Barney Calhoun

Barney Calhoun is a main character in the Half-Life games. He was a security guard at Black Mesa before becoming a key Resistance leader. Although initially considered a "throwaway" character (in fact, an entire class of throwaway characters), Barney has played increasingly prominent roles as the series has progressed.

Since Barney Calhoun is the name of a specific character in the Half-Life story, the name "Barney" also applies to the Black Mesa security officers in general.

Background


Barney Calhoun, an undecided two-year major from Martinson College, was employed as a mid-level security officer at the Black Mesa Research Facility, with Level 3 security clearance. Three of his best friends in the complex were Gordon Freeman, Otis, and Kooy. His duties included guarding assigned sections, performing general maintenance, and assisting the Science Team as and when he was required.

His "Disaster Response Priority" was to protect the Black Mesa facility and its equipment in the event of an emergency. His secondary priority was to safeguard members of the science team, whilst his own personal safety was of relatively low importance.

During the course of his daily duties, he was required to repair an elevator in Sector G of the Black Mesa compound, and, while traveling in the elevator with two scientists, witnessed first hand the effects of the resonance cascade on the facility. After the elevator plummeted to the ground, killing the two scientists and knocking Calhoun unconscious, he woke up and fought his way to the surface, seeing the panic of facility personnel desperate to escape Black Mesa by any means available. He discovered his friend Otis dead, killed by HECU troops. Whilst fighting his way through the facility, he stumbled across Dr. Rosenberg, a high-ranking researcher working on teleport technology.

Rosenberg took Calhoun to an abandoned area of Black Mesa filled with prototype teleporter machinery, and with the assistance of two other scientists named Walter Bennett and Simmons, Rosenberg teleported Calhoun to Xen, where he reactivated an old triangulation device. When Calhoun returned to Earth, he and the three scientists were able to teleport to an overlooked entrance of Black Mesa. A momentary malfunction led to Calhoun being rapidly transported through the facility, but he was ultimately able to escape with Rosenberg and the other two scientists in a Black Mesa SUV.

Many years later, after the Portal Storms, Seven Hour War, and subsequent Combine take over, Barney became a Resistance leader and went under cover as a Civil Protection guard to gain information on the Combine. However, he often had to distribute beatings to random citizens so he would not be investigated. He often assisted Isaac Kleiner in his teleportation experiments. One day, Kleiner's cat was used as a test experiment and something traumatizing happened to it. Barney had nightmares about the cat for many weeks.

One day he discovered his old friend Gordon, who had not aged a day, being ferried towards the express Razor Train to Nova Prospekt. He immediately led Gordon to his office, where he disabled surveillance and told Isaac Kleiner about his discovery of Gordon. However, his cover was almost blown and he was forced to send Gordon away through a window.

He later met Gordon and Alyx Vance at Kleiner's lab. He got Gordon into his HEV Suit. While Gordon was being teleported into Black Mesa East, the much-hated (by Barney, at least) headcrab pet of Kleiner, Lamarr, jumped into the teleporter, destabilizing it and depositing Gordon outside. Barney gave Gordon a crowbar and noticed how alert the Citadel was, then sent him on his way through the Underground Railroad.

During the rebellion in City 17, Barney came to be the impromptu 'field commander' of the Resistance forces and led a push towards the Citadel in order to break Eli and Judith Mossman out of it. Later, he met up with Gordon and together, they led a team of soldiers into the Overwatch Nexus to disable the Suppression Device. They succeeded in this task and Barney stayed behind to keep the gates open and send more Resistance soldiers up to help clear the rooftops. He was later pinned down by snipers attempting to retrieve a grenade cache from a ruined building. After he was rescued by Freeman he assisted Dog in attacking the Citadel directly in order to rescue Alyx.

After the Citadel's Dark Energy reactor exploded, Alyx and Gordon went back into the Citadel to slow the core's meltdown to allow more time for themselves, Barney and the remaining troops and citizens to escape. When they reached a Resistance safehouse in the city, Barney described the Resistance plans (to reach the train station and leave the city by train) to Alyx and Gordon, while also explaining that the Combine forces gathering in the area would stop the Resistance forces from reaching the train station in time. To make matters worse, the safehouse was discovered by a City Scanner shortly after Gordon and Alyx entered it. Gordon and Alyx volunteered to draw off the majority of the attackers so that more people could escape.

After they successfully drove off a sizeable Combine force, Barney helped ferry citizens through to the trains. Eventually, when all the citizens were safe, Barney himself fought his way to the train platform, and escaped just before the Citadel detonated and destroyed City 17.

Half-Life
In the original Half-Life, "Barney" was the collective name for a class of identical NPC security guards. Never referred to by name in the game, the internal name of the character model was "monster_barney", and in multiplayer the model was simply named "barney". The name was born in the earlier alpha versions of the game where the model for the security guards held a resemblance to actor Don Knotts (screenshot), which combined with the status of being a security guard, inspired comparisons with Knotts's character "Barney Fife" from The Andy Griffith Show, which in the U.S. has long been a disparaging term for an inept policeman or security guard.

Initially, the "Barneys" were intended to be hostile NPCs who would attack the player. However, to test certain AI scripts and combat subroutines, Barney was temporarily changed to work with the player. Testers grew so fond of Barney's (occasionally bumbling) behaviors that his role and AI scripts were rewritten to set Barney as a friend.

Multiple guards could be encountered and allied at once. In the game, the Barneys served a role much like the equally ubiquitous scientists: providing conversations that revealed small parts of the story. Additionally, they could support the player as allies in combat. Although each Barney carried a handgun, their effectiveness in combat could often be hampered by poor pathfinding and slow response times. However, some players have remarked on Barney's unusual combat capability as compared to the HECU, as during their rare battles he is capable of killing one or occasionally several of the more heavily armed and armoured soldiers, most likely due to his accuracy at long range.

