â | I'd like to take a moment to address you directly, Dr. Freeman. Yes. I'm talking to you, the so-called One Free Man. I have a question for you. How could you have thrown it all away? It staggers the mind. A man of science, with the ability to sway reactionary and fearful minds toward the truth, choosing instead to embark on a path of ignorance and decay. Make no mistake, Dr. Freeman. This is not a scientific revolution you have sparked...this is death and finality. You have plunged humanity into freefall. Even if you offered your surrender now, I cannot guarantee that Our Benefactors would accept it. At the moment, I fear they have begun to look upon even me with suspicion. So much for serving as humanity's representative. Help me win back their trust, Dr. Freeman. Surrender while you still can. Help ensure that humanity's trust in you is not misguided. Do what is right, Dr. Freeman. Serve mankind. | â |
~ Breen attempting to convince Gordon to surrender. |
â | Dr. Freeman. You really shouldn't be out there. At the moment of synapse, as I teleport, this chamber will be bathed in deadly particles that have yet to be named by human science. Perhaps when I have the leisure to do the work myself, I'll name one after you. That way you won't be completely forgotten. When the singularity collapses, I will be far away from here. In another universe, as a matter of fact. You, on the other hand, will be destroyed in every way it is possible to be destroyed-and even in some which are essentially impossible. | â |
~ Breen to Gordon during their confrontation at the Citadel's Dark Fusion Reactor. |
Dr. Wallace Breen is the secondary antagonist of the Half-Life series, serving as the main antagonist of the 2004 first person shooter video game Half-Life 2.
He was the former administrator of Black Mesa prior to the Black Mesa Incident and the Seven Hour War. Following the Combine's subjugation of Earth, Breen managed Earth's surrender in exchange for immunity from the Combine, but at the cost of human enslavement.
He was voiced by the late Robert Culp.
What Makes Him Pure Evil?[]
- He ended the Seven Hour War by convincing the Combine to enslave humanity and let him rule the Earth under a brutal totalitarian regime built on genocide against the human race,
- He turned a blind eye to the Combine lobotomizing and mangling people from Nova Prospekt into Stalkers which are malformed cyborgs used as slave labor in Breen's headquarters, the Citadel.
- He used Dr. Mossman as a spy, raiding Black Mesa East and capturing Eli without waiting for her signal to capture Gordon.
- He implored Gordon to surrender to the Combine "for the people", despite the high probability that they won't accept it and would likely just kill him anyway.
- He tried to banish Eli and Alyx through a portal to the Combine Overworld when the latter refuses to collaborate with him. After this failed due to Judith breaking Gordon free, he tried to teleport through the portal himself, gladly giving up on Earth altogether as he will soon join them by becoming a host for an Advisor.
- What's worse when Judith broke Gordon free before escaping, he shot him with the Gravity Gun this was considerably dangerous considering the Gravity Gun was charged with dark matter this made it even worse since Gordon didn't even provoke him early just like the Civil Protection did in Point Insertion this makes Wallace Breen hurting people for no reason unlike Gordon Freeman who only kills creatures that are after him.
- Deep down, his "altruistic" motives aren't as noble as the Breencasts made them out to be for several reasons:
- He called people who refer to "their benefactors" as the Combine small-minded, and yet he hypocritically did the same thing behind closed doors in the game's final mission.
- He made it very clear during said mission that he's perfectly okay with delivering Earth to the Combine personally in exchange for becoming immortal. Although he begged Gordon not to destroy the portal since it could bring the whole Citadel down on top of the people below, this was simply just to save his own skin as he mentioned earlier that the building would've fallen anyway due to a Singularity Collapse (which is the name of the achievement for stopping his escape) even if the player failed to defeat him the Citadel would still fall.
- Not to mention there's the suppression field keeping people from breeding and would drive humanity to extinction as well as to zombification anyway.
- He hypocritically accused Gordon Freeman for selfishly betraying mankind, yet he is the one who chronologically did it first.
- In most of his Breencasts, instead of answering the question he talked about things unrelated.
- He showed a serious face after he finished his Breencasts, which implied he is only saying this to please the citizens.
- In an announcement about how the Combine Soldiers couldn't defeat Gordon Freeman, he is only angered because the Combine is having trouble, not because they are getting killed.
- Even if some could argue that his motives were altruistic at first, he subverted all of them at the end of Half-Life 2 when he tried to leave Earth so he could become an Advisor, gladly handing over what remains of his own species like lambs to the slaughter for more power.
- Simply put overall, Breen only cared about himself and his own personal power, and whatever claimed that he's in it to help anyone else otherwise is mere propaganda.
Trivia[]
- To date, Wallace Breen is the first (and so far, the only) Half-Life to be Pure Evil, and therefore the only Valve villain to be Pure Evil.
- According to Marc Laidlaw, Breen was originally intended to return in Half-Life 2: Episode 3 and would have had a rather sympathetic fate, stating that he was himself a prisoner of the Combine and took no pleasure from his current grotesque existence. Had this been canon, Breen would not qualify as Pure Evil however this is unknown.
External Links[]
- Wallace Breen on the Villains Wiki
- Wallace Breen on the Half-Life Wiki