Dr. Wallace Breen

The screens in City 17 turn on and a silhouette appears, the President of the World, Wallace Breen. —Our true enemy is INSTINCT. Instincts raised us when we were just becoming. Instincts took care of us and protected us in those difficult years when we made our first tools, prepared a meager diet.

Dr. Wallace Breen is the Administrator of the Black Mesa Research Facility at the time of the Black Mesa Incident in 200-. During the events depicted in Half-Life, he is neither seen nor directly mentioned by name, instead always referred to as "the Administrator". It is by his instruction that unstable sample GG-3883 is scheduled to be thoroughly analysed in the Anti-Mass Spectrometer, requiring a dangerous operating level of 105% despite protests from the staff and equipment malfunctions.

His insistence on these unsafe operating conditions, in apparent collusion with the G-Man[2], leads to the Resonance Cascade and subsequently the Black Mesa Incident. The great "lengths" he went in obtaining the sample alludes to the fates of numerous Survey Team members who died in Xen in order to acquire it and other specimens.

The disaster directly leads to the Seven Hour War, at the end of which he "negotiates" a peace agreement with the Combine that spares humanity, but at the cost of their freedom. Breen is appointed with charge of an entity called the Human Affairs Bureau and then later declared the "Interim Administrator" of Earth (as seen on newspaper clips in Black Mesa East). To what degree the invasion and his issuance of power was intentionally orchestrated is uncertain, but his comprehensive motivations for ensuring the Black Mesa Incident remain unknown (though almost certainly influenced by the G-Man).

If his propaganda is to be believed, he may have been under the impression that introducing the Combine would have brought about a cosmic unity between the two races, and would have been ultimately beneficial for the human race (something that he still claims despite the evidently large number of humans suffering at the time of Combine occupation of Earth). Whether or not he is the one who intentionally attracted the Combine to Earth, his intentions appear to be noble on the surface, and he sounds quite sure that he is doing the right thing — though he may be sim