Left 4 Dead: A Box Art Retrospective

[Woe Is You]

That cover is pretty much intentional, though.

In an age where everyone and their mom was either doing a platformer or a shmup, you have to admit a picture with an old guy playing the banjo stands out.

 

[karmapolizei]

You should read the Caeser 3 manual sometime. Especially where it talks about the Medium Statue ( http://img.metaboli.co.uk/products/2176/en/user_manual.pdf : Top of Page 210) and that was released as is...

WHAT THE HELL IS THIS SHIT?

Also, Caesar 3 had over 200 pages of manual? What the hell do you need that much manual for? (Now that I think about it, RTSses and the like usually have that much manual... but if I remember StarCraft, I never used it. Only the tech tree that came with the game as a poster)

Then again, the manual for Falcon 4.0 had almost 1,000 pages.

 

[PhoenixFlame]

I like these sort of insights into things that you normally wouldn't expect from Valve. You'd expect a dev blog to talk more about nuts and bolts than they do about production topics, but I think it gives fans an insight into the process a bit more so they are just a touch less likely to explode when a new patch comes out that screws some stuff up.

 

[ckeymel]

Being an artist, I found it a lot of fun to read. I love that kind of stuff and it was cool to see the different designs that they tried out first. It's always a shame to see the neat artwork that goes to waste. I actually really enjoyed their second and third designs, but I can see where they would not have really worked for box art.