Left 4 Dead Story Line

Koreish

Valve has stated that there is in fact a story to L4D. I personally think that the survivors are characters in a movie and each campaign is a new set for part of the film. Reasons why... Valve has included many movie aspects visually; vignetting, grain, contrast etc. The loading screen is reminiscent of movie posters, the characters have "name" as "character" The most telling is at the very end of the credits it says XXX# of zombies killed in the making of this movie.

There is an alternative story here
http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=759074

Just wondering what thoughts you all may have to a possible story and how future updates can be incorporated into the story.

kryyst

Well the fact that the AI Director controls how/when the Zombies attack..

Your-Amish-Daddy

And the fact that you're never out of handgun rounds, just like in the movies..

pragtastic

I've yet to run out of pistol ammo IRL.

Linc

pragtastic wrote:

I've yet to run out of pistol ammo IRL.

Such a badass.

MiracleManS

pragtastic wrote:

I've yet to run out of pistol ammo IRL.

I've yet to die in a zombie invasion. BEAT THAT

UPSWeezer

I agree with his story line. Makes sense.

Winfrey

I actually could care less about a story.

NiGHTS

To you, games are nothing more than pixels. You make me sick.

Winfrey

That's right these games are just recurring events requiring my twitchy shooter finger, nothing more...

Not to mention devs/publishers have gotten WAY too into putting stories into every game. I mean was tetris just so-so because a sharp compelling story was absent? Was pong any less compelling without some BS about having to stop the white box to prevent world destruction?

ok, so maybe they would, but I don't think we need a story for every game. We do need fun gamepley for every game. Which is why I like Left 4 Dead.

Your-Amish-Daddy

Uh, You know that pong and tetris were like...BEFORE stories for games came out, right?

Winfrey

I know that more people have played tetris or pong (or successors) than probably any other game. Case in point, stories are not/should not be a big deal. I'll watch a movie or read a book for that, it isn't 100% necessary for genuine game success or enjoyment. We've just latched on to a "good story" as relevant to the ultimate success of a game.

I don't foresee Left 4 Dead becoming significantly better with a movie script story.

And I also call BS on tetris and pong being before stories for games. There were earlier games that had more story than either pong or tetris, but were far less successful.

Koreish

Valve has left it so open ended and vague that we are allowed to kind of create our own story. The plot of L4D can be as simple as shoot and survive or as complex as we make it. Some ideas prolly make more sense than others but whose to say the survivors didn't just kill their rescuers for shits and giggles? I do see Winfrey's point, but games have become so complex a story is almost necessary to hold it together.

Idiot_Slayer

This is kind of a futile discussion if you watch the commentary for L4D valve explicitly states that there was once a linear plot that linked the games together, but they decided against it. Mercy hospital was the first campaign and the chopper pilot was supposed to get sick as he was flying away from the city kind of thing.
Check it out the commentary was rather interesting.

pragtastic

MiracleManS wrote:

I've yet to die in a zombie invasion. BEAT THAT

And I never will.