Best Villains Ever #2
GLaDOS (Portal)
GLaDOS serves as guide, narrator, nemesis, and only actual character in Portal. She’s the computer system that’s currently running Aperture Science, and she remains a totally unique creation in video games. It would have been easy enough to write GLaDOS as an uninspired HAL 9000 ripoff, but that’s not what Valve has done; her dialogue is both crazy and comical, and the dangerous "edge" really develops throughout the game. Early on she’s mostly funny and instructive, but by the end of the game she’s become downright menacing — I commented yesterday on the pacing put into Kefka’s design being the best, but if it has a challenger, GLaDOS is it. The acting keeps up, also, and is initially robotic but gains much more personality and human quality toward the end; by the time we actually first get to see GLaDOS it’s almost surprising that she’s actually a giant computer, since we’ve become so accustomed to thinking of her as a person. From the first words she speaks when you wake up in the pod at the beginning of the game to the chilling final strains of Still Alive, all of GLaDOS’ lines are perfect — exactly what one would expect from the creative team of Chet Faliszek and Eric Wolpaw.
Dialogue aside, GLaDOS is a very interesting villain just because we’re never quite sure how in control of the situation she is. She’s clearly not as powerful a figure in her space as the aforementioned HAL 9000 — it appears that she can’t control or even directly observe quite large amounts of the Aperture Science facility — and yet, we’re left with the feeling that she’s outsmarted us even in the end. That, somehow, we’ve played directly into her hands anyhow, even when we thought we were escaping from her and kicking her ass with missiles. The actual fight is fairly interesting (as interesting as a boss fight in a puzzle game could be expected to be, anyhow), but the best part is listening to GLaDOS’ taunts ("All your other friends couldn’t come either, because you don’t have any other friends because of how unlikable you are. It says so right here in your personnel file: Unlikable. Liked by no one. A bitter unlikable loner whose passing shall not be mourned."). It’s very rare that the thing I like the most about a video game is the dialogue and the voice acting, but that’s the case with Portal, and it’s not because the gameplay was lackluster; it’s simply testament to the overpowering quality of the game’s sole character. This, as they say, was a triumph.
