Almost Games: Division 9, the original Left 4 Dead (with video)

Irrational Games is a tale of loss and redemption.

It is the company that was co-founded by BioShock creator Ken Levine more than ten years ago. Eventually the company was purchased by Take-Two Interactive and was renamed 2K Boston. Four years after its acquisition, Irrational Games has returned and showed GameInformer one of its canceled projects from 2005 named Division 9.

Division 9 was very similar to Left 4 Dead. The concept involved having a group of survivors who needed to fend off hordes of zombies with limited resources. There were also missions that could be activated as well as base building mechanics. One example of base building gameplay Nate Wells of Irrational Games gave presented players with a doctor who needed to be rescued. If successful you would have a doctor at your base who would most likely heal you. Even though Division 9 was a first person shooter, it borrowed heavily from RPGs, much like BioShock.

Division 9 originally was a sort of spin-off to Irrational Game’s SWAT series. The funny thing is that no one thought a zombie game would sell back then. Right before Division 9 was set to be sold to Vivendi, Take-Two purchased Irrational Games and turned the game into vaporware.

All that is left is a video (embedded below) that shows off what could have been. If Left 4 Dead had squad controls it probably would have been called Division 9.

Read [GameInformer]