RPS L4D Interview with Chet - 3/5/08

PC gaming website Rock, Paper, Shotgun has posted a new interview with Left 4 Dead developer Chet Faliszek covering issues as diverse as L4D, the development process, TF2, the writer's guild, and Bob Ross.

RPS: Do you think gamers really "get" Left 4 Dead? The survivor stuff is pretty straightforward, but there’s this whole asymmetric FPS thing going on… it’s different.

Faliszek: When we describe it people say "yeah, we get the zombie game idea", and then they actually play it and they say "oh, now we understand". It’s hard to translate that fact. It’s a game where you know where your team-mates are and you know what they’re doing, and you always have to be aware of them. More than any other game it has that thing where you have to work with the other players. When gamers get that they click and have the "oh wow" moment. That’s what it’s about: four guys trying to survive together. It’s not about the zombie thing, or the horror, it’s about these four characters.

RPS: It’s not like a survival horror experience, though. It’s more intense, less scary.

Faliszek: Yeah, I liken it to the final moments of Counter-Strike. It’s that bit where you’re the last one or two guys on the team and everyone is watching. If you screw up then everyone knows. In Team Fortress you can have a bad day and no one will really notice. You can be off somewhere spamming rockets and no one cares. But in Left 4 Dead you’re always on stage. You throw a grenade into the middle of everyone and they’re going to know it. That’s the intensity of thing.

Chet explains why all of the campaigns happen at night - the infected are still part human and therefore have worse vision when it's darker, so the Survivors only move at night to avoid more infected. More TF2 shorts are coming, and Chet says that "we'll do something like that for Left 4 Dead. We have a bunch of guys working on it." You heard it from Chet first. Other topics include Call of Duty 4, the writer's guild, Chet's job, moving Valve's properties to movies, Xbox 360 version developer Certain Affinity, and how much work is put into audio. Chet describing the Valve development process:

RPS: How are you guys feeling about the changes ahead for TF2?

Faliszek: Awesome! Robin Walker is a gaming God, according to PC Gamer [US] anyway. These guys play a lot and they know what they’re doing. I mean you see this stuff and react to it, but... did you ever see that painting guy, Bob Ross?

RPS: Sure.

Faliszek: Well it’s like that. He’s painting and puts this huge black splat in and you’re all, "Oh, you’ve totally ruined it now," but then suddenly it’s a painting of a duck. It’s the same with TF2. The changes end up making sense, even if you don’t get it right away. I have total faith.

Thanks to Rock, Paper, Shotgun and Chet Faliszek for providing us with such a great interview. RPS is a gaming news website dedicated to the PC, and if this interview is any indication, it's a site worth visiting. If you haven't yet, go read the interview! Also, CVG has posted a short Left 4 Dead preview from PC Gamer which talks about an aspect of L4D gameplay that we hadn't heard of before.