In Valve’s two-part video game, Portal, GLaDOS certainly seems like a villain at first. The premise of the video game is that you are a “tester” in a science lab called Aperture Science, progressing through more and more difficult and dangerous test chambers. GLaDOS is the game’s villain, but her bad behavior is not her fault. In the course of gameplay, we learn that GLaDOS, who we meet as a big robot, was once a human before her power-heavy transformation into a robot drove her insane. First, this essay will establish evidence of GLaDOS the big robot’s evil deeds. Then, it will prove the central claim that it is not possible for a being transforming into a giant robot in the world of Portal to retain sanity. Finally, it will prove that it is the scientists, not GLaDOS, who are the true villains of the videogame.
There are many good reasons why you’d think GLaDOS is the central villain when you first start playing. In Portal, you have to go through many tests with only the false hope of cake. Right before you reach her chamber, you have to think quickly and use your teleportation device (the portal gun) to get out of a conveyor leading into a pit of fire. Along with the fire chamber, she tries to kill you with neurotoxin in a timed battle, eventually leading to her explosion. But the picture becomes more complicated in Portal 2. After you accidentally awaken GLaDOS again, she tells you why she was so unhappy when she woke up. She had to relive the moment of her death when you exploded her over and over and over again, thinking of what she could have done better.
Still, we learn something else about transforming into a “super bot” that excuses Glados’s behavior even further. When the player puts Wheatley, your original friend at the start of Portal 2, into the big robot, you learn that when you become a robot, you become insane with power. This same fate befalls Glados when it happens to her. In the official Portal comic, LAB RAT, soon after Glados becomes the super robot, we see an example of how power-mad her transformation makes her.
As we walk through the details of this example, the Neurotoxin Incident, we will see that it is actually the fault of the scientists that Glados found herself armed with such a dangerous substance. The scientists allowed her to be equipped with neurotoxin before she was stable. They failed to even check that she was partially stable before they gave her access to said neurotoxin—a very dangerous gas.
Here’s how the sequence unfolds in gameplay. Right before you are let out of the lab, you actually fall into Old Aperture. Here, you learn about two new characters, the second of whom is important to the central storyline. These characters are Cave Johnson, and Cave Johnson’s assistant, Caroline. Since Cave Johnson got sick, Caroline was made into a robot to keep Aperture Science running and uphold the place for many more years than she would as a human, but the robot version of Caroline went crazy, killing almost all the workers. Another thing you learn is that you feel the need to “test” when you are in the GLaDOS robot body. Wheatley talks about how he feels this “itch” to test – as though he would not be able to live happily without testing. Essentially, he has to conduct tests even if he doesn’t want to, because it would otherwise result in major discomfort. This helps GLaDOS’s weird forceful testing that we saw back in the comic: another major reason why it’s not GLaDOS’s fault for seeming crazy.
“Do you know what doesn’t rhyme with compliance? Neurotoxin,” GLaDOS says in the panel. Arguably, the fact that she is forcing the workers to do what she wants by threat of death is such an extreme course of action that it is a sign of her going power-mad in and of itself. But more importantly, this extreme behavior is a departure from the way GLaDOS acts prior to her transformation. Before, she was a seemingly average woman working as Cave Johnson’s assistant. We see this when GLaDOS repeats the phrases in one of the prerecorded messages before they were actually said, shown in chapter 7 of Portal 2, titled “The Reunion”, to be perfectly normal statements like “yes, sir.” One YouTuber describes the way the next sequence unfolds: GLaDOS hears Cave’s and Caroline’s voices for the first time in her life. She repeats ‘Yes sir, Mr. Johnson,’ and is terrified. In other words, we see GLaDOS awaken again after a panic, and when Mr. Johnson asks a question, GLaDOS repeats after Caroline before even hearing the voice line, sending her back into a panic. Her dialogue matches exactly with her former self, Caroline, revealing: GLaDOS used to be Caroline. The transformation was responsible for the change in her attitude.
The evidence is clear that GLaDOS, the video game character from Portal, is not the villain of her game. This is an important thing for the Portal community because it would give a very different view of the story, one where we find that the scientists were the bad guys. This topic is important to the world because we should first look at what makes people the way they are, instead of just judging them by how they are now. It also gives a more reasonable view of people in a grumpy mood. Someone might generally be happy and kind, but just be having a bad day. If we judge them based on their background, they are a good person, but if we only looked at how they act, then they would look like a very mean person who never is kind to people.
Bibliography
“Lab Rat.” Lab Rat, Valve, 2011, https://www.thinkwithportals.com/comic/#20.
(youtuber), oliviacat01. “Portal 2: Glados Finds out She’s Caroline.” YouTube, YouTube, 27 July 2015, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZWe1rYKZpY.
“Caroline Voice Lines.” Caroline Voice Lines – Portal Wiki, Wikimedia Commons, 24 Jan. 2021, https://theportalwiki.com/wiki/Caroline_voice_lines.
Portal. Windows PC, Mac, and Linux, 2007.
Portal 2. Windows PC, Mac, and Linux, 2011.