Left 4 Dead 2 Preview

VideoGamer.com: You’re calling the AI Director Version 2.0 in this game. What makes it 2.0?

CF: We have more special Infected. What that means is you have more choices you can make. The Charger’s great against people who are grouped up together. You want to bash them out of that. The Director’s going to be monitoring that, see that and it’s going to send the Charger at them versus the Hunter. Or if someone’s running ahead the Hunter does it. So it’s a subtle change. We could have made that change in L4D, but without the new special Infected the Director would still be pretty hamstrung in what it can do. Now it can do all these cool things. We also have weather events. It’s like, OK great; it’s raining, big deal. If you’ve ever lived in the south you know thunderstorms come up, especially in summer afternoons, that are just these gigantic downpours for just a few seconds and they go away. It’s just the humidity in the air. So you’re walking through a field and you’re like, oh, this is going to be an easy run, and all of a sudden you hear a clap of thunder and you know you’ve got seconds to find some place to hold up because once that thunderstorm hits, it’s claustrophobic rain. It’s like if you played Blood Harvest in the corn field. You can’t see your guys, there’s no glow and all that. That’s how the thunderstorms hit.

VideoGamer.com: You talked about personally wanting to have a better story. What can you tell me about it?

CF: We start in Savannah and we get to New Orleans. If you’re trying to get out of the Savannah area they would send you to Atlanta, but Atlanta’s already fallen, because the way viruses or sicknesses spread, is really through large populated areas because of how travel works. You start in a world where the infection hasn’t hit. It’s not like in L4D, where you have this city, or even like New Orleans, which is dug in and you’re making your final stand. This is a city that’s just like, hey let’s get on the bus, we’re evacuating. Our CDC/FEMA guys have got their signs out saying wash your hands, you’ll be OK. So the world’s changing as you go. You go from that to this, where the military is actually saying they assign people groups, and you have to go through the fence system to prove that you can walk and you’re not sick. If you’re sick, get the hell out. Whereas at the beginning you’re like, we all love each other. As you go across the south you’re actually going to be in different sections and see how people reacted to it and what choices they’ve made about it. We’re going to talk about the world there.

The characters also have an arc. They meet the minute you start the game. They’ve met for the first time, not like L4D where they’d known each other for a brief period of time. At the same time that you see the Infected, they see the Infected. As you progress across the campaigns you’ll see them change among themselves. One of the things people liked in L4D was the interaction between the characters. We had some of that, but we have even more of that now. We’re still not going to have big cutscenes. We’re still for the guys who don’t care. They just want to jump in and play and they want to play in any order they want. We’re still going to support that. We’re still going to make that happen.

VideoGamer.com: But the dialogue will be there for people who are looking for it?

CF: Yeah. We always wanted to have variation. So we had depth with things that were rare and would only happen every so often. Well now we have that as well as having variation based on which campaign you’re playing as they progress together.

VideoGamer.com: Describe to me the demo on show here at E3.

CF: We have five campaigns. You’re playing the fifth campaign, the first two maps. You start along the Mississippi River and you see the bridge. All you know is the military is operating by this bridge, getting people out on army cruise ships, out onto the Gulf of Mexico. You get there; the river’s been blocked because there’s been so much craziness going on. The military has been active in New Orleans, and they’ve taken an active aggressive role in protecting people. You’ll see that in some of the later maps. But right there when you’re landing at the water, you know you’ve got to get to the bridge and there’s the coach. Unfortunately it’s on the wrong side of the river.

VideoGamer.com: Will L4D2 be heavily supported after release?

CF: Yeah. In fact L4D, we still aren’t done with it. We still have updates coming. We’re going to announce some stuff. Our focus always is on what we’re putting in the box, put as much as we can in the box. Let’s not worry about: let’s save that and not put that in the game. No, let’s put that in. And with the five campaigns, all of them out of the box, playable Versus, co-op, Survival and the new mode, there’s just a ton of content in there.

VideoGamer.com: L4D3 for 2010? It seems like an annual franchise like Madden!

CF: We do it once in a year and everyone’s like, oh my god! Let’s do this one. Let’s worry about this and then we’ll see.

VideoGamer.com: We’re a multiplatform website. Was there ever any thought about doing a PS3 version? Did it even cross anyone’s mind?

CF: If it crossed someone’s mind it wasn’t the focus. The focus was 360 and PC. A) it’s what we develop on. B) it’s the platform we think lends itself to the interaction of our game the best. Microsoft didn’t know about L4D at first. Then they saw it last year and they just started coming to our offices to play. I think it had little to do with actual work, they just wanted to play. And actually we had had them out to come take a look at L4D2 before the announcement and everything. Talking with those guys, their marketing guys, they’re like, oh we play every Friday. And they do. They’re hardcore players. They all knew how to play. I didn’t have to give them any instruction. I thought we’d have to put it on easy for you guys. Let me tell you, you guys are good. This is a really good relationship and they’re really supportive, they’ve been really helpful, super great. I know they’re supposed to be big, bad and evil but that’s not the side we see of them.

VideoGamer.com: Do you think L4D will ever come to a PlayStation console?

CF: Right now it’s PC and 360. That’s definitely what we’re going to do. It’s just the platform that lends itself to it. And Xbox LIVE just makes it an easy thing to do. If you think about it, ten years ago we could have made L4D, but you wouldn’t have been able to hook up to your friends and it just wouldn’t have gained online as it did. And it’s really because of Steam and Xbox LIVE that we can make L4D.

Left 4 Dead 2 will be released exclusively for Xbox 360 and PC on November 17, 2009.