Left 4 Dead Opening

[guno]

http://store.steampowered.com/app/5141/

Louis is such a wuss ;p

[guno]

it actually turns out our characters are given randomly :T

No actual choice

[Purplecat]

I expect people to ragequit just because they get the wrong character. :V

(Is there an actual difference between them anyway, apart from graphics and voices)

[Tyakoto]

Characters are identical in gameplay, in terms of weapon handling.

[Wulfie]

[Jinx]

As far as I can remember, the only place that said the characters are given out randomly was in an E3 Preview from July: "Faliszek also clarified that, as with previous builds, characters will be assigned to players randomly upon joining a game." I'm betting this was done to simplify things for previewers and play testers. I'm pretty confident that you'll be able to pick whatever character you like, and I thought for sure I heard that mentioned somewhere, although now I can't seem to find anywhere that states this as fact. As partial proof here's a couple pictures:

Able to choose character on the X-Box 360 single player mode

Kinda hard to make out, but I think this image pops up before starting the campaign. I vaguely remember seeing video of somebody playing on the 360 and on this screen they were able to change who they were playing as (you would see it switch back and forth from "<Playername> as Bill" and "Bill as Himself")

ffffff.... now I'm even more confused than before I started writing this.