Valve Called Out For Using A Real-Life Corpse In Half-Life 2

Valve Called Out For Using A Real-Life Corpse In Half-Life 2
Images: Valve

Written by 

Joseph Kime

Published 

23rd Dec 2022 13:01

Half-Life 2 is considered among the upper echelon of video games, let alone the FPS genre, and it has always stood as one of the proudest achievements of Valve. If we're not counting the billion-dollar video game storefront.

The game has long been regarded as one of the greatest ever made, thanks to the strides that it made in the innovation of making the FPS genre far more appealing.

Its VR follow-up, Alyx, proved that when Valve is ready to make a quality Half-Life game, it'll do it. Even if that quality features images of actual corpses.

Half-Life 2 Uses Actual Corpses As Models

It has been discovered that Half-Life 2 utilised disturbing images of actual human corpses in the creation and detailing of the game's dead bodies.

The model, corpse01.mdl, has since become a very popular skin for players to don in Garry's Mod and Half-Life 2 mods, but it has been revealed that the model uses images of scarred corpses to finish it off.

The subreddit eyeblech is dedicated to sharing disturbing and gross images. It shows off a medical textbook's example of a burnt corpse, and Redditors in the comments quickly pointed out that it was exactly the same as the model in Half-Life 2.

Valve ripped the image for its own models and has harboured real images of corpses for years. It's a pretty grim discovery, especially for the faint of heart - and frankly, an incredibly strange detail to discover so many years after the game's launch.

Fans React To Grim Corpse Discovery

Fans have taken to the replies of the tweet that has brought the information to light for many, and they're not particularly stoked to find out that actual human bodies are peppered through the game.

One disturbed gamer wrote, "That explains why so unsettling. These ones were always in a spot where something was ready to mess you up plus their twisted ragdolls added to the creepy feeling." 

Another added, "Just saw the real picture and it is in fact just pasted onto this model but so much more disturbing when seen as a real photo," while a third said, "This a common theme, Valve also using real dismemberment corpse as a reference in Left 4 Dead 2 Zombie to generate gun shot wound and dismemberment on common zombie model."

It's a lot of information to take in - and frankly, we could have done without it. Cheers, Gaben, son's crying. Nice one.

Joseph Kime
About the author
Joseph Kime
Joseph Kime is the Senior Trending News Journalist for GGRecon from Devon, UK. Before graduating from MarJon University with a degree in Journalism, he started writing music reviews for his own website before writing for the likes of FANDOM, Zavvi and The Digital Fix. He is host of the Big Screen Book Club podcast, and author of Building A Universe, a book that chronicles the history of superhero movies. His favourite games include DOOM (2016), Celeste and Pokemon Emerald.
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