By Jim Rossignol on March 24th, 2010 at 2:34 pm.
A sales update on the Left 4 Dead blog actually reveals some stuff. The Fallen Survivor?
Coming out this Spring for Left 4 Dead 2 is the brand new DLC “The Passing”, which contains:
A Wicked Witch Bride! A Gargantuan M60! A Slashing Golf Club! And Introducing The Fallen Survivor! Meet 3 Left 4 Dead 1 Survivors! New Game Modes!
Was that a typo? Game Modes? Didn’t we mean Game MODE? Did we mean to include that “S”?!?!?
YES WE DID!
The Fallen Survivor?
Exactly what I was thinking.
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Actually, the Fallen Survivor is the new uncommon-common infected. They’ll run away whenever they see you, and if you manage to kill one you’ll get explosives/health kits/pills etc.
Someone dies, though, so both theories are correct.
I saw the first part in an interview with Chet on him playing The Passing, so as far as I know they haven’t changed it and that’s real.
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isn’t the fallen survivor already in the L4D2 assets?
(not in the game you understand, just stuffed in there somewhere waiting to be put back in for a low-low-price)
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fwiw the fallen survivor is an uncommon infected who explodes into flames when you shoot him.
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Just… shh.
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For the low low price of free.
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I’m guessing the fallen survivor refers to the death of one of the existing L4D1 characters in the new map, hence the ‘meet 3 Left 4 Dead 1 survivors,’ part…
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The Fallen Survivor is The Passing’s Uncommon Common Infected I think. Also interesting is the fact that we will only “meet 3 Left 4 Dead 1 Survivors.” I thought we would encounter all four in the beginning but by the end of it only three would remain. Very looking forward to this, L4D1′s DLC, and the comic.
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The fallen survivor will ‘fall’ in an update to L4D1.
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Hmm, ok. That kind defeats the surprise then. We’ll know who’s fallen before we find out why.
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You must have a poor view of Tarantino films, Hybrid
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L4D2 is dead to me, DEAD.
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But is it LEFT FOR….
*ahem*, nevermind.
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Or you can boycott , so that L4D2 abomination never happens again
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<3
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God knows that Valve hasn’t made any money off L4D2. Heck, further boycotting might have the impressive result of putting them right out of business!
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Francis Tank!
I HATE SURVIVORS!
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A Wicked Witch Bride eh? Curious.
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PLEASE DON’T LET IT BE FRANCIS
(“I hate being a vampire”)
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Pink Ninja ninja stealthed my joke. :-(
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Don’t fuck with ninjas
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OP to boycott time: 15 minutes.
C’mon, you guys can do better than that.
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It was the damn captcha >:[
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Hmm, why must I be so tempted by L4D2? I seriously don’t have time to play it, but it looks sooo goooooood.
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Not only does it look good, but it’s leagues ahead of the original too! Here are the high points, for me:
- You can’t duck and cover to pass through a crescendo, you need to complete an objective to stop those zombies from rushing.
- The personalities of the original L4D always felt a little rushed, they were chatty but they didn’t actually have enough to say, quite the opposite is true of the new crew. Personal favourites are Nick the lovable wise arse and Rochelle, who’s one of the few, rare believable female characters out there in gaming.
- Melee weapons! It’s quite funny to take to a zombie horde with a guitar.
- The maps are less samey in that they’re more visually varied, and the director AI actually opens and closes different pathways so you might head along a path you found in one playthrough only to find you’re screwed and in a dead end.
Those were the things that really made it, for me. At £15 I think it’s worth picking up but only if you have the £15 to spare and you like the look of it. It’s definitely a huge step up over L4D though in just about every conceivable respect.
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Reason I made the post is that you could pick it up now for £15 and play it later, when you do have time for it.
But playing through a campaign doesn’t take all that long. I tend to play it in short bursts, saving after a map and then resuming in my own time.
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For all the problems with griefers/rage-quitters, one thing they absolutely nailed is the mini-crescendo events. It’s very rare that a game inspires a sensation or emotion in the player, and I think what L4D2 does is convey the anxiety and adrenaline rush felt in being chased. It’s not unique in this, sure, but design-wise it’s a remarkable success, in what it sets out to do and what it achieves.