Blue Shift would reveal that the Barney Calhoun was the security guard pounding on a door as Gordon Freeman (the player) passed by in a tram during the opening sequence.

Half-Life: Opposing Force
The first Half-Life expansion, Half-Life: Opposing Force, confirmed Barney's first name in dialogue. Barney was joined by his co-worker Otis (named after another character from The Andy Griffith Show); both Barney and Otis helped Adrian Shephard, the protagonist of Opposing Force, in much the same way that Barney had helped Gordon Freeman in the original game, such as opening authorized access doors and killing some enemies along the game.

Half-Life: Blue Shift
Barney gained a starring role in the following expansion, Half-Life: Blue Shift. He was finally given a surname (Calhoun) along with an improved appearance. Unlike Gordon Freeman and Adrian Shephard, Barney lacked any form of power armor and was equipped only with a simple armored vest and helmet. Thus, instead of utilizing HEV recharging stations, Calhoun would restore his damaged armor by picking up fresh vests from fallen comrades along the way. Note that unlike Freeman and Shephard he does not come across any living security guards after the cascade except for one towards the end of the game who only lives long enough to tell him about recharging the power cell and then immediately dies.

At the beginning of Blue Shift, the player may notice strange material in the character's locker: books titled The Truth About Aliens and Government Conspiracies that show that Barney may be paranoid, or at least something of a conspiracy theorist. This could also be foreshadowing, since the game centers on aliens and government conspiracies. Also seen in Calhoun's locker is a picture of a young woman, which suggests, along with the fact that the Blue Shift manual says "Buy flowers for Lauren," that Calhoun has a wife or girlfriend. A box in his locker reveals, when destroyed, a chumtoad creature as a small Easter egg.

At the end of the game Barney, along with a few scientists, manages to escape from the Black Mesa Research Facility, and he is described as being "Out of range" by the textual summary, as compared to Gordon Freeman, listed as "hired," and Adrian Shephard, listed as "detained".

It should be noted that the Barney Calhoun from Blue Shift never actually meets Gordon Freeman in the course of the game itself, although Gordon's tram passes by Barney at the start of Blue Shift as he is trapped outside a locked door, in a humorous nod to a scene from Gordon's perspective during the tram ride in Half-Life. Gordon can also be spotted through a security camera heading to the test chamber he was tasked to work in. After these encounters, Gordon can be seen for the last time at the end of the game as two Marines are dragging Freeman away. If in the original Half-Life the player, as Gordon, attempts to talk to a security guard before the resonance cascade, one of the responses possible is, "Hey, catch me later, I'll buy you a beer." In Half-Life 2, Barney jokes to Gordon, "Now, about that beer I owed ya!".

In an early trailer for Half-Life 2, (featuring gameplay that was heavily edited in the final version of the game - Barney is not in the scene in the release) Barney says to Gordon, "Remember when we thought Black Mesa was as bad as it could get?" This may be a reference to the Uplink demo, featuring a level that did not appear in the full game, at the end of which a 'Barney' security guard makes the soon to be proved totally incorrect exclamation "It can't get any worse than this!"

Half-Life 2
Barney is one of the primary characters in Half-Life 2. How he ended up in City 17, or what has happened to him since the events of Half-Life, and what happened to the scientists he escaped with in Blue Shift, is not explained. Barney works undercover as an officer in the Metro Police Civil Protection Unit for the Combine. He is first seen at the beginning of Half-Life 2 and provides insider information to Gordon Freeman and company on the Combine. It becomes gradually clear that Barney is one of the leaders of the rebellion against the alien empire.

Toward the end of the game, Barney participates in City 17's armed uprising against the Combine and briefly fights alongside Gordon through the Overwatch Nexus located in a former museum building. Barney's health regenerates extremely rapidly; although he is not invincible, it is highly difficult for him to die unless the player sends him in against overwhelming odds. His death will result in a black screen fade and failure message, then the game will reload from a previous checkpoint.

Half-Life 2: Episodes One and Two
Barney is also in the first episode after Half-Life 2, Episode One. Alyx and Gordon encounter him in an apartment complex along with some resistance fighters, looking a little worse for wear. His stubble has grown, his hair is somewhat ratted, and there's a patch of blood on his forehead. He provides Freeman with his iconic crowbar, as he already did in Half-Life 2, and comments amusingly that he can't carry many more of these. After splitting up, they regroup back at the train station, where Barney has brought the last of the resistance and citizens of City 17. He is then seen leaving the city on a train, while Gordon and Alyx act as a diversion so he and the rest of the evacuees can escape safely.

It is also revealed in casual ingame conversation that Barney and Gordon used to race each other by crawling through the vents back at Black Mesa in order to retrieve Dr. Kleiner's keys whenever he locked himself out of his office. As the resonance cascade occured the day after Gordon began his job at Black Mesa (although in Opposing Force, there is a sign that says "Employee of the Month" and shows a picture of Gordon Freeman), and the guard who offers Gordon a beer at the begining of Half-Life is not the canonical Barney Calhoun, this implies that the two may have known each other before the event.

Barney does not appear or is even referred to during the course of Episode Two. Given his place as a returning character of note in the series, and that he escaped City 17 ahead of Dr. Freeman, he is presumed to be still alive. Whether he will make an appearance in Episode Three is not yet known.

Voice and model

 * Michael Shapiro provided Barney's voice in Half-Life and its add-ons as well as Half-Life 2. Scott Lynch, Valve Software's Chief Operating Officer, lent his face to the game for use in-game as Barney in Half-Life 2.