OXCGN’s Left 4 Dead 2 Interview: “We want to fix that!”

by Aaron Bertinetti.

© 2009 Aaron Bertinetti.

During E3 2009, the overwhelming majority of gamers and press were shocked by Valve’s announcement of Left 4 Dead 2 so soon after the multiplayer hit of last year. Thankfully I’d fortuitously booked some time with Valve prior to E3 2009, after a bet with a mate over a case of beer.

Not only did I win a case a beer, but I also got some time to catch up with Valve behind the scenes to play some Left 4 Dead 2 in a private room (with Peter Molyneux no less!) and have a wide ranging chat about the rapidly developed sequel.

In part 1 of my two part interview with Chet “Mr. Awesome” Faliszek, Writer on Left 4 Dead and Left 4 Dead 2, we talk about why Valve is bringing a sequel so soon after the first and what new features convinced the team that they could outdo last year’s hit just a year later and in spite of the inevitable complaints from parts of the community.

We also cover a bucket load of new features and upgrades coming in the sequel and how Valve just wants to KISS… keep it simple, stupid!

Read on and look out for a revealing and hint heavy Part 2 in two days.

Left 4 Dead 2: Valve’s Zombies killer returns with a vengeance.

Part 1 – “We want to fix that!”

OXCGN: Straight off, can you tell me why people should be interested in a sequel that’s coming a year after the first one?

Chet Faliszek: If they love the first game it’s just us doing more of that and even better… and just a ton more.  One of the things is that we play a lot of Left 4 Dead ourselves and we see things like corner stacking, or other stupid gameplay, and we want to fix that!

One of our mantras is the best way to play should be the funnest way to play.

OXCGN: Agreed.

Chet Faliszek: Right, so we’re making those kind of changes. It’s also, we’re talking about marrying the idea of storytelling in a multiplayer game. We’re taking it to the next level in this one. We meet these four just as the infection’s starting in Savannah and we go all the way through to New Orleans with them. And we know what’s going on with them right.

The other four are a little bit more disconnected and here they’re a little bit more connected. And we have that story going through everything.

We’ve got new creatures that you can play. There are five campaigns. You can play versus, co-op, survival and a whole new gameplay mode right out of the gate.

OXCGN: Do we know what that gameplay mode is yet?

Chet Faliszek: Ah… We’re not talking about that yet.

OXCGN: Okay…

Chet Faliszek: We’ve got it ready but we’re not talking about it. [Ed. Playing as the Director?]

We’ve got a chainsaw, we’ve got melee weapons, we’ve got all kinds of cool stuff. We’ve got tons of new weapons. New items like the incendiary ammo. You know there’s a ton of stuff. The Director can make it have storms come!

[Laughs]

OXCGN: Yeah the Director is amazing. Can you talk a little bit about the advances you’ve made with that, in terms of weather, etc?

Chet Faliszek: So like when we first said that the Director can control weather and it rains and it was like “oh yeah it rains, we played in rain in the last one”. But it’s these storms that come up that are claustrophobic and blinding and you’re left with just no idea what’s going on, it’s like being in the cornfields of Blood Harvest right, where it’s just this horribly scary event. You know they’re coming so you’re running to try and find a place to go hide to get ready for them.

We’ve got campaigns where it actually changes the map layout, [pointing to onscreen gameplay] so the next map in this campaign we go into a cemetery, which is classic New Orleans above ground cemetery, and it actually reroutes depending on how you’re doing.

It’s just we’re smarter about how we’re spawning the infected and which infected is deciding to spawn against you to kinda counter your play style. It’s a whole new level of that kind of interaction you already love taken further.

You know one of the things that we’re really aware of is that when you’re talking sequels, the first instinct is to complicate things.

OXCGN: And here you’re keeping it simple.

Chet Faliszek: Yeah, we didn’t really want to do that with Left 4 Dead. Because Left 4 Dead is all about not complicating it. Your friends can jump in, that’s never played before, sit next to you on the couch, split screen and just start playing. We wanted to keep that.

OXCGN: We’re a big fan of the fact that you’ve kept the split screen, because in this day and age it just doesn’t really turn up in many multiplayer games anymore. It’s all about Live.

Chet Faliszek: Yeah and so we wanted to have that you jump in and you go. And on top of that we just wanted to make it cooler for all those people who were playing that.

OXCGN: Cool. What brought on the melee weapons and incendiary ammo? Is there a mechanical reason behind that?

Chet Faliszek: Well first of all to release a zombie game without a chainsaw, you know we apologise…

[Laughs]

Chet Faliszek: …we fixed that right away.

The melee was something we always just talked about. I mean we talk about horror films, zombie films, zombie games, and Left 4 Dead all the time at work. So the team that got Left 4 Dead out the door was a group that had worked together at that point for, the whole team, like nine months and it had previously been worked on by other people. I worked on it for longer than that, but the core team was forty five people for nine months.

We shipped it and we all came back after a little break  and said “lets make more, lets do more, this is what I want to do, this is what I want to fix, this is my idea” and so we put it all up on the whiteboard and we realised that we all had this shared vision of this game we wanted to make and so this is what Left 4 Dead 2 is gonna be.

Fin.

Come back tomorrow for the sequel, Part 2 of our Left 4 Dead 2 Interview, where we answer the questions for the lovers, the haters and the undecided zombie killers out there. Special thanks to Chet Faliszek, Doug Lombardi and Katie Engel at Valve for their generous time during a crazy E3 2009.

© 2009 Aaron Bertinetti.

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