthesized voice. GLaDOS was originally intended to be present solely in the first area of Portal; she was well received by other designers and her role was expanded as a result. Play testers were motivated to complete tests in the game due to her guidance. While the game was initially designed with other characters, they were later removed, leaving GLaDOS as the only character players encounter. McLain imitated dialog read aloud by a speech synthesizer with her own voice, which was then processed to sound more robotic, and performed songs in character during the closing credits of both entries in the series. "Still Alive" became hugely successful, notably appearing in the Rock Band game series, and has been a popular song for YouTube users to cover. GLaDOS later appeared in The Lab and Lego Dimensions. GLaDOS received critical acclaim from critics and gamers alike, citing her characterization as a variously narcissistic, passive-aggressive, sinister, and witty antagonist. IGN considered her one of the greatest video game characters, particularly among those created in the 2000s. Universally praised for her contributions to the caliber of Portal's narrative, GLaDOS received multiple awards for being the best new game character in 2007 from GameSpy, GamePro, and X-Play. A number of publications listed her as one of the all-time greatest video game villains, including IGN and Game Informer, both of which ranked her first. She has been the subject of significant critical analysis from both journalists and game developers, who have compared her to other villainous computer systems in fiction, including HAL 9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey and SHODAN from System Shock, with GLaDOS meeting the former in Lego Dimensions.

Overview GLaDOS operates the entirety of the Enrichment Center across most appearances, using cameras, intercoms, and other apparatus to monitor Chell as an unseen but omnipresent overseer. Her physical body is instead contained in a central circular chamber, appearing as a slender, vaguely humanoid mass of wiring and mechanical parts hanging upside-down from the ceiling. GLaDOS's main intelligence and memories are stored in a yellow-eyed Central Core forming the "head" of the assembly, with the body responsible for accessing the facility's functions, alongside attachment points for various multicolored personality core spheres to better guide or control GLaDOS's behavior. The original Portal game features the morality, intelligence, curiosity, and anger spheres underpinning her main personality, while Portal 2 introduces a more independent GLaDOS, alongside the space, adventure, fact, and intelligence-dampening spheres as corrupt or rejected personality cores.

Portal

In Portal, GLaDOS is the only witness to the situation of the player character, Chell. The game begins with GLaDOS as an unnamed computer voice introducing Chell to the game's Aperture Science Laboratories Enrichment Center and the physics of the portal gun. Her behavior is largely innocuous, though she occasionally experiences glitches and puts Chell through increasingly dangerous tests. GLaDOS uses the lure of cake and grief counseling to encourage Chell to continue, only for the final test to end with a deadly fire pit. Once Chell escapes, GLaDOS's dialogue becomes increasingly erratic and personal, attempting to trick Chell into returning or accusing her of being "not a good person" or of breaking GLaDOS's heart by disobeying her. At the end of the game, after Chell moves through the bowels of the Enrichment Center, GLaDOS's chamber is reached, where the final encounter occurs. In this encounter Chell dislodges the various personality cores (each also voiced by McLain, with the exception of the final core, which is voiced in a guttural fashion by Mike Patton) and incinerates them. During the battle, it is revealed that before the events of Portal, GLaDOS released a neurotoxin into the Enrichment Center, with the surviving scientists installing a morality core to prevent further incidents. Additionally, GLaDOS also appeals to Chell by claiming she is the only thing that can protect humanity from "them". After the cores are incinerated, the room is sucked into a vortex leading to the surface and GLaDOS is destroyed.

Lab Rat GLaDOS also appears as the antagonist of the Lab Rat webcomic, depicting both her creation and eventual defeat from the perspective of Doug Rattmann, the last surviving Aperture employee. Rattmann worked on GLaDOS alongside another scientist named Henry. She proves to be extremely hostile to humans even in her early iterations, only operating for fractions of a picosecond before going rogue and triggering a killswitch. After the morality core prevents her from killing the scientists outright, she instead conscripts all employees into mandatory testing to kill them. Rattmann ends up as the sole survivor after escaping her for several weeks, eventually managing to orchestrate the events of Portal by relisting Chell as the next test subject.

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