Valve Stuns Gamers - EA Conference

Awesome, I will be buying Episode Two now, and of course, Epidose One too! I'll wait until nearer the release time, and play them back to back.

This is great news! <3 Valve!
 
Darkside55 said:
Finally...TF2. I knew it was coming. I knew it would come, I knew it was coming soon, I had a feeling. When Valve said that EpTwo would have a new multiplayer game I knew this was it. FINALLY. I don't think anyone's waited with bated breath for this game more than me. I always kept the hope alive for this thing; got every TF2 article tucked away in a box, and I knew that despite all the hush-hush and "neglect" it was still in production.

So it's kinda anti-climactic then that all this waiting for a game I'd become so familiar with turns out to be something that sounds like cartoon TFC, at least in the art style. "Pixar-esque CG?" Who wants that? There was a toon textures pack released for TFC if people really wanted it. Maybe it's too early to rag on it but I think it's safe to say if this is the art direction then we're not going to get the gritty TF2 that was promised in 1998. TF2 was supposed to be the original Valve Team Fortress mod to ship a few months after HL; it had basically all the features TF2 was supposed to have, but they ended up releasing Team Fortress Classic instead as an ode to old QWTF, and their plan was to use the TF2 design in its own game. So really, we were promised TF2 originally and that got replaced by TFC (not complaining), then TF2 was to be its own game that fell by the wayside because they scrapped the engine like twice, then the Source engine came and they didn't want to talk about it. So now, they're releasing TF2...it's called TF2...but it looks like it isn't Brotherhood of Arms. That's wildly disappointing to me.

I have great faith in Valve and I'm going to say the game will probably be fun, but it's not going to be the same. Likeness to Battlefield series of games be damned, I want a war not cartoon caricatures. I want my squad-centric gameplay with a machine gunner, a marine with a one-fire rocket, an officer class that increases the squad's accuracy and abilities, and medics that can revive the newly dead. Commander mode and engineer resource management. That's TF2, man.

Where is everyone getting the idea that TF2 is just going to be a cartoony port of TFC? I mean if Valve says the aim of TF2 is to make the best-looking and playing class-based MP game, do you really like they'd simply change the art direction of the original game and call it a sequel?

Are you guys that dumb?
 
Portal, I just find it odd. What we can gather is that Portal is a sci-fi.

Is Portal the working title for Prospero by any chance, the game concept that evaporated away during development of HL?
 
D3pth Charge said:
Is this just your opinion or do you have some valid source of information backing these claims up? Just curious.

http://dystopia-game.com/media/main.php?g2_itemId=349

Lets just say, you don't spend a week working in Valve's offices and not ask them for tid bits of info about TF2....

But it's still just an opinion based on things said publically and the answers I got to my questions back in Feb 2005. A lot of time has obviously passed since then, but I'm willing to bet that I'm right :)
 
Portal is basiclly a puzzel game , with only a portal gun at your disposal and you can do some crazy stuff.

TF2 sounds very creative , there's no need for bitching. I guess if we would have gotten the original idea for TF2 , people would have bitched saying it's just a clone of other games and isn't unique.

Now people bitch that TF2 sounds more original and unique. Just wait for the media and the info. Who says there aren't vehicles and all the other stuff? just wait and see. Eitherway , it's gonna be good.
 
Sparta said:
Where is everyone getting the idea that TF2 is just going to be a cartoony port of TFC? I mean if Valve says the aim of TF2 is to make the best-looking and playing class-based MP game, do you really like they'd simply change the art direction of the original game and call it a sequel?

Are you guys that dumb?
On the other hand does the game we were promised back when HL1 was released sound like it would be fitting for cartoon graphics? Also would valve release such a game as a free mod if it was being made to such a scale?

I'm sure there will be differences to TFC but the art direction and the fact its being handed out for free with EP2 would lead me to think it wont be a huge overhaul or reinvention of the wheel like many had been hoping for after Valve initially announced TF2 so many years ago. If it was as big an update I suspect they would have released it stand alone like they did with DoD Source.

