“Left 4 Dead 3” is still nowhere to be seen, and Valve haven’t been talking about the game either. But then again, the studio rarely talks about projects they have in development until they’re ready to show them to the public. We did catch a few glimpses of the title here and there throughout the months, and some people even reported seeing it in Valve’s bug databases – but the studio is left to confirm that the game will come out anytime soon.
They did use scenes that looked like they were made for “Left 4 Dead 3” for an official presentation related to the new Source 2 Engine, but other than that, they haven’t mentioned the game in any official context, and haven’t confirmed that they are actually developing it at the moment. Some fans were speculating that the Source 2 presentation was just a technical preview that utilized familiar assets (a level from a previous “Left 4 Dead” game) in order to better illustrate how the engine has evolved.
What could the new game do to improve the experience of the franchise though? This is a question that many have been asking about the possible new release, and fans already seem to have some ideas about what they want to see from the new “Left 4 Dead 3”, whenever it comes. On one hand, of course, everyone is asking for technological progress – this is traditionally a franchise that relies heavily on its atmosphere and presentation, so Valve should focus on its artistic aspect as much as possible.
On the other hand, some have been requesting better support for community-created content. “Left 4 Dead 2” already made it quite simple to share user creations through the Steam Workshop, but actually producing those user-made campaigns was a different story. The clumsiness of the Hammer Editor and the Source Engine as a whole are starting to show, and if Valve want “Left 4 Dead 3” to be successful in terms of community-driven content, they should definitely reevaluate their toolset for the new release.
Which could tie in with the speculation that the game is being prepared with Source 2 in mind, as the new engine is also reported to bring about a complete overhaul of all the tools under its hood. Hammer, the level editor, has been particularly refined and is now reportedly much easier to use. An early preview of that build was already made available for “Dota 2” in certain ways before, and players were generally quite impressed with the overall quality of the new tool and how much it simplified the otherwise annoying Hammer workflow. Hopefully, these changes will propagate to the rest of the toolchain as well.