Anybody who has played some of Valve's most famous franchises knows that Valve can't seem to count to three. While the company frequently delivers strong sequels to its most famous games, it never follows them up with a third game. One of these franchises is Left 4 Dead, which got two blockbuster games before suddenly falling off the radar. Left 4 Dead has no shortage of fans to this day, and many of them still hold out hope that Valve will make Left 4 Dead 3 someday. In the meantime, though, Turtle Rock Studios is making the next best thing to Left 4 Dead 3, and that's Back 4 Blood.
Back 4 Blood is the next best thing to Left 4 Dead 3, and that's not a coincidence. On the contrary, it's completely intentional. Turtle Rock is the studio that was responsible for developing the Left 4 Dead franchise before it parted ways with Valve. Left 4 Dead's fans are surely going to flock to Back 4 Blood to finally get their filling of its long dormant parent franchise. However, that doesn't mean everything is looking rosy for Turtle Rock. It's actually under an unbelievable amount of pressure. Back 4 Blood needs to cut through a game market thick with zombie games while also being a successor to Left 4 Dead that's worthy of a decade of silence.
Back 4 Blood's Burdens
Even though the last game in the franchise came out in 2009, Left 4 Dead's fan community is very much alive. Some fans are so dedicated that in 2020 Valve allowed the release of The Last Stand, an expansion to Left 4 Dead 2 made completely by fans, as an official DLC. Back 4 Blood has to live up to the high hopes of fans, whose imaginations are sure to be racing now that Back 4 Blood is coming out in a few months. A spiritual successor like this has to somehow live up to the mountain of nostalgia that Left 4 Dead's image evokes while also being new and interesting enough in its own right to convince fans to play it instead of just playing Left 4 Dead again. It won't be easy for Turtle Rock to give fans everything they want.
It also can't be denied that Back 4 Blood is hardly short on competitors right now. There are a ton of zombie games both in development and already on the market. The Last of Us alone has been taking the franchise by storm, setting new bars for telling gripping narratives in the zombie apocalypse. Other zombie franchises that fans are hoping to see continued soon include State of Decay, Dying Light, and Dead Island. There's also zombie modes in games like Call of Duty and even Civilization that show how commonplace zombie media is. Back 4 Blood won't shine if it's just an imitation of the things that made Left 4 Dead work. It has to be innovative and unique, even while trying to revive the Left 4 Dead model.
Making Back 4 Blood Work
Even with these major sources of pressure on Back 4 Blood's performance, neither fans nor Turtle Rock should despair. There's a few reasons that Back 4 Blood can get past some of these challenges. For one thing, it's probably going to beat many other zombie games to the punch as far as release dates are concerned. Back 4 Blood only has three months to go before release. For another thing, it's a unique type of zombie game compared to what else is on the market. It'll be a multiplayer-focused zombie game coming out well before anything similar is ready to ship. It might even be out before The Last of Us 2 gets its much anticipated multiplayer mode.
Back 4 Blood's future isn't all gloom and doom. All the excitement around the game is ultimately a positive. It would be terrible for Turtle Rock to deliver a great game that didn't get any attention. It seems like Turtle Rock has already taken some measures to mitigate stress on itself, too. Fans have known Back 4 Blood exists for two years now, but for the vast majority of that time, Turtle Rock has worked on the game quietly. In other words, Back 4 Blood has spent most of its life working without the weight of the public eye and coming together behind closed doors. That's cause for optimism. Even if the pressure is mounting as Back 4 Blood's release approaches, hopefully Turtle Rock has given itself the necessary time and privacy to get the game right.
Back 4 Blood releases on June 22, 2021 for PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
