Valve’s Chet Faliszek, writer for the upcoming zombie shooter Left 4 Dead, has been discussing his decision to focus on the zombies themselves, and not on an “evil mastermind” behind their appearance.
“The evil mastermind at the end is never as good as whatever you had in your head when you were coming up with it,” explains Faliszek. He used the 1996 disaster movie Twister to hammer home the point: “They had evil weathermen to justify their plot. Evil weathermen. What the hell? There’s no evil weather men!
“… We don’t make evil scientists that have created a zombie infection to stomp out the USA — the evil Russian scientists or whatever post-Cold War enemy you want to use.”
Faliszek believes that gamers don’t want heavy-handed stories and cutscenes when playing a zombie game. “They want the zombie apocalypse,” he proclaims. Instead, Valve wishes for the plot to be told with the gameplay, and the story to be the player’s experience. Sounds pretty good to me, although contrary to Faliszek’s claims, I do like a game with cutscenes as much as ones without. Provided the story is good, it can be heavy-handed if it likes.
That said, he’s definitely right on this one — just give us the bloody zombie apocalypse!