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So end of March now becomes spring.
No surprise there Valve! sigh
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The end of March IS spring. :p
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Please don’t keep my hopes up – I need to feel pessimistic
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Don’t make me post the Valve Time link! Don’t make me do it!
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The Fallen Survivor was actually showcased in a video about The Passing linked in this very place. It’s an uncommon infected that runs away from the group, but drops a medikit when killed, if memory serves. Sounds good to me from a decision-making point of view: risk charging forward to get a medikit or not? Solid decision that’ll have players calling each other “fucking morons” for deciding one way or the other. Joy!
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from what i’ve seen, he’ll be carrying a randomized selection of stuff: exploding into flames if it’s a molatov and you hit it, dropping a medpack if he’s got one, etc.
it’ll add a bit of randomness into proceedings, but since if it does get put in this way i’m sure his payload will be controlled by the AI director it’s not quite as awesome as it could have been.
i’ll buy the DLC if it’s around the £5 – 7 mark.
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You must be new.
Valve doesn’t charge for DLC.
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Then all is well, non?
Just to reiterate, i would happily pay money for the DLC if it was around the fiver mark. Because i sense you care what i think: i have no problem with Valve releasing sequels, charging for DLC or being a business.
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On a tangential angle: am I the only one who does not like L4D2? I played it a while, didn’t like characters, didn’t like the setting, didn’t like gameplay (yup, feels much more random and less tight), didn’t like new special infected.
I have sunk 120+ hours into L4D1 and I swiftly came back after 15-25h of L4D2. I prefer the cast, versus mode and regular infected. Dunno why.
Tell me I am not alone.
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Is Nick the guy in the suit? He is the only one I can tolerate, the others are just uninteresting.
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@Bart – Interesting. I thought pretty much everything about L4D2 was better than the original, although I probably like the characters from the first game better. That said, I think I would enjoy L4D1 just as much as the second game if they added in the zombie damage system from L4D2. I don’t like going back to the first game because my guns don’t feel nearly as satisfying to use as the new one.
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I don’t really like it either. I like the characters but I hate pretty much all the campaigns and the over abundance of special infected types ruined VS for me.
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Apologies if someone has mentioned this:
I realise that the story for The Passing will include a member of the original four being in a not there status, but people seem to be confusing the fallen survivor with this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ObiPxnaLiQ8
Which is someone who started out as a survivor, thus has a medkit, molotovs etc, but wasn’t immune after all.
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left for dead 2 is 50% off soon btw.
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There’s a sale on at the moment, they’ve cut the price to £15 which is what it should have cost to start with. I’ve picked it up.
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Yeah the fallen survivor is an uncommon infected that randomly drops healthpacks n stuff…im sure it was mentioned in PCG at some point.
Has it been revealed yet whether this will be free DLC, or paid for? My guess is they’re putting an awful lot of stuff in in order to justify a price tag.
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It’s Valve. The justification is that new people will buy the game.
That’s the big trick. They want more people to buy the game, and spread the word about how you always get the DLC free. It builds consumer loyalty (with the exception of the idiots that boycotted L4D2, specifically the ones that were playing it first day because they had it preordered).
It’s a no brainer, really.
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The last few TF2 updates have been massive, but free.
Consideirng L4D2′s popularity, I COULD see more of a reason to charge, but I don’t think it’ll happen.
I just hope they start hyping up updates for l4d/2 like they did TF2 updates. Part of the fun of the TF2 updates is finding out what the new weapons are going to be.
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Also can we talk later about EA deciding to charge for game demos?
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The only actual new information here is the fact that there will be multiple new game modes (previously, we were told of just one.)
The Fallen Survivor was mentioned quite a while ago. He is supposed to drop items when killed, but runs away when Survivors come near. Could work well, but only if they are the only way to actually get the items. L4D2 versus already has way too many items, adding an Uncommon that drops even more would make things pretty unbearable. If it is the only way to get items outside of the saferoom it would offer a good risk/reward and give a good opportunity for Infected to attack.
