Walter Bennet

Walter Bennet is a scientist first mentioned in Half-Life: Opposing Force. He then appears in Half-Life: Blue Shift where he is an assistant to Rosenberg, with Simmons.

Half-Life: Opposing Force
Walter is first introduced in the chapter Vicarious Reality, in a hologram message intended to him. It states that Walter worked on the Barnacle Gun. The talking scientist explains he has to cease his experiments on the creature because the Administrator has called him down to the Anomalous Materials lab for an important experiment.

Half-Life: Blue Shift
In Blue Shift, it is learned that when the Resonance Cascade occurred at Black Mesa, Rosenberg and a colleague named Harold formulated a plan of escape: They would reach an abandoned area of Black Mesa and use an old prototype teleporter to teleport themselves to the surface and escape. Along with Simmons and Bennet, they set out to accomplish this, but they do not count on the arrival of the HECU and their immediate hostility. Harold is killed and Rosenberg is captured, but Walter and Simmons escape unscathed to the prototype and get it ready for the teleportation sequence.

When Rosenberg returned with a security guard named Barney Calhoun, Walter was extremely relieved and briefed him on the situation. Barney had to be teleported to a different part of the facility, and to Xen, but he prepared the teleporter for its duties. Walter was the first one to go through the powered teleporter, and arrived in a parking lot. Simmons soon came through as well, and got a Black Mesa SUV ready for their escape while Walter used a crowbar to open a gate. Soon, Calhoun and Rosenberg teleported to the parking lot, and they escaped with the SUV. Bennet's fate afterwards is unknown.

Behind the scenes

 * Walter's name is based on the "Scientist 01"'s face texture name, which is simply "walter". He was therefore created like Gina Cross, Barney Calhoun or Otis Laurey, from being a generic model with a generic first name to a standalone character with a surname, although Isaac Kleiner also stems from "Scientist 01".
 * Walter is the only NPC in the Half-Life series to ever wield a crowbar, with the exception of Barney Calhoun, near the end of Episode One.

Trivia
In the late 1990s / early 2000s, Walter was very popular among players, who tended to refer to the bald/glasses scientist by that name. He was also the subject of a fanfiction named "Walter's World" on Planet Half-Life, quite popular on its day.

List of appearances

 * Half-Life
 * Half-Life: Opposing Force
 * Half-Life: Blue Shift