sup yall now that im a little less tired I wanna clarify again that this vids just my drowsy opinions and speculation :) also, looking back on this, framing it as though Moby would definitely hate modern TF2 was probably in poor taste, since as far as I know he hasn't actually publicly expressed anything like that I was just trying to make a point about how meticulous the style originally was and how far it's fallen in my opinion, if you disagree and think its Epic now thats fine i dont rly care
I would also like to see tf2 take itself more seriously, like just imagine a story of heavy's backstory growing up in a gulag, or scouts life on the streets in a single parent household or demoman dealing with his alcohol addiction. all of these tragic stories we'll never see because it wouldn't be "silly".
He's actually one of the only Australians who doesn't get their power from a metal. And personally I like saxon hale and he could of also been grounded in cartoonly reality too.
The way I see it, in TF2's early days, there really wasn't much of an intended lore. It was more like there was a vague, basic lore that was born from the game's initial aesthetics. I think the comics themselves don't feel all that jarring from the early ideas through dialogue and concepts from TF2's lifespan, but rather an extension and further exploration of those ideas. I believe the Sniper vs. Spy update marked the beginning of the creative team for the game finding their footing with what they wanted to do with this the lore, because I think that really was the best way forward in making a unique universe. As for the game's artstyle itself, I think this was moreso disrupted by the ever-increasing saturation of cosmetics and weapons in the game, not so much the lore. While there was some non-game media that supplemented this, these were mostly designed as tongue-in-cheek promotional material, because you'll notice in the mainline comics, you don't really see much from the plethora of stuff added in the updates since the game's launch. They team still chooses to focus on the game's base aesthetic with the addition of the witty writing that early 2010s Valve was sort of known for.
Funfact:there actually was a tf2 animated series based on the comics that was supposed to come out (i think on adult swim ?) However it was scrapped after valve lazed around and DIDNT DO A SINGLE EPISODE , and allegedly expiration date was the series pilot but it was released on youtube after the series was scrapped
I personally like the way TF2 went (not nesscarily the destruction of the art style just more so the goofiness) over the original idea, but I won't deny that the original idea is intriguing to me and I respect that you like it more.
Its like other valve seqels. FIrst it starts as Dark and more depressing game/story but over time or with another version it becomes goofy . You can see this transition from games like l4d to l4d2, hl2 beta to hl2, and other valve games like older cs to CS go. They are lost a bit of charm and what made them more sirius storiea/games , but all of theri fans plays this game cuz then not becomed bad.
@@benjistyles19 No, they're not. The context matters. In this context, nobody is referring to the griddy. They misspelled gritty, and their reaction to me pointing that out is perfectly enough evidence of that. Nobody says "dark and griddy", that doesn't even make sense. Google the definiton of gritty, and suddenly "dark and gritty" immediately makes sense.
I think one aspect that actually changed in the other direction was heavy. I always see people joke about how he's actually "one of the smartest characters" despite how fans seem to portray him but the fan interpretations at times actually feel more accurate to what he originally was to be honest. The comics and various things nowadays portray him as quiet and intelligent when that is quite literally the exact opposite of how he acts in the game. He's loud and crazy. It's pretty clear that it's not just him being bad at English. He's supposed to be insane like the rest of them. Many of the original shorts (especially meet the spy which makes him out to be as dumb as soldier) definitely don't make him act like this. Heavy is one of the goofiest characters in the game who literally eats lunch mid-battle. I think it's a bit weird how they seemingly tried to make him one of the more serious characters. Pyro I also think is handled a bit iffy. Mostly because the original joke was sort of thrown out the window when it comes to pyroland. They make him too obviously child-like and everyone else is seemingly aware of it too. But what made the original short so funny is that it's not obvious what's going on in his head and others are terrified of him because of that. In the original short he might be dancing around and acting goofy but when it cuts back to "real life" he's portrayed to be a lot more sinister. It's sort of understandable why the game itself doesn't try to do this because then you would never really see much of the pyroland stuff but I feel like everything else probably should had stuck to how it originally was.
@@Игорь-щ4г2з I always thought that would be a good way to try to work in that kind of personality back into the comics (he loses control when he has sasha or something) but if I remember correctly he only has it for a few panels at most and there isn't really enough time to really do anything with that. So I wouldn't really say that's necessarily the case. It still doesn't really change the fact that heavy is pretty dumb in a lot of the original shorts so it still doesn't make all that much sense to have him act this way in the first place.