The death of an original Survivor was announced not too long ago. It isn’t exactly clear how this is going to work yet. My guess is that in The Passing it will be randomised who will be dead at the start of the level (I recall Valve announcing that there will be multiple dialogue trees that can occur during the campaign, so I assume that will be linked to who has died.) Then the L4D1 DLC will let you choose who dies. My guess is it will be some variant of “the bomb has to be detonated manually” and one will have to sacrifice themselves, whilst the others have to defend them.
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I don’t really think so, because if it were that, Bill would probably be the one to do it.
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I love how we’re still at fever-pitch paranoia levels in this comments thread. Valve are releasing new content for several games at once, have never mentioned any price, and people are already coming up with conspiracy theories about how, because this is L4D (TEH GRAET SATEN), they must have an insidious plan to take our moneys again.
I’d like like to point out that TF2 is up to about its 30th free content update now, and they haven’t asked a single penny beyond what you paid for the orange box.
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Apples & Oranges…
Valve have been pretty blatant about TF2 & Left 4 Deads differing market and content. Left 4 Dead is too tight to really allow mass content updates without significantly cheapening the game experience.
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The DLC is free for PC owners, which you should be.
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L4D3 calling it now!
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zombie zoe, hubba hubba!
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I really do wish L4D2 had fixed the allied AI. If they’d given me orderable bots, and hadn’t included Cletus the slack-jawed redneck survivor (Elis, I think he’s named?) I’d undoubtedly have cracked by now and brought a couple of friends with me.
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Actually, Ellis is lovely. A surprise hit. He has this bubbling, irrepressible enthusiasm, and some wonderfully funny lines.
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@Arathain
It’s obviously a matter of personal opinion, but I think he’s literally the most irritating character in the history of gaming. In the demo I frequently stopped shooting zombies and started shooting him, just to shut his grating, ignorant mouth. I absolutely delighted in watching a hunter rip his guts out, I’d just sit back and watch. Having a survivor that I hate far more than the zombies doesn’t make for good survival gameplay. :)
The AI thing is still the real deal-breaker, but Ellis is still just awful IMO.
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Agreed. I like Ellis. In fact, I’ve ended up liking all of the new Survivors quite a bit, which is something I wasn’t expecting at first. I imagine most of the bad mouthing of the new crew is from people who just don’t like things to change and wanted the old ones to return.
But Vinraith is right about the AI. They are truly awful. They still don’t react fast enough to teammates being pinned, often just completely ignoring them or running backwards towards them. They also don’t seem to have been programmed to deal with new Infected, with them running into spit and punting Chargers. Still, their x-ray vision and inability to cause friendly fire is quite good when playing as Survivors, although infuriating for the Infected team.
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@Vandelay
I imagine most of the bad mouthing of the new crew is from people who just don’t like things to change and wanted the old ones to return.
You’re welcome to do so, of course, but I like Coach and Nick quite a bit. Rochelle’s basically a nonentity, neither interesting nor irritating. Ellis, though, needs to die a horrifying, slow, painful, bloody death.
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Ellis is my favourite character. I’m not sure why. I think I feel sorry for him.
Personally, I can’t stand Nick, although this might be because it seems that everytime I join a lobby:
1. The host has selected Nick.
2. He will use the katana exclusively.
3. He will individually kill the most zombies, and brag about it.
4. He will be a complete liability.
5. He will throw a hissy fit when his teammates can’t help but shoot him as he runs around like a bandy legged cretin.
6. He will then attack his teammates with his stupid fucking katana.
It’s got to the point where I will leave any lobby where the host wants to be Nick. :(
Odd to hear people complaining about the AI. I didn’t realise anybody played this offline. I hate online gaming in general, but this is the one game that’s converted me. Once I’ve found a session without a katana wielding bellend, I’ve had some really tight games even with random strangers.
Your best bet is to always join games in progress. You won’t get the completion achievements, but the rage quitters have usually already died and rage quit.
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@vinraith: If only Valve was smart enough to design the games in the way you want, on the schedule you want, I’m sure they’d be more respected and successful as a company.
