The player-character Chell is introduced to Wheatley when he revives her from her cryonic hibernation, with the intent on helping her escape the deteriorating Aperture Science facility. Wheatley then helps Chell find a portal gun. Wheatley leads Chell to the chamber containing the remains of GLaDOS, and accidentally reactivates GLaDOS while trying to engineer their escape. Chell is separated from Wheatley by GLaDOS and forced to perform more tests. Wheatley manages to rediscover Chell and helps her escape to maintenance areas behind the testing chambers out of GLaDOS's reach. He guides her to destroy GLaDOS's neurotoxin supply and sabotage the turret manufacturing line before returning to GLaDOS. Without these hazards to stop her, Chell follows his instructions to transfer his core into that of GLaDOS. With the threat of GLaDOS quenched, Wheatley prepares to send Chell to the surface, but he becomes power-hungry due to GLaDOS's core programming; he places GLaDOS's personality into a module powered by a potato battery and sends her and Chell into the depths of Aperture Science. As Chell and GLaDOS fall, GLaDOS reveals that Wheatley was actually meant to be a "tumor", with the purpose of generating an endless stream of bad ideas in order to control her.
Wheatley, recalling the earlier battle with GLaDOS, takes steps to prevent Chell from activating the core transfer mechanism and assaults her with bombs. However, he did not account for tubes carrying the various gels through the room, which Chell destroys with the bombs and uses the resulting spillage to complete the attachment of the corrupted cores. With Wheatley distracted, Chell tries to initiate the core transfer, however bombs rigged in the stalemate resolution annex explode before this can take place. As the failsafes on the reactor core fail, the roof collapses. Chell creates a portal between the room and the moon's surface, dragging her and Wheatley's module through it; GLaDOS, now having regained her body, knocks Wheatley away, and then restores the facility to normal working order. Wheatley is shown in the game's epilogue to be floating adrift in space, apologetic for the trouble he has caused, and forced to listen to the deranged ramblings of the space personality core.
GamesRadar's Tyler Wilde wrote that Wheatley was "surprisingly expressive" and called it "bumbling".[33] CNN's Larry Frum called Wheatley "silly, frantic and almost childlike".[34] ABC News' Lou Kesten called it "equally memorable" to GLaDOS and a "chatty, nervous A.I."[35] Entertainment Weekly's John Young described its eyeball's appearance as a "giant blue eyeball resembles a HAL 9000 computer with an Apple makeover". He also wrote that he was the "most delightful artificial-intelligence program one could hope to meet, and his witty quips and general clumsiness are a frequent source of amusement" and that he is "splendidly voiced" by Merchant.[36] Editors for CNET wrote that "if Stephen Merchant doesn't win every video game voice actor award for his portrayal of the protagonist's wacky robot sidekick, there is no justice in either this world or any virtual one".[2] An editor for CBS News wrote that Wheatley was "chirpy and well-intentioned" but also "dim-witted". The editor added that the "interactions between the player, GLaDOS and Wheatley are what give "Portal 2" its charm and provide much of the humor that keeps the game captivating puzzle after puzzle".[37]
This video and audio doesn't betray any great secrets about Portal or Valve, but it is a curious window into how one of the most critical components of a video game gets done, and supplies a key storytelling device. Because we've all heard bad voice acting before, and know how jarring it is to any sense of participation, much less immersion.
Ellen McLain (born 1952/1953) is an American voice actress. She is best known for providing the voice of GLaDOS, the primary antagonist of the Portal video game series, the Combine Overwatch in Half-Life 2, and the Administrator, the announcer in Team Fortress 2. Her voice roles also include the Jaeger A.I. in Pacific Rim[2] and The Witch in Left 4 Dead and Left 4 Dead 2.
