Cut L4D1 Lines

[A Friend]

A common criticism many levy on the L4D1 survivors is that they hardly talk, but as it turns out they do in fact have a LOT of cut lines that for some reason were never included in the game. I haven't bothered to count, but I'd bet the proportion of lines cut is roughly equal to what L4D2 cut from the final game when it launched. You can actually hear some of them in old trailers such as this one.

They're all included in the game's subtitle files, and we know for sure that at least some of them were recorded thanks to the aforementioned trailers, which begs the question why they were never shipped with the game in the first place. The ones featured in the trailers all seem to sound alright. Hell, L4D2 shipped with all the cut dialogue included in the game files - though to be fair that may just be a result of how rushed the game was.

I know some TLS members browse the forum, so I'm hoping one of them can shed some light on this with the help of their Valve connections. It seems like something that should've been included in that update since they restored all of L4D2's lines anyway. Do the sound files even still exist? It wouldn't surprise me if Valve trashed them to make room for other projects, or if it's sitting in a forgotten hard drive in some dusty closet assuming they weren't thrown out. Hopefully they exist somewhere though, there's a lot of cool lines that deserve to see the light of day.

[what?]

Originally posted by A Friend:

which begs the question why they were never shipped with the game in the first place.

99% certain it's just general mismanagement of sound files and laziness. It's not like voice lines and scripting them in would cause engine problems.

Some weren't even programmed correctly when the game shipped, like Francis would just plainly say "No." when he was incapacitated, but that was fixed (albeit much later).

Originally posted by A Friend:

Do the sound files even still exist?

For the L4D1 survivors, very few of them do.

L4D1's vocalizer is very weird. There exists a few voice lines that are exceedingly rare. As in, you literally have to spam the voice command for about 30 seconds in order to get them to play.

Louis' "Turn around, man!" at the beginning of the video you linked is in the game. But you not only need a vocalizer that has the "Behind us" voice command, but also need luck since it'll probably only play once every 30 uses.

Others just aren't programmed in. It's even worse with the L4D2 survivors, so much so that this guy ended up making a few dozen addons to restore much of them.

I'm not sure why TLS didn't just go ahead and re-implement all of them and patch the rare ones. No sense letting them sit in the game files and take up space.

[A Friend]

Originally posted by yesskillch:

...

Sorry if I wasn't clear, but the point I was making was that the sound files for these cut lines weren't included in either game at all - they aren't in the sound folder or anywhere else, whereas in L4D2's case the cut lines were included, but not programmed into the game. That's why they could be restored in the TLS update.

I just wanted to know if the sound files for these cut lines exist somewhere in Valve's offices, and if they do could they perhaps be included in a future update.

[JAiZ]

Originally posted by A Friend:

Hell, L4D2 shipped with all the cut dialogue included in the game files - though to be fair that may just be a result of how rushed the game was.

The L4D2 survivors and NPCs also have a ton of cut voicelines that aren't in the game files. I'd guess that the ones that did remain were just the ones that were missed during the purging.

Originally posted by A Friend:

I know some TLS members browse the forum, so I'm hoping one of them can shed some light on this with the help of their Valve connections.

The only thing I know, is what Chet Faliszek said in videos on his YouTube channel, which is basically that developers don't cut content to annoy players, they cut it because it no longer fits their vision of the game - or for voicelines specifically, that it no longer fits the character design they envisioned:
"There's a lot of lines cut from the Left 4 Dead series, where I just don't think they work."
"It lessens the impact of the characters, because a lot of them [the cut voicelines] don't fit the characters."
"Often, especially in the first session I am trying like 3 different characters when going into the recording session. So, there's the... like... the character's going to go this way, or maybe they're going to go this way, or maybe they're gonna go really out there this way. You kinda find the character in that first session, by having them [the voice actor] read a lot of that stuff, and so with that you'll end up with some lines that you'll never use, cause it doesn't fit the character that you decided on."

