Gabe Newell once wondered if Left 4 Dead really needed zombies
Left 4 Dead is one of the most famous and successful zombie games of all time. It even presaged the runaway success of The Walking Dead television show. But there was a time when the presence of zombies in the game wasn't quite a sure thing, because Valve boss Gabe Newell wasn't certain they were the best way forward.
The story was relayed by former Valve writer Chet Faliszek, whose credits include Half-Life 2: Episode 1 and 2, the Portal games, and of course Left 4 Dead 1 and 2. «Once I went to dinner with Gabe and he was beating me up that, if you look at zombie movies, he's like, 'Night of the Living Dead is about racism, Day of the Dead is about—or Dawn of the Dead—is about consumerism',» Faliszek said in a recent interview with YouTube channel Kiwi Talkz. «Whatshisface [presumably George Romero] had purposely made those movies about things and kind of like to talk about them. He's like, you know, 'What is your movie about? What's your game about? What's your zombie story about?'»
Faliszek told Newell that Left 4 Dead was about the individual stories arising from people coming together in a crisis—specifically a zombie apocalypse—but Newell apparently wasn't convinced that an undead holocaust was the best approach.
«I remember, he's just like, well let's not do zombies, zombies are just cheesy. They're just really cheesy,» Faliszek continued. «And at the time, you did not have The Walking Dead TV series and all this, right? So it was very cheesy. But as a kid who saw Dawn of the Dead at a midnight movie and was just, like, terrified, it wasn't cheesy to me. I had no idea those scenes were cheesy until watching them later.»
Of course, Valve went ahead with zombies in Left 4 Dead, and Faliszek clarified in an email to
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