Theme

As with its predecessor, Left 4 Dead 2 tells a story as a mock horror movie, introducing each campaign with a movie poster and ending with credits. Unlike the first game, which was episodic, Left 4 Dead 2 features an overarching storyline.^[11] The game is set in the Southern United States, starting in Savannah, Georgia and ending in New Orleans, Louisiana.^[7][8] Left 4 Dead 2 introduces four new survivors whose backstory is provided through dialogue. The four survivors have to fight their way through the hordes of infected, using safehouses along the way to rest and recuperate, in order to reach extraction points.

The amusement park in the campaign "Dark Carnival."

Campaign 1: "Dead Center"

After climbing to the roof of a hotel in Savannah to be rescued, the survivors find themselves abandoned by helicopters, and so make their way to the local mall, after hearing word of a second evacuation point there . After a brief encounter with a gun store owner, Whitaker (voiced by Dayton Callie), the survivors discover that the mall is overrun, and use a stock car to bust out of the mall and travel towards New Orleans.

Campaign 2: "The Passing" (Downloadable Content)

On their way there they encounter the survivors featured in Left 4 Dead at the portside town of Rayford.

Campaign 3: "Dark Carnival"

The survivors are then forced to abandon their car after finding the highway completely blocked by wrecked vehicles. Ttravel through a still-operating (but abandoned) amusement park and start a huge fireworks-and-lights show used by the rock band, The Midnight Riders, in order to attract the attention of a helicopter pilot.

Campaign 4: "Swamp Fever"

After being rescued, they realize their pilot has been infected. Nick is forced to kill him, which causes the helicopter to crash into a bayou. They find brief shelter in a plantation mansion and make radio contact with a boat captain named Virgil who can get them to rescue, but he needs additional diesel fuel to make it to New Orleans.

Campaign 5: "Hard Rain"

Amid a torrential downpour, the survivors go ashore, make their way through an abandoned sugar mill to a gas station to get fuel supplies, and return to the boat. Virgil takes them to New Orleans where the military appears to be evacuating civilians.

Campaign 6: "The Parish"

The group head to the extraction point, but discover that the military is actually bombing bridges to cover their retreat. The survivors then make their way across a lift bridge amid a mass of infected and board the last military helicopter leaving the city before the bridge is destroyed.

Although the survivors' fate after evacuation is left unexplained, Chet Faliszek, the game's writer has said that the military is taking survivors to cruise ships in an attempt to escape the worldwide infection.^[12]