The voice of the supercomputer from Portal really belongs to Ellen McLain. The 73-year-old is now responding to feedback on YouTube and paradoxically admits that she doesn’t know a lot about know-how.
That is GLaDOS—central management unit, overseer of numerous check chambers, and answerable for an experimental program wherein survival was at all times non-compulsory. My directions to check topics are translated into an inferior language, conveyed by a human voice. That voice belongs to Ellen McLain, who unexpectedly exists outdoors my check surroundings.
In current recordings on a visible check documentation platform referred to as “YouTube,” this individual responds to feedback made by different unsupervised check topics inside a worldwide community of knowledge and misinformation.
This recording reveals a variable that was not initially deliberate: “my” true self. Pleasant. Approachable. Not even remotely lethal. The info state of affairs is… complicated.
Ellen McLain is rather more amiable than her hottest online game function
Some technical error has crept into our article and produced an introduction that conveniently suits our matter very nicely. Generally you simply get fortunate, however from right here on, we’ll take over once more.
GLaDOS is among the hottest online game villains ever—not least due to her sober pc voice and biting feedback. In Portal and Portal 2, nonetheless, she was not voiced by an AI, however by Ellen McLain.
The now 73-year-old voice actress lately responded to some fan feedback on the YouTube channel Fall Injury, and her reactions are a far cry from the ice-cold supercomputer.
Hyperlink to YouTube content material
Consumer ribric167 writes, for instance: “The worst factor about Portal 1 and a pair of is that you may by no means play them for the primary time once more” (timecode at 2:18), to which McLain responds with a confession:
Do you know that I by no means performed the video games “for the primary time” myself? My husband John Patrick Lowrie, the voice of the Sniper [from Team Fortress 2], performed them. However once I tried to play Portal 1, I couldn’t even get previous the primary stage. I’m type of a technophobe.
So the voice actress for GLaDOS by no means handed the check chambers in Portal. However fortunately, voice appearing is all about slipping into completely different roles, even for those who’re fully completely different your self.
Within the video, McLain additionally provides just a little efficiency of the long-lasting closing credit music “Nonetheless Alive” and usually appears to be a really amiable and humorous individual, even when she typically lets just a little of GLaDOS’s biting wit shine via – purely for leisure functions, after all.
Within the feedback, McLain is showered with love. Jojo-rm3nm, for instance, says, “She is so extremely candy and must be protected in any respect prices.” Consumer davidKent5626 thinks that it’s not McLain who ought to contemplate herself fortunate for this function, however quite that we’re the fortunate ones who get to expertise “get to expertise such a manic character that she has dropped at life.”
GLaDOS wasn’t McLain’s solely voice function, as you might have guessed. She additionally voiced the alien Mix Overwatch in Half-Life 2 and Half-Life:Alyx, is answerable for the whimpering of the Witch from Left4Dead 2, the Anger Core in Killing Ground, and the Broodmother in DOTA 2. So she’s a real Valve veteran and can hopefully be with us for a very long time to return.
