14 DAY TRIAL // Valve is getting ready to release Left 4 Dead 2 in November and the development team at the company is busy talking about how this new release is different from the first game in the series, which managed to be a surprise hit last year. The emphasis is allaying the fears of gamers who might be thinking that they are only getting new campaigns with no significant gameplay changes.
Chet Faliszek, who is the project leader on Left 4 Dead 2, has talked to Gamasutra and accentuated that what the team is doing with the new game cannot be accomplished via DLC for the original release.
He says that “Balance is really important. Trying to do piecemeal stuff in DLC, you have a real balance issue there where you're going to have to go back and keep nerfing or expanding elements as you go on. That was one of our original thoughts when we were looking at Left 4 Dead 2, this want to have a cohesive single statement.”
He used the newly unveiled character, the Jockey, as an example. He has the power to take over one of the survivors for a limited amount of time. He could have been dropped into Left 4 Dead but that would have meant that the AI Director could not have taken advantage of its capabilities in perfect fashion and that he would have lacked the chance to fight alongside the Charger and the Spitter, who are also new to the sequel and allow for more complex tactics on the part of the zombies.
Another interesting point is that the Artificial Intelligence Director, who oversees the way the zombies assault the survivors, is now completely customizable via the scripts which Valve has implemented in Left 4 Dead 2, allowing people to mod its behavior and provide new challenges to players.