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@plugmonkey
I’m not playing offline, but I usually can’t dredge up three friends to play with at the same time, so we use AI to fill the gaps. It doesn’t work very well, though it’s less aggravating than pick up groups (like your “Nick” stories).
@Obdicut
Right, because that’s definitely got something to do with what I said. Or, you know, I was just saying that if they had improved some things that bothered me about the first game that I, personally, would be more inclined to buy the second. Don’t let me get in the way of your aimless sanctimony, though, because anyone that criticizes anything Valve has ever done is fundamentally evil and must be smited.
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@ Vinraith You always seem so unhappy. I can’t help but be amused.
It’s probably funniest when you first castigate me for misrepresenting your position and then go on to misrepresent what I said.
AI can’t just be ‘fixed’. AI is one of the goddamn hardest things in the world to program well, especially for any complex game. Games that manage AI well are goddamn extraordinary, so much so I can’t actually think of one off of the top of my head other than Arkham Asylum. Games that do allied AI well I really can’t think of.
And when you talk about bringing friends with you, you are, in fact, setting yourself up as though your opinion represents more than simply your opinion. Your analyses of games appear to always pretend that games are produced in a vacuum, by studios who have to make no choices between where to concentrate their efforts– except, of course, when you’re castigating a company for making a sequel ‘too soon’.
Your persecution complex is also kinda funny.
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@Obdicut
And when you talk about bringing friends with you, you are, in fact, setting yourself up as though your opinion represents more than simply your opinion.
Indeed, I’m speaking on behalf of two other people that would also be more inclined to buy the game if the friendly AI were better. That’s hardly going to impact Valve’s bottom line in any meaningful way. As to the rest of what you wrote, I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you’re just habitually misreading my tone. There’s no “castigating” going on here, and no “unhappiness” being expressed. It’d be nice if Valve had made L4D2 a game that was interesting to me, personally. They didn’t. That’s fine, I’ve got lots of other things to play and they’ve got lots of other customers to serve. Where’s the problem?
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@ Vinraith: If you aren’t able to muster up 3 friends on Steam to play L4D2 with, then why not join or create a public lobby so you are at least playing the game with other humans rather than the AI that you dislike so much?
Seriously, it’s a great way to meet other players you get on with. I have perhaps 4-5 meatspace friends who I’ve played L4D and L4D2 with, but there’s another ~100 players on my list who I met in game, either co-operatively or against each other in a VS / Scavenge match. You talk, you banter, you laugh at each other’s comical mistakes, you save each other’s arses or kill each other spectacularly – it’s easy for the digital bonds to form.
There are always at the very least 10 of them online on my list at any given time, so I never have a problem getting a good game on with players I trust to play properly, have fun, and not be twats. We don’t owe each other anything, there’s no obligations to be friends outside of the game if that’s what you’re concerned about; ~95% of them I only ever talk to when in game or arranging one. The rest I have actually become good friends with and found we have a lot in common, and I’ve even met a couple in the real, non zombie infested world.
I have to say I disagree with you on Ellis. I think he has his own personality, naive charm and amusing lines. Of course, that is completely subjective and you are entitled to your opinion there.
On the Valve subject, I have noticed that you tend to speak on it an awful lot at RPS. When there is a post in any way related to Valve, you are often there and arguing negatively against them as a developer and a company. For what it’s worth, I agree with you that they aren’t perfect and they do have some rather rabid fans, but you seem to fight this particular battle a little too hard and too frequently, which I think is why our fellow Rocking Paperish Shotgunners like Obdicut get annoyed with you.
I don’t know if you are aware of it, whether it’s done with intent or you simple enjoy repeating your stance on the matter… It’s just a personal observation – take it or leave it.
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@Rokahowlic
I haven’t had good experiences with PUGs in L4D, in general playing with the AI and a few friends is a much more pleasant experience, but the AI is of course terribly inept. It’s something of a catch-22, and an unfortunate one. That’s all I was trying to express in that original post, incidentally. It wasn’t a criticism of Valve, it wasn’t an indictment of the game, it was just “gee, it’d be nice if…” It wasn’t intended to start an argument, and I shouldn’t have allowed myself to be dragged into one.
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Vinraith you’d be surprised at who you can find. Or you could look up other people in the RPS Steam group and just join their game.
