Don't forget to check out "Blue Shift's Boring Brilliance" for a closer, more nuanced look at that game and an analysis of Barney as a character: ruclips.net/video/ZZw9uw9YvSg/видео.html
Actually, female assassins did get a model change. Their breast got reduced in size and jiggle bones got disabled, also their head visor doesnt reveal their eyes when killed anymore
@@GermanPeter Half-Life has quite a few sexual undertones if you look for them (the xen trampolines looking like sphincters, the headcrabs being vaguely vaginal in shape which is more apparent in later games, the cut Mr. Friendly, etc.)
those low pitched F R E E M A N voice bug is not a bug, its actually saved as a audio file. And not only "Freeman", but also "Yes" and "Right" and a scream (saved as a scream25) where he sounds like a dying scream from hell. You can actully hear the scream in Resonance Cascade when the scientist get hit by the laser but its kinda hard to hear it because the scream is low.
I just don't understand WHY it's a thing. It even happens in Blue Shift with an entirely different line (I think either the "Yes" or "Right" line, actually). Why did they think that was necessary? It couldn't have been actually intentional.
I haven't examined the files but I think it might be something like some of the the german audio being saved at like 22 kHz or something, and the game is incorrectly forcing playback at 8 kHz, which would drop the pitch and slow it down.
In my original German retail version I accidentally discovered that all gore would return if you turned the (otherwise useless) parental controls on and off again. I quite liked how the robots bled red and gibbed screws 😂
This little tidbit made into at least one PC magazine at the time. Luckily this flew under the radar, otherwise HL would probably have been banned for gore. Reminds me quiet a bit about GTA's "Hot Coffee". At the same time there were plenty of Quake 3 previews, but nobody was allowed to mention the original name, because it would fall under "promoting banned media".
This is why i wondered that the robots didnt gib in this video, like i remembered. I always disabled the gore filter back then this way, i did totally forget that. But if i remember right, friendly NPCs had red blood, robots had yellow blood and both did spread springs, screws, and gears when gibbed.
@@fonesrphunny7242 True, i remember seeing this hint in the cheats section of one of these old german pc gaming magazines. I think i saw this hint in the PC Joker or PC ACTION back in mid to late year 2000.
okay one thing is that i absolutely do not agree with the original voices being "unremarkable" Harry S Robbins was absolutely killing it as the "crazy movie scientist" archetype. Mike's perfomance as Barneys is more cozy than anything but the Gman voice was extremely unique and memorable.
I have to agree, Robins' performance was pretty good, but there were a few quirks (hehe) to it too. Like I said, we grew fond of it over time. Personally, when I played the game in English, I didn't immediately go "OH YES! THIS IS PERFECT!", I just thought the voice acting was pretty good and later grew fond of it when I played the game more. I actually see the German voices the same way, where I'm now really fond of their calmer, almost comically indifferent performance. Like, there's all this chaos and destruction going on, but they sound more mildly peeved than anything.
I actually do like the voice lines cutting into other voice lines. It's like writing interruptions for game dialogue, but good. Something I used to notice a lot is interruptions written into a script; planned interruptions that contain plot-relevant stuff is a common trope, but they don't _feel_ like genuine interruptions. The person interjecting waits for when they're supposed to butt in, which makes the whole thing feel stilted.
OH MY GOD YES. interruptions always feel so artificial: the guy IMMEDIATELY stops speaking when the other starts, as if he knew he was about to be interrupted and didnt even try to keep going as someone might irl
goldsource tech savvy here. Characters ingame speak with dialogues with something called "scripted_sentence" which just makes the character speak for X desired amount of time with X desired audio file. The interruption being wrong happens because idiot devs instead of timing the scripted_sequences so both dialogues are really close together, they instead chain the dialogues so when one sound file finishes being spoken, the next one begins, leaving a gap of time created by both the extra silence present within the sounds themselves and the engine detecting when one sound ends so the next is activated. This, in my own opinion, judging by how valve worked on their half life games, is just out of laziness and lack of time (or wantings of doing it quickly). Since if you need to cut a dialogue or shorten/lengthen it later, you just do so and the chain is not affected and plays well, whilst if you make a change and you are timing the dialogues, you'd have to go back and check every time you change something, to see if the timings are still working fine, for each dialogue, and adjust each every single time accordingly. Which is a pain. Thats why, boys, when working on something that needs several pieces thrown together by different people, you have to work as a team and have someone plan ahead and know every detail of technicality so nobody wastes time or effort. This could've been avoided if a clear plan of what the game dialogues were going to be was set in stone beforehand, which would also mean that the game had to be planned mostly beforehand. But you know valve... they scrap ideas and tons of work like its just taking out everydays trash. Entire games cancelled or completely remade from scratch. Half life is nice, yes, but when you look under the hood of that ferrari, the thing is made out of spare parts from all over the place that barely holds itself together through a miracle.
Skyrim is insufferable for that. It'd be nice if games acknowledged them with some grumbling or some remark from the interruptee while the other guy blurts his point out, makes it a bit more alive
the most interesting thing about the human "death" animations is low long they still had to use those in games, at CSGO's german release in 2011/2012 they still had the player characters calmly surrender and lie on the ground after getting half a mag unloaded into their faces.
I was thinking about that actually! I bet that competitive CS:GO players would love that feature, because it'd make it REALLY obvious when someone is dead or not (unlike ragrolls which could get stuck on walls).
@@GermanPeter i imagine most competitive players would prefer to disable corpses altogether, in my experience they are willing to make games look like they could run on a dreamcast to squeeze out every last bit of performance for that sweet sweet FPS increase.
@@GermanPeter in Q3 we used to use cvar stuff to force it so everyone was the loudest, largest character and bright green with all other textures greyscaled. it's a deep rabbit hole if you open it up.
@@GermanPeter it would block vision of people behind them though which would suck pretty bad also how do you explain that when a guy goes falling off the 51st floor of Vertigo or drowns on Lake, YOUD JUST KEEP DROWNING
The robot models are in Team Fortress Classic, too. This makes it very hard distinguishing what class you're fighting against or even who's helping you.
