Wheatley



Wheatley,, is a personality core of masculine programming and English West Country accent who appears in the single-player campaign of Portal 2.

He serves as the game's, guiding Chell through her efforts in escaping the Aperture Science Enrichment Center.

Wheatley is voiced by British actor and comedian.

Background
Prior to the events of Portal 2, Wheatley took charge of maintaining the Extended Relaxation Center - which houses test subjects in long-term cryogenic stasis before and after they are put through the testing courses. However, what he has done to actually manage the entire wing remains unmentioned. It was only until many centuries later that Wheatley decided to escape the facility. To accomplish this, he attempted to gather help from any remaining test subject that managed to last centuries after running out of cryogenic supply. Luckily for him, Chell was one of them if not the only one that lasted.

Portal 2


Wheatley is first seen during the very beginning of the game during the chapter The Courtesy Call, wherein he removes Chell from her Relaxation Vault and puts her into one of the old testing tracks, so she can find a Handheld Portal Device and help him escape. After she acquires the device, he meets up with her and detaches himself from his management rail to accompany her to the Central AI Chamber so they can access an escape pod to the surface. He uses his compatibility with the Enrichment Center's systems to allow passage through a testing chamber's backstage.





Trivia

 * Appearance-wise, Wheatley appears to be a variant of GLaDOS' Intelligence Core (the one telling the cake recipe), with a blue "eye" and three dots, though Wheatley has dots only on his right side and possesses a white light as his iris instead.


 * Wheatley's heard in the Meet Wheatley (video) video shown at E3 2010 uses a placeholder voice provided by Valve animator Richard Lord. Due to very positive feedback, Valve considered at some point making the voice official. Later Lord himself emphasized that his voice was temporary, saying that "theres no way you will be dissapointed with the final voice - i'm over the moon with who it might be." [sic], until it was announced that Stephen Merchant would provide the final voice.


 * Portal 2 then won the award for "Best Performance by a Human Male" with Stephen Merchant's portrayal of Wheatley.


 * Wheatley makes a cameo appearance in an official plugin, created by Bethesda and Valve, for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, entitled


 * In the developer commentary of Portal 2, it is revealed that he was originally intended to have tried escaping with other subject prior to waking Chell up. This still remains in the game, as during the final boss battle, he says that he tried escaping with 6 people prior. However, due to his nature and the heat of the battle, it is unknown if he was lying or not.