E3 2021: Warner Bros. Games Conference Roundup

I am incredibly excited for Turtle Rock Studios’ upcoming spiritual successor to the Left 4 Dead franchise, known as Back 4 Blood. However, I thought it was quite strange that Warner Bros. Games would hold an entire 25-minute long E3 conference about one particular game mode in the title and nothing else. Yet, here we are. I managed to take quite a few notes about this specific game mode during Warner Bros.’ time onstage, and I’d like to run through the details I jotted down for you today.

For starters, the Warner Bros. Games E3 showcase focused entirely on the fact that Back 4 Blood will have a player-versus-player mode, called “Swarm.” This mode will operate on a “best of three rounds” system. The first round will consist of four non-zombie players against a team of zombie players, known as “Cleaners” and “Ridden,” respectively. In this mode, the objective of the Cleaners is to survive as long as possible, while also scavenging for useful supplies and eradicating the Ridden. The goal of the Ridden is to kill all four Cleaners on the opposing team as quickly as they can.

In the following round, players then switch sides, with the former team of Cleaners assuming the roles of the Ridden and vice-versa. Whichever team survives for the longest amount of time as the Cleaners is declared the winner of each match. Turtle Rock Studios’ main goal, when it comes to Swarm mode, is to “make a mode just as fun and replayable as the main campaign.”

There are eight playable Cleaners, all of whom have special perks that benefit themselves and their allies. You can see more of these perks in action, as well as more examples of them, in this trailer from IGN. I definitely think the existence of these unique perks is a significant improvement over the characters in Left 4 Dead all essentially being equally skilled in things like first aid and firearm proficiency. These character-specific skills provide quite a bit of variety, in addition to the ability for players to coordinate their chosen Cleaners’ traits to make a much more effective team.

Now, there are some Ridden who look and function similarly to their counterparts in Left 4 Dead. This might give you the impression that Turtle Rock Studios may have taken a little too much inspiration from the game to which their title serves as a spiritual successor. For example, there exist equivalents in Back 4 Blood that function almost identically to L4D’s Jockey, Boomer, and Witch. Though I suspect the latter of these may not be playable in Swarm mode. However, there appear to be new varieties of enemy forms as well.

At the start of each round, players can choose between a total of nine playable Ridden. Furthermore, as the Ridden battle against the Cleaners, they gain points that can be spent on team-wide “mutation” upgrades which serve to give the Ridden team an advantage over the Cleaners. Virtually no detail was provided as to how the “team-wide” part of that idea functions, but I must admit, I’m interested to see how that ends up playing out in the final game.

As you might expect given that players on the Cleaners team can carefully choose their characters in such a way that their unique abilities complement one another, I would suggest that it is wise to choose from the nine available Ridden so that your team composition counters the strategies of the Cleaners. I don’t recall whether or not it was mentioned that players on either team can change their characters once a match begins, but perhaps further elaboration on that topic will come in the future.

On an additional positive note, it was revealed during Back 4 Blood’s time onstage that players controlling the Cleaners can find, equip, and utilize many different weapon customization options during world exploration. Things like scopes, sights, and stocks for various types of firearms were mentioned specifically. I would imagine these weapon options and enhancements will be present in both the main co-op campaign and Swarm mode, though that wasn’t officially confirmed.

Back 4 Blood is currently slated to be released on PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X|S. According to Turtle Rock Studios, cross-platform play and cross-generation play are both “fully intended” to be supported, starting with the game’s open beta planned for later this year. Speaking of that open beta, it will begin in two phases. Everyone who pre-orders the game will have access to the beta beginning on Thursday, August 5th, 2021. The beta will then be available to everyone regardless of pre-order status starting exactly one week later, on August 12th.

Warner Bros. Games’ E3 showcase of Back 4 Blood concluded with several clips taken from a Reddit AMA with the game’s lead developer. That segment of the conference revealed several additional details about the title, which I will now briefly run through. Firstly, the PVP “Swarm” mode features character progression trees that are separate from those within the main co-op campaign. Secondly, those “mutation points” for the Ridden team I mentioned earlier are granted to players based on how well they’re performing in a given match.

Thirdly, the game’s development team explained that there will be more varied objectives in both the PVP mode and the main campaign than simply killing Ridden and reaching a safe area at the end of each map, as was the case the majority of the time in both Left 4 Dead titles. There will also reportedly be secondary objectives players can complete during the game, though no examples of such objectives or their purpose were stated during the showcase.

Turtle Rock Studios additionally mentioned that there will be periodic “lulls” in gameplay during which the Cleaners aren’t constantly being swarmed by enemies. The Cleaners can take advantage of these opportunities to explore the map, looking for supplies such as ammunition and the weapon enhancements I alluded to earlier. I would still personally advise that the Cleaners stick together as much as possible during what little downtime they’ll have, but these chances for exploration could come in quite handy.

Two final notes from the Reddit AMA are that players will be strictly limited to four-player queues for the campaign and Swarm mode, at least at launch. On a similar token, the team has no immediate plans to implement split-screen co-op gameplay during the game’s launch window. However, it’s entirely possible that both of these statements may change sometime later.

There you have it, folks! Now that I’ve written all this out, it seems to me like there was quite a bit of information revealed about Back 4 Blood during the Warner Bros. Games E3 showcase this year, despite the conference only focusing on a single game mode. The final bit of information I can provide you with at this point is that as of the time of writing, Back 4 Blood is scheduled to be released on Tuesday, October 12th, 2021.