Gabe Newell got up and talked very briefly about Left 4 Dead at the EA press conference in Los Angeles today. Not much new was talked about though Newell did go into how the game’s director AI will adjust the difficulty level and narrative pay-off depending on the success or failure of the group.

Two examples were given for the presentation. The first showed a group that hadn’t been doing particularly well in their flight from dismemberment and/or undeath. They were hurt, almost out of ammo, and generally looking pretty pathetic. The last confrontation at the gas station in the level shown in the preview turned out to be pretty easy for them with only a few zombies waiting to take them down.

Enter the second group full of health, happiness, and hand grenades. They’d been working together well as a team and not committing random acts of friendly fire. So when they reached the gas station there were many more enemies waiting for them to provide more of a challenge. Not only that, but the pay-off for reaching that point was much more explosive with a couple of boomer bosses waiting to explode and set the entire gas station off, showing once again the impressive physics supplied by Source as the roof of the station buckled upwards into the air and shattered as pieces flew in every direction.

Hopefully we’ll get further impressions this week though to be honest, we’re running out of things to talk about here with this admittedly exciting game. Zombies, co-op, survival, guns, explosions, player controlled bosses, death, mayhem, fun. Let’s kill some zombies already.

Source: E3