@@TheGarbus613 They reskinned the human enemies with metal skin and some get visors while also giving them a robot voice .. would constitute another video (also canon and story changes in the german gunman universe compared to the rest of the world)
I absolutely broke when I heard Barney say "Da ISSA ja endlich". The pure vibes made me reflexively go grab a beer while being mentally transported into having just left the ARBEIT and taking my VW Käfer to the Kneipe.
as an american, I always found the german version of the soldiers actually pretty cool (despite having censorship), I remember one time in a private mod of mine, replacing the soldier models and voice lines with the german versions and made up small a subplot about the EU sending an experimental robot army to black mesa to steal documents regarding the xen research
The Robogrunts became a new and distinct enemy in Sven Co-Op. They function as the tougher version of the human grunt, so that's one upside to the German version.
hey .. i have to admit that i no longer have the version but the robot grunts were cut from a very early developer build that you could get your hands on (the leak only had the on a rails maps but the developers placed the first robot grunt in this international version with a broken transparent but definately robot grunt body) It was literally a wireframe skeleton of the robot grunt and at this time bullet proof (i whish i still had that leak version it was from a german forum that i forgot and that is most likely dead as i have not seen anyone else post that version of the game yet, the time was around uplinks demo reveal which probably makes this not a mod but a developer leak build back in the day)
"So it's not okay for humans to kill humans, but it's perfectly alright for the US military to send robots to kill people." Looks like somebody's getting drone striked soon.
the bug where the HECU soldier shot you instead of the scientist is actually well known... Just not in the german version. It mainly occurs in Half Life Source (which is already a broken mess)
Iirc the changes weren't that crazy, the main change were that the combine were changed to have plastic material when shot (similar to gman in half life source), and ragdolls were made to fade away like german left 4 dead 2.
If there is one thing I like about German version of Half-Life 2 is the voices of Combine Soldiers in it. At least they don't have this nasty voice filter original had, instead their voice sounds more muffled, like they have the gasmasks on, instead of sounding like someone's first attempt to use vocoder filter on their voice. Funny enough Valve had the same voice actor doing the Russian version of the Combine Soldiers as well, apparently (assuming it was the actual person and not text to speech, though the voice lines sound like an actual human voice).
@@deepsnow4994 I think it makes more sense the original voices, Combine Soldiers had their body transformed, including their voice to communicate with the Overwatch. With the Civil Protection, you can at least listen to what they say because they didn't passed through the Combine transformations yet.
Barney VA works so well because he doesn't actually speak the standard High German that all the scientists speak, makes him feel more blue collar. It's the small things in his dialogue that makes it work like: 7:58 "Da isser ja endlich" instead of "Da ist er ja endlich" or that he doesn't pronounce the "T" at the end of "Nicht" so it becomes "Nich" Also the VA does a great job with tone and infliction
Barney actually sounds kind of happy about the disaster, because he finally gets to do something. I could draw a comparison to Dr. Livesy, of course without all the maniacal laughing.
itd be great if they went further and got rid of the combat as well and made it so you go into work and complete the test properly because they planned ahead
The gameplay would be replaced by a mechanic where G-Man appears and reprimands you every time you do something risky. Like, say, not wearing a helmet, hanging around near toxic waste, abusing the office microwave...
@@t850terminator Black Mesa is just full of OSHA violations that probably only haven't been reported because Black Mesa (and Aperture, Aperture is worse) are probably too high a security clearance for the US government to let OSHA into
nihilanth saying "Ich bin der letzte" gave me chills, lowkey Also the vibe i get from Barney is that guy who was somewhere hoping for an apocalypse cuz he thought he would do well with all his security weapons training and whatnot lol
How Barney says "Da ist er ja endlich" sounds like he's just pissed with you taking so long and was about to follow it up with asking what took you so long.
I like to imagine gordon does know all the barneys cause hes a scientist but hes also extremely quick to pick up weapons and bludgeon or blow away aliens and soldiers hes not only trained but also not freaking out at murder makes me think he hangs out with the security guys more than the other scientists
Honestly, any time I listen to anything german, my brain is always surprised how many "english" words it can pick up with the help of subtitles. I sometimes forget that english is a germanic language because learning french also taught me how much french is baked into it too.
As a German gamer myself since the mid-90's I like your video and can relate to the early German game censorship system. This is an entertaining format and I hope you'll cover other German versions of games
Hearing the scientist whimper like a dog when cut up in the ventilation shaft fan was amazing. A lot of what makes Half Life so appealing to me is just how gruesome and nihilistic it is and that fits in perfectly.
12:04 That robot laughter is perfect tbh. For humans, laughter is a instinctual response to a distressingly unexpected event turning out to be fine; that's why we like laughing, it calms us down from our distressed state. Correspondingly, the robot laughter sounds like the robotic equivalent: the robot recalibrating itself from an error state.
I've watched many videos about German half-life, but this is the first time i've ever seen the dying guard. And JEEZ that actually gave me shivers it was such a good voice line! It sounds like a side character dying in a war movie in the English version, but that German line was incredibly realistic. First video I've watched of you, I'll binge your vids now. And yes please do more videos ! I'd love to see the extensions and hl2!
der Name GermanPeter hittet ganz anders wenn er nur deutsch sprechen würde mit dem Namen und rein deutschsprachiger zielgruppe hätte ich so meine bedenken hahaha
mein gott, dieses video bringt so viele erinnerungen zurück als ich 10 war und das erste mal Half-Life Source gespielt habe. Gerne noch zu Blueshift und OpFor
I got recommended this video by my RUclips Feed and found this channel for the first time because of it. I actually got fooled at the start by you speaking german, because I thought, as a german myself, "this is probably a german channel that uses subtitles a lot", but alas, you didn't. I played a bit of the german version of Half-Life 1 (Only the first two chapters tbh), and in a way, I thought it was very charming how the voice actors are in the german version. Especially that "Warum tragen wir eigentlich alle diese lächerlichen Krawatten?" is a line that actually sounds way better than the original. It adds this... idk, this personality to the character. And Barney/Security Guards having LOADS of personality after the Incident made me proud to be german kinda. "Ach da ISSER ja endlich" radiates so much love and perfectly capsules conversations you would have in that time. "Ja, da hatta' mal das hingekriegt, Da willse mich wohl verarschen", to hear this type of stuff in a german dub is gold. Also all the references to the german government and work ethic made me laugh a lot haha Deutsche Bahn Train Announcer Such a well edited and visually appealing video, gleich mal abonniert!
