Well, once again, Valve has the internet talking about Team Fortress 2, a game that came out, like, forty-six years ago. Amazing how they keep doing that.
The six new alternative weapons for the Soldier and Demo have started appearing amidst the fog of war, a war the Soldiers have been winning from the get-go. With over nine million Soldiers and Demomen fallen, the Soldiers currently have a lead of about 250,000 — not a huge lead considering the numbers, but one they’ve steadily held and, unless the Demos really make a push, will continue to hold in pursuit of the exclusive seventh weapon.
In the meantime, TF2 crafting has been announced, which will allow players to collect blueprints and recycle weapons and items they don’t want in order to fabricate those they do. There’s also a Propaganda Contest which invites players to design propaganda posters for the war. The winner receives a unique, monogrammed in-game item, most likely a hat of some sort, and there are awards for the runners-up as well.
Plus, there are comics! Featuring the prickly Announcer, the hippie-thrashing adventurer and inventor Saxton Hale, and now the Demoman, whose first two new weapons are a sword, called the Eyelander, and a Shield called the Chargin’ Targe.
The Eyelander replaces his scotch bottle and sucks away some of the Demoman’s health, though once he starts hacking off enemy heads, he will gain buffs to both his health and speed.
The Eyelander does not crit unless the Demoman is also holding the Chargin’ Targe, which replaces his sticky launcher. Equipping the shield provides the Demoman with fire and splash damage resistance, and allows him to charge faster than a Scout can run and bludgeon his enemies when he connects. If the Demo is also holding the Eyelander he’ll be able to crit with the blade as well.
So! That was certainly unexpected (though the hidden Poopy Joe page hinted that one of the new weapons might be a sword, which perhaps means the Soldier will be receiving a pick-axe or bugle.) Looks like a rather drastic change for the Demoman, practically a change into a whole new combat class, one that charges and hacks and slashes like some sort of medieval berserker. Interesting. I don’t know how it’ll work out, but it’s definitely interesting.
The war rages on, and we’ve still got lots of weapons headed our way, plus new achievements, new maps, and whatever the hell else Valve has planned. Stay tuned! And support our troops!
31 Comments
December 15, 2009
Hopefully that comment went through, otherwise
No, Support OUR troops! http://www.teamfortress.com/demomanupdate
December 15, 2009
Editor nitpick: “The six new alternative weapons for the Soldier and Demo have
startingstarted appearing.” Feel free to nuke this comment.December 15, 2009
Nice summary of the war thus far.
December 15, 2009
All this the one week when I can’t play any TF2 due to being offline at home. GRRRR.
December 15, 2009
Arhh, you wee soldiers shink yurr all soo greet doount yaar.
Ah, yurr racists tha flamin’ lut of yaar.
Shut up, it’s a passable Scottish accent. What? Yes it is, it totally is. I’m practically in Scotland anyway, what do you mean I’m not, you southern jessies think of THE NORTH as anywhere north of Luton anyway. Hell, half of the people I speak to down South think Newcastle is in Scotland, so how dare you accuse me of having a rubbish accent. Grrr, bloody Southerners.
Anyway, I’m looking forward to bashing some heads in with the eyelander, I already love to stick-jump into the midst and start thwacking people with the bottle as it is.
December 15, 2009
The Eyelander and the Chargin’ Targe certainly make for the most radical class change we’ve seen so far (until the Soldier’s anticipiated sewing kit unlock enables him to do haberdashery instead of combat). Instead of mid-range grenade + sticky spam, the demo will now be taking on soldiers and pyros in face-to-face melee combat. It’ll be very interesting for the first few days. I await the 1v1 Eyelander duels with great anticipation.
December 15, 2009
I’m going to guess that the hidden Poopyjoe page hint for the Solider unlocks is a life stealing rocket launcher, or one that shoots spaceship explosives.
December 15, 2009
Uhm, 2 pro-demo comments and no pro-soldiers?
You’re all a bundle of girls’hair! We’ll blend the lot of em demos, charging or not, into alcoholic ketchup sauce!
All possible praise to Valve on this one though, I don’t think I remember any other game getting half this much awesome support after release, one wonders how they get their money back for all of that extra work…
December 15, 2009
Come on Chris, we already know all that. If not through Valve, through your tweets. Besides, this war is boring. It’s meaningless and is only determined by which side has the players of the worse quality (the only way to tilt the war’s balance is to convince a large groups of bad players to switch sides). The update itself is boring, too. I don’t like the new background, it ruins the mysterry that was around TF2. Sure, releaving them at some point might be nice, but instead we get very short, very detail packed comics. It just feels shoddy.
I was more interested in the Killing Floor free passes that were handed out to the game’s owners. I got one, realyl liked it, and purchased it. It’s pretty sweet.
December 15, 2009
You support Soldier? Really?
AAAAAA
December 15, 2009
It seems that Chris’s blog updates are now just longer versions of his Twitter updates :(
December 15, 2009
@Vorrin
I was thinking the same thing about money. I wonder if TF2 sales are going up due to all the nice work they put in two years after release? Or is Valve just awesome that they don’t care if they make more money or not?