@@ShowinGrowin i could argue that only heavy acting dumb would be blu heavy, but that would require explaining the fact that there are multiple instances of multiple different people. Also agreed, they could explore more of his personality, but for comic series that short(and abandoned) i don't see it happening, heavy is side character unfortunately.
well, Team fortress 2 is actually a sort of dramatized documentary game, the game makers probably thought that the RED team was good enough for promo while the BLU team could look completely different.
Did you forget about Meet the Heavy, his introductory video? In there, he is mostly serious and almost even somber when he is giving the interview (except for his overreaction at someone touching "Sasha"), but the moment he is on the battlefield, he goes bananas, mowing down enemies left and right and having an absolute blast while doing so. And that aspect of him never goes away. Whenever he is fighting, he acts like a barbarian overdosing on testosterone. Whenever he is chilling after a mission, he is chill and serious.
I always loved tf2's unmatched americana feel, and i think the loss is most notorious with maps, we went from beautiful dessert landmarks and 60's spy tech, to... Maps like Venice and bread space, which, from a gameplay perspective are cool as heck, but... Yeah they completely forget what made tf2... Also, on that same note, I think saxton hale does fit in with the 60's style, but not from a spy movie perspective, but rather from a 60' superhero comic perspective Also, fempyro on a video complaining about the loss of tf2's style lol
Hale fits because he’s literally a parody of Charles Atlas ads from old 60s comics. He makes the same pose and everything, which is why all of his comics are parodies of old Marvel comics, in fact his personality is a bit like Stan Lee in a way.
venice and bread space along with being unfitting are some of if not the 2 worst maps in the game layout wise. venice is literally a csgo map made by someone who had 80 hours in the game (most of which were probably testing and viewing the map itself rather than actually playing) as such it has a whole ton of confusing sections that make no sense for a tf2 map and tons of open areas for snipers. as for bread space... does anyone actually like playing that map??? literally sniper heaven, the entire map is just wide open areas with no cover that are twice as big as they should be
I get where you're coming from, but I disagree about this being a problem. Retcons aren't inherently bad, and in this case, the only thing that was truly changed from the established lore was the scale of the conflict, from a war for world domination, to a war over pointless gravel. It's not like there was a plot there to begin with, just vague details about the world. As for Saxton, he was introduced in the same update as Jarate of all things; things had already gotten pretty silly. Does it really matter if the macho Australian character wasn't meant to be how Saxton Hale after normally, when he sells kidney-enlarging pills to people for the purpose of "jar-based karate"?
Thing is, The Administrator still has her fingers in the whole world basically, and the comics were building up to a reveal of the Administrator's true plans. I don't think the scope of the conflict got any smaller, but rather more indirect with the impact. The gravel wars are a small, but vital piece of a larger mostly off screen plot, headed by a woman powerful enough to force world leaders to cover up her dirty dealings.
I actually like the new TF2 better cause yeah the old style was cool but if the game stayed 100 percent serious there is a chance it would have died out, yeah the gameplay alone is cool as hell but thats not the only reason people stayed its a game where you can just have dumb fun one of the few games left where this is the norm and not taken as serious as a WWIII.l
Hale's first real appearance ended with him getting into a fight with Steve Jobs, the man that invented piss-throwing that scares the enemy for life, might just have been designed to be silly to the core
3:53 I absolutely love the ying/yang dynamic of that description. BLU constructs, RED demolishes. One creates, the other destroys those creations. In a never-ending cycle.
The one thing that bothered me even if it's a bit pointless to overthink it is that RED is the demolition team, thus they should be the attackers. It also probably makes more sense if you think about the theming of the teams: RED is rustic themed, BLU is industrial; Maybe BLU would be trying to take over the planet to make everything into a factory machine, all they care about is money - On the other side RED are the common poorer people who are concerned about that (but still probably maniacs who want world domination too, to fit into the wackiness of the game) and want to destroy BLU. I think whenever someone thinks of TF2's mercs they probably default to the RED team colors for no reason, with this theoretical AU that I just pulled out of my ass, it would make sense to see them as the heroes/protagonists and BLU as the villains/antagonists. Again, I'm overthinking it but food for thought I guess.