I knew all of this except that friendlies sit down when their health reaches 0. And can still be interacted with. That's a significant code overhaul to make that happen.
I actually wanted to learn German in highschool, because during the last weeks of junior high, they drove us over to the high school and they told us we could go onto skyward and request for classes we wanted, and I selected a lot of 3D art classes (because I had an Engineering class that I loved) and requested for German and French, but unfortunately I didn’t get assigned
Oh Peter, a good idea would be to cover the National and German Release of Wolfenstein. Its so censored that we literally have two different versions made of the same game!
If I may suggest a series to review the German quirks of, what about Command & Conquer? The whole series up to Red Alert 3 has had German censorship. Infantry in Tib Dawn and Red Alert had the blood in their death animations turned to an oily black, their death screams were made robotic and the sound of getting run over was replaced by the sound of a soda can being crushed. Tiberium Wars even replaced the Nod Fanatics with bombs-on-wheels (same change as the GLA Fanatics in Generals) and the nuclear missiles were renamed "Aurora Bombs" but there was an X-rated "Kane Edition" that restored those to the original portrayals.
I imagine the censorship was grating when the rest of the world got the proper uncensored version (Australian here, I feel your pain) but there's something oddly charming about the robot grunts IMO.
Luckily you could get uncensored versions from Austria or Switzerland where they also speak German. Those were still legal to buy but a bit more expensive. Or you could get a "bloodpatch" for most games.
It would be worth mentioning that all half life games are available uncut nowadays for the german market. Times are changing in the video game censorship situation here and a lot of games that have been censored or even not allowed to be sold in the past are now available in the original version, which is very nice. Some Examples are: Max Payne 1, Wolfenstein Franchise, Heretic, Star Wars Dark Forces, Hitman 1, Doom 3 Resurrection of Evil, Quake and many more.
I'd heard a couple tidbits about german censorship, but I really liked the comprehensive look at it! I'd love to see the expansions and Half-Life 2 covered like this :D
I can relate to the german scientist voice actor, because I'm (not currently though) doing Half-Life: Finnish mod, where I voice act the scientists, and I suck at the screaming parts too. It clearly sounds that I'm acting (badly).
Now, you could also lean into the cheesiness and do that same weird whimpering and moaning! Or you just start cussing and go "PERKELE" or something. That'd be hilarious! I think going the parody route would fit the game a lot and especially the fact you're not a professional voice actor. It's what I'd do, anyway!
ooh, this is interesting. i always knew german censorship is too much and i also heard that soldiers are robots and so on, but i didnt expect it wouldve broken some stuff like no gore or gears! hahah. also, teen version on steam is based on german version. and it looks like the widespread pirated version in korea was based on teen version back then. so although im not even older than HL, through browsing on the internet i could hear a bit about the pirated version and the german version before. and voices are really interesting, especially about barney's characteristics that is similar to HL2, changing characteristic might be controversial, but personally i like this. great video, and you just gained a sub.
Really interesting video, love how well the Barney and kleiner interrupting each other works. Funny how little bugs like that can add to a game's charm. Just think of rocket jumping... FREEMAN - I don't want to be disturbed right now.
I really love that interaction because of that. Like they already hated each other as coworkers before the disaster, but having to spend the past days together just made it worse.
Pseudo german, Chapter 1, "das Voicenakten" is a play on Voice Acting which is "synchronsprechen" in german. Chapter 2, "Das Censorenshippen", which is censorship, the actual word is "Die Zensierung" and Chapter 3, "Die Conkenlusion" is Conclusion, which is "Die Conclusion (Yeah, its spelt like that in german too)" in german.
17:09 Enemies and friendly NPCs absolutely flinch when shot, with different animations playing depending on the body part that's shot. I don't know what you're talking about here.
I literally showed several examples in the video of enemies not flinching at all when being shot, especially when attacking themselves. I don't know what you want me to say, I provided evidence of my claims right there.
@@GermanPeter The issue is you're expecting a flinch after every shot like it's supposed to have Doom rules and misinforming people by saying they don't flinch which isn't true. Burying the game for no reason when there is an advanced flinching system present already is the issue. Hell, there is even a way to stunlock an enemy by timing your shots, making them a joke.
I didn't say the German version doesn't have flinching but the original version does, I meant that there is not enough flinching in the first place. It's fine if enemies bleed, but without that, you can't know if you're even hitting them. I don't have to make anything up there, I legit had no idea if I was even dealing any damage at times, especially against the Alien Grunts, the Gonarch and the Nihilanth. Heck, I never even noticed anything of the sort in the first place, even after having played through the game three times now, so what does that tell you? This is just bad game design. Cool that it has region-based flinching or whatever, but it can't carry the game through not having any blood effects. Either you have no blood but enemies flinch more, like in Doom, or you leave the blood in. Not both.
@@GermanPeter "Unlike in games like Doom, enemies in Half-life don't really flinch when being hit by an attack" This is exactly what you said and it's false, plain and simple. Again, what you're doing here is trying to apply Doom rules to HL for whatever reason. It works different in HL, shoot an enemy and they will flinch, wait a second and shoot again and they will flinch yet again. Here's an example: You know the alien grunts you're having problems with? Shoot them with a powerful weapon, like a shotgun, and watch them flinch, wait half a second and shoot them again. Before they can even lift their hands fully to attack, you'll force them to a stunlock that'll flinch them over and over. Just a simple trick that you didn't know and called the game out for no reason because of it. And that whole "the only way to know whether you're dealing damage or not" thing is also exaggerated, I mean even if the censored version lacks blood, don't you hear their very specific pain grunts? Half-Life has plenty of flinching and other, different gameplay elements. In this case you needed to play it more than three times (or do a single, thorough run paying attention) to understand the ins and outs of its gameplay, before talking about a certain aspect in a video.
