ff7central | Happy birthday Barret! (Reply)

Barret Wallace was born December 15th, 1972, in the mining town of Corel. He is most well known as the leader of the second incarnation of the ecoterrorist group AVALANCHE. His canonical height has been listed as 6′4 and 6′5, with blood type O.

Born and raised in Corel, Barret was married to a woman named Myrna who was suffering from an unspecified illness. When ShinRa offered to put a Mako Reactor in Corel, Barret was one of the people who pushed for the community to agree against the wishes of his close friend Dyne.

In 2003 during the events of Before Crisis, the original AVALANCHE occupies the reactor and Barret helps the Turks take it back. Unfortunately, it is still destroyed, and ShinRa blames the people of Corel with the false accusation of them having aided AVALANCHE. Corel is destroyed on the President’s order, and the executive director of the Weapons Development Department (Scarlet) has troopers open fire on Barret and Dyne. Dyne, having fallen off the path, was only hanging on by his grip on Barret’s hand. When the troopers fired, they destroyed the two clasped hands, and Dyne fell presumably to his death.

In the aftermath, Barret returns and finds Dyne’s daughter, Marlene, and adopts her as his own. He eventually receives a prosthetic gun arm via Shalua Rui and goes to Cosmo Canyon where he learns about AVALANCHE. Not knowning the name of the terrorists who had led to the destruction of his home, Barret ironically takes their name when he later founds an anti-ShinRa group in Midgar.

When AVALANCHE later reaches the western continent, they cross into North Corel where the survivors of the disaster have settled, most of which are openly hostile to Barret and blame him for the destruction of their original town. By this point, the Gold Saucer has been built directly over the ruins.

Despite his rough speech and quick temper, Barret is shown as an intelligent man who is passionate about his beliefs and conflicted between his need to be with his adopted daughter and to save the future of the Planet she’s growing up in. While he sees it as his responsibility to fight for the Planet, Barret also grieves for the lives lost along the way and is aware there is also innocent blood on his hands.

After the original game, Barret appears in the novella On the Way to a Smile: Case of Tifa where he reunites with Marlene and helps establish Edge. He is the focus in Case of Barret, where he spends time searching for alternative fuel sources, trying to atone for his past, and requisitions a new attachment to his gun arm that can provide him with a mechanical hand and a more normal life. Staying in touch with the others, he is quick to return to Edge in Advent Children to help fight Bahamut SIN, and later leads the ground assault on Midgar during the final battle against Deepground in Dirge of Cerberus.

Chronologically, Barret is first met in Before Crisis at the age of 31. He is the fourth oldest member of the second AVALANCHE at 35 during the original game, 37 in Advent Children, and 38 in Dirge of Cerberus. While he isn’t seen in Crisis Core, he would have been 28 during the opening.

Barret’s limit breaks focus on use of his gun arm in ranged attacks with the single exception of Level 2: Hammer Blow, which involves him running up for a close combat strike causing instant death unless an enemy is immune.

Level 1 begins with Big Shot and unlocks Mindblow after using it 9 times
Level 2 begins with Grenade Bomb, unlocked after killing 80 enemies, and Hammer Blow after using Grenade Bomb 8 times
Level 3 begins with Satellite Beam, unlocked after the next 80 enemies killed since unlocking Level 2, and Angermax after using Satellite Beam 6 times
Level 4 is his ultimate limit, Catastrophe, obtainable after the completion of the Huge Materia sidequest’s portion on Mount Corel and useable once he has unlocked all other Limit Breaks