@@its_cookie_man I think it was more for the irony. Lets take payload for example, blues attacking because they want to blow it up and be called in to reconstruct it. Red defends the place because they want to be called in to demolish it themselves.
@@prantosadnan7852 It's an interesting theory, but what about other modes like control points? Well.. actually in that case I guess it's just about domination idk.
@@its_cookie_manGood point, I honestly dont know the lore reason for control points in the first place. Maybe territory reasons? It just seems odd compared to capturing intel and pushing bombs
@@ZoofyZoof richter literally explains saying, it’s like building a house just for it to get peed on, the concept artist took his job seriously, and made fantastic displays of the world, it had some brilliant style to it, and now the structure which he had created has been completely obscured by the garbage piled on top of tf2, its just sad to see a masterpiece be wasted
@@DR.Narbacular See, that is exactly the thing that makes people not understand. A lot of people simply see that as a positive. They don't see the house being peed on, they see a house having been remodeled. Because that's what it was. Remodeled, not peed on. Nothing ever stays the same, and being wacky and ridiculous was what made TF2 stand out, and still stand out. That, and solid gameplay with lots of room for customization. If you don't like the house how it is, it's alright. You can leave the house, you can accept it for how it is, you can even share what you don't like about it, but trying to denigrate others for liking the house better now is petty.
@@M4x_P0w3r Remodeled in to a toilet, you mean? The artstyle was never supposed to be over-the-top goffy game for kids. That's one of the things that Richter is criticizing. In fact i see a trend with old games that goes like this: a serious game, which has some funny little details as a compliment, releases; over time, some people take the funny little details and start to over exaggerate them, to the point where they are hindering the original idea of the game; after that when somebody mentions that the game used to take itself more serious, he is categorised as simply being a nostalgic old man, who needs to catch up with the new times. You cannot argue that the artstyle we have now can compete with the original one. There are many videos on the topic that explain this. And it's fair to question somebody's tastes, when their actions have changed a good art piece. "You can leave the house"? Yeah, thanks for coming to the same house that we both live in and incouraging it's degration. Now I have to search and settle for a new home, until you come here and start feeding the mice all over again. How about you leave, if you don't like the original design of the house? Or I can just "accept it" and quietly mumble my opinions, while you do your "pissing" and reply with the relativist answear of "I respect your opinion, but i will continue to do what i'm doing".
this video is pretty eye opening to me (and honestly a bit depressing) knowing that for years ive agreed with the sentiment that the enthralling world of tf2 has stood the test of time only sidestepping the sorta recent 5 or so years of updates. since i only joined near the tail end of tough break, i considered everything before hand to be sacred and beyond me, therefor it is good without question. but to have your perspective of things really opens my eyes to the fact my version of tf2 is the one doing mannrobics on the grave for the piece of art based in a spytech world being torn apart in a proxy war headed by the worlds strongest shadow government, played from the perspective of the very last chain of command hired to kill through the romanticized lenses of some of the worlds greatest commercial artists painterly styles. damn.
Like in that original 60's realistic sketch of him, it honestly looks like a middle aged man puffing up his chest for a photoshoot and not much of a real brawler, it adds to that thought that he was more of a character and different outside a persona, and all other portrayals, cartoony, or later in person, show him massively more buff and towering and grizzly, adding to the thought that later portrayals really believed a persona was the real him
Whenever I learned about tf2 I didn't own a pc. The only way I was able to play was on the PS3 edition of the Orange Box. For those who don't know, TF2 is stuck on a 2008 version of the game on the PS3. I always thought that the game felt much darker and grittier compared to the version of the game I would see everyone else play. I just brushed it off as me just mixing up the atmosphere after playing Half-Life 2 and Portal on the same disk. Looking back at it now though, that thought was absolutely true. The lighting system was changed over the years to remove much darker shadows. Many textures on the charaters and weapons would get brightened up. Instead of subtle hints to the 60s spy tech, the game has gone almost fully sci-fi with it's technology. Artwork and advertisements started using less of the pastel color scheme and started uing much more saturated colors. And don't even get me started on hats. Don't get me wrong, I love the tf2 of today, but sometimes I just want to boot up my old Orange Box version of the game just to experience that atmosphere once again, with it's much more subtle design choices, something modern tf2 has abandoned. Thanks for the video, and have a great day.❤
Finally I am not alone in adoring what TF2, USED to be.. Till today I regret not knowing how to get TF2 as a kid, or just in general not being born earlier to get the experience right.