I said "don't really flinch". Not that they NEVER do, just that it's not noticeable most of the time. And no, you can't always hear their pain grunts either. Not that that'd even fix anything, because what if your audio is turned off? Dude, the whole game is poorly designed in this aspect. You're telling me I have to play it three times to "understand the ins and outs" when I could tell from my first play session that something was wrong? Yeah, no. This censorship was lame, uninspired, and broke the gameplay. Valve messed up, end of story.
So even in USA (where there is not content censorship), if you set the language to German, you will have human military grunts speaking with robot voices. I was curious if maybe they recorded human grunt voices for Austria..
By release, both versions, the german cut version and the international uncut version were available in austrian stores, there was no specific austrian release. It mostly depended where the stores had its warehouse. Woolworth for example had its distribution hub in Germany and so it delivered the german cut version to its austrian stores. But the majority of the stores simply sold the english version. Austrians had to decide between german and blood.
I'd be curious to see if they changed the black ops assassin's alternate death animation. While they usually just fall flat on their backs when killed, they will occasionally have a longer death animation where they try to take of their mask, but only succeed in pushing up the visor before dying, thus letting you see their human faces.
So I'm from Austria and I bought Half life from steam. Obviously it was in German. But there were still gibs, blood, and The Original HECU Soldiers. But theyr voice was still the robot one. I bought OP4 off of Steam but this version WAS CENSORED with no blood no gibs and all the dissappearing into nothing after getting killed. But all the HECU were still human so my copy of Half life wasn't censored but OP4 was WHY?!?
The german version still has some really quotable lines, "Blutverlust.... festgestellt" "Was riecht hier so?" "Mann, hast du diesen Schuss gesehen?!" x3 I never had the german version myself but saw a good friend of mine playing it a lot before i gifted him the UK version for his birthday.
The Nihalanth is actually much easier to understand in German than in English, und meine Deustch ist nicht sehr gut. 7:00 - ok that was creepy af! You know, the Barney hive-mind theory actually makes a lot of sense. I’m putting that in my head canon.
19:08 I suppose it’s like the battle droids in Star Wars where they’re completely robotic, but still use computers and external communication gear that are also used by organic beings
The one where he says “freeman does not need to know any of this” is better with the cut off, it’s like he knows hat he’s about to say and just interrupted it.
9:22 Maybe Gordon started work at Black Mesa as a security guard while working on his PhD in theoretical physics and the events of HL1 are just Gordons first day actually working in hazardous materials, might explain why he was late as he would have probably had a change in schedule which could mess anyone up when it comes to sleep cycles
Don't forget to check out "Blue Shift's Boring Brilliance" for a closer, more nuanced look at that game and an analysis of Barney as a character: ruclips.net/video/ZZw9uw9YvSg/видео.html
Ok
"german gaming" i read. hmm, german games interests me
ja
So much for quiting
So what’s your favorite type of sausage and beer
Gordon's German voice actor deserves some credit too, absolutely nailed the role!
Dunno. He had a couple of wobbly bits in the middle, but I suppose it was a mostly solid performance
Best comment of all times!
It took me 10 seconds to realise the joke
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@@romulusnuma116 Same, I feel ashamed ngl
Actually, female assassins did get a model change. Their breast got reduced in size and jiggle bones got disabled, also their head visor doesnt reveal their eyes when killed anymore
Sadly… I miss those bouncing physics
Ahh yes *B R E A S T B O N E*
Well, can't say I ever noticed that! Why do they even have jiggle physics to begin with? You barely see them up-close.
@@GermanPeter Half-Life has quite a few sexual undertones if you look for them (the xen trampolines looking like sphincters, the headcrabs being vaguely vaginal in shape which is more apparent in later games, the cut Mr. Friendly, etc.)
@@mishapp4439 spiders with vaginas?!?!?!?!?!?!?!??!
those low pitched F R E E M A N voice bug is not a bug, its actually saved as a audio file. And not only "Freeman", but also "Yes" and "Right" and a scream (saved as a scream25) where he sounds like a dying scream from hell. You can actully hear the scream in Resonance Cascade when the scientist get hit by the laser but its kinda hard to hear it because the scream is low.
I just don't understand WHY it's a thing. It even happens in Blue Shift with an entirely different line (I think either the "Yes" or "Right" line, actually). Why did they think that was necessary? It couldn't have been actually intentional.
@@GermanPeter Vielleicht doch, keine Ahnung, vielleicht hat ein Praktikant sich ein Spaß erlaubt oder so. Es bleibt auf jeden Fall ein Rätsel.
We just could go and fix the .wav file, but I personally find it funny and random like just out of an corner in Black Mesa: F R E E M A N!
I haven't examined the files but I think it might be something like some of the the german audio being saved at like 22 kHz or something, and the game is incorrectly forcing playback at 8 kHz, which would drop the pitch and slow it down.
@@dantubehds Da isser ja! Der content creator und Übersetzungspezialist der deutschen Valve fans auf RUclips, hier unterwegs im Kommentarbereich. :D
In my original German retail version I accidentally discovered that all gore would return if you turned the (otherwise useless) parental controls on and off again. I quite liked how the robots bled red and gibbed screws 😂
Yes! same, the main benefit was that bodies didnt disappear anymore and aliens gibbed as well
Oh yes, this was a fine little discovery.
This little tidbit made into at least one PC magazine at the time. Luckily this flew under the radar, otherwise HL would probably have been banned for gore. Reminds me quiet a bit about GTA's "Hot Coffee".
At the same time there were plenty of Quake 3 previews, but nobody was allowed to mention the original name, because it would fall under "promoting banned media".
This is why i wondered that the robots didnt gib in this video, like i remembered. I always disabled the gore filter back then this way, i did totally forget that. But if i remember right, friendly NPCs had red blood, robots had yellow blood and both did spread springs, screws, and gears when gibbed.
@@fonesrphunny7242 True, i remember seeing this hint in the cheats section of one of these old german pc gaming magazines. I think i saw this hint in the PC Joker or PC ACTION back in mid to late year 2000.
okay one thing is that i absolutely do not agree with the original voices being "unremarkable"
Harry S Robbins was absolutely killing it as the "crazy movie scientist" archetype. Mike's perfomance as Barneys is more cozy than anything but the Gman voice was extremely unique and memorable.