The way they have planned the graphics does sount to me we will get something alot closer to TFC than say Battlefield 2 or what was originally planned for TF2 back in the days.And no I'm not saying I wanted battlefield, if I did thats available now.
 
So, from reading the article...

TF2 is just going to be TFC on source...with the characters looking like they are from The Ship? GG, very revolutionary.

I'd like to see how TF2's maps are going to match up to FF's. eat's Well is absolutely visually amazing and a work of art.
 
http://pc.ign.com/articles/718/718495p1.html

a bit more info about the style of TF2.
Nobody promised you anything about how TF2 will be. This game is on development so many years that things just..change. Bring on TF2 and Portal media.

That "new" ep2 trailer has nothing new , the new scene GS mentioned in their article is not shown - it's the same trailer we already seen.
 
"So, from reading the article...TF2 is just going to be TFC on source..."

Will people stop making stuff up?
 
DigiQ8 said:
i dont think TF2 will be just a source version for TFC, that cant be
I would be shocked as well, not least because Ep2 focuses on vehicles (which were a major part of the original TF2 design). And also because, you know, it's Team bloody Fortress.

As for the FF guys...
 
I'll use thsi thread to ask a question seeing as this was released at an EA conference, a guy I know via DoDSource is going around spreading that Valve is owned by EA, is this true? Because I thought they only have a publishing deal.
Sorry for going a bit OT but I couldn't really find any forum to post it in and this topic was here so..
 
Valve are their own dudes. Gabe and the co-founder (can't remember his name, but he bowed out when HL1 shipped or thereabouts) had a lot of money from their involvement in MS, so they were able to bankroll HL1's development on their own terms. HL1 sold a boatload so they were able to continue as-is, I believe.
 
So if you want Team Fortress 2 , you need to buy EP2 to? I dont have EP1 so what do I do with EP2?

Im starting to hate those episodes.
 
Woah. That Portal thing sounds weird, but TF2? Wooooooooooooooot.

EDIT:

Betelgeuze said:
So if you want Team Fortress 2 , you need to buy EP2 to? I dont have EP1 so what do I do with EP2?

Im starting to hate those episodes.

It'll probably come as a standalone product too, me thinks.

EDIT2:

Gamespot said:
Newell revealed that the vaunted PC first-person shooter franchise is going to arrive on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 and that the PC and console versions will ship with not only a new single-player game called Portals, but also with Team Fortress 2, the ambitious multiplayer game that Valve tried to develop in the late 90s but that quietly disappeared later on.

Does this mean we'll get Portals and TF2 along with Episode 2? Weeeewwwttt.
 
Gargantou said:
I'll use thsi thread to ask a question seeing as this was released at an EA conference, a guy I know via DoDSource is going around spreading that Valve is owned by EA, is this true? Because I thought they only have a publishing deal.
Sorry for going a bit OT but I couldn't really find any forum to post it in and this topic was here so..
As others have said, Valve are their own people, EA just publish their games at retail (which I think is unusual for EA, they own most of the development studios they publish). In the end you get the good bits about EA (the distribution) without the bad bits (stupid movie licence games, endless derivatives of previous games, poor working conditions for employees etc.)

It depends how much episode 2 cost - if its the same as episode 1, getting it and not playing it just to have TF2 isn't that bad really, is it?
 
I'm sooo glad we have so many people here that are apparently "on the inside" when it comes to VALVE and TF2, I don't know what I'd do if we didn't have so many knowledgeable people telling us exactly what VALVE's plans are.

TF2 was just announced, they're using the same 9 classes but so what? You have no idea how they've changed those classes.
 
I hope that both Portals and TF2 will be awesome. The hype is wearing off... that sucks a good deal.
 
Not to burst the bubble, but will these games now have such advanced graphics, that lower end computers can't run them anymore?
 
This news is what makes Valve my favourite development company...
 
ray_MAN said:
Not to burst the bubble, but will these games now have such advanced graphics, that lower end computers can't run them anymore?
No. As you can see from the Ep2 trailer, the next-gen stuff is optional.
 
