According to Chet Faliszek, a former valve writer, Gabe Newell, valve’s president and co-founder, didn’t want to include zombies for Left 4 Dead.
Faliszek recently participated in an interview on the YouTube channel Kiwi Talkz, where he talked about a variety of topics, including his work on The Anarcrusis and more content outside the Portal game . Most importantly, the network’s host, Reece Reilly, asked Faliszek about his work on Left 4 Dead, especially why zombie stories often come up in different projects, and why there is almost no original content anymore.
Gabe Newell wasn’t thinking about zombies in Left 4 Dead
“When I went to dinner with Gabe Newell at the time, he was saying to me ‘if you look at the zombie movies, The Night of the Living Dead is about racism, Dawn of my Dead is about consumerism,'” Faliszek said. “What’s your game going to be about?” asked Newell as he tried to understand the basic concepts of what Left 4 Dead might be.
“I’m in favor of a game to be played together, it’s real and the game will go forward together,” Faliszek said. “We started talking more and more about the plot and content of the game, and at one point I remember Newell saying ‘let’s not make zombies then, zombies are just unattractive’. Of course, in those years, The Walking Dead series and all this zombie content didn’t exist, which is why the idea of zombies was so unpopular, because it was unknown.”
Faliszek explained how, in his youth, he breathlessly finished classic horror films, watching those horror elements in some films without realizing that they were a bit unpleasant, so he decided to make the characters in the game more conscious about the environment they were in.
“So I said, “Why don’t we just take the characters and the real world and make them feel like they’re actually in a zombie movie in the game. That’s when Zoe and Levis reacted to it by saying, “Oh, my God, it’s like in these movies.”
In fact, given that the main reason everyone is playing Left 4 Dead right now is because they’re advancing and fighting together against the zombie herd and the epidemic, it’s beyond perfect that no one listened to Newell at the time.
