Don't worry about Left 4 Dead 2's change in cast and character. Valve's fairly certain you're going to come around to the new cast, despite your current attachments to Francis, Louis, Bill and Zoey.
Valve's Chet Faliszek gave us a quick run down of new quartet of Survivors you'll eventually fall in love with in Left 4 Dead 2. Don't worry, everyone will feel a little uncomfortable at first, as you'll meet the new Survivors when they meet each other—and when they meet some of their first infected.
Faliszek said that he's not particularly worried about fan apprehension over a bunch of new humans strolling in and taking on zombie slaying duties. The Left 4 Dead team has spent a considerable amount of time concepting, body casting and voice casting the new stars: Nick the gambler, Rochelle the cable news reporter, Coach the... coach, and Ellis the mechanic.
Valve has tapped some better known voice talent for the sequel, highlighting the vocal appearance from two established actors: Chad "Cutty" Coleman from The Wire, who plays Coach, and Eric Ladin from Generation Kill, the voice of Ellis.
Two characters that didn't make it into the final version were a female DMV worker—amiable, not stereotypically surly—and a fireman, someone who would know how to expertly use those axes players can now pick up for melee attacks.
But the scrapped DMV employee just wasn't turn out to be as interesting as originally hoped, dashing Faliszek's dreams of being able to appeal to real-life DMV workers that he "was the guy who put a nice DMV employee into our game."
That firefighter just didn't seem to fit into the world of Left 4 Dead, Faliszek said, not like the new cast, a group of Survivors who will have a more noticeable arc. Expect characters to change as they progress through the game's five announced scenarios.
Perhaps the most interesting, Nick the gambler, already scores points for referencing the character G.O.B. from the hilarious Arrested Development. But it's his more opportunistic side, a man with designs on profiting somehow from the zombie apocalypse, that should be interesting to observe in action.
For hands-on impressions of the newly announced Left 4 Dead 2, check out our hands-on preview.