Team Fortress 2 announced
 

For anyone who hasn't heard TF2 will be released alongside with Half-Life: Episode 2. Here is a group photo of the characters in the game. http://media.pc.ign.com/media/011/01...g_3746315.html

All I can say is YIPPEEE!!! Its about time.

I kinda like the style they went with.

Didn't they originally announce this way back with the Commodore 64?


Mr Mephisto

Yep, back in '98. I believe 'em this time.. it's Valve! :)

I'm pumped.. TFC was awesome.

I was excited about this game like 5 years ago then forgot all about it. Maybe I'll give it a try anyhow.

The characters definetly look different than I expected, but in a good way.

I never heard it was announced the first time, so I'm looking forward to this.
I wasted countless hours on the original, the characters look ace

Kinda amusing that they were originally going to make it a heap more realistic than TFC and then after all this time they've decided to go in the opposite direction.

Oh well, looks like this one is going to stick to the TF formula rather than reinventing it, should be good :)

wow i wonder how pissed off the fortress forever mod team is.

That's a good point. While the in game videos they first showed off 3-4 years ago showed a Battle Field type game this looks like much more fun. The characters remind me alot of the characters from Armed and Dangerous.

I look forward to it.:thumbsup:

Aren't those graphics a little dated?

I think the graphics are purposefully cartoonish. They're so low-tech that they're hi-tech.

I was a little dissapointed when this was first announced, but I'm looking forward to it now. Originally the game was going to be Team Fortress 2: Brotherhood of Arms and it was going to be super realistic moden combat game. The demo even won best of show at the '99 E3 convention.

However, since then the market for that kind of game has been saturated. Besides, the game they were designing already came out... it's called Battlefield 2.

Since there are so many realistic shooters I think going in the opposite direction is the right wa to go. TFC was never a very realistic game, so why try to make it so?

I agree with you. I mean if they are gonna keep TF2 consistent with TFC by having conc jumps... rocket jumps and etc... the cartoony look is the way to go... not ultra-realistic. Plus I think it will be refreshing to have an FPS that is actually made to be fun to play... not something that is trying to replicate real life situations.

Why thank you!

I have the PC Gamer issue when this game was 1st announced.

I have the urge to go find it now... but it's probably buried in some box completely lost.

My theory is that CS is what killed TF2. The early screens looked a lot like CS, and valve knew there was no point in releasing something that was already out there.

I'm looking forward to some more TFC Bingo goodness. Killing a fatty with caltrops is not as easy as it sounds!

I like (in a funny way) how the sniper looks like a safarri big game hunter :) The flamethrower guy just looks awsome though. Spy looks pretty cool too.

TF2 is going to rock - I'm still a TFCer, part own the NZ community at www.nzfortress.co.nz. If you're feeling a little bored, check out the stuff we have on the front page - new videos etc.

Valve totally blew it. They could have released TF2 (the realistic combat strategy game) before Battlefield but they wanted to make more money and so they stalled. Now, they have to scrap it all and renamed a TFC copy/paste job as "TF2." Pretty pathetic, but a good example of why Valve is a horribly inept company run by their marketing department.

Or perhaps they realized that TF2 was going too far from TF's roots, and decided to redo the game to better suit the flavor of the predecessors.

Game companies do not make decisions to scrap YEARS of work over "suiting the flavor of the predecessors." The development of TF2:BoA was plagued since the beginning due to poor planning on Valve's part. The game failed to deliver what it promised in time so they ditched it completely and slapped its name on a copy/paste job. It's Daikatana all over again, except Romero actually released that years-late garbage.

Are you sure it was "YEARS" of work that they scrapped? I only remember seeing a total of 4 screenshots from TF2:BoA.

What exactly is the copy and paste job? Are you saying TF2 is just TFC with prettier graphics?

After watching the latest teaser I am even happier with the direction of the game... looks fun as hell. But I do know one thing... people should try it before saying its gonna suck. Its kinda like eating new food as a kid... if you convince yourself its gonna be bad before you try it... then you will most likely never give it a fair chance.

If the game DOES turn out horrible I will be one of the first in line saying WTF Valve?!? But it comes free with HL2 Ep.2 so how much can you truly bitch about it?

[edit]Oh I guess I could have included a link for the latest teaser... I dunno if its actual in-game footage or not....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PACZIIrxMh8

I lie... there were a total of 11 screenshots on IGN from '99 to 2001

Well, I got my information from an interview with the developers, whereas you got yours from... wherever.

