Is Left 4 Dead Open World?
Left 4 Dead is a franchise of cooperative first-person shooter (FPS) video games, in which players must survive a zombie apocalypse in several campaigns. Considering that many video games include an open world gameplay in their features, new players wonder whether the Left 4 Dead video games are open world.
Left 4 Dead video games are not open world. Progress is mostly achieved by moving at specific directions, and environments are not expansive and open as in traditional open world video games.
The Reason Why Left 4 Dead Video Games Are Not Open World
While the exact definition of open world in video games is often subject of debate, there is a trend regarding open world video games as a genre. If we consider classic 3D open world video games such as Assassin's Creed, Far Cry, Grand Theft Auto, Just Cause, among others, then we will see a pattern in these games which includes features that are present in all of them. Video games that belong to the open world genre in general feature not only large environments, but boundless envionrments, in which players are able to completely choose where to go. In general, these games allow the player to choose whether or not to engage in the main story of the game, and players able to perform side activities and complete side missions. These side missions are often repeatable. The official campaigns of Left 4 Dead have a linear structure: the player character must keep moving forward in order to progress in the story. This is in line with classic FPS video games such as Doom, but not in line with classic 3D open world video games such as Assassin's Creed and Grand Theft Auto. For these reasons, it is accurate to describe Left 4 Dead as a video game with large environments, but not as a video game with open world environments.
Left 4 Dead May Not Be Open World, But It Does Not Have Linear Gameplay
Moreover, the official campaigns of Left 4 Dead are linear in structure, in the sense that the player character must move in one direction, however, this does not mean that the official campaigns of Left 4 Dead are predictable: Left 4 Dead video games are known for their unique AI director which changes each playthrough of the official campaigns of the game, adjusting the difficulty, spawning enemies, and changing several aspects of the gameplay. For this reason, while Left 4 Dead video games are not open world, they are very replayable, and while they have linear environments, they are not linear games in the sense that they are completely scripted and predictable.
Could Left 4 Dead Be Considered Open World According to Some Definitions?
There are some players hat consider open world any video game with large environments in which there are side activities. In the case of Left 4 Dead video games, while the environments of the official campaigns of these video games could be considered large, they do not have side activities. Such as in classic FPS video games such as Doom, in Left 4 Dead, if the player decides to adventure in the environments of the official campaigns, what they are going to find is more ammunition, more weapons and more enemies. This is in contrast to traditional 3D open world video games such as Grand Theft Auto and Just Cause in which the player is able to not engage in the main story of the game, and instead complete side missions in different locations of the game world. In Left 4 Dead video games, the official campaigns are structured in the sense that the player character must keep moving in one specific direction, even if the player is able to adventure in the environment and collect more items.
There are video games which have a main story, which do not have an open world in the same sense as Grand Theft Auto and Just Cause video games, and which are sometimes described as open world by some players, such as Dragon Age video games and early The Witcher video games. Some players consider these video games to be open world because they feature large environments and because these games allow the player to choose which missions to complete, which activities to participate in. I dispute that these video games should be considered open world. They are video games with large environments, but there are many boundaries between the environments of these games, which are most often than not separated by loading screens and other forms of transition. This difference becomes even more evident if the player plays the early The Witcher video games, such as The Witcher (2007) and The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings (2011) and then proceeds to play The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt (2015). If the player plays these games, the difference between a video game with a large environment and a video game with a traditional 3D open world will become more evident. Moreover, even if these video games could be described open world, Left 4 Dead video games would still not match this description: the official campaigns of Left 4 Dead video games may have large environments, but they do not have side missions. At most, the player is able to find ammunition, weapons and more enemies when adventuring in the large environments of Left 4 Dead, but not side missions. In this sense, Left 4 Dead is more similar to traditional FPS video games, such as Doom and Quake, than it is to open world video games such as Grand Theft Auto and Just Cause. Left 4 Dead is also not similar to video games with large environments that feature side missions, such as Dragon Age video games and early The Witcher video games, because the official campaigns of Left 4 Dead do not feature side missions. While Left 4 Dead video games may not be open world, they are very replayable due to the unique AI director feature of these video games.
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