Armored Headcrab

Armored Headcrab
General information
Faction	Xen wildlife
Type	Durable Headcrab variant
Game information
Entity	npc_headcrab_armored

 

The Armored Headcrab is a Headcrab variation introduced in Half-Life: Alyx that features a bullet-proof shell across its top. It first appears in the chapter The Quarantine Zone.

Overview

The Armored Headcrab appears and behaves largely identically to the normal Headcrab apart from its hard green shell with protruding red spikes on its back and on the joints of its front legs that renders it impervious to all attacks except those to its underside or unarmored parts of its body. Like all Headcrab variants, the Armored Headcrab can latch onto the skulls of victims, creating Zombies that are immune to headshots. Once an Armored Headcrab Zombie is killed, the Armored Headcrab will detach and begin searching for a new host body. To kill an Armored Headcrab, one must wait for it to lift its front body before pouncing, exposing a glowing heart in its mouth which spontaneously explodes upon being shot, tearing the Headcrab's body into pieces. An alternative way to kill one is to aim for the sides of its body that lack the protective armor. This method will often require more ammunition, but will leave the Headcrab intact, with a non-glowing and inexplosive heart.

It is unclear how Armored Headcrabs are formed. However, armor-like growths are seen developing in areas overrun by Xen infestation. Loose armor shells scattered around these growths are also a common sight which Alyx will comment on with curiosity if picked up. One Armored Headcrab is seen initially hiding inside its shell by tucking its legs in, blending in with other nearby empty shells.

Behind the scenes

Valve spent a great deal of time ensuring the player properly learned how to handle Armored Headcrabs as they found invulnerability was an especially difficult feature to teach. The first encounter with this Headcrab variant was deliberately designed so that the player was not under the stress of being attacked, a group being confined inside a wire fence. The developers placed Armored Headcrabs at eye level facing the player exposing their weak spot which is visually apparent by being bright and pulsing. The unique death effect of exploding upon targeting this weak spot is meant to signify to the player that they did something special to kill this Headcrab as opposed to how regular Headcrabs have been fought up until this point. A second Headcrab placed behind the lock that the player must shoot to enter this caged area is meant to encourage the player to notice and shoot its weak point. Two additional Armored Heacrabs inside the cage are scripted to repeatedly attack invisible points on the wire fence, constantly demonstrating how they always expose their weak points before they leap and allowing the player to practice hitting the weak spot from behind the safety of the fence.

The developers still found that not all players would leave such natural, entwined training sequences with perfect understanding of the mechanics they're intended to learn, so if the instruction was absolutely critical, they would create a more bulletproof gate to ensure the player demonstrates proper understanding before proceeding onward. In the case of the Armored Headcrab, however, they found they could afford to let a few players through with less than perfect understanding as they were given enough of a chance to experiment to gain a sense of what was going on, and further encounters would solidify this knowledge. The developers added a custom response specific to Shotgun fire, which the player obtains not long after being introduced to the Armored Headcrabs, where the Headcrab flips over and wiggles for a brief period, clearly exposing its weak point. This was implemented to help reduce the resource loss that they witnessed occurring for players who were still struggling to understand the Armored Heacrab's mechanics after they acquired the new weapon.

A "Headcrab Cluster".

Xen fauna called a "Headcrab Cluster" in the game files is often seen growing near the armor-like growths mentioned above. The fragility of the Armored Headcrab combined with the bits of armor growth on their claws could suggest Armored Headcrabs are relatively young. Shells are often seen growing onto these clusters, the implication being that Armored Headcrabs are born into these shells which they eventually shed when old enough, thus explaining all the discarded shells seen by Alyx in the Headcrab-infested sewers (although this implication does not concur with the method of Headcrab birth seen being carried out by the Gonarch in the original Half-Life).

An early render of the Armored Headcrab model includes an unused version with pink crystalline growths on the Headcrab's skin, indicative of the visual design iterations the developers went through to better convey its armor to the player.

Gallery

• 

  Model render of early designs.

• 

  Armored Headcrab at Fairview Junction.

• 

  Exposing its glowing heart.

• 

  An Armored Headcrab among armor-like Xen growths.

• 

  More armor-like growths.

• 

  Ditto, with several empty armor shells.

• 

  An Armored Headcrab surprise attacks from a pile of shells.

• 

  Combine Worker zombified by an Armored Headcrab.

List of appearances

• Half-Life: Alyx