Barret Wallace

Barret Wallace (Japanese: バレット・ウォーレス, Hepburn: Baretto Wōresu) is a character in Square Enix's role-playing video game Final Fantasy VII. He was created by character designer Tetsuya Nomura, and has since appeared in the CGI film sequel, Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children as well as other games and media in the Compilation of Final Fantasy VII series. As of Advent Children, Barret is voiced by Masahiro Kobayashi and Masato Funaki in Japanese, while Beau Billingslea and John Eric Bentley voice him in English.

Barret is first introduced in Final Fantasy VII as an eco-terrorist, leading the group AVALANCHE to bomb Mako reactors in Midgar as to avenge the losses dealt him by the megacorporation Shinra Electric Power Company, the Planet's de facto world government, who operate under the pretense of saving the Planet. Over the course of the story, Barret re-examines his efforts and focuses on pursuing the villain Sephiroth in an effort to protect the planet and the future of his adopted daughter, Marlene. Elements of the Compilation of Final Fantasy VII would later expand upon his character, detailing the character's history before and after the events of the original game.

The first black playable character in the Final Fantasy series, Barret's appearance and sometimes profane speech has been compared to that of Mr. T. He is also considered to be the first true father figure in the series, for his relationship with his adoptive daughter Marlene. His character arc is also considered a deconstruction of a revenge story, as a former coal miner seeking vengeance through eco-terrorism before eventually realizing revenge is not the right motivation. The character has earned praise, but also criticism and accusations of racism by some.

Barret was designed by Tetsuya Nomura, and was present in Final Fantasy VII from its early development. Initially the game was to only have three characters: Barret, the protagonist Cloud Strife, and the heroine Aerith Gainsborough. During a phone call to project director Yoshinori Kitase, it was suggested that at some point in the game, one of the main characters should die. After much discussion as to whether it should be Barret or Aerith, the producers chose Aerith, as they felt Barret's death would be "too obvious".

Originally called Blow in the early planning stages of the game, Barret's name is based on the Japanese transliteration of the English word "bullet", and he was developed with the "Gunner" character class in mind. During an early demonstration of the game, Nomura felt his original design made Barret appear too short, and revised it. He stands at 6 feet 5 inches (196 cm) tall, and is the first black playable character in the series. He has a high and tight haircut and full beard, and wears an earring in his left ear. His attire consists of a jacket with torn sleeves, dark green pants, boots, a fingerless glove on his left hand, and metal bands surrounding his abdomen and left wrist. Nomura wanted to give each character in the game a striking feature on their character design, and in Barret's case it was the scars on his cheek.

Barret was a concept Nomura had wanted to introduce since the beginning of the game's development, a character with an arm replaced with a weapon. His right hand is replaced with a prosthetic gatling gun called a "Gimmick Arm", which he refers to as his "partner" in-game. When they were still planning out the technological aspects of the game's world however, early designs of his character had a bowgun on his arm instead. He was originally planned to have a medallion around his neck, but this was later changed to a set of dog tags.

When developing Advent Children, Nomura stated that because of the comparisons between Barret's original design and Mr. T, they decided to take it in a different direction for the film, implementing co-director Takeshi Nozue's suggestion to give him cornrows for his hair, while Nomura designed his face. Artist Yusuke Naora also influenced the design, developing his attire, which originally consisted of white overalls, before instead having him wear him a down vest. Other aspects of his design included the removal of the metal bands around his body, a white sleeve extending from the middle of his right forearm to his elbow which is fastened by straps, a black band on his left forearm surrounded by a pink string and bow, and a fishnet shirt that ends in torn fibers below his waist. The dog tags were altered to a bullet and medallion supported by a chain around his neck, and three rings covered his left hand. His Gimmick Arm was modified into a robotic prosthetic hand, developed by Nomura, with the only guideline being "a huge, over-the-top gun that transforms in a huge, over-the-top way". Nozue stated that these specifics made it difficult to work with, and decided to conceal the hand's transformation sequence into the gun as much as possible. Barret's arm tattoo was changed as well, but retained the "skull and fire" motif of the original. It was redesigned by Brazilian tattoo artist and fashion designer Jun Matsui, featuring a stylized black skull surrounded by flames, meant to give a strong impression of "masculinity and power". While the skull was done in black, the flames were in red to represent his "hot-headed personality", and utilized a tribal pattern as they had become popular in Japan at the time to represent vitality.

For Final Fantasy VII Remake, Square wanted to show Barret as a mature person, contrasting him with the younger Cloud when interacting with others. While they originally planned to use his Advent Children design, the staff later decided to give every party member a new look. The team noted that his design was the one most significantly changed from the original game, but tried to keep aspects of his original design in mind to give him a strong and stalwart appearance. Main character modeler Dan Suzuki commented that they went through several drafts on Barret's face before modeling him. Barret's shoulders and the back of his neck were also changed halfway through development to help "bring out his dependable, fatherly nature". His gun arm also went through significant changes, adding a motor and mapping out the internals to invoke a sense of realism, but also the mental image of Barret being able to disassemble and maintenance the weapon after missions. His melee weapons were designed to reflect his "blunt, no-nonsense personality". In the English dub of Final Fantasy VII Remake, John Eric Bentley voiced Barret. During localization, Bentley did not know the exact media in which he would portray Barret, but figured it had to do with the remake. Bentley researched in order to portray Barret properly, and was aided by the translators for the Japanese version, who gave him the context of the scenes he had to record. For him, one of the biggest challenges in his work was "representation", and claimed that Barret was more than a one-dimensional character. In regards to the story's mission to destroy the Mako Reactor 5, Square aimed to show Barret as a fitting leader for AVALANCHE and show how his relationship with Cloud is improved.