Interview: Valve's Chet Faliszek on Left 4 Dead 2 and Half-Life 2: Episode 3

Chet Faliszek does something at Valve. Even Valve don't know what he does: "We are all still trying to figure out exactly what it is that Chet does at Valve, but at the very least he occupies office space on the 11th floor as self-proclaimed Mr. Awesome."

He has been involved with the writing and creation of the holy trilogy of Left 4 Dead, Team Fortress 2 and Portal. I had a brief chat with the G-Man of Valve on the Left 4 Dead 2 tour. He's quite amazing, like an enthusiastic Tim Robbins.

Has Left 4 Dead 2 been a success so far? (I'm really bad at opening questions)

Oh yeah. People here have been playing some Dark Carnival, it's great.

Has it been well received? (I'm equally bad at second questions)

The demo's gone out to everybody today, and there's been a really positive response from the pre-orders.

What sort of role do you have in making the games?

No one at Valve just has one role. So we come up with the level design, and some of the level designers come up with the writing. It's all back-and-forth.

How did you go about creating the world of Left 4 Dead?

We looked a lot at other horror films and zombie movies. We really wanted to make our own story, our own fiction, our own world.

What do you do to differentiate the game from standard zombie movie tropes?

Our zombies have mutated into more monster-like creatures. It's something that early on is really favourable as a way to break up from the experience and make it disperate. Things like the Witch and the Tank really shift gameplay when they arrive.

Were you surprised by the amount of females who play Left 4 Dead?

I tested it at home and it passed the couch test. There's a bunch of women gamers who are better than I am. A lot of gamers of various skill levels play the game, and I think that's because it's more about the experience than the skill path. Obviously if you play it more you get better at it, the challenge is there. But a lot of people can just jump in and you know what to do: kill the zombies. If you see someone down, you help them up. Stay together. If you just follow those simple rules you're going to get pretty far. We wanted to make sure that you could do that, so it was a really great pay off seeing that reaction.

What's new in Left 4 Dead 2?

It starts with the obvious: four new survivors, five new campaigns, set in the deep south. There melee weapons, there's a gore system for the melee weapons so you can see the damage, which is really good. Each level has a different feel. We have a new game mode, Scavenge. We've added new weapons like chainsaws and grenade launchers. We've expanded out the gameplay really far, to really flesh it out.

Have you made any graphical improvements?

Now we have more than just light and dark. We've done a lot with fog and shadow in the swamps. You're in the water so much, so that was improved. The Source engine is updated incrementally. If you look at Half-Life 2, every game since then has improved the engine.

What are you working on next?

I don't really know yet. We're just winding down Left 4 Dead 2, then we'll get back to Seattle and figure it out.

No word on Half-Life 2: Episode 3 yet?

No...we like to wait until we actually know when we're going to ship something before we mention it.

I take his closing remarks to mean that Episode 3 is definitely in the pipeline, it's just a question of when. My completely unsubstantiated thoughts are that it'll be with us by this time next year, and it'll be in the Source Engine. Then Half-Life 3 will be released - with a whole new engine - in time for the eighth generation of consoles, which is estimated to be in 2012. But the world's going to end then anyway so don't get too excited.