It seems to me that if Valve simply wanted to make money, as you suggest, they would have released the game long before now, before it was done, to capitalize on the TF name. Obviously they did not do this. In fact, TF2 is going to be free with Episode 2. Valve could have easily released it as a stand alone game, for $50 or so, to "make more money." But they are not doing so. Funny, that completely flies in the face of your theories.

Like it was stated above, play the game before criticizing it, sheesh.

In 1998, eight years ago, Sierra and Valve announced that TF2 would be released as an expansion to Half-Life later that year.
http://www.gamespot.com/pc/action/te...ml?sid=2463316

In 1999, seven years ago, Sierra launched a website for TF2(:BoA) announcing it would be a stand-alone game to be released later that year.
http://www.gamespot.com/news/2460650.html

In 2000, six years ago, Valve announced that they were dropping the Quake-based engine in favor of a proprietary engine for TF2(:BoA) -- no release date is mentioned.
http://www.gamespot.com/pc/action/te...ml?sid=2592192

In 2000, nearly six years ago, Robin Walker (a creator of the original Team Fortress mod for Quake and was working on TF2(:BoA)) answers some questions which clearly show that TF2(:BoA) was to be a vastly different game than what is now being paraded around as TF2.
http://www.gamespot.com/pc/action/te...ml?sid=2652476

Yes. TF2 is TFC with cosmetic changes -- the teaser trailer even uses a variant of a ten-year-old map, 2fortX.

You misunderstand my point. My point is that Valve is trying to capitalize on the hype (though now mostly burned out) about TF2(:BoA) and releasing a copy-paste job with NOLF-style graphics in order to sell HL2/Episode 2. It may be fun if you've never played TF, TFC, Q3F, ETF, or the half-dozen other TF-variants, but for those of us expecting some return on the years of wait for TF2(:BoA) it is a massive hand->forehead moment.

I did play TFC for a few years and I am perfectly fine with the direction they are going. If I want realistic squad based combat I'll go play BF2. TFC for me was more about having fun than being realistic. If realism is your thing then try Fortress Forever when it comes out. http://www.fortress-forever.com/

The "community" that voices its opinion on the steampowered forums seems to be split 50/50. Some love it... some don't.

I'm just speculating but I believe that once they started working on the Source engine HL2 and CS:S became more of a priority because the sheer amount of people playing CS dwarfed the TFC community. Yeah they might have had that one guy punching in the 1's and 0's working on TF2:BoA but he was like Milton from OfficeSpace... and they took his stapler.

But anyway... I am sure I will get ripped to shreds for speculating. I just feel that any sequel/update to TFC was always on the back burner for Valve.

Personally, I agree with your point of view.The cartoony graphics match the game way more than realism.The game played like a cartoon to begin with.Rockets, grenades, snipers, sentry guns and flamethrowers all over the place.It was chaos, and not typically the environment for tactics beyond the very basic.My only concern is that Valve doesent fix issues that are still problems like in CS:Source, like Hitbox issues, line of sight glitches/bugs and still having weapon balancing issues.

Side note: I miss the shields from 1.6

I don't think TF2 was ever a priority development - they released a few screenshots and avis that could have easily been made on goldsrc to show what they wanted to do. Then the realised it was like game that they already had - CS. Personally, I'm glad they delayed it, i don't want to play a CS game under the name of TF.

Your links to those press releases mean nothing, seretogis. CS was always going to be more of a priority - makes them far more money. Then along came Source and Steam (without which, we could not have the former) and i recall reading an article or an interview (i forget which) which stated that the guys in charge of TF2 had been reassigned to work on Steam and Source.

TF2 was never not going to be released, it was just a lower priority than the other balls Valve were juggling, and I'm glad they delayed it and changed their minds, because TF2:BoA looked like the most boring BF/CS rip-off/combination possible, it would have totally strayed from what TF is about.

Oh and saying that having 2fort proves they aren't doing anything is complete bollocks, 2fort is a classic map, there cannot be TF without 2fort.

And i'm sure a totally inept company could release consecutive games rated better than anything else ever in the genre - Half Life and Half Life 2. Get over yourself.

I've played TF-variants for nearly 10 years. Imagine if every year a new movie came out but it was simply a remake of a 10 year-old movie, and you may begin to have an idea of what I am talking about. TF2:BoA -- if you made any effort to read the material I linked -- is not even close to being anything like Counterstrike. The fact that this is the gaming forum does not give your ignorance any value simply because "LOL I PLAEY GAEMSZ."

I provided reading material which describes the type of game TF2:BoA was going to be, so really there is no reason to be so uninformed.