No Disappearing Heads

No Disappearing Heads

Shoot someone in the head in Night City and their entire skull can vanish in a puff of red. Not a wound, not a mess - the whole head, simply gone.

It breaks the moment. A pistol round should leave something behind.

This mod stops that. Heads still take terrible damage from gunfire, they still come apart, they just stay attached.

What changes

• []Gunfire no longer removes heads entirely[/]

  []Headshots leave a partially destroyed head instead[/]

  []Arms, legs and torsos are completely untouched[/]

  []Melee is completely untouched - katanas and mantis blades still take heads clean off[/]

  []Grenades and explosives are completely untouched[/]

  How it works

  The game already knows how to damage a head in more than one way. It has a setting for "take the whole head off" and a separate setting for "blow a hole in the head" - the second one is what the Relic mantis blade finishers use.

  Vanilla picks the first option for most gunshots. This mod watches for that decision and quietly swaps it to the second one.

  That's the entire mod. It changes one value, at one place, at the moment the game decides what a head should look like. It checks two things first: was this a head, and was this gunfire? If either answer is no, it does nothing at all and vanilla behaviour continues untouched.

  Nothing about the kill itself changes. Damage, deaths, perks, quest triggers and enemy reactions all work exactly as they always did. Only the visual result is different.

  Requirements

  • []redscript[/]

    That's it. No Cyber Engine Tweaks, no TweakXL, no ArchiveXL, no new files added to the game.

    Installation

    Unzip into your Cyberpunk 2077 folder. You should end up with:

    Cyberpunk 2077/r6/scripts/NoExplodingHeads/NoExplodingHeads.reds

    Vortex and Mod Organizer 2 can install the archive directly.

    To uninstall, delete the r6/scripts/NoExplodingHeads folder. Nothing is left behind and saves are unaffected.

    Conflicts

    • []Other gore mods that use redscript. Any mod that rewrites the same dismemberment function will fight with this one, and only one of them will win. Reduce Gore is the main example - it switches dismemberment off wholesale, so there is no reason to run both.[/]

      []Dismemberment chance mods. These are fine. Mods like Higher Chance Dismemberment change how often limbs come off, not what a head looks like afterwards. They work alongside this without issue.[/]

      []Gore texture and visual effect mods. Fine. This mod changes no textures, meshes or effects.[/]

      []Weapon and damage mods. Fine. This mod never touches damage.[/]

      Known limitations

      • []The sound effect is chosen by the game before this mod runs, so you may still hear the full head-removal sound over a head that stayed on. It is a small thing and most people never notice it.[/]

        []Not every character model in the game has been checked. The wound this mod switches to is one the base game already uses, so it should be present everywhere, but if you find an enemy type that looks wrong please say so in the comments and include what they were.[/]

        Configuration

        There is no settings menu. Open the .reds file in any text editor and you will find a small number of plain-English switches at the top.

        To turn the mod off without uninstalling it, change NEH_Enabled to return false.

        To turn on logging while troubleshooting, change NEH_Verbose to return true.