Personally I like the more goofy aspects of tf2. I like how absolutely insane it is and silly it is. I grew up with the tf2 being this silly insane world. I definitely get your point but I just prefer it this way.
That point about how slightly misreading source material can complete change the direction of something? Welcome to the world of being a 2000s Sonic fan lmao. We’ve dealt with the same shit and we feel you, brother.
@@IslamHany-dg6xi I mean Sonic Lore is a mess as it is, but i think Frontiers did a good job at trying to unify it all. And besides, since Ian Flynn worked on it, every character was written very well compared to the previous games.
I learned a lot from this video, like TF2's original storyline and how Saxton Hale was probably meant to be a mascot/caricature to help Mann Co sell more weapons before being misinterpreted as literally being a buff Austrailian shorts guy. It makes a lot of sense the way you put it and this was a good watch.
Did you forget that Moby Francke has made a portrait for Saxton Hale in the same style as the other 9 class portraits that depicts him with a big mustache and a big ass hat
To be honest, the reason I even started playing tf2 in the first place was because of the silly and goofy stuff in it. I do find a more serious version of it very interesting tho. To me at least, the current state of the game with its goofy nature is what gives its charm for me accompanied with great gameplay as well. And without it, we might not get the mercenaries we know today with their silly and iconic personalities.
I would say that change of hands in writing was jay pinkerton (according to his wiki) he started working at valve in 2008 which kind of lines up with the change of tf2's writing (and supposedly he also wrote the comics) he also worked on portal 2 and hl:alyx, if you compare portal 1 to portal 2 those two games also has notably different writing and characters and so does hl1/hl2 and alyx aswell
jay pinkerton ruins everything he touches how has that mans humor not changed in the last 15 years compare hla to any other half life game its ridiculous
I really like the images of the precursor tf2 you show us in this video. While I'm impartial to spycore, I'm absolutely a fan of more muted colors. I think that's something that stands out even among more cartoony modern games, which tend to be brighter and shinier as opposed to the duller colors tf2 has. A shame about the lime green though, if it was a darker green it would fit much better. The faded purple seems decently in line to me, but lime green seems odd, especially when there's colors closer to the airstrike or the liberty launcher to use.
I feel the original tone of TF2 was always to play it straight but be a bit cheesy and have some subtle jokes. Spy's a perfect example of this through his art, story, and gameplay design. He's an international man of mystery and often portrayed as the most competent mercenary alongside sniper...but his plans can be completely foiled by turning around or the most insane mercenary pyro doing the bare minimum to foil Spy. He wears a suit and is well kept...but wears a clashing ski mask because how else would he keep his identity a secret from teammates and enemies alike? He's kind of like Batman, cool in many aspects but also a bit ridiculous when you think about it. Also why were you playing with a fempyro model ,':\
they would simply have to state somewhere in the comics that both Mann brothers eventually bought most of the United States, and it grew from there in secret. I don't really think it would be too dificult to convince us of this, since there are a lot of maps that don't take place in the badlands, and a lot of what happens behind closed doors has always been kept secret. They'd just need to make it clear that with time, the gravel wars grew to be something world-wide. This could even work with the whole Administrator plotline
Slightly bonkers would be cool, imagine the “Saxton was a persona to sell” happened alongside the “wtf why has this wizard interrupted my lakeside match 30 times in the past 5 minutes”
@JcoleMc it's rated about as well as it should be, you just hear about it alot because of how little high quality fan content the tf2 community gets, so when something to Emisis Blue comes out, of course people are going to talk about it alot.
You're not alone. I distinctly remember thinking the plot of TF2 was really cool. With big Iluminati corporate overlords fighting for world domination. Then I read the comics and went "wait... what? That's lame af." The whole "gravel " thing kind of gave me The Last Jedi vibes in retrospect. Felt like it was mocking and "subverting" the old lore.
@@mr.monkey354 Yeah, and James Bond was always silly too. But it's a different kind of silly. TF2 at the start was more true to the 60s kind of silly, while the new TF2 style ended up feeling more modern (not worse necessarily).