Varsity said:
No. As you can see from the Ep2 trailer, the next-gen stuff is optional.
Valve have designed source to degrade nicely for old graphics cards/pcs I don't think they'll stop now.
 
let's see the PRICE

$60?

I don't give a rat's ass about TF2 or Portal

gimme Episode 2!
 
holyyy crap!!! do you know how great this is?!? i will be able to play Half Life 2 and all the episodes on my 360 (or ps3 if it really does have slightly better graphics)!!! not only that, but i can play them on my 42 inch Sony HDTV!!! i can play Half Life 2 in HD!!! wow a dream come true...now im off to Jamaica for 5 days, laterrr
 
If ya'll want to see what portal is all about, check out
http://www.nuclearmonkeysoftware.com/narbaculardrop.html

The guys who made this little puzzle game were hired by Valve to take it professional. Portal is the result.

The game's pretty old graphics, but the gameplay is actually lots of fun, despite basically being just sort of a tech demo. Anyone who says that Valve just quickly copied Prey is full of crap. They bought these guys out more than a year ago, long before anyone knew that Prey wasn't dead for good.
 
I really wasn't planning on purchasing Ep. 2, but with this announcement i'll have to. Guess it's a bonus to TF2 =p
 
Varsity said:
I would be shocked as well, not least because Ep2 focuses on vehicles (which were a major part of the original TF2 design). And also because, you know, it's Team bloody Fortress.

As for the FF guys...
Remember that most of those comments are from FF fans and not from the team. In fact, the first comment I saw from a team member was basically saying he was gonna wait for more info before getting all worked up over nothing.

Okay, so nothing's certain, but to compete with FF they're gonna need a damn good product because FF is looking tiiiight, especially the mapping (the revamped maps and the new stuff). If TF2 were essentially TFC:Source, they would lose a significant proportion of the hardcore gamer sales come release (provided FF didn't have any major flaws and both were more or less the same in terms of gameplay). A Valve-made TFC:Source would attract the console players who haven't played HL or HL2 and their popular mods.

The thing is, if Valve were making a TFC port they would have known for a long time about it, and they would have had the opportunity to kill the competition long ago. This means either (A) Valve are very, very nice people -nicer than we already give them credit for- or (B) TF2 will be fundamentally different to TFC. TF2 will be coming out on consoles so I wouldn't be surprised if they threw a little co-operative living-room play into TF2. Like someone said earlier, Ep 2's supposed to have vehicles. It might make sense that TF2 might feature some 2+ player vehicles a la UT2K4. I wonder how the Source engine would handle that, though.

r~ Defrag said:
Also, although the FF community is fairly active and a lot of people know about the mod, I don't think it's going to dent Valve's sales of Episode 2. Valve has huge advertising clout so even if our vision of TF is well balanced and enjoyable, word of mouth can only do so much. I think it's fair to say we won't be seeing any steampowered.com mod advertising for FF that other mods have enjoyed. Like I said though, on the flipside, Valve could've just shut us down.
This is why I think if TF2 is essentially just TFC:Source, they should have forewarned you somehow, because one of Valve's promises to help out people who mod for their game. In this case, it would have only been fair to inform you guys that you wouldn't be getting the support other deserving mods would get.

Should be interesting to see what Valve have got up their sleeves, though. :)
 
Interestingly, I agree with Crispy.
 
I think the FF team has nothing to bitch about and nothing to worry about. They knew Valve was making a TF2, and the fact that it's finally covalescing into form can't possibly be a reason for them to get angry, because they've had its misty reminder there the whole time.

I also think that Fortress Forever is a damn fine mod and holding its own. I'll have Episode 2 and TF2 on the day they're released, but I'll be damned if I don't have FF on the day it's released too. They've got nothing to worry about - and that applies to both Valve and the FF team. Plus, does it really matter if you get more or less people? The only players that matters are the ones who care enough about mods and FF to actually play it despite TF2, while the other ones you might be losing are probably idiots anyway.

I'm excited, anyway - the bundling of TF2 with Episode 2 is kind of a punch in the face to all the naysayers that are whining about episodic content's $20 for 4 hours of play. Plus, any new Valve game is awesome for me.
 
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