I have to agree, Robins' performance was pretty good, but there were a few quirks (hehe) to it too. Like I said, we grew fond of it over time. Personally, when I played the game in English, I didn't immediately go "OH YES! THIS IS PERFECT!", I just thought the voice acting was pretty good and later grew fond of it when I played the game more.
I actually see the German voices the same way, where I'm now really fond of their calmer, almost comically indifferent performance. Like, there's all this chaos and destruction going on, but they sound more mildly peeved than anything.
I actually do like the voice lines cutting into other voice lines. It's like writing interruptions for game dialogue, but good. Something I used to notice a lot is interruptions written into a script; planned interruptions that contain plot-relevant stuff is a common trope, but they don't _feel_ like genuine interruptions. The person interjecting waits for when they're supposed to butt in, which makes the whole thing feel stilted.
True, but the robot conversation for instance was impossible to listen to and made no sense because of the interruptions.
OH MY GOD YES. interruptions always feel so artificial: the guy IMMEDIATELY stops speaking when the other starts, as if he knew he was about to be interrupted and didnt even try to keep going as someone might irl
goldsource tech savvy here. Characters ingame speak with dialogues with something called "scripted_sentence" which just makes the character speak for X desired amount of time with X desired audio file. The interruption being wrong happens because idiot devs instead of timing the scripted_sequences so both dialogues are really close together, they instead chain the dialogues so when one sound file finishes being spoken, the next one begins, leaving a gap of time created by both the extra silence present within the sounds themselves and the engine detecting when one sound ends so the next is activated.
This, in my own opinion, judging by how valve worked on their half life games, is just out of laziness and lack of time (or wantings of doing it quickly). Since if you need to cut a dialogue or shorten/lengthen it later, you just do so and the chain is not affected and plays well, whilst if you make a change and you are timing the dialogues, you'd have to go back and check every time you change something, to see if the timings are still working fine, for each dialogue, and adjust each every single time accordingly. Which is a pain.
Thats why, boys, when working on something that needs several pieces thrown together by different people, you have to work as a team and have someone plan ahead and know every detail of technicality so nobody wastes time or effort. This could've been avoided if a clear plan of what the game dialogues were going to be was set in stone beforehand, which would also mean that the game had to be planned mostly beforehand. But you know valve... they scrap ideas and tons of work like its just taking out everydays trash. Entire games cancelled or completely remade from scratch.
Half life is nice, yes, but when you look under the hood of that ferrari, the thing is made out of spare parts from all over the place that barely holds itself together through a miracle.
Skyrim is insufferable for that. It'd be nice if games acknowledged them with some grumbling or some remark from the interruptee while the other guy blurts his point out, makes it a bit more alive
the german Barney gives me some Michael Erentraut vibes. Like completely unfaced by everything because its just another tuesday
"no Half-Life measures, Gordon"
''you in black mesa now, ni''
waltuh put your crowbar away waltuh
ja
Gordon, put your crowbar away gordon. I'm not going to xen with you right now, gordon.
the most interesting thing about the human "death" animations is low long they still had to use those in games, at CSGO's german release in 2011/2012 they still had the player characters calmly surrender and lie on the ground after getting half a mag unloaded into their faces.
I was thinking about that actually! I bet that competitive CS:GO players would love that feature, because it'd make it REALLY obvious when someone is dead or not (unlike ragrolls which could get stuck on walls).
@@GermanPeter i imagine most competitive players would prefer to disable corpses altogether, in my experience they are willing to make games look like they could run on a dreamcast to squeeze out every last bit of performance for that sweet sweet FPS increase.
@@GermanPeter in Q3 we used to use cvar stuff to force it so everyone was the loudest, largest character and bright green with all other textures greyscaled. it's a deep rabbit hole if you open it up.
@@GermanPeter it would block vision of people behind them though which would suck pretty bad
also how do you explain that when a guy goes falling off the 51st floor of Vertigo or drowns on Lake, YOUD JUST KEEP DROWNING
@@Suiseisexy Also gib modes in Q3
The robot models are in Team Fortress Classic, too. This makes it very hard distinguishing what class you're fighting against or even who's helping you.
15:30
@@GermanPeter Aye. I wonder how much effort it would've taken to make TFC an exception?
Aren't they also present in Gunman Chronicles? My memory is a bit hazy with that one though.
@@TheGarbus613 They reskinned the human enemies with metal skin and some get visors while also giving them a robot voice .. would constitute another video (also canon and story changes in the german gunman universe compared to the rest of the world)
I absolutely broke when I heard Barney say "Da ISSA ja endlich". The pure vibes made me reflexively go grab a beer while being mentally transported into having just left the ARBEIT and taking my VW Käfer to the Kneipe.
Ja.
as an american, I always found the german version of the soldiers actually pretty cool (despite having censorship), I remember one time in a private mod of mine, replacing the soldier models and voice lines with the german versions and made up small a subplot about the EU sending an experimental robot army to black mesa to steal documents regarding the xen research
This is so cool :D
The Robogrunts became a new and distinct enemy in Sven Co-Op. They function as the tougher version of the human grunt, so that's one upside to the German version.
hey .. i have to admit that i no longer have the version but the robot grunts were cut from a very early developer build that you could get your hands on (the leak only had the on a rails maps but the developers placed the first robot grunt in this international version with a broken transparent but definately robot grunt body)
It was literally a wireframe skeleton of the robot grunt and at this time bullet proof (i whish i still had that leak version it was from a german forum that i forgot and that is most likely dead as i have not seen anyone else post that version of the game yet, the time was around uplinks demo reveal which probably makes this not a mod but a developer leak build back in the day)
note: you could not change gamma too and the window that should show a picture of a garganaut was missing (got no idea what alpha timeframe that is)
"So it's not okay for humans to kill humans, but it's perfectly alright for the US military to send robots to kill people." Looks like somebody's getting drone striked soon.
the bug where the HECU soldier shot you instead of the scientist is actually well known... Just not in the german version. It mainly occurs in Half Life Source (which is already a broken mess)
Can't wait for Quirks of German Half-Life 2
i tried watching some half life 2 german gameplay (as i am german myself) and it sounds like a middle school project.. I didn't really enjoy it at all
imagine what they would do to the combine, especially for the german 'people'
Iirc the changes weren't that crazy, the main change were that the combine were changed to have plastic material when shot (similar to gman in half life source), and ragdolls were made to fade away like german left 4 dead 2.