You have to make friends before you can play with them. So bite the bullet and go through a couple bad games, and find some good people to play with.
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@DJ Phantoon
There’s a fascinating psychological gulf between primarily SP players and primarily MP players. I absolutely can’t conceive of spending game time trying to find random internet people to play with. There are too many good games out there that let me play alone or with friends for me to bother with those that don’t.
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You might rephrase what you said to be “I wish that L4D2 was a single-player game”, then.
You also should not be surprised after the amount that you’ve railed on Valve that people assume your negative comments about a Valve game are more of the same.
And yes, your tone does seem remarkably miserable most of the time you talk about PC gaming.
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@Obdicut
You might rephrase what you said to be “I wish that L4D2 was a single-player game”, then.
I don’t wish that. I want to play the game co-op, but with less than 4 people. That means that I either wish it scaled to the number of people present, or that the AI allies were up to snuff.
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What Vinraith has said is essentially the reason I’m not buying L4D2. I have some friends who play it, but they didn’t always want to play L4D1 at the times I wanted so, so I ended up playing it less often than I liked. I tried finding random groups to play it, and I actually enjoyed playing with the AI more because online with randoms was an experience straight from the pits of hell. 1 guy who’d played the levels to death would run on ahead and bitch that some people wanted to enjoy the experience rather than just CHAAARGE. 1 person would move excessively slowly, taking sometimes several minutes to navigate the exit from the starting point. 1 person would be like me, moving at a reasonable pace, checking out the little details but not dawdling excessively, but they’d be French. Not that I’ve a problem with the French, but I don’t speak it, which makes communication difficult. This happened to me -every time-. Then I got the demo for L4D2, and it happened some more. I didn’t like the idea of my gameplaying enjoyment to be at the whim of people I didn’t know, so it was simple enough not to buy it.
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I feel I have to come to Vinraith’s defense here, as I agree with much of what he says. The community that is around L4D is possibly one of the worst I’ve ever tried to enter. It takes forever to fill up lobbies, because people can’t wait two minutes for it to fill, or everyone has already taken the team they want to be on, or there are people with clan tags, or there a group of friends waiting, or there isn’t enough space for their friends. Using the quick match option isn’t much better, as quite often you join games where a mass rage quit has just happened. Once you actually get into a game, they are always filled with people who bitch and moan about the game or other players. I very, very rarely see people who hang around much more than a map or two before leaving in disgust at their “noob” team or the “pubstomping”/”haxoring” opponents. It takes a hell of a lot of time to actually find people that you are going to want to play with more than once and I can understand completely why someone would say it just isn’t worth the effort.
As for the bots, I am amazed that there are people saying that they never have to cope with them. Are you seriously telling me you never have people rage quit any of the games you have been in, leaving you to suffer with the inept bots that don’t even know when there is Spitter spit on the floor in front of them?
I love Left 4 Dead and when it works it is one of the most fun games I have ever played, but it is pretty infuriating the for a sizable proportion of the time.
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I feel the same about Rochelle. She’s rather bland, but the other three are fleshed out well. How anyone cannot absolutely love Ellis’ comments at the start of Dark Carnival’s finale is beyond me.
“You’re telling me that we’re going to rock out and kill zombies? This is the best day of my life!”
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@Vandelay
Thanks. I really didn’t intend for this to become… whatever it is it became. You’ve gotten across what I was trying to get across better than I did, I think.
@Fumarole
I only played the demo, so if he’s terribly funny outside the confines of that I wouldn’t know. I think he’s just a bit too reminiscent of some real people that drive me up the wall, though, hence my issues with him.
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@ Vandelay
I find that my human teammates can often be far, far too slow to even notice that a smoker is dragging me across what feels like the entire map. There’s a fair few times the bot has been the one to get the special infected away from me because they, quite doggedly, go to rescue survivors.
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Actually, I think it will be a different person each time. There’s been mention that one of the players has to sacrifice themselves at the end of the L4D1 update, so different sacrifice = different character.
In other words, the L4D1 players have a choice of who is canonically the Fallen in 1, in 2 it’s determined procedurally. Or something like that.
