Left 4 Dead is a classic survival horror shooter. Valve found lightning in a bottle with the game's frantic pace, easy-to-handle mechanics, and short, concise campaigns. Fans gravitated toward Left 4 Dead, and elevated it with additional modded content. The fan campaigns for Left 4 Dead often feel just as solid as the originals featured in the game. For a community that generally shows a lot of love, it is strange that the Left 4 Dead wiki was hit with a bit of vandalism, introducing a "cut" character to the game's lore.
The original Left 4 Dead was released in 2008, with the sequel Left 4 Dead 2 following just one year later. While support for the game has remained high both from Valve and its fans, it is surprising that Left 4 Dead 3 never released. It does appear that a spiritual successor has been created in Back 4 Blood, as many of the staff who worked on Left 4 Dead are still with Turtle Rock Studios, the Back 4 Blood developer.
While various pieces of concept art for a Left 4 Dead successor have floated around for a while now, there has never been any mention of a "Purple Francis" that showed up mysteriously on the Left 4 Dead wiki recently. The addition of Purple Francis came with an incredible amount of nonsensical lore for a character that, until this post appeared, never existed. Purple Francis once owned a root beer factory and raised two sons, Cungulus and Skibbity, and a daughter, Johnson.
The author of that post had such a bizarre and elaborate history for the character that it seems the plan to post all of this unusual lore had been brewing for a while. That it was noticed immediately, and fans decided to run with it, shows the community is still enthusiastic about the game, and it is why Left 4 Dead is one the games fans have wanted Valve to revive for some time. Little bits of fan art started to appear shortly after in support of the character.
The community has taken the unusual bit of vandalism in stride. While the mods of the wiki have removed Purple Francis, they did create a Left 4 Dead mod that players can download turning Francis purple. Fans are continuing to create delightfully strange content for the game, that way Valve can spend more time on franchises that aren't Left 4 Dead, letting the fan communities run the show. Now that Purple Francis has appeared, it might not be long before other color variants of the main heroes show up.
Left 4 Dead is available now for Mac, PC, and Xbox 360.
Source: GameSpot