Valve Announce Left 4 Dead 3!

Here it is folks! L4D3!

Bellevue, WA – Fresh off the heels of the Electronic Entertainment Expo, Valve Software dropped another bombshell this week, announcing a third entry in their zombie survival series Left 4 Dead. “We are very excited to continue this franchise,” said Gabe Newell, founder and managing director of Valve. “We know our fans can’t wait to confront the zombie hordes again. And so we proudly announce our next title, Left 4 Dead 3, coming to PC and Xbox 360 consoles in October… of this year!”

The original Left 4 Dead was released to popular and critical acclaim in November of 2008 and has sold over 2.5 million copies. A sequel, Left 4 Dead 2, was announced at this year’s E3 and is slated for release in November of 2009.

Regarding the release date, Newell had this to say: “I know that this announcement means that Left 4 Dead 3 will actually release before Left 4 Dead 2, which might not make sense to some. But we’re just so excited about what we’ve done with this game that we want to get it into the gamer’s hands as soon as we can.”

Pressed about the quick turnaround in new titles, Valve’s Chet Faliszek assuaged some fears. ”We came up with some really cool ideas during the development of Left 4 Dead 2 but the programmers had already written a bunch of code so we were kinda like: ‘Screw it, let’s make a NEW game!’  And we did! Besides, there was no way our cool new changes could have been applied to the previous games–I mean, it’s not like there’s some kind of magical ‘patch’ we could apply that would update them.”

Valve promises that Left 4 Dead 3 won’t disappoint. Players will get to take the role of one of four survivors: Joey, Francine, Louie, or Phil. New enemies include The Burper (who belches toxic smoke on players) and multi-ethnic zombies dressed in culture-specific clothing. The highly-touted A.I. Director feature, which dynamically ramps up the tension and difficulty for the players, has undergone some major changes as well. Valve wouldn’t reveal all the details, but an e-mail response did offer this tidbit: “Let’s just say the A.I. Director is a lot smarter and a lot more powerful this time around. You might just find yourself fighting your way to the escape vehicle in a movie and BOOM–your Xbox reboots. That’s the A.I. director at work.”

And what about new weapons? ”We’re replacing the Sniper Rifle with a bow and arrow, since it’ll do about as much good against the Horde. Oh, and there’s now a sawed-off shotgun and, wait for it, a slightly better sawed-off shotgun. Zombies beware!”

Major retailers are now taking pre-orders for Left 4 Dead 3 and Left 4 Dead 4 which was just announced during the writing of this story.

DISCLAIMER: This story is actually fictional