Meet the Survivors of Left 4 Dead 2

Left 4 Dead was one of the biggest new games of last year, introducing a fresh and interesting twist to the whole action survival genre by putting four characters in front of a seemingly never-ending horde of zombies in different cliché locations, like a farm, an abandoned airport or a hospital.

Its four main characters, Bill, Francis, Louis and Zoey, went on to become household names for gamers that spent many hours playing as them in the numerous online and single player modes of the title released by Valve. Some of their in-game taunts were also turned into classic one-liners thanks to the Internet.

But now, as Valve announced Left 4 Dead 2, a lot of people became concerned about the fact that the newer characters wouldn't have any interesting story behind them. Not so, says Valve's Chet Faliszek, who talked about the new survivors in the upcoming sequel to the original.

He says that people will soon grow accustomed to the new characters and the fresh things in the game. A considerable amount of time was spent modeling the characters and making them very believable in order to satisfy the fans. That being said, people will surely love the new stars: Nick the gamble, Rochelle the cable news reporter, Coach the coach and Ellis the mechanic. Two established actors will lend their voices to some of these survivors, as Chad Coleman from TV series The Wire will play Coach and Eric Ladin from Generation Kill will voice Ellis.

Originally, there were more characters in the pick for a leading role in the game, said Faliszek, who revealed that a female DMV worker, who would be amiable, far from the stereotypical description of such employees, and a fireman that would expertly use the ax that can now be wielded by players. But as all the characters went on to become more nuanced, these two weren't developing as the creators wanted, so they were scrapped.

Are you excited about the new characters in Left 4 Dead? Or do you think the original ones would have been a good fit in this one as well? Leave us a comment with your choice.