News
Left 4 Dead Cut Scene Free
8,000 Lines of Dialogue
by Coop
We love, love, love Left 4 Dead. Everyone in the office who has touched it is a fan, and November can't come soon enough for Valve and Turtle Rock's zombie massacre title. I expect to play it over and over again, and the developers expect the same. Because of this, Valve has announced that the game will not have any cut scenes other than a short opening, directed by the creators of the Team Fortress 2 videos, to introduce the story. That way, players will not need to sit through any videos the twentieth time through. That doesn't mean the game is short on plot - on the contrary, Left 4 Dead has nearly four times the dialogue of Half-Life 2. It is spoken by characters, scrawled on walls, and delivered in different, original ways. Valve's Chet Faliszek explained that "We [Valve] didn't want to have the game gummed up with a story line," Faliszek said. "We wanted to keep it really clean and tight. A zombie apocalypse."
Despite being low on cut scenes the atmosphere and little drips of plot that Valve drops into Half-Life 2 make it one of the most interesting tales in gaming. I expect a similar story in Left 4 Dead, and can't wait to see how they pull it off. "It's about killing zombies, not some fable on the reconstruction of humanity," Chet elaborated.
He also explained that all 8,000 lines wouldn't be heard the first play through, and are context-sensitive depending on different triggers. Maybe a player will only speak a line when the whole team is alive at a certain point? Maybe another player will only talk about her past when she is alone with one other survivor? The possibilities are endless, and I can't wait. The game comes out mid-November, so stay tuned to Gamervision for more Left 4 Dead news.
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Comments
will be interesting to hear how this all works out without cut scenes.
Zombie buddies!
Is it going to be reading books? I love reading books that I find scattered around. It feels like I'm getting to a deeper part of the game that most people omit. I used to get yelled at for slowing down my raid groups in WoW because I would stop and read the ancient texts that I found.
i know this game is going to give me nightmares, but you know, those really cool kinds
"But wait! I need to know why the Promenade Sentinel is so angry all the time!"
Damn it! I wish I had waited to get my hands on this while I was at PAX. Has there been any talk of a demo?
Ahhh, I can't freaking WAIT for this game. While I normally would be turned off at the thought that a storyline would "gum up" a game, this is Valve we're talking about, and I trust them to do it right.
@Sean: I doubt there is a demo prior to the game being released. Valve don't roll like that.