A closer look
Valve created the terrifyingly passive-aggressive robotic voice of GLaDOS in Portal by feeding Ellen McLain's recorded voice lines through a specialized software originally designed for people with severe speech impairments; they stripped away all the natural human inflection and layered on synthetic modulation to craft the ultimate sociopathic artificial intelligence who endlessly emotionally manipulates you with the promise of baked goods; the result is a hauntingly cheerful antagonist who will casually criticize your weight while dropping you into a pit of toxic sludge, remaining deeply funny that the gaming industry's most beloved and frequently quoted robotic villain was constructed using accessibility software specifically designed to help people communicate, which was then weaponized to deliver incredibly sick burns about a companion cube
