NAME: Barret Wallace

GENDER: Male (And WHAT a male!  Er, I mean, *cough* -ahem-, uhm, right...)

AGE: 33

AFFILIATION: AVALANCHE

JOB: Leader/fighter

WEAPONS: An array of attachments for his artificial arm, consisting mostly of projectile weapons.

STATUS: Alive at the end of the game

HISTORY:  Little is known of Barret's past.  What is known is that he was born and raised in the coal-mining town of Corel.  He also had a wife, Myrna, who was said to have been very sick.  It was because of this that Barret (along with most of the townspeople) allowed the Shinra to build a Mako reactor in exchange for the promise of a better life, even though the reactor would make coal-mining obsolete.  The only person who objected was Dyne, a life-long friend of Barret's.  Despite Dyne's objections, the reactor was built, with the townspeople providing the labor.

One day, about 4 years before the start of the game, Dyne and Barret were coming back to town after being away for a few days to oversee a new reactor being built, only to find the village in flames!  The town headman, who had escaped the carnage, tried to warn them that the Shinra had attacked the place (in retaliation for an explosion at the Corel reactor, which the Shinra blamed on a "rebel faction"), but he was shot dead by Shinra MPs.  Barret and Dyne made a run for it, but they didn't get far.  They almost got Barret, but Dyne jumped in the way, and fell off a cliff.  Barret grabbed him, but before he could get Dyne to safety, the MPs used their machine-guns to blast away Barret and Dyne's joined hands.  Dyne plummeted into the depths, and Barret lost the use of his arm.

What happened immediately afterward isn't clear, but we do know that Barret made it back to the village, where he found almost everyone dead or dying... except a baby.  It was Dyne's daughter, Marlene.  Barret took her to safety, and adopted her.

Some time after that, Barret got a prosthetic arm, but then had it removed to make way for an adaptable arm-mounted machine gun.  Sometime during this time, he apparently spent some time in Cosmo Canyon, or at least studying its philosophies of Planet-Life.  He read up on everything there was to know about the Lifestream and how the Mako reactors effectively kill the Planet by processing the spiritual green goop.  He then moved to Midgar, where he took up the reigns of AVALANCHE, an anti-Shinra military and political movement (It's made clear in Before Crisis that AVALANCHE was a large-scale militia, but they were all but defeated and destroyed by this point).  He recruited Biggs, Wedge, and Jessie, and then came upon Tifa Lockhart.  Using the basement of Seventh Heaven as a base, the group made their plans.  It is unknown how many operations Barret and co. performed, but some of them had to have been major enough for Shinra to set a trap for them so early in the game.

Then Barret had a grand idea: Bomb a Mako reactor.  That would shake people's confidence in Shinra, make them lose money, and help the Planet.  But they needed some inside help.  Fortunately, Tifa had just run into an old friend: Cloud Strife, a supposed "Ex-SOLDIER" of Shinra's who was now acting as a merc-for-hire.  The rest... is the Game =)

ANALYSIS: 

Big and tough, Barret is AVALANCHE's #1 fighter and tough-guy.  His intelligence seems to vary; he runs the gamut of  insightful and eloquent to downright stupid and clueless, whatever the script calls for.  Because of this, it's hard to nail down Barret's character.  People see him as 2-dimensional, because he's a big black man who talks Ebonics, forgetting that there are many facets to his character.  On one hand, he's caring and compassionate.  He did, after all, adopt and look after a little girl, and has gone on suicide missions just for the sake of the Planet.  On the other hand, he' can be ruthless and hard-headed.  I mean, we're talking about a guy with a GUN for a hand!

Barret seems to suffer from some Post-Traumatic stress from losing his family and hometown, and in fact uses that as his excuse to get revenge on the Shinra.  Though it's interesting that he gets caught up in his own "Protect the Planet" rhetoric: he flees Midgar with Cloud, simply based on his say-so, to pursue Sephiroth.  He leaves Marlene in Elmyra's care and drops everything to join this guy he barely knows on a quest that certainly would take him away from his main objective of getting back at the Shinra.

Though part of that may be because of the defeat he suffered: He lost Biggs, Wedge, and Jessie when Sector Seven fell, and after that, while he didn't realize it at the time, he was no longer a leader of anyone.  He agrees to help Cloud find Aeris, because Aeris helped Marlene.  And while he does contemplate getting new recruits for AVALANCHE, no one ever "officially" signed on.  It is only when Barret and co reach Cosmo Canyon that he declares that "AVALANCHE lives again!"... though no one really supports him in this.  As an aside, it makes for an interesting debate whether Cloud and co. can really be considered AVALANCHE before or after this point.  The Shinra only refer to them as "AVALANCHE' once after, and that's after Meteor's been summoned, and I'm pretty sure no one in the party refers to themselves as being in AVALANCHE at any point after the Shinra building, either.

Also, Barret's ego keeps taking hits throughout the game, and he finally accepts that he's no leader.  It takes a big man to admit that he's not good enough for a role that they used to pride themselves on having, but he bows out and lets Cloud lead the journey to find Sephiroth.  Then after that, he nominates Cid to be party leader after Cloud disappears (Well, actually Tifa took charge, but she left when they did find Cloud).  Barret used to be the Big Man with the Big Ideas, but he seems quite content just being the party's main muscle.

All Barret ever had was loss: He lost his family, then lost a lot of his friends.  He then had to leave Marlene in a stranger's care, and then lost his former best friend, Dyne, after having to fight him when that other one-armed man went nuts.  However, we really don't see too many long-term affects to Barret's personality from much of this.  Whether this is because Barret bounces back from things easily, or lazy character scripting, is anyone's guess.

One fascinating point is, if you actually land Barret as your Gold Saucer date (yes, you can do this!), when Cait Sith reveals that he has Marlene captive, Barret doesn't respond very much.  he just bows his head and gives in.  Again, just bad writing?  Who knows?

Overall, Barret is one of the best characters in the game, both script-wise (though he definitely could have been better) and for use in battle.  Unlike most of the other characters who average-out on the low-to-mid end of things, he has high strength, low magic, and that's it.  Just like with his character, you know where he stands.