To many, the Left 4 Dead games make up some of the most iconic zombie titles in gaming. Valve's co-op experience that sees players team up to fight off hordes of undead has become influential within video games, inspiring recent titles like Anacrusis and Back 4 Blood, with the latter even borrowing the 4 from Left 4 Dead's naming. However, recent reports suggest that Valve president Gabe Newell wasn't initially onboard with zombies being the primary enemies of the games.
In a recent interview, former writer at Valve Chet Faliszek told of how when he was beginning work on the first Left 4 Dead game, Gabe Newell tried to steer the direction away from zombies. Left 4 Dead launched in 2008, before the first season of things like The Walking Dead TV series and game that sought to redefine the zombie genre. This meant that films like Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead were major influences in people's ideas of zombie media.
To Newell, this meant that a zombie game would come off as "cheesy." Even as Faliszek explained that Left 4 Dead would be about the team working together, making the themes of the game separate from other zombie media, Newell still believed that the undead were "cheesy." As Faliszek explains, this led to him having to include zombies in the game while understanding the "cheesiness" of them. This resulted in a couple of characters in Left 4 Dead like Zoe and Lewis who understand their scenario is like a movie and play it seriously from there. Faliszek speaks on this at 9:27 below.
Faliszek admits that even while he wanted zombies to be in Left 4 Dead, at the time they were "cheesy" monsters. However, in the early to mid-2010s, zombie games were to be found all over the video game industry, with some like Dying Light and Telltale's The Walking Dead giving fresh spins on the undead creatures. Zombie titles have been less dominant in recent times, but some big releases have still found major success, such as Dying Light 2, which sold 5 million units in its first month.
Even without zombies taking the forefront, co-op horde games inspired by Left 4 Dead have been popping up all over. Warhammer Fantasy's twist on the traditional zombie formula sees the undead replaced by numberless hosts of Skaven in Vermintide, and more recently Arcane Studios announced its latest title Redfall. Not much is known about Redfall, but it is inspired by Left 4 Dead and features vampires instead of zombies. Still, without zombies in Left 4 Dead, it is unknown how much of an impact it would've had on the games of the future.
Left 4 Dead is available now for PC and Xbox 360.