The interesting thing about Glados/HAL 9000 parallels is that
Hal was conceived at a time when artificial intelligence was more of a fictional construct than a practical possibility. Hal is introduced as humanlike because the audience is familiar with and comfortable with humans, but they aren’t familiar with or comfortable with living computers. It’s when he starts acting robotic and calculated that the audience realizes “oh no, he’s a computer” and he becomes threatening.
By the time Glados was conceived, we had become used to computer automated systems. Synthetic voices offering us information is something we encounter in daily life. Glados is introduced as a computerized preprogrammed voice because that’s what the audience is familiar and comfortable with. It’s when she starts acting human and emotional that the audience realizes “oh no, she’s alive” and she becomes threatening.
Oh hey it’s this post again
I fucking love this observation.
Then the second game spends half it’s time convincing you “maybe she’s alive enough to fall in love with me” before declaring “she’s alive enough to dump your ass”.
I played Portal back when it first came out and I remember that moment for me came early, before the boss fight, before the ominous wall scrawlings even appear. It was right around test chamber 8 I think, where the game teaches you about how momentum is preserved through portals. Before then I hadn’t given much thought to Glados. I figured she was a voice recording that just automatically delivered information and jokes as I went. (Which, to be fair to me, is literally what she is.) As you finish the test, flying through the air, she just goes:
“Wheeeeeee.”
Something about where it triggers in the game felt too responsive to me, and the line read sounded too… alive. There’s no other lines in the chamber after that. Just an unnerving silence that followed me to the next loading screen. It was genuinely unsettling.