Left 4 Dead creator says they got it right in the end because 'Gabe dragged it out of me'
pcgamer.comLeft 4 Dead co-creator Chet Faliszek, who also worked on the Half-Life series and Portal, recently posted a video to TikTok discussing aspects of the development of the premiere co-op zombie shooter. Seriously: How are we in 2023 and no-one has managed to top these games yet?
Faliszek on this occasion was reminiscing about something that may seem pretty incidental: the box art. Left 4 Dead has a striking cover image that is also a kind of gory joke, where a hand is superimposed on a bright green background but with the thumb having been ripped off. Took them a while to get there though, and the starting point was the artwork for Steven Spielberg's Band of Brothers, which has a vastly different mood.
The reminiscing was inspired by a tweet from the Valve Archive account, which dug out a pretty bad early concept for the cover that, per Faliszek, was even tested in some stores. «The box cover meeting was brutal,» said Faliszek. «I was unprepared and got my ass handed to me for being sure what I didn’t think worked, but not being able to express clearly why.»
Oh god…The box cover meeting was brutal… I was unprepared and got my ass handed to me for being sure what I didn’t think worked but not being able to express clearly why…Learned a ton that dayThis is from a later group and we actually tested some of these in stores. https://t.co/ilbkGh1C1qMay 17, 2023
Faliszek says he knew the meeting was coming, but did not prepare for it. «The Band of Brothers photo was the first one shown. I didn’t like it, and I was unable to express why I didn’t like it because of a couple of things. One, I had not lifted my head up. I had not looked up and seen where the project was with everyone else.»
«Gabe [Newell] was across from me, the door
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