Left 4 Dead Developer Illuminates Lighting Choice

[Osiris]

Left 4 Dead Developer Illuminates Lighting Choice

Left 4 Dead developer Randy Lundeen talks about the lighting choices made by Valve during the development process of the game. You can see a before and after image below to give you an idea of how the game was changed:

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"While sudden zombie attacks were inarguably scary, they were also frustrating--players weren't being given the information they needed to react," said Lundeen. "They wanted that 'Here they come!' moment, and we weren't giving it to them. The solution? Light-colored fog."

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For those of you that missed it, our Left 4 Dead image quality and gameplay performance evaluation can be seen here.

 

[synergy]

I definitely think it would have been frustrating had they left it as dark as pictured. While it would have been more realistic, it would have been hard to keep on top of horde attacks and made gamers throw their arms up in surrender. Just my opinion.

 

[Ethan_Kaizer]

Perhaps they could have made the highest Co-op difficulty with the original lighting, to really make it a challenge.

 

[synergy]

That would be good because players would have the option. It might still get too frustrating though...especially on expert. It could have been a good thing to actually have it be an option set by the lobby host, much like the difficulty, but have it be a separate option instead.