With Back 4 Blood’s official release, it stands to reason many are diving into the new Left 4 Dead-style zombie shooter. They’ll take on the role of a Cleaner, selected from 8 characters in the game. These character designs and inherent abilities are slightly different, as well as their starting secondary weapon. In other words, players may want to change these characters out and experiment with their Back 4 Blood decks in relation to each character.

Changing characters, however, presents a problem. Back 4 Blood’s campaign offers two methods of playing: online or solo. Playing a game like Back 4 Blood is best with friends, but it’s entirely reasonable not to want to play with strangers on the internet and just play solo. It’s already been revealed that Back 4 Blood’s solo mode doesn’t support progression, meaning cosmetics, achievements, stats, and unlockables won’t pop offline, and it’s even worse given that it prevents players from unlocking new Back 4 Blood characters.

RELATED: Back 4 Blood Gets Gory Marketing Boost at UFC Vegas 39

Back 4 Blood Characters/Cleaners

The characters in Back 4 Blood, known as Cleaners, are an interesting and diverse lot design-wise. There’s 8 of them, with each of them bringing something unique to the table. Players just begin with four though: Holly, Mom, Evangelo, and Walker. Holly has a very laidback demeanor and carries a spiked baseball bat as her special secondary, while Mom is full of grit (emphasized by her Belgian shotgun) and love (emphasized by her ability).

back 4 blood

Still, given that there’s a total of 4 acts, 10 “missions,” and various levels per mission, swapping out characters is normal. Outside the original four Back 4 Blood characters, players can unlock Hoffman, the crafting, gun-loving survivalist; Doc, a strong healer; Jim, a strong sniper; and Karlee, a strong option for stealthier options. The problem is that each of these characters are unlocked all at once, at the end of the tutorial mission “The Devil’s Return.”

Back 4 Blood: Why Characters Aren’t Unlocking At The End of The Devil’s Return

No matter if online or solo, beating The Devil’s Return in Back 4 Blood triggers a cutscene that introduces the four aforementioned characters, indicating that they are now playable. The problem is, if in solo mode, that’s simply not the case. The game will essentially show the characters that should have been unlocked, but they won’t be. The only way to unlock them is by completing the last mission of The Devil’s Return online (which is possible to do after beating the mission on Solo).

The reason this happens seems to be because all progression in Back 4 Blood is tied to the in-game accomplishments, which are the same thing as the game’s achievements and then some. Yet, Back 4 Blood won’t track, progress, unlock, or pop any of these accomplishments when in solo mode. Cosmetics aren’t really a major concern for some, sure, but the fact remains that Back 4 Blood has a lot of achievements that can be missed and something as major as the other four characters of the game can’t simply be unlocked when playing solo.

It should be noted that Turtle Rock Studios is aware and working on a fix, but it's a strange oversight nonetheless. For now, anyone choosing to play the game solo may want to hold off for a major Back 4 Blood update.

Back 4 Blood is available now for PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X.

MORE: Back 4 Blood Uses Denuvo DRM