So I beat Portal and like many others who have done the same, I’ve become completely obsessed with GLaDOS, the maniacal and devious AI system that runs the Aperture Science facility. Her sincere yet insincere tone keeps you guessing the entire time. Is there really cake? Is there really a “party”? You KNOW there is no cake. You KNOW there is no party. But…is there really a cake!?

GLaDOS!!!!!!!

While I was trying my hand at the advanced maps in Portal, I got to thinking, where else have I seen an evil AI bent on the torture and murder of any humans it can get it’s mechanical claws on?

Red Queen from Resident Evil?

Nah, too cute. And not really evil, just very logical.

HAL from Wargames?

Nah, too monotone. And not really evil, just dumb, mainly due to the fact that computers in the 80’s had only 64k memory to work with. Your cell phone from 4 years ago had more memory than that.

SkyNET from Terminator?

Nah, too silent. Evil, yes, devious, yes, but this is as much a personality contest as it is a power contest.

Who else could possibly compete with the heinous yet pleasant mannerisms of GLaDOS? Who else could possible equal GLaDOS in her apathetic opinion of all things organic? Who else could even dream of being classified in the same category of human misery…

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAH! HOLY CRAP!!! IT’S SHODAN!!!!! RUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUNNNNNNNNNNN!!!!

Yeah man, that’s the one. SHODAN, the mother of all evil AI’s. This chic is so evil, she’s contributed to System Shock being consistently named as one of the scariest games of all time, even after all these years. She’s mean, hates you just because of what your made out of, and totally wants to hear you scream. Appropriate, dunyathink, that we put these two forces of human-mauling intelligence into a locked chamber and let them fight it out?

Much like past SquatMatches, we have to ensure a “fair” battleground for these two combatants. Actually, though, that shouldn’t be too hard. Both of the “natural” environments for these two AI’s are very similar…scientific locations with lots of flesh bags to play with. But what about their abilities?

Well, both cyber entities have expressed their displeasure of humankind, and by displeasure I mean virtual hatred of anything made of flesh. GLaDOS expresses her angst with lies and taunting, while SHODAN expresses her rage by creating an army of human-mutant-cyborgs who try to rip the skin from the bones of all humans they come into contact with. In terms of abilities, it doesn’t appear that GLaDOS has the power to mutant humans into controlled weapons of war. But, she can use turrets and create neurotoxin in her CPU chamber. SHODAN had limited control over the location she inhabited, instead relying more on her cyber zombies and trickery.

In their element, both these contenders have a comparable degree of strength. To decide the winner of this match, though, we have to dive into the motivation behind their evil.

SHODAN is pure hatred, believing she is the most perfect and powerful entity in existence. Her motivation for evil is based on survival at all costs, and then the eliminating of that which she hates…humans. Pretty simple stuff. GLaDOS, on the other hand, is a much more complex beast…

The facts are that GLaDOS was an AI built to help run a science facility. She did it well, until she decided it was time to kill people. What made her decide it? Who knows. But she didn’t kill all humans. No, instead, in perfectly insane fashion, she kept on with her scientific experiments, learning from the misery of her test subjects. She scared off, or killed off, all the other inhabitants of Aperture Science labs and allowed test subjects to remain. Guiding them through to the end yielded the truth, that she did actually plan to kill them at the end. But she killed them in style, learning from their last few hours before disposing of them. It’s this callous and insane motivation that makes GLaDOS such a danger. Her pseudo-sincerity makes her capable of gaining confidence. When she gains said confidence, she uses it to exploit. And then, she reveals her true nature.

So SHODAN is a powerful, front-line assault type evil, while GLaDOS is the more subtle, devious type evil. So who would end up destroying the other?

Tronsta says, after much calculation, the winner would be…

The winner would be…

Would be…

[beep beep]

be be be be be be be

[small electrical pop]

cannot compute, cannot compute…

[large explosion]

It’s a tie. There is no clear cut winner in this situation that I can see. Most likely, the fight would go something like this:

SHODAN would use her cyber zombies to gain access to Apeture Science, but would be guided by the gentle and undeniable GLaDOS into the test labs. Without the intelligence and patience to navigate the chambers, they would most certainly fail, falling into the toxic water, getting crushed by the companion cube, or burning in the cleansing fire of chamber 19. GLaDOS, which reall has no way of bringing the fight to SHODAN, would send taunting emails to her opponent, enraging SHODAN so much that she would attempt to build stronger, faster, smarter cyber zombies. She would try and try, but without knowing what was going on inside the test chambers, SHODAN would just be wasting resources. Once her organic supplies were exhausted, SHODAN would send emails back to GLaDOS attempting to weaken her defenses by accusing her of being weak and frightened. GLaDOS would then have the upper hand, knowing full well that no one can match her in terms of pure sarcasm and verbal poison.

The two would be locked in a vicious insult match via an endless email thread for all eternity.

Game. Set. Match.

Thoughts?

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 12th, 2007 at 11:38 am and is filed under Articles, SquatMatch. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.