It's also pretty creepy when games use actual images of corpses for their textures.
The fact that someone actually noticed that is terrifying in itself.
Didn't some recent controversy happen over something like that? Like they used a photo of the Himeyuri students for an album jacket or something.
What game was that again? Hong Kong 97?
Half-Life.
Thanks.
I looked it up, and yeah, that's pretty brutal... I guess it's not that uncommon for Western game developers to just use actual corpse photos as references for models.
From Wikipedia (Half-Life 2): In 2022, fans discovered that the texture used for a corpse model originated from a photograph of a dead body published in a medical textbook, drawing criticism.
It was revealed in 2022 that the face of a corpse appearing in the masterpiece FPS "Half-Life 2" used a photograph of a real dead body. Developed by Valve and released in 2004, "Half-Life 2" is a first-person shooter (FPS) that generated massive buzz for its beautiful graphics and realistic physics powered by the "Source Engine," which Valve spent five years developing. The game features extremely realistic corpses, but it has been discovered that the face of one of these corpses was taken from a real dead body. Half-Life 2 is set in a world where humanity is subjugated by an empire called the "Combine," following an elite MIT graduate physicist who, guided by the mysterious G-MAN and armed with a crowbar, sets out to save the world. The world is devastated under the rule and surveillance of the Combine, and running into corpses in the streets is not uncommon. The discovery of the corpse's origin started on Reddit, specifically in r/eyeblech, a subreddit dedicated to grotesque photos and videos. A user posted several disturbing images with the comment, "Insane photos from a forensic textbook." One of the posted photos received a comment saying, "This looks identical to the corpse's face in Half-Life 2." After users investigated, it became highly likely that the right eye area of the original photo had simply been copied and pasted onto the left eye. Following this, Richter Overtime, a channel compiling various information on Valve games, released a video explaining the details, bringing widespread attention to the fact.
The grotesque corpse graphics had reportedly been used since the beta version of Half-Life 2. The source code for the beta leaked in 2003, forcing Valve to omit parts of the story and lore, and drastically alter stages and gimmicks within the game. While they had to rebuild almost the entire game in just a single year, they apparently couldn't overhaul all the graphics as well, meaning many of the graphics used in the final retail version were carried over from the beta. The beta version is said to have been much darker and more grim, and it's believed that the overly graphic depictions of corpses are a lingering remnant of that beta content. These corpse graphics were used not only in Half-Life 2, but also in "Garry's Mod," a physics sandbox game utilizing Half-Life 2 models and the Source Engine. Released in 2006, Garry's Mod remains highly popular to this day, and mods to replace the corpse graphic with a different one have already appeared.
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