If there is one thing I like about German version of Half-Life 2 is the voices of Combine Soldiers in it. At least they don't have this nasty voice filter original had, instead their voice sounds more muffled, like they have the gasmasks on, instead of sounding like someone's first attempt to use vocoder filter on their voice.
Funny enough Valve had the same voice actor doing the Russian version of the Combine Soldiers as well, apparently (assuming it was the actual person and not text to speech, though the voice lines sound like an actual human voice).
@@deepsnow4994 I think it makes more sense the original voices, Combine Soldiers had their body transformed, including their voice to communicate with the Overwatch. With the Civil Protection, you can at least listen to what they say because they didn't passed through the Combine transformations yet.
Barney VA works so well because he doesn't actually speak the standard High German that all the scientists speak, makes him feel more blue collar. It's the small things in his dialogue that makes it work like:
7:58 "Da isser ja endlich" instead of "Da ist er ja endlich" or that he doesn't pronounce the "T" at the end of "Nicht" so it becomes "Nich"
Also the VA does a great job with tone and infliction
Barney actually sounds kind of happy about the disaster, because he finally gets to do something. I could draw a comparison to Dr. Livesy, of course without all the maniacal laughing.
"HAHAHA MY FRIEND TOXIC WASTE MAY MEAN DEATH FOR YOU"
the freeman voiceline was so unexpected and i can't stop laughing
itd be great if they went further and got rid of the combat as well and made it so you go into work and complete the test properly because they planned ahead
That would be the most German thing indeed.
The gameplay would be replaced by a mechanic where G-Man appears and reprimands you every time you do something risky. Like, say, not wearing a helmet, hanging around near toxic waste, abusing the office microwave...
HL: OSHA edition
Full-Life
@@t850terminator Black Mesa is just full of OSHA violations that probably only haven't been reported because Black Mesa (and Aperture, Aperture is worse) are probably too high a security clearance for the US government to let OSHA into
nihilanth saying "Ich bin der letzte" gave me chills, lowkey
Also the vibe i get from Barney is that guy who was somewhere hoping for an apocalypse cuz he thought he would do well with all his security weapons training and whatnot lol
How Barney says "Da ist er ja endlich" sounds like he's just pissed with you taking so long and was about to follow it up with asking what took you so long.
Nah, he's more being cynically excited to see you.
German Barney sounds like he hasnt slept in days and this just seems like one big fever dream to him
Sounds about right
Wonderful as always! I can see German Freimann everytime I close my eyes!
I like to imagine gordon does know all the barneys
cause hes a scientist but hes also extremely quick to pick up weapons and bludgeon or blow away aliens and soldiers
hes not only trained but also not freaking out at murder
makes me think he hangs out with the security guys more than the other scientists
how is your channel so underrated? i would have thought you'd explode in popularity with this amount of quality
Watch my stuff to make it grow! :D
"How is your channel underrated?"
~73K subscribers
Alright then, random commenter.
@@adirblazkowics7717 that's underrated.
Honestly, any time I listen to anything german, my brain is always surprised how many "english" words it can pick up with the help of subtitles. I sometimes forget that english is a germanic language because learning french also taught me how much french is baked into it too.
As a German gamer myself since the mid-90's I like your video and can relate to the early German game censorship system. This is an entertaining format and I hope you'll cover other German versions of games
Hearing the scientist whimper like a dog when cut up in the ventilation shaft fan was amazing. A lot of what makes Half Life so appealing to me is just how gruesome and nihilistic it is and that fits in perfectly.
they shouldve doubled down on german half life 2 and called it the AIDS suit
12:04 That robot laughter is perfect tbh. For humans, laughter is a instinctual response to a distressingly unexpected event turning out to be fine; that's why we like laughing, it calms us down from our distressed state. Correspondingly, the robot laughter sounds like the robotic equivalent: the robot recalibrating itself from an error state.
I've watched many videos about German half-life, but this is the first time i've ever seen the dying guard. And JEEZ that actually gave me shivers it was such a good voice line! It sounds like a side character dying in a war movie in the English version, but that German line was incredibly realistic. First video I've watched of you, I'll binge your vids now. And yes please do more videos ! I'd love to see the extensions and hl2!
German Peter: Starts out in german
Me a german: Oh peter please no
German Peter: Just Kidding!
Me a german: Oh thank god.
der Name GermanPeter hittet ganz anders wenn er nur deutsch sprechen würde
mit dem Namen und rein deutschsprachiger zielgruppe hätte ich so meine bedenken hahaha
Therapist: bavarian gordon does not exist, he cant harm you
Germanpeter thumbnail:
''Schieße, this damn tenticle is a pain, doesn't even let me finish my word document.''
mein gott, dieses video bringt so viele erinnerungen zurück als ich 10 war und das erste mal Half-Life Source gespielt habe. Gerne noch zu Blueshift und OpFor
Blue Shift and Opposing Force are in production ;)
@@GermanPeter Decay maybe, or asking too much? :D
0:14 you got me
I got recommended this video by my RUclips Feed and found this channel for the first time because of it.
I actually got fooled at the start by you speaking german, because I thought, as a german myself, "this is probably a german channel that uses subtitles a lot", but alas, you didn't.
I played a bit of the german version of Half-Life 1 (Only the first two chapters tbh), and in a way, I thought it was very charming how the voice actors are in the german version. Especially that "Warum tragen wir eigentlich alle diese lächerlichen Krawatten?" is a line that actually sounds way better than the original. It adds this... idk, this personality to the character.
And Barney/Security Guards having LOADS of personality after the Incident made me proud to be german kinda.
"Ach da ISSER ja endlich" radiates so much love and perfectly capsules conversations you would have in that time. "Ja, da hatta' mal das hingekriegt, Da willse mich wohl verarschen", to hear this type of stuff in a german dub is gold.
Also all the references to the german government and work ethic made me laugh a lot haha
Deutsche Bahn Train Announcer
Such a well edited and visually appealing video, gleich mal abonniert!
