Turtle Rock are preparing to come Back 4 Blood once again - will players leave it left for dead once again?

Returning to the source of its spiritual predecessor's success may remedy its conceptual troubles.

Though it was marketed as a belated successor to the beloved Left 4 Dead diptych, Back 4 Blood bore little resemblance to its forebearer - save for a forthright four in its title. Whereas Valve’s grindhouse gameplay succeeded through its sophisticated simplicity, prioritising emergent encounters against staid set pieces, Back 4 Blood was plagued by an onerous card-based system of progression and messy mission structures. Developed on the Unreal Engine rather than Valve’s proprietary Source engine (you may read further on the former in a recent article of mine), its animations and gore mechanics were curiously crude compared to Left 4 Dead - illustrated by Crowbcat in a thorough exploration of its shortcomings and shortcuts.

Back 4 Blood served as an unintentional cipher to understanding the crisis of the industry’s middle-class and their commercial ambitions. Its UI was detrimentally cluttered, settling objectives within a prominent top-left reserve of the screen; its visuals were crisp, favouring fidelity against textural character. Indeed, as a subsidiary of Tencent, their survival is predicated on their aptitude in delivering a perpetually profitable product. One generation ago, their gargantuan misstep in Evolve represented an existential error in their standalone ambition; returning to a familiar formula required a six-year synthesis. Considering competition within the co-operative horde shooter space was rather slim, partially due to Payday 2’s niche providence and Payday 3’s subsequent silent lobbies, Back 4 Blood’s viability promised to be Turtle Rock’s smoking gun - or Smoker, in their own parlance.

Back 4 Blood’s featured creatures were extraterrestrial in design, portending an interplanetary crisis.

Tuning the game to a live-service cadence required an extensive excision of the qualities that have made Left 4 Dead an enduring fascination. Crucially, its card decks imbued gameplay with a roguelite model of progression: certain modifications would increase movement speed, reload time, or provide passive bonuses to your team. In principle, this is a worthy evolution - Left 4 Dead, for its scavenging sensibility and tactical terror, did not allow for improvements to locomotion. However, in a similar regard to the halcyon days of Star Wars: Battlefront II, having to grind through rote skirmishes while weathering difficulty spikes, ultimately relying upon those of your team with the appropriate inventory to assist you, rendered initial gameplay erratic and gruelling. Then, a more pressing question would emerge: why am I depriving myself of enjoyment? There is not an inherent flair to the fighting, nor tactility in its objectives: how would bolstering my deck raise my opinion of the game?

Left 4 Dead, conversely, is a delight to this day. Mods notwithstanding, the thrill of progressing through its curated, yet improvisational campaigns, punctuated by pulsating races to its cathartic safe rooms, has yet to be approximated by a developer since. Though the Resident Evil remakes - and by extension, its original renditions - would later lower one’s pulse in their mad dashes and chapter breaks, Back 4 Blood’s retreats failed to provide the player with a remote sense of relief. Victory, moreover, felt an inevitability, rather than earned. This may be attributed to its prioritisation of empowerment against survival: if your game is a service, rather than a statement, your customers expect to finesse their decks with little friction, checking off challenges with attuned precision. Left 4 Dead’s potency is in its unpredictability; Back 4 Blood’s fatal flaw is its clockwork combat.

On mods, Left 4 Dead’s community coalesced around their official implementation. Though the vanilla game is practically perfect, its selection of outright insane content turns it into the most complete experience available on your computer. My personal favourite addition is “Zoidberg Zombies”, which turns basic infected into everyone’s favourite crustacean practitioner - whoops and all. You can find maps that essentially serve as total conversions, from the Mushroom Kingdom to Springfield, along with novel weapons and occasionally incongruous music. For some time, I would launch my game to the dulcet tones of Crash Twinsanity’s theme, before ending my campaigns to Spongebob’s Sweet Victory - aided by Marvin Gaye’s Sexual Healing whenever I had to apply a medkit. Again, this byzantine collection is a testament to the power of supporting a creative community; Back 4 Blood’s lack of mod support immediately hindered its longetivity. Should we ever lose the Library of Congress, Left 4 Dead 2’s workshop would serve as humanity’s greatest reservoir of popular culture, reserving two crucial, yet contradictory concepts in dignity and irreverence.

Left 4 Dead 2 lived long enough to be potentially populated by ravenous Fall Guys.

A report from Elfrain at MP1st uncovered a peculiar development: an indication that Back 4 Blood 2 - or Returning 4 Seconds - is in active production. The resume of stuntman Jesse Hutch listed a video game entitled “Gobi 2” - sharing a codename with Back 4 Blood that can be identified through an error message. Furthermore, the domain Back 4 Blood 2 was registered in May of last year - three months after Turtle Rock ended development upon Back 4 Blood. Evidently, expanding upon their established formula - irrespective of its reception - is the most sensible option the studio may pursue; a prospective successor, moreover, could learn from feedback provided to its predecessor. Granted, the game was not a commercial catastrophe: it featured within the top twenty best-selling titles of 2021, an impressive feat against its October debut and a simultaneous launch on Games Pass - curtailing sales both on Xbox and PC. Additionally, as it achieved a reported player count of 10 million to March 2022 - a brief window of five months - one can estimate a revamped rendering to draw a similar crowd. Evidently, there is an appetite for a classic zombie mauler both on consoles and PCs; tailoring a successor for the Switch 2, furthermore, could appease a demographic deprived of this genre for some time.

How could Turtle Rock deliver Back 4 Blood 2 - or Thirsty 4 More? - to a greater audience? To begin, they should sever ties with their publisher in Warner Bros. Games, who appear to be consolidating their brand through an emphasis on in-house properties. This, in turn, would enable a digital-only release, thus streamlining distribution in a manner reflecting its PC principles. Then, they should licence Source 2 from Valve - if the latter would let them. This would give it an immediate appeal against Left 4 Dead 2, as it would feature updated toolsets and a chance to begin anew. Granted, this is purely propositional: I know it would be prodigiously difficult for the studio to switch at this stage. If they were to build upon Source 2, they could split the standard card-based gameplay and modded campaigns in two, thus appealing to those who were taken to the mechanics of its predecessor and those who desired greater flexibility. Ultimately, Back 4 Blood 2 - or All 4 One - could become the defining horde shooter of its generation, lasting well into the next.

Offense and Defense cards would support the player; Corruption cards would allow the player to manually modify the attitudes of their foes, potentially yielding greater rewards.

Most importantly, the game needs to feature a memorable band of characters. Emphasising specialised archetypes over tenacious survivors abandoned the everyman qualities of Left 4 Dead’s characters, bickering and bantering their way through impossible circumstances. Left 4 Dead 2’s iconic opening cinematic was a tour de tone, capturing the fundamental essence of their heroes with elegance. There is an endearing camaraderie to their alliance, emphasised through tailored item interactions and desperate callouts. Again, it is easier to suggest than conceive; a memorable quip in grabbin’ pills was heightened as an organic phenomenon.

Would you squad up once again for Turtle Rock’s proprietary apocalypse? Or, will you refuse to leave its predecessor Left 4 Dead? Keep in mind, only one features Shrek as a moddable boss.