Have you ever wondered why the Dreamcast HD Houndeye looked so fucked up? It would appear that whoever was remastering the models had chosen the wrong reference mesh and went with its design. Said reference mesh being the Alpha version of the Houndeye. Now that being said, these textures were never the intended look and the model how we got it is the intended look, but it is noticeable that the alpha texture fit this version of the Houndeye much more. It also has the weird fins on the top that the Alpha Houndeye also had. This would greatly play into @Suparsonik's theory that a part of the Dreamcast's HD pack was actually internally done by Captivation Digital Laboratories, whom probably didn't know much about Half-Life at this point compared to ol' Gearbox Software. But that's just speculation!
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About over a decade ago, 1PlayerD and myself once confused the Dreamcast Houndeye as the Alpha Houndeye with the retail textures slapped onto it. I still to this day see this confusion and see people try to make a beta mod with the Dreamcast Houndeye instead of the Alpha one (which we have both a compiled version and the raw sources to.) Funny how these things work, ain't it.
I honestly prefer the dreamcast designs compared to the gearbox made "HD" designs, houndeye included.
Parts of it being done by Captivation Digital Laboratories would make so much sense, especially since there are a lot of models that just don't fit the style of the way Gearbox made their previous models, like the player character, holo, islave, bullsquid, etc.
There's another theory that it's just iteration, but I really only see that with the scientist zombie, which clearly was iterated (and downgraded) upon. The DC zombie is different from the final HD one, which shows THAT at least was, but again, even the DC zombie was not made in the same way as the other models mentioned in the previous post.
P.S. The final HD zombie sucks. It's just a shitty stripped down version of the PS2 zombie. The DC zombie looked so much better amongst all the other HD content, and made more sense, since it's actually based on the HD scientist, not the PS2 scientist.