Thank you!
The robots are a little silly but after hearing their voices I can't help but I kinda like them, especially the robotic laughter.
I knew all of this except that friendlies sit down when their health reaches 0. And can still be interacted with. That's a significant code overhaul to make that happen.
I actually wanted to learn German in highschool, because during the last weeks of junior high, they drove us over to the high school and they told us we could go onto skyward and request for classes we wanted, and I selected a lot of 3D art classes (because I had an Engineering class that I loved) and requested for German and French, but unfortunately I didn’t get assigned
Ah yes, the good old time where you needed a "blood patch" to enjoy german half-life to it fullest...
Oh Peter, a good idea would be to cover the National and German Release of Wolfenstein. Its so censored that we literally have two different versions made of the same game!
Seeing half life in German, makes me want to go through my favourite games in different languages as a reason to replay.
German Barney is a real one.
If I may suggest a series to review the German quirks of, what about Command & Conquer? The whole series up to Red Alert 3 has had German censorship. Infantry in Tib Dawn and Red Alert had the blood in their death animations turned to an oily black, their death screams were made robotic and the sound of getting run over was replaced by the sound of a soda can being crushed.
Tiberium Wars even replaced the Nod Fanatics with bombs-on-wheels (same change as the GLA Fanatics in Generals) and the nuclear missiles were renamed "Aurora Bombs" but there was an X-rated "Kane Edition" that restored those to the original portrayals.
I've never seen anyone cover the censorship in Half Life 2 so I'd love to see it!
Would love to see more! Opposing force sounds especially interesting.
It's in the works!
Great video as always Mr peter, those low pitched F R E E M A N voice really intrigued me.
I imagine the censorship was grating when the rest of the world got the proper uncensored version (Australian here, I feel your pain) but there's something oddly charming about the robot grunts IMO.
Luckily you could get uncensored versions from Austria or Switzerland where they also speak German. Those were still legal to buy but a bit more expensive. Or you could get a "bloodpatch" for most games.
The voice doesn't change even in the original game when the military takes over. It was a touch Black Mesa devs added.
Dude working as the announcer totally got locked in his office and just decided he might as well keep working
It would be worth mentioning that all half life games are available uncut nowadays for the german market. Times are changing in the video game censorship situation here and a lot of games that have been censored or even not allowed to be sold in the past are now available in the original version, which is very nice. Some Examples are: Max Payne 1, Wolfenstein Franchise, Heretic, Star Wars Dark Forces, Hitman 1, Doom 3 Resurrection of Evil, Quake and many more.
Holy cow!
Mentioning Momo by michael ende, i did NOT made THAT connection!
Thank you for pointing this out!!
The idea that all Barneys are a hivemind is my personal headcanon now.
I've always liked the robot grunts and I still hope somebody will remake them as a mod for Black Mesa. :)
I'd heard a couple tidbits about german censorship, but I really liked the comprehensive look at it! I'd love to see the expansions and Half-Life 2 covered like this :D
I'd love to see videos about the rest of the series!
I can relate to the german scientist voice actor, because I'm (not currently though) doing Half-Life: Finnish mod, where I voice act the scientists, and I suck at the screaming parts too. It clearly sounds that I'm acting (badly).
Now, you could also lean into the cheesiness and do that same weird whimpering and moaning! Or you just start cussing and go "PERKELE" or something. That'd be hilarious! I think going the parody route would fit the game a lot and especially the fact you're not a professional voice actor. It's what I'd do, anyway!
To be fair its hard to scream voice act in a home/apartment setting without your neighbours calling the police because they think youre being murdered
9:14 I didn't know I needed German Barney saying "Hey Gordon" in my life till today.
I hear they got the same VA for Gordon.
Did they put some Rammstein on the sound track? That alone would be worth buying this version.
I'd love to have the first Half-life game but the entire soundtrack is just replaced by Rammstein music.
ooh, this is interesting. i always knew german censorship is too much and i also heard that soldiers are robots and so on, but i didnt expect it wouldve broken some stuff like no gore or gears! hahah.
also, teen version on steam is based on german version. and it looks like the widespread pirated version in korea was based on teen version back then. so although im not even older than HL, through browsing on the internet i could hear a bit about the pirated version and the german version before.
and voices are really interesting, especially about barney's characteristics that is similar to HL2, changing characteristic might be controversial, but personally i like this.
great video, and you just gained a sub.
You channel logo is too dang happy, please I cant take it anymore lol
Id love to see more The Quirks of German Blank videos
"The announcer was just following orders"
Oh boy
The Nihilanth’s German voice is FANTASTIC.
Really interesting video, love how well the Barney and kleiner interrupting each other works. Funny how little bugs like that can add to a game's charm. Just think of rocket jumping...
FREEMAN - I don't want to be disturbed right now.
I really love that interaction because of that. Like they already hated each other as coworkers before the disaster, but having to spend the past days together just made it worse.
It's a shame we didn't get a Czech version of Half Life too.
I'm sure there's a distasteful joke about the Czech version being conscripted into the German half-life ...
In the Czech version everyone would start cussing like crazy after the cascade, hell even before that
11:16 you'd think robots would just use internal communication devices instead of using radios lmao
Half-Life actually seems like the perfect game to be ported to Germany. The game is the sci-fi equivalent of Forklift Driver Klaus
The H.I.V. Suit actually killed me.
I am dead.
This is the best thing I’ve ever seen
Are those chapter cards genuine German or a pseudo German using purely English root words?
Pseudo german, Chapter 1, "das Voicenakten" is a play on Voice Acting which is "synchronsprechen" in german.
Chapter 2, "Das Censorenshippen", which is censorship, the actual word is "Die Zensierung" and Chapter 3, "Die Conkenlusion" is Conclusion, which is "Die Conclusion (Yeah, its spelt like that in german too)" in german.
@@Meme_Man_ Thank you.
17:09 Enemies and friendly NPCs absolutely flinch when shot, with different animations playing depending on the body part that's shot. I don't know what you're talking about here.
I literally showed several examples in the video of enemies not flinching at all when being shot, especially when attacking themselves. I don't know what you want me to say, I provided evidence of my claims right there.