There's also external reasons for voicelines to be cut (both before and after recording). In another video, Chet mentions that Francis was supposed to have a line in Dead Air talking about beer, but it was cut because mentioning alcohol would've affected the game's age rating.

I also remember a few instances of voicelines that were always supposed to play, but didn't due to typos in the scripts lol

Originally posted by A Friend:

It seems like something that should've been included in that update since they restored all of L4D2's lines anyway.

Only some accessible cut lines were restored, there's still plenty that exist outside of the game, which nobody has access to.

Originally posted by A Friend:

Do the sound files even still exist? It wouldn't surprise me if Valve trashed them to make room for other projects, or if it's sitting in a forgotten hard drive in some dusty closet assuming they weren't thrown out.

They're probably sitting in a forgotten hard drive in some dusty closet, but nobody really knows for sure.

[A Friend]

Originally posted by JAiZ:

The L4D2 survivors and NPCs also have a ton of cut voicelines that aren't in the game files. I'd guess that the ones that did remain were just the ones that were missed during the purging.

It's interesting to know that there's even more recorded L4D2 dialogue that's missing. I assumed that everything that was usable was lazily dumped in the game because of the way it was developed and the sheer amount of unused dialogue taking up half the game's storage.

Originally posted by JAiZ:

The only thing I know, is what Chet Faliszek said in videos on his YouTube channel, which is basically that developers don't cut content to annoy players, they cut it because it no longer fits their vision of the game - or for voicelines specifically, that it no longer fits the character design they envisioned

There are a handful of lines I could see as out of character if you really squint, but most seem alright to me. I've spent thousands of hours hearing these characters talk, so I'd like to think I have a good grasp of what they would and wouldn't say.

Only a handful of lines are related to cut content like locked doors breaking or intro narration. Still, I don't see much harm in including them in the game files anyway so modders can use them if they want, even if they're unused in vanilla. Valve even did something similar for custom campaign creators when recording for the Passing, so the precedent is there.

Originally posted by JAiZ:

Only some accessible cut lines were restored, there's still plenty that exist outside of the game, which nobody has access to.

Not even Kerry, the Valve employee who helped with TLS? I don't see how he wouldn't have access to them unless they're deleted or sitting in a forgotten hard drive in some dusty closet.

Originally posted by JAiZ:

They're probably sitting in a forgotten hard drive in some dusty closet, but nobody really knows for sure.

How receptive do you think Kerry would be to the idea of going on a scavenger hunt around the office? He obviously still cares about the game since he's working on it 15 years after release. If they're ever found, it'd be a pretty huge find in my opinion, especially if a second TLS-scale update is ever green lit by Valve.

[JAiZ]

Originally posted by A Friend:

Originally posted by JAiZ:

They're probably sitting in a forgotten hard drive in some dusty closet, but nobody really knows for sure.

How receptive do you think Kerry would be to the idea of going on a scavenger hunt around the office? He obviously still cares about the game since he's working on it 15 years after release. If they're ever found, it'd be a pretty huge find in my opinion, especially if a second TLS-scale update is ever green lit by Valve.

While it would be a really awesome find, that's a huge ask for anyone.
Afaik, there's no public info regarding how much unused stuff Valve actually has stored away, so it could legitimately take months of searching to come across anything - and that's assuming the files still exist in the first place.
People can't really put their lives and work on hold for something that might not even exist.

[A Friend]

Originally posted by JAiZ:

While it would be a really awesome find, that's a huge ask for anyone.
Afaik, there's no public info regarding how much unused stuff Valve actually has stored away, so it could legitimately take months of searching to come across anything - and that's assuming the files still exist in the first place.
People can't really put their lives and work on hold for something that might not even exist.

Well, I'm not asking him to put his life and work on hold for it, nor do I expect that he would. I know searching for it likely wouldn't be easy, but you make it sound like I want him to find the One Piece. At the very least, there's no harm in bringing it up, and if the answer is "no" then so be it - but why shut down an idea before it even has a chance to take off?