How The Sacrifice should have ended

[Flobee]

I don't know about you, but I feel that finishing the Sacrifice campaign is a pretty anti-climactic. The sacrificee (sacrificer?) just kind of...falls over and gets swarmed and it's over. There are a ton of voices lines in the game files relating to the various characters and the final sacrifice, (Bill has some particularly heart wrenching ones in there) but I've played through it a number of times now and personally never heard any of them actually PLAY in game. Either I'm just getting really unlucky with the AI Director's dialogue randomizer everytime, or the dialogue found in the game files simply can never actually play, and were just recorded and ultimately scrapped for whatever reason.

This rad dude took it upon himself to produce a little machinima, putting to use some of the unused(??) dialogue, giving the end of the campaign a little more impact.

I would have just posted this in the L4D/L4D2 videos thread but I like it enough that I thought it deserved its own.

[TheCarpe]

Yeah, that's pretty good.

I think I read somewhere a lot of the lines recorded (specifically all the ones of Bill's last words, were left in for use by machinimators.

[Flaming Cheese Wheel]

I've not really bothered with The Sacrifice since trying it out the first night because no matter who does the ending right now, the campaign just screeches to a halt right there. If Valve was Old Valve and not variously distracted with whatever, they would have found a way to come up with four distinctive endings at the most, or not have had the campaign go straight to black the second that the last generator is restarted at the least.

But right now it's just "One of you has to die a cheap death. No... really cheap."

[Boss Llama]

I agree. I thought for a good 5 minutes on L4D2's poll of the week, before selecting the option saying you didn't win when you sacrificed yourself, you simply had to die so the team would win. If they had actually made the sacrifice significant in some way, or recognized as more than just a win condition or victory mechanic, I'd have voted otherwise.

[Flaming Cheese Wheel]

Minimum better ending: Like in the video. At least have the game show you something instead of just stopping.

More elaborate ideas:

Require the choice earlier: The character making the heroic sacrifice has to split from the group 2/3rds of the way into the stage. The other players have to help the doomed player finish the required tasks, but that player won't be able to rejoin the others. Gamplay issue with this, of course, is that the sacrificing player could be... not so skilled.

Allow for the chance of something unusual: Let more than one character go, or allow someone else to try to rescue the victim. Maybe 90% of the time this results in a total party kill, but in rare instances you get an alternate awesome cinematic ending, a hidden achievement, etc.

[BigBiker05]

I really like the video. I was sad by the ending. The whole just fall over and THEN get swarmed by commons didn't fly with me. Would it have been that hard to have a charger or a tank hit you into that room? Especially a charger since it can spam further away and be less likely to see appear on screen.

The first time I played it I was like, wtf, what happened, why did I just get incapped, there is nothing around me. Then the swarm came and I realize thats how the map ends.