@Nonomu
“mysterry” around TF2? If anything, TF2 used to just be “BLU guys attack RED guys for no apparent reason.” Now we’re getting a semblance of a storyline. I doubt it’ll become Half-life quality or really reveal a whole lot, but I think it’s a nice touch. Plus the comics are hilarious.
The whole WAR update has gotten me back into TF2. I never played a whole lot of it before (I’m not much for multiplayer play); I haven’t started it up since the Pyro update. It has changed a lot since then for the better. My favourite class is the Spy, and the Spy update made the game so much more fun for me.
Three cheers for Valve and their great support for us, the constantly-whining community!
December 15, 2009
Anyone who doesn’t love Valve at this point is either a Communist or a straggling L4D2 boycotter.
December 15, 2009
The story that’s evolving is pretty cool. Best friend vs. best friend. It’s just like Macbeth, AKA the Scottish Play.
Think about it: Three witches (Administrator, Ms. Paulson, and Saxton Hale) conspire to corrupt a good Scottsman into killing his best friend in a quest for power. Meanwhile, a woman very important to the Demoman is encouraging him to go through with the killing, while he himself is reluctant.
How dare Jay Pinkerton steal a story that Shakespeare stole fair and square.
December 15, 2009
Hmm, I wonder if the soldier is getting a bugle melee weapon. In war, you play the trumpet to wake up soldiers or to honor the dead. My best guess would be that the alt-fire or taunt might do something to speed up the respawn of your allies, but most servers mess with respawn times, so I doubt that’s the angle Valve will take. Maybe it just buffs nearby allies.
I don’t get a WWII/Cold War era soldier getting a pickaxe. That’s more a WWI thing, where soldiers would dig underground to plant explosives. In ‘Nam, tunneling was the enemy’s thing.
Then again, the Medic got a WWI pickelhaube helmet, and one of the soldier’s hats is a Vietnam-style helmet, so who knows. However, I take historical accuracy very seriously in TF2. It’s the Mad Men of team FPS games.
December 15, 2009
OMFG NO NONDRICK UPDAET!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!? WHY O WHYYY!?!?!?!?!?
December 15, 2009
GO SOLDIERS!!!
December 15, 2009
Wild guessing time: Since we know the Demoman will get the sword, and we can assume Soldier will get the pick-axe, I wonder if the secret 7th will be the bugle. Dunno what it will do, but it seems like something that would end up as the 7th.
Or maybe it’s just there to intentionally mislead us. Who knows!
December 15, 2009
I need a new gpu. I can’t join the fight with the broken piece of crap I’m using right now :(
December 15, 2009
I love how they made that fan-Announcer the canon design, besides the RED/BLU suit. Such a… Valve thing to do.
December 15, 2009
Secret 7th weapon: Florida.
IT SHOOTS ORANGES.
@A Person!
True, and sad.
@Keenblaze
Yes, I’ve misspelled mystery. And I liked not knowing much about what going on.
@Tim
Yes, Valve loves making references and stealing stories.
Also, the soldier is a whackie who didn’t notice WWII was done, so he is very oldschool and might get a pickaxe. He has a bloody shovel already.
@mAk
The word on the street is that TF2’s bottleneck is the cpu, unless your gpu is raelly that worse than your gpu.
December 15, 2009
@Nonomu198
“unless your gpu is raelly that worse than your gpu”
What? :) Anyway, what I meant was that my gpu is currently in a near-death state. I need a new one and I’m planning on buying it with a whole lotta other parts to build a new rig. Thanks for the tip, anyways.
December 15, 2009
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ASu0lrJNzwA
NEW DEMOMANS CHARGE ATTACK!!!!!!!!!
Lol anyway, valve is obviously going to give the seventh weapon to the engi and troll us all.
December 15, 2009
What? No news about Games for Windows LIVE selling full games?
Kind of bad imo.
If I wouldn’t lag online, I would support the Soldier though.
December 15, 2009
I cannot report on GFWL selling full games because GFWL is DEAD TO ME.
December 15, 2009
If you guys noticed a couple clues Valve has left us (the boot-print and coffee stain on the newspapers, for instance), you might agree with what I’m about to say:
My money is on the Engineer getting SOMETHING. Whether it’s the full update, or something weird, I think we’ve only hit the tip of the iceberg with the War Update.
Also, I want more backstory on the characters. We’ve already got Tavish Dagroot, and I love Valve even more for that.
December 15, 2009
@ Cowjuicer
Just want to note that Tavish is the name of Demoman’s dad, though I was a bit confused on that at first too.
December 15, 2009
Soldier gets a sniper rocket launcher!
http://www.teamfortress.com/war/part5/index.htm
December 15, 2009
Sweet! I’ve always hated how long rockets take to actually hit something mainly because I am lame at determining where someone will be in five seconds. (Thus why I play Spy because I just have to walk behind someone and STAB THEM IN THE BACK instead of predicting their movement amidst wild jumping spasms.)
I heart Valve.
Also, I heard the Meet the Pyro video is coming tonight. :D
;)
December 15, 2009
@ Cowjuicer again
You’re right actually, I read it again a bit and he is named Tavish. How odd!
December 16, 2009
@mAk
really*, and cpu*. I typed these comments kind of hastily. From now on I’ll quadruple check just so you guys can’t quote me and smile.
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