Procedurally generated canon: that would be pretty darn interesting to pull off.
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I don’t think the Fallen will be one of the Survivors we knew from the first game. Aren’t they supposed to be immune from the virus? I seem to recall one of the Valve developers (Chet?) doing a demonstration of the DLC and saying “there is only one way to find out if you are immune. The fallen turned out not to be,” or something along those lines. It would also cause problems with multiple Bills/Louises/Zoeys/Francises running around, which would look kind of stupid.
The Fallen will just be random “Survivors” that turned out not to be immune.
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@MadTinkerer I heard that one ultimate ‘canon’ version of what happens will also be shown in a comic that will be released.
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We’ve known about the Fallen Survivor for, like, a long time. He holds weapons and ammo and runs away from you and if you can kill him he drops stuff.
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The fact that one of the original members of the L4D1 survivors would die, was also revealed in the latest Game Trailers TV episode.
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Oh just bring the fucker out already. I’m not getting any younger over here Valve. You churned out an entire expansion in a year and now 6 months later, not even a single map?
Honestly, it’s like Crash Course all over again. What an anticlimax that was.
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Expansion? Are we really going there again? Sigh.
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Sorry, Freudian slip, sequel. I thought both games were worth every penny. (Although clearly my subconscious disagrees)
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@Howl, four months is not six months.
It’s hardly as if L4D2 has had no patches: http://store.steampowered.com/news/?appids=550
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Aw, Valve must really hate L4D players… Killing their survivors too now… Is that a desperate attempt at making the last L4D owners give up and go buy the sequel? It’s hard to imagine how they’re going to make good on their promise of further DLC for the game if they kill off one of the players.
(Disclaimed: at most 50% of the above is intended to be taken seriously)
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the release of l4d2 made me completely appathetic to the first one i’ve no interest in the series anymore, they’d have to do something pretty spectacular to respark it. bring on Episode 3 & Portal 2!!!!!!
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lol fat geeks are still BAWWing over how valve had to audacity to relase a sequel to a popular game.
they should of stopped supporting l4d1 entirely just to make those entitled little shits cry more
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Essentially that’s what they’re doing. Killing off one of the survivors in the next L4D1 update means it’s no longer Left 4 Dead & so they bring those chapters of the story to a close.
Before anyone gets on a high horse, I’m not complaining. I own both games & am more than happy with VALVe’s products and/or services as my Steam profile would show if you looked it up.
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Totally agree, people need to get over the fact that Valve actually made a squeal to a popular game quickly, and instead be happy that (in my opinion) , they created a generally more polished experience in the second. In no way it is an expansion pack imo. The whiners love quoting one interview made way back when they said they would have TF2 style updates,they didn’t (for obvious reasons really), so get over it!
I do agree that I prefer darker levels, but hopefully The Passing will have some of that.
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Totally. L4D1 was lovely as it played to all the horror tropes, which is clearly shown in the survivor choice (teen girl, war veteran, biker, panicky nerd). Similarly the guns were clearly niched and structured.
Aptly given the location, L4D2 just muddied the waters with mostly insipid characters and settings. Only really hard rain is worth playing for its locale as it’s awesome, but again there are no horror classics like corn fields etc.
Just felt it tried too hard to be serious and came away dull.
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There’s some I like about the first one better (characters, atmosphere), but as far as gameplay goes, I much prefer the 2nd. The first one has too many “if you aren’t standing in this exact spot to pull survivors off the edge of building X, you’ll be kicked by people who NEED TO WIN a game to be happy with their lives” spots. It’s like you HAVE to do that to win the round. The new one has far fewer of those, with the exception of some charger-instant-kill spots, but even those are fairly obvious to the survivors, so it’s not some esoteric game-mechanic thing.
It has a lot more balanced feel to it, for someone that enjoys playing casually and doesn’t want to deal with kick-happy tards that freak out if you aren’t doing everything “their way”
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I had originally vowed not to get this game until HL2 Episode 3 came out, but uh… I couldn’t resist that half-off price.
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L4D, whatever. What about Episode 3?
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The fallen survivor is supposed to scream to attract the horde.
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