It is revealed in The Sacrifice comic that the Survivors are Carriers, and that they have been inadvertently transmitting the disease throughout Philadelphia.Īged in his late fifties or early sixties, Bill is the oldest of all the Survivors. They are also playable in the Left 4 Dead 2 ports of No Mercy and the other original campaigns since it is simply a retelling of the same events for Left 4 Dead. As the DLC The Sacrifice takes part in Left 4 Dead's story arc, it is possible to play as the Left 4 Dead Survivors in Left 4 Dead 2 due to the DLC being ported to Left 4 Dead 2 as well. NOTE: Left 4 Dead Survivors appear in The Passing for Left 4 Dead 2, but are unplayable characters. Left to right: Francis, Bill, Zoey, Louis The final design of the survivors, shown on the poster for the "No Mercy" campaign. To maintain audience credibility, the screenwriter will not make wholesale personality changes to all leading characters: which is probably why Valve left the other Left 4 Dead persona untouched. Most notably, in the wake of Bill's death Zoey is made to 'grow up' and thus take on marked aspects of his personality whilst Nick subtly loses a lot of his hard-shell cynicism. Valve induces precisely this type of personality metamophosis in both volumes of Left 4 Dead. (Zoey's fourth wall breaching "zombie bullshit" elevator soliloquy and Ellis' asinine 'Keith stories' are illustrative examples in this regard.) Once set, the screenwriter is then also free to allow individual characters to mature (or regress - if a villain or coward is needed) as the plot unfolds. Once introduced, the screenwriter finds it very easy to develop sub-plots and dialog appropriate to these characters' personalities and their interactions with the environment and each other. Bill and Coach.Īpathetic: aloof, neutral, from a different social background, enigmatic, along for the ride, swept up in events, victim, suffers bravely, supporter, observer.
Realist: objective, lives by a personal code, disciplined, builds bridges, leadership role, adaptable. Optimist: moral, friendly, feelings trump facts, naive, does the right thing, loyal. Each character is then assigned a stereotyped personality selected from four distinctive types:Ĭynic: self-centered, hostile, fires off put-downs and sarcasm, questionable morality, shady past, street or book smart. This involves casting four main characters, each of whom have nothing much in common with one another but who are thrown together to face a challenge. To portray their personalities Valve uses (perhaps deliberately and with tongue firmly in cheek) a standard screenwriter ploy to populate B-grade action, Western, sci-fi, sitcom and costume drama scripts with characters that are instantly recognizable to 'popcorn' audiences. When controlled as AI Bots, Survivors will have preference over specific weaponry, and will attempt to choose that type if possible. Every Survivor plays the same their physical differences are purely cosmetic and do not alter gameplay. Players can choose which Survivor they control in the lobby, or be automatically assigned to a Survivor that is not being controlled by a player when they join a game that is already in progress. In the comic, the Survivors are referred to as "Tango-Mike" (T-M in the NATO Alphabet) by the APC Driver, probably in reference to Typhoid Mary, the most notorious real-life carrier known in America.Įach playable Survivor has his or her own unique appearance, personality, dialogue, and backstory, making them easier to identify at a distance. There are also non-playable Survivors that players will meet throughout the campaigns.
At the start of the first campaign in Left 4 Dead 2, the playable characters have just met each other and do not even know each other's names. In Left 4 Dead, it is never explained how they met up with each other, or how long they have been together (although judging by the timing given by the intro cutscene and The Sacrifice comic, it is less than 12 days by the start of the first campaign). In addition, The Sacrifice comic presents the hypothesis that the Survivors are carriers of the Infection―and as such are a positive danger to any uninfected humans they encounter. Although the playable characters are immune, a comment by Bill suggests that they could become an Infected at any point. The term, however, is commonly used to refer to the eight playable characters from the Left 4 Dead game series. The Survivors are people in the world who either have not yet contracted the Infection (by virtue of natural immunity) or are carriers of the disease but who display none of its symptoms―and who may thus falsely believe themselves to be immune.
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