@@GermanPeter The issue is you're expecting a flinch after every shot like it's supposed to have Doom rules and misinforming people by saying they don't flinch which isn't true. Burying the game for no reason when there is an advanced flinching system present already is the issue. Hell, there is even a way to stunlock an enemy by timing your shots, making them a joke.
I didn't say the German version doesn't have flinching but the original version does, I meant that there is not enough flinching in the first place. It's fine if enemies bleed, but without that, you can't know if you're even hitting them. I don't have to make anything up there, I legit had no idea if I was even dealing any damage at times, especially against the Alien Grunts, the Gonarch and the Nihilanth. Heck, I never even noticed anything of the sort in the first place, even after having played through the game three times now, so what does that tell you? This is just bad game design. Cool that it has region-based flinching or whatever, but it can't carry the game through not having any blood effects. Either you have no blood but enemies flinch more, like in Doom, or you leave the blood in. Not both.
@@GermanPeter "Unlike in games like Doom, enemies in Half-life don't really flinch when being hit by an attack" This is exactly what you said and it's false, plain and simple. Again, what you're doing here is trying to apply Doom rules to HL for whatever reason. It works different in HL, shoot an enemy and they will flinch, wait a second and shoot again and they will flinch yet again.
Here's an example: You know the alien grunts you're having problems with? Shoot them with a powerful weapon, like a shotgun, and watch them flinch, wait half a second and shoot them again. Before they can even lift their hands fully to attack, you'll force them to a stunlock that'll flinch them over and over. Just a simple trick that you didn't know and called the game out for no reason because of it.
And that whole "the only way to know whether you're dealing damage or not" thing is also exaggerated, I mean even if the censored version lacks blood, don't you hear their very specific pain grunts?
Half-Life has plenty of flinching and other, different gameplay elements. In this case you needed to play it more than three times (or do a single, thorough run paying attention) to understand the ins and outs of its gameplay, before talking about a certain aspect in a video.
I said "don't really flinch". Not that they NEVER do, just that it's not noticeable most of the time. And no, you can't always hear their pain grunts either. Not that that'd even fix anything, because what if your audio is turned off?
Dude, the whole game is poorly designed in this aspect. You're telling me I have to play it three times to "understand the ins and outs" when I could tell from my first play session that something was wrong? Yeah, no. This censorship was lame, uninspired, and broke the gameplay. Valve messed up, end of story.
L4D2 was censored in Germany and Australia, and it was censored in a way that really negatively impacted the gameplay experience
Germany: we are free country
Also Germany: every game must be censored
So even in USA (where there is not content censorship), if you set the language to German, you will have human military grunts speaking with robot voices. I was curious if maybe they recorded human grunt voices for Austria..
By release, both versions, the german cut version and the international uncut version were available in austrian stores, there was no specific austrian release. It mostly depended where the stores had its warehouse. Woolworth for example had its distribution hub in Germany and so it delivered the german cut version to its austrian stores. But the majority of the stores simply sold the english version. Austrians had to decide between german and blood.
I'd be curious to see if they changed the black ops assassin's alternate death animation. While they usually just fall flat on their backs when killed, they will occasionally have a longer death animation where they try to take of their mask, but only succeed in pushing up the visor before dying, thus letting you see their human faces.
So I'm from Austria and I bought Half life from steam. Obviously it was in German. But there were still gibs, blood, and The Original HECU Soldiers. But theyr voice was still the robot one. I bought OP4 off of Steam but this version WAS CENSORED with no blood no gibs and all the dissappearing into nothing after getting killed. But all the HECU were still human so my copy of Half life wasn't censored but OP4 was WHY?!?
The one on steam seems to not depend on region but on the language you choose as the English version is fine to play in Germany now
Immortal "dying" Barney is just so tired and takes a nap after talking to Gordon
5:26 Einstein speaking his native tongue
as a german I thankfully never played the censored version of any game because I always played the release of the country of origin (usually the US)
The german version still has some really quotable lines, "Blutverlust.... festgestellt" "Was riecht hier so?" "Mann, hast du diesen Schuss gesehen?!" x3 I never had the german version myself but saw a good friend of mine playing it a lot before i gifted him the UK version for his birthday.
2:34 "It sure AIDs you."
The Barney Hive mind is something I want to see drawn because the concept is hilarious
The Nihalanth is actually much easier to understand in German than in English, und meine Deustch ist nicht sehr gut.
7:00 - ok that was creepy af!
You know, the Barney hive-mind theory actually makes a lot of sense. I’m putting that in my head canon.
12:05 that dialogue cutting off is in the english version too.
Nope, I checked. He finishes his sentence just barely before the other one starts talking.
German Barney: aw fuck, can't believe you've done this!
Wonderful video, can't wait for your channel to get far more attention
19:08 I suppose it’s like the battle droids in Star Wars where they’re completely robotic, but still use computers and external communication gear that are also used by organic beings
du hörst dich im deutschen genau so an wie im englischen
Yea
The one where he says “freeman does not need to know any of this” is better with the cut off, it’s like he knows hat he’s about to say and just interrupted it.
I am here to request the Quirks of German Half-Life 2, never seen the German version of that game talked about and I am super interested
Yeah, when people talk German versions of Source games it's always L4D2 or Counter Strike or TF2
FRREEEEMUN
Those robot voices giving me a little bit of "Tomb of the Cybermen"
Would love to find out what kind of vocoder that is
I absolutely want to see more of this. Anything to further expand my knowledge-base of Half-Life trivia beyond all reasonable standards
hello my name is Brian Willings and i got a Ph D. in Half-Life Meta-Lore.
the low pitched freeman noise sounds like either a pitched down normal voice line file or a further pitched down version of an opposing force line
2:14 the *HIV* suit omg
The scientist cutting the other off before the test chamber actually fits though.
Amazing Peter, great content as always!
No wonder German Barney sounds more happy once the resonance cascade hits; He has an excuse to quit his boring job!
9:22
Maybe Gordon started work at Black Mesa as a security guard while working on his PhD in theoretical physics and the events of HL1 are just Gordons first day actually working in hazardous materials, might explain why he was late as he would have probably had a change in schedule which could mess anyone up when it comes to sleep cycles