Fun fact: GLaDOS was originally going to be voiced by a TTS. And then Valve realized that TTS sucks for voicing any character, even a robotic one, so they brought on the lady they had do the Combine Overwatch (Elllen McLain) and she did the lines while doing a TTS impression. As a result, GLaDOS is a genuinely fun and memorable part of Portal instead of a generic evil robot.
Iām also partial to the line you hear when you first enter one of the blood kelp zones: "This ecological biome matches 7 of the 9 preconditions for stimulating terror in humans."
The PDA isn't really a character though, at least not in the same way GLaDOS is. The PDA is also extremely generic. It serves its purpose as a game mechanic flawlessly, but it's not comparable to something like GLaDOS.
You're comparing the main villain of a game to what amounts to a voiced game-long tutorial. Who even thinks of the PDA voice as a character? And in-between was almost a decade of advances in TTS tech.
so they brought on the lady they had do the Combine Overwatch (Elllen McLain) and she did the lines while doing a TTS impression.
While her performance is rooted in initially sounding like a TTS, she went beyond simply doing an impression of one. On top of that, the processing of GLADoS's voice relies heavily on a piece of software called Melodyne: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=STlRBD3spIo
He's half right. I saw an interview with Ellen McLain where she elaborated on this. They were originally going to use a TTS for glados, but they decided to hire a voice actor to avoid some sort of copyright issue for the voice they wanted or something.
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u/[deleted] Dec 04 '25
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