Telltale's The Walking Dead Could Have Been a Left 4 Dead Spin-Off

Marking the tenth anniversary of Telltale Games' The Walking Dead, publisher Skybound Games released a mini-documentary showing several behind-the-scenes moments and uncovering prototype footage of the game's initial development.

One of the most curious revelations the documentary provides is that The Walking Dead was initially conceived as a spin-off of the Valve's Left 4 Dead series. The game's season design and direction lead Jake Rodkin shared that the game could have become an absolutely different zombie experience, although it seems that the studio is certainly happy that the things eventually ended up another way.

"I'm really glad that didn't work out," said the creator of The Walking Dead series Robert Kirkman. Rodkin added that thematically the game turned out to be much closer to what The Walking Dead is about than Left 4 Dead or other zombie series. "It ended up being a really good fit," he said.

Although the devs didn't reveal the reasons for changing the concept, they disclosed another interesting piece of the studio's original plans for the game. The Walking Dead season design and direction lead Sean Vanaman shared that initially, the studio wanted to tell the story of a young man who was raising his sister.

However, the devs decided that building a character history based on already pre-existing history was rather tough, so they settled on building the relationships from scratch.

We highly recommend watching the full documentary to check out an early art test prototype as well as hear the stories and thoughts from The Walking Dead creators. You can find the documentary here.

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