Early censored Models

When Half-life was released in Germany it needed to be censored. But did you know that when valve was developing the game it was censored outside of the German build too? There were plenty more features programmed for Half-Life that were cut due to the game being too violent. In this article, we’ll be covering early versions of German censorship, early features that got censored in the base game, and what type of censorship made it into the released German build.

Features Censored From The Game

Early versions of the game were much more violent than the retail build. For example, there was a cut headshot feature for the hgrunt. If the player shot a grunt in the head with a weapon that did at least 15 damage a shot, the top of his head would have gotten blown off, leaving only the jaw and neck. The model and textures for this exist in the Half-Life SDK along with leftover code defining how much damage the player would have to do in one shot. Scientist also used to have skins for corpses. The earlier versions of the scientist models would have shown organs spilling out of a stomach wound, and his back would have had exposed bone and a gaping hole. This feature was kept until right before release, as evidenced by there being variations of both retail Barney and scientist textures with wounds. On the retail wound texture, rather than a stomach wound, it looks like it has deep lacerations. The Barney textures have a big wound near the left side of the chest.

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  Retail version of the cut bloody scientist skin, found in Half-Life: Source

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  Bloody skin for Barney, found in the SDK

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  screenshot of a dead scientist in “We’ve got hostiles”, displaying the early skin for corpses

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  Ditto, datacore

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  Ditto, with Barney in the freezer in office complex

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  SDK model of grunt after getting head shot off.

Early German Censorship

In early builds of the game, German censorship was tackled differently. Due to Germany having stricter regulations for violence in video games, valve decided they would make all the human npcs robots for German builds. By doing this, they could keep the violence while still complying to the restrictions. The scientist were turned into red and white robots, while the security guards were blue and white. The grunts were green and white with red eyes. An interesting detail about the grunts is that a hassault version was made, but we don’t know what it looked like. One could presume it looked similar to the robot grunts. We have a qc file for both the heavyweapons version and the normal version. There is also a a max file referencing the German hassault, but the mesh is long gone and all that remains is an error message about its textures. There are a few leftover textures for the robot grunts, but we don’t have its mesh. The zombies also had German versions. They appeared like the scientist, except they had claws and appeared broken, with holes in their backs. Interestingly, the claws appear to have broken uv maps and use the texture for the side of the headcrab.

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  Screenshot of an early lab design, with the German Alpha's security guard in the background .

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  screenshot featuring the German Alpha’s security guard model in the background.

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  Pre-release German version of the scientist.

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  Another image of the scientists.

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  German Alpha Zombies in an early version of Office Complex.

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  A Grunt in the early version of Apprehension.

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  A Grunt on the cliffside.

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  Scientist recreation, by the Cobalt-57 team

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  Ditto, Security Guard

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  Ditto, grunt

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  Ditto, zombie

Final German Censorship

In the final German build of Half-Life, they decided to keep the models of all friendly npcs, except they no longer had death animations. Instead, their animations were updated to feature an animation of the npc sitting down and shaking its head in disappointment. Npcs also no longer gib in this build of the game. They instead fade away upon getting blown up. Despite npcs not gibbing, the gib models are still replaced due to certain behaviors using them, like barnacled spewing out gibs after death. Npcs no longer bleed in this version, although corpses and blood already placed in levels still appear. The grunts are also robots in this build of the game, complete with robotic sounding voices. Their designs were updated from the last version though, as they now sport a heftier model. They also have very different textures. They still have a green color scheme, but they new textures have panels, screes, and are overall more complex. They have a single red eye and no equivalent of a mouth. Interestingly, this model appears in Half-Life: Deathmatch, as a player model. The female assassins were changed as well. The detail of their breast bouncing in certain animations was removed, as well as her breast sized reduced. The detail of her visor flipping up upon death is also removed, likely due to it showing she was in-fact a human.

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  German death animations for friendly npcs

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  comparison between retail and German walk animations

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  Robot version of the hgrunt, used in the German build of Half-Life

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  German version of the gib models, replaced with gears and springs.

Unused Gibs

Half-Life has many gib related files leftover in the released game. The vortigaunt, scientist, zombie, and the hgrunt had gib models in the game. Weirdly, these weren’t full sets of gibs. Rather, they were a single limb that was usually a leg. Interestingly, Half-Life: Source has even more leftover gib content. There’s a model for a severed alien grunt head that was cut in half and textures leftover for alien controller gibs. The textures for the alien controller gibs are higher res versions of the vortigaunt gib textures. Half-Life also had sticky gibs at some point. Sticky gibs are, like the name implies, gibs that would stick into surfaces. They are fully programmed, but aren’t used. The models for these are also leftover in the game files.