Left 4 Dead Could Have Been Not a Zombie Game At All

Valve's co-op first-person zombie shooter Left 4 Dead might have not had any zombies in it, ex-Valve writer Chet Faliszek revealed in an interview for the Kiwi Talkz podcast. According to the writer, in the early stages of the game's development, Valve's head Gabe Newell tried to dissuade developers from the idea to have ​​​​a zombie apocalypse as a setting.

Faliszek shared that Newell was afraid that the game would not be taken seriously. Although, in the early 2000s, when no big hit dramas like The Walking Dead were out yet, and the zombie horror genre was just starting to return to fashion in films and video games and wasn't overused, Newell still believed that this kind of setting would not the right choice.

"At the time, once I went to dinner with Gabe and he was like 'if you look at zombie movies, Night Of The Living Dead is about racism, Dawn Of The Dead is about consumerism'," Faliszek said. Newell then asked the devs what their game was going to be about.

"And I'm like well it's about working together, it's the game itself, it's a reflection of the game," the writer continued. "We'd kind of get pushed more and more because I remember [Newell] said 'well let's not do zombies, zombies are just cheesy.'"

Faliszek agreed that at that time, zombie films were campy as they never had well-crafted scripts and performances until the arrival of The Walking Dead series. Although, he still loved that genre as he grew up watching old zombie movies.

So, to convince Newell, the creators came up with a decision to make the characters aware of the environment they were in, adding references to films about the living dead to the game, but trying to maintain a serious tone, without jokes that break the fourth wall.

"So I was just like why don’t we just take the characters and the world, and make some of the characters in the world aware that they’re in a zombie movie essentially. Zoe and Lewis understand that like 'oh my god this is the thing from movies,' but they play it seriously," Faliszek said.

Elsewhere in the interview, Faliszek also touched upon memories of Valve's first visit, spoke about titles he worked on in the past, including Portal 2 and Half-Life, and talked about Anacrusis, the game which is currently in development at Stray Bombay, the studio founded by the Faliszek and game designer and an ex-Riot Games employee Kimberly Voll. The game was released in early access in January 2022.

You can find the full interview with Chet Faliszek here. Also, don't forget to join our new Reddit page, our new Telegram channel, follow us on Instagram and Twitter, where we are sharing breakdowns, the latest news, awesome artworks, and more.