10 Things You Didn't Know About Half-Life
3. The German Version Is Heavily Censored
When Half-Life was released, the German gaming market had a significant number of content restrictions in place, specifically relating to in-game violence.
As Half-Life is, at its core, quite a violent game, and so the title had to be heavily modified for the German market to lock in a release.
The most obvious change comes down to in-game blood; characters no longer bleed when hurt and fade away like magic when they're dead. In Half-Life, bodies generally stay around for a while, but not in this version.
One of the more significant sections in Half-Life pits Gordon against a load of Marines who've been brought in to clean up the Black Mesa incident. In the German version, they're replaced with robots, complete with different voice lines.
There's plenty of other changes too; barnacles no longer vomit blood and bones (cogs and springs instead) and they even reduced the breast jiggle on the super-fast female assassin enemies.
Finally there's an alternative violence filter where blood is turned yellow, and characters weirdly have mechanical parts if they're dismembered or blown up etc.