Valve's Gabe Newell was among the many in EA's parade of speakers during today's EA press conference. Newell took the stage to talk a bit about Left 4 Dead, and how the "Director" AI could scale gameplay in real time.
Earlier today, we saw two short demonstrations of this Director AI in action. In the first example, four co-op players weren't doing very well. They were low on ammo and inaccurate in shooting. Because of this, the Director AI scaled the game's difficulty back a bit. The group only had to fend off a few zombies.
The second example was set in the same setting, a gas station. This time around, the players were better, and were hitting targets skillfully. In this situation, the group was bombarded by several zombies rushing at them. The Director AI rewarded their sharp shooting and team work with awesome visuals of the gas station exploding.
Newell also showed a short video that featured new character designs for the "survivors" in Left 4 Dead. We don't have any of those images, but they were mostly conceptual art anyway. Instead, we offer up new screenshots from the game in the gallery below, fresh from EA.
LAUNCH GALLERY (8 IMAGES)
Dale North is Destructoid's Editor-In-Chief, a founding editor, and specialist in Japanese gaming. An accomplished musician, Dale was reporting from Japan during the earthquakes of 2011. Luckily, he got the fuck out alive and is home in America now with his wife and beloved corgi, Einstein. Dale is also a co-founder of Destructoid's sister anime site
Japanator. Likes Corgis, Sega Saturn, PSP, iPhone, Photographic tools.
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Contest:
11:57 PM on 07.14.2008
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NOT liking the new character designs. Seriously Valve?
PETITION TIME!
I've played both RE:Outbreaks. Wonder if it's coming out for ps3 as well. If not I still have a 360
Yeah, the new character designs suck, except for maybe the black guy. ("Who's dying first NOW, motherfuckers?!") The old ones were nearly perfect, especially the woman, and now they've gone and generic'd them up a whole lot. Bad show, Valve. What gives?
Also, why release these new screens, if these character models are out of date?
Eh, that's what mods are for though.
That's the thing, it's something you'd see in any other zombie film... which haven't been too great lately. Valve has the capacity and the ability to revitalize a genre like that, IMO, and those old character models added some new life to it.
Oh well.