GLaDOS (Genetic Lifeform and Disk Operating System) is a fictional character from the video game series Portal. The character was created by Erik Wolpaw and Kim Swift and voiced by Ellen McLain. GLaDOS is depicted in the series as an artificially superintelligent computer system responsible for testing and maintenance in the Aperture Science Computer-Aided Enrichment Center in all titles. While GLaDOS initially appears in the first game to simply be a voice that guides the player, her words and actions become increasingly malicious as she makes her intentions clear. The second game, as well as the Valve-created comic Lab Rat, reveals that she was mistreated by the scientists and used a neurotoxin to kill the scientists in the laboratory before the events of the first Portal. She is apparently destroyed at the end of the first game but returns in the sequel, in which she is supplanted by her former intelligence dampener and temporarily stuck on a potato battery, while her past as the human Caroline is also explored.
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. The physical appearance of GLaDOS went through several designs, one of which featured a large disk below her. 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.
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The Weighted Companion Cube (also simply called the Companion Cube) is a fictional item featured in the Portal series of video games by Valve Corporation. Initially featured in a single level of the original Portal, Test Chamber 17, as one of Aperture Science's ubiquitous Weighted Storage Cubes with heart symbols printed on the outside, it is given to the game's main character, Chell, as part of the antagonist GLaDOS's sinister testing initiative.
Portal 2 is a 2011 puzzle-platform video game developed by Valve for Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, PlayStation 3, and Xbox 360. The digital PC version is distributed online by Valve's Steam service, while all retail editions were distributed by Electronic Arts. A port for the Nintendo Switch was included as part of Portal: Companion Collection. Like the original Portal (2007), players solve puzzles by placing portals and teleporting between them.
Portal is a series of first-person puzzle-platform video games developed by Valve. Set in the Half-Life universe, the two main games in the series, Portal (2007) and Portal 2 (2011), center on a woman, Chell, forced to undergo a series of tests within the Aperture Science Enrichment Center by a malicious artificial intelligence, GLaDOS, that controls the facility. Most of the tests involve using the "Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device" – nicknamed the portal gun – that creates a human-sized wormhole-like connection between two flat surfaces.