Otis

From Combine OverWiki, the English Half-Life Wikia

Otis was a security guard in Black Mesa. He assisted Adrian Shephard during his escape, and was a friend of Barney Calhoun. He appears in Half-Life: Opposing Force and Half-Life: Blue Shift.

[edit] History

Otis had a good natured, if dim-witted and lazy personality. He only got his job at Black Mesa because his cousin pulled strings to get him in; he stated that he would otherwise have become a mall security guard. The day of the Black Mesa Incident, while Otis was checking in his friend Barney Calhoun, he remarked that they had a long day ahead of them, unaware of the impending irony. Characteristically, he then went to the firing range to eat donuts instead of practicing.

After the Resonance Cascade, a guard similar to Otis but with a full head of hair stayed with scientists who were studying headcrab zombies. He opened a door for Adrian Shephard using a retinal scanner and asked Shephard if the HECU teams were really there to help the Black Mesa personnel, and not just kill them. He got no answer.

Otis soon left the area with Barney (probably because it was overrun by aliens) and eventually convened with Adrian Shephard whilst looting a candy machine. He then helped Adrian carve a path to an elevator where other HECU troops were fighting Vortigaunts. Despite his laziness on the firing range, he was a fantastic shot and would often kill Xenian creatures faster than Adrian could.

He witnessed the first sighting of a Race X Shock Trooper as it killed a fellow guard and abducted a scientist. When they reached the elevator, Otis elected to stay with a frightened scientist, and Adrian ascended alone to find all HECU troops dead.

While it is unknown how he died, Barney found Otis's dead body thrown into a sewer by two HECU troopers

[edit] Class

Since he is the only named one, Otis has become a name to describe all overweight Black Mesa guards in the game, which are only found in Opposing Force and Blue Shift. Similarly, they all wield Desert Eagles and use the same lines as the character Otis.

[edit] Trivia

• It is not clear which of the appearances made by the character model Otis in Opposing Force and Blue Shift are in fact the character Otis, or just the same character model being used over and over again in the manner of the Barney security guards. Timeline wise, it is not possible for all of the appearances of Otis to have been the same person, this is furthered by the fact that Otis uses two different models.

• Otis's name comes from the name of a character on the Andy Griffith Show, like Barney.

• A cheat in the Dreamcast version of Half-Life that provides the character with invincibility is "Otis loves Dreamcast".

• Originally, Otis wears a helmet similar to Barney, the helmet was removed for some reason, however the original Otis model with the helmet can be seen on the multiplayer model selection in Opposing Force.