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Left 4 Dead 2 Interview
We sit down with Valve's story writer and all round Mr Awesome, Chet Faliszek. Today's order of business is zombies!
Written by Andy Griffiths, 29 October 2009
GamerZines: Left 4 Dead seems a much larger all round experience this time around. How have you enhanced the story aspects of it?
Chet Faliszek: One of the things in the original Left 4 Dead was that every place you fought was essentially in the same state - battle hardened and dug in. We wanted to tell the story of how it evolved and so we see Savannah and the city streets are empty. It's a town deserted but not a town fighting the zombie apocalypse. As you start out obviously the zombie Apocalypse hit it, but it has a very different feel. As you go through you'll see different areas, for instance in the swamp there's a little village and their like "Everyone get out! We're taking care of ourselves!" By the time you get to New Orleans you're in a world where the military has completely taken over and they are being really harsh about the safety of smaller groups because they have much larger groups to take care of. The story evolves as you progress and the survivors continually talk about what's going on. It's funny because in the demo some people have already started to catch up with some of the other nuggets of information out there.
GZ: Expectations are a lot higher this time around due to a much bigger audience than before. How have you guys responded to that?
PCGZine Issue 37
For our latest Left 4 Dead coverage, click here to download PCGZine Issue 37 for free.CF: The game was in development for three years, but really nine months at Valve. Before that it was Turtle Rock, who are part of Valve now. We look at Left 4 Dead 2 as the game made by people that love Left 4 Dead. We didn't want to make it overly complicated, where it's not going to work right. The first thing you can do with sequels is make them complicated and not make it what you love about the first game, because you can't make it that simple. Left 4 Dead is really a throwback to the Doom days, so we wanted to keep that simplicity. We want it to be the game of choice when your friend comes over and you both want to play split screen. But we wanted to add more complexity for players who knew the game and wanted the more advanced stuff. We had that in Left 4 Dead 1, with the killing of the witch and a total noob is not going to know how to do that. But it doesn't actually hurt them not to know, because there's other way they can deal with her. Although if you do know about that sort of stuff it can enhance your experience.
GZ: You've added new campaigns and more of them. Has this impacted the quality of the content?
CF: Everyone in the team knows how to make the content. Turtle Rock originally had one level designer and when we came in we added five more to the team. We started with a much bigger team right from the get go. All of whom really understood the game well and had an idea of what they wanted to do with it. You really see that coming through because the levels are actually much bigger. It's weird because the demo is actually the smallest part of the game and we struggled with what to give players with the demo. We wanted to show a crescendo that happens and we thought that level was a good showcase. The maps are larger but they are also more complex and there's more in the world you are dealing with. Playing in the swamp is entirely different to playing the Parish or playing Dark Carnival. We wanted to make sure each of them was distinct with the uncommon common and different sets of weapons. We wanted to make sure the swamp is all about horizontal combat because we don't have any vertical places, whereas the Parish is all about vertical combat with tight corners and small interiors. Not just those simple changes but the things you have to do in the world and the way you interact with them is really different with each campaign.
GZ: How tempting is it to throw in as many zombie cliches as possible?
CF: It's always a balancing act when you do that. We have a cricket bat which not many people got, so I guess they haven't seen that movie. We are big fans of the Zombie genre, so it's fun to be able to do things like that. One of the highlights for me was calling Fangoria, because we wanted to do a contest with them and them knowing about us and being excited. A magazine which I used to read when I was a teenager excited about horror and now I'm working with them to put us in the magazine.
Left 4 Dead coverage available in PCGZine Issue 37 - click here to download it for free!
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