IbizaPocholo
NeoGAFs Kent Brockman
Back 4 Blood's Special Ridden Were "Inspired by Gameplay Needs" with "Inevitable" Left 4 Dead Similarities
The structure of Back 4 Blood – from its name to the core gameplay experience to the developer – has inevitably attracted comparisons to the Left 4 Dead games. The special Ridden which serve as unique zombie variants are found in both the PvE and PvP modes have been a common subject for such...
comicbook.com
Speaking to Robb during an interview before the game’s beta began, we asked how Turtle Rock Studios went about designing these Ridden and if conscious efforts were made to avoid copying designs from the Left 4 Dead games. Robb said the team focused more on designing Ridden around what the game needed but agreed that some crossovers were bound to happen.
“I think basically our Ridden are inspired by gameplay needs,” Robb said. “There being some crossover into the abilities that the Left 4 Dead zombies had is somewhat inevitable because we need a guy that can break up a party. We need a guy that can pin characters that are … that can mess with characters who decide to run off on their own. So, a lot of it is dictated by gameplay.”
Continuing, Robb said the developers “took great pains” to give the special Ridden their own unique aspects and mechanics while avoiding “doing straight rip-offs of other zombies.”
Whether it was because of learnings from past games or fluid designs alone, Robb said the team didn’t really run into situations where special Ridden they came up with were completely out of line for Back 4 Blood. In the event an idea for one was too powerful, the team was often able to modify it and make it work instead of scrapping plans.
“We had a pretty clear idea – as clear as you can have – at the beginning of what kinds of mechanics we needed the Ridden to use or what kinds of things we needed,” Robb said. “We didn’t have as many dead ends as we did in past games where we came up with something and were just like ‘This doesn’t work.’”
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Back 4 Blood Won't Feature Popular Left 4 Dead Game Mode
Back 4 Blood, the upcoming co-op zombie shooter which is meant to be a spiritual successor to Left 4 Dead, has been confirmed not to contain a fan-favorite mode from the Valve-published series. Specifically, that mode happens to be a Versus Campaign, which would allow players to play through the...
comicbook.com
Back 4 Blood, the upcoming co-op zombie shooter which is meant to be a spiritual successor to Left 4 Dead, has been confirmed not to contain a fan-favorite mode from the Valve-published series. Specifically, that mode happens to be a Versus Campaign, which would allow players to play through the same missions from the main game against other human players. While the lack of this feature has seemingly upset many prospective Back 4 Blood players, though, developer Turtle Rock Studios still has another plan when it comes to PvP.
News regarding the lack of a Versus Campaign in Back 4 Blood was recently shared in the game's Discord server by one of the developers working on the project. When asked whether the game mode would be appearing, the developer in question from Turtle Rock clearly replied, "No." Not long after this news was made clear, those on the Back 4 Blood subreddit began expressing their disappointment at the lack of this beloved feature from Left 4 Dead.
Although a further explanation from Turtle Rock for the lack of a Versus Campaign in Back 4 Blood wasn't mentioned on Discord, in a recent interview with us here at ComicBook.com, the studio did shed some more light on this decision. Plainly, creative director Phil Robb said that the decision not to include a Versus Campaign purely was done to spice things up. "We don’t want to just do the same thing, right?" Robb mentioned of making Back 4 Blood almost too similar to Left 4 Dead. The bigger reason for this omission, however, seems to purely be due to the time it takes to play. "But, two: One of the things about the campaign PvP is that it’s a really big time commitment. I would say that most PvP games out there, you can jump in and have a few matches in 10, 15 minutes. So, it’s not as big of a time commitment," Robb said.
