![Zombie[1]](http://media.criticalhit.net/2009/09/Zombie1.jpg "Zombie[1]")
Earlier this year Valve announced that Left 4 Dead 2 was going to be set in New Orleans and instantly some obscure group started screaming racism. This was quickly ignored but I did also say at the time that setting a zombie game in a city that is still recovering from Hurricane Katrina is possibly a stupid idea.
I wasn’t the only one to make such unfounded claims and Valve has been steadily trying to calm any fears that people may have about the setting, most recently they have been explaining why they chose New Orleans and apparently the Hurricane had nothing to do with it.
According to Chet Faliszek the reason they chose New Orleans is because
“We still wanted it to be on the East coast, a bunch of us are from the areaâ€
… but wait he has some more logical reasons to follow
“It’s an interesting place that is not covered in a lot of video games. There’s not a lot of video games that go down to the deep south, through the Savanna and New Orleans. There’s a lot of cool gameplay there, there’s a lot of cool areasâ€
Okay that makes more sense and it’s not like I think New Orleans won’t be a great location, I just think they should have only used it for Left 4 Dead 3.. or L4D4. The trauma of hurricane Katrina is still a little fresh in the minds of New Orleans residents and I see no reason why they couldn’t have set L4D2 in Texas (Zombie cowboys), the midwest (Zombie Farmers) or up north in New York or Boston (Zombie Yuppies?).
Either way I am going to be grabbing a copy of this game as I missed the insanity that followed the first one and I don’t want to be left behind again.
Source: Incgamers
Last Updated: September 21, 2009
ewie
September 21, 2009 at 09:18
New Orleans would be perfect, with all those
graveyards in the city, perfect setting for a zombie
game.
CrescentCityRay
September 21, 2009 at 21:05
“a city that is still recovering from Hurricane Katrina”
Just so you know, Katrina ain’t what we are recovering from.
Our outfall canal floodwalls fell down without even being overtopped by storm surge water (at less than half their design loads) because of negligent engineering in the design of those floodwalls’ foundations by engineers employed with the US Army Corps of Engineers as reported in the official levee failure investigation reports and reported to Congress by Corps leadership in June of 2006 and as decided by US 5th District Judge S. Duval in January 2008.
i.e. it was not a ‘natural’ disaster! The classification is ‘MAN MADE’! – human error, engineering mistakes.
The levee failures and subsequent flooding were NOT because of our corrupt local levee boards and politicians or because of weak soil, barges, wind, rain, land elevation, levee heights, subsidence, budgets, democrats, republicans, crime, an act of God, school busses, our culture, environmentalists, neighborhood groups. It wasn’t even caused by FEMA, our Sewage and Water Board or our state’s Department of Transportation, or our poverty, lack of education or any of the other RED HERRING issues very successfully promoted by so many. It was not the fault of flood victims.
Blaming levee and floodwall failures on Katrina is like saying a bridge collapse was because of traffic. Would you blame the drivers?
The levees did not fail because they were ‘overwhelmed’. Federal engineers made lots of big stupid mistakes. Our disaster was the worst engineering catastrophe in the history of North America and the engineers that designed and built and were responsible for those failed levees are the same engineers tasked to rebuild our storm surge protection system. And, the federal government gives us no choice (and never did), but to accept the Corps’ work. Locals were only supposed to mow the grass.
When reporting on the effects of our flood catastrophe, please don’t blame it on Katrina. The engineering structures we depended upon failed us. Please don’t be a flood victim hater looking for ways to hurt and insult us.
There are so many insulting myths about New Orleans and its people. Here are but a few:
Do people know that 90% of the metro area evacuated before the storm? It was the most successful evacuation of a metropolitan area in this country’s history. Could their city do as well?
Do they know that the Lower Ninth Ward is but only 2 of the 140 square miles (in just Orleans Parish) that flooded when flood control structures fell down.
Do they know that 70% of New Orleans home owners had flood insurance? – a rate higher than almost anywhere else in the country.
Do they know that the flood, proportionally, killed just as many rich, middle class and poor as well as black, white, Hispanic and Asian New Orleanians? The only demographic that suffered more than the rest were our elderly who suffered the worst, by far. Did you know many thousands of New Orleanians died in the months after the storm from stress and depression, and are still dying?
Do they know that 50% of New Orleans is above sea level?
Did you know ships must travel 96 miles upriver from the Gulf to reach New Orleans? – we are not a ‘coastal’ city.
96 miles upriver!!!
Do they know the Corps is mostly responsible for the losses of our wetlands that use to serve as a storm surge buffer for New Orleans?
Do they know that New Orleans has a higher percentage of residents that remain lifelong residents of their home town than any other major metropolitan area in the US?
Do they know the vast majority of New Orleanians are honest, hard working, tax paying, law abiding US citizens and deserve their respect?
Why do outsiders believe these myths?
The myths seemed to stem from journalists parachuting in with preconceived notions and lazy but flowery language and they typically reported it all wrong. Countrymen and politicians used our problems as partisan political fodder. New Orleans and its residents have been ruthlessly slandered like no American city has ever experienced. Lazy media reported a ‘natural’ disaster and too many of our countrymen feel we deserved our disaster and should even be denied the right to exist. It is plenty enough to hurt your feelings. Our fellow US citizens don’t care that all the misinformation has seriously disillusioned and disturbed so many.
BTW, N.O. is not on the East Coast.
Geoff
September 21, 2009 at 21:28
Thanks for that, an interesting read.
It serves as a reminder to at the very least examine, if not outright challenge the preconceived ideas that we’re fed through the media.
I’m certainly spurred to investigate, and find out more, and if you have any recommended reading – please
pass it through.
CrescentCityRay
September 22, 2009 at 00:35
visit http://www.levees.org
Oh, and yea, Valve will have a good time researching the new game’s environment.