McLain provides voices for many characters in several video games from Valve. Among them are GLaDOS, the primary antagonist of the Portal video game series (for which she won an AIAS Interactive Achievement Award for Outstanding Achievement in Character Performance), the announcer in Team Fortress 2; and the voice of the Combine Overwatch for the Half-Life series.[3]
McLain sang "Still Alive" and "Want You Gone", the ending credits songs to Portal and Portal 2, respectively, both of which were written by Jonathan Coulton.[4] She sang "Cara Mia Addio" at the end of Portal 2. It is sometimes called the "Turret Opera".[5] In December 2011, McLain won the Spike Video Game Award in the category "Best Performance by a Human Female" for her voice acting as GLaDOS in Portal 2.[6]
McLain has been married to fellow voice actor John Patrick Lowrie since 1986.[13] McLain now spends her days as a voice instructor, teaching at local community and children's theaters.[citation needed]
This page is meant for the viewing of the images of voice actors from various foreign various language broadcasts of Lost in comparison to the original actors and is intended for comparative purposes only.
Joe Micheals is an American voice actor who voiced the Announcer in Portal 2 and in the Robot Repair minigame from The Lab.[2] He is often confused with Joe Romersa, another voice actor, as they are sometimes credited under the same name.
Micheals knew that he wanted to do voice-over work from an early age, as he was always fascinated by radio. When he was a teenager, he created his own radio commercials by reciting ads out of the newspaper and mixing the dialogue with Top 40 music, broadcasting the results to his local neighborhood in Millwood, Washington. His creations caught the attention of a manager at a local radio station, KJRB, who hired Micheals and gave him his start in the industry. Though radio was his passion, Micheals also developed an appreciation for the artistry of voice-over work, which led him to branch out into doing voice-over work for commercials, television, film, and eventually, video games. Over the course of his career, Micheals has lent his voice to everything from employee instruction videos and automated phone systems to critically-acclaimed video games such as Portal 2.[1]
On February 26, 2016, YouTuber Tyler McVicker discovered the existence of unused audio files from Robot Repair featuring Joe Micheals in an early version of the Steam VR Performance Test application. These files consist of raw voice acting sessions of Micheals running lines with a few Portal 2 writers, including Erik Wolpaw, which demonstrate how the writers directed Micheals in his performance as the Announcer.[3] After McVicker compiled some of these files into a 20-minute-long video that he uploaded to YouTube, which can be viewed here, Micheals featured the video on his own website.[1]
The voice behind the Portal antagonist GLaDOS, Ellen McLain, has been speaking about her experience as the ruthless yet still amusing robotic adversary. While the voice actor is known largely for her work on the puzzle games and other Valve titles, Ellen McLain has also starred in some live-action films, including Pacific Rim and a Twitch adaptation of Marsha Norman's play Night, Mother. Recently, she's been discussing her work as the omnipotent character, giving an account of her experience taking on the role of a non-human.
During an interview with the YouTube channel KIWI TALKZ, as spotted by PC Gamer, McClain discusses her role in Portal and what was expected of her from day one. She said that during the audition for the first game, Valve already had a computer-generated voice, which McClain was asked to imitate. She goes on to say that the reason they wanted a voice actor rather than using a computer was that the AI-generated lines were copyrighted and it was actually cheaper to get a human to do the lines. She also goes into some detail about how she was able to pull off the robotic voice, noting that she made the word "Aperture" sound like it had two A's at the start.
It's a shame there haven't been any more Portal games after the second one. While there has been some desire for Valve to make Portal 3, it doesn't seem as if the developer will give the world a third entry. That said, there is still plenty of love for the first two games, and McLain's voiceover work is just one aspect that makes the series so beloved.
Ellen McLainBirthplaceNashville, Tennessee,BirthdateDecember 1, 1952OccupationActress, Voice ActorFirst FilmHalf Life 2Active Years2004-PresentNotable FilmsPortal,
Portal 2IMDb entryWebsiteEllen McLain is an American opera singer and voice actress from Nashville, Tennessee. She is best known for providing the voice of GLaDOS in the video game series Portal. She provides the voice of the Jaeger A.I. in Guillermo del Toro's Pacific Rim.
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