@@mr.monkey354 he never claimed it wasn’t? He just thought that two corporations fighting over the world was more cool than fighting over gravel. And plus the new map’s kind of support the old lore
I don't mind the plot changes... especially when at first plot was vague and nearly nonexistent. But as for the artstyle... i have to agree that it's getting out of hand a little. That's why the only cosmetics i buy are the ones that are more "grounded" and don't take away from character's personality. Basically something they would actually wear if they had chance to
Honestly? I think a Gritty TF2 would be a lot worse than the goofy thing we have today, because there are, already, way too many Gritty shooters. Hell, 99% of shooters are gritty, or at least have a “gritty undertone”. And TF2 being this goofy-ah storyline, where Pyro manages to become a CEO and a giant Muscle Man kicks the hell out of Yetis and where New Zealand is an Atalntis-esque kingdom? It just feels *right*. It feels fresh and funny.
I actually believe that the grittier plot is still canon, and that the administrator is in fact running Tf industries by having Red and Blu compete and that that's why red and blu have expanded beyond their simple gravel origins and brother rivalry, like a rivalry taken to the next level that is fueled purely by the animosity of the 2 brothers and nothing else which led them to expanding worldwide in many different companies and subsidiaries and produce. It's still canon, but the origin of that expansion came from the brothers like "our founder" plaques in the main offices. And the Abraham Lincoln rocket jumping origin and other "whacky shindig" in tf2 likely came from the history books of teufort who's population drinks lead water. And I feel that tf2 definitely still retained that grit in the Meet the Team videos, but in those videos had a good balance between humor and seriousness, because there needs to be some comedic cartoonish aspects to justify game mechanics like rocket jumping. This is where I feel the comics differentiated with their balance of the 2 where the Meet the Team and Expiration Date videos didn't in that the comics are too goofy and ridiculous, but it can probably be retconned and australium can be treated as an actually fascinating mysterious element that powers the spytech, and that the "wacky history" is just the town's belief of what happened, or something along that line. Edit: Pyrovision was literally just a metaphor for pyro's joy and euphoria and enjoyment of his cruel and atrocious actions. And also I feel people forget that tf2 is a franchise that CAN be taken seriously in characters and plot and explained in a somewhat realistic sense despite the goofiness and cartoonishness, and that sfms like spy's disguise and emesis blue or winglet's fedora chronicles prove people do want to see enjoy tf2's grittier side and doesn't have to be ALL comedy and ALL gags, but a balance between the 2 like in the official Valve sfms. For example maybe saxton was using these comics to market his products, but decided to try and actually be like his mascot version of himself and shave his chest to resemble australia and do the stunts and play the character and eventually went overboard, or halloween being some kind of mass hysteria due to perhaps an experimental brain washing device akin to the many spy tech devices in the various facilities they fight over located in the mountain lab that made the mercs hallucinate the facilities as carnivals, spooky mansions, and etc around the same time of Halloween, and that demoman's connection with merasmus and monoculus is because he was one of the first people experimented on and the comic is what he thinks he remembers from his childhood, and all that jazz. The goofiness and cartoonishness of the game is simply a way to have more leeway on the background and story, gameplay mechanics, overall game design, and writing and comedy, and a homage to both movies and cartoons and culture, and allows the franchise and artstyle to be timeless and extremely flexible (but not too flexible tf2 fans.) For example rather than australium being a super human influencing substance that gives australians power we can see it as an actually mysterious and powerful and unstable ALMOST super natural element that can quite literally make people crazier and influence the psyche or consciousness of the people that come across it, like saxton hale, grey mann, and the administrator. Saxton hale perhaps handled australium which made him crazy enough to believe he is the character he was marketing, or australium drove greymann to killing his brothers and taking over tf industries, or it drove the administrator to dominating the world, potential explanations like those.
Meh, I wouldn't like the idea that we'd go so overboard as to say "This substance caused everyone to do this highly specific thing". They did it because they wanted to or were always that way.No need to sugarcoat it. Let people murder other people because they want to. Other than that, pretty accurate, as with Pyrovision.
How is it that a self-confesed TF2 maniac and avid lover and collector of the art that is me has literally NEVER heard the name Moby Francke before watching this video?! I don't know if I'm a tool for not noticing, if there's been a glitch in the timeline, or if Mr. Francke just avoids all the press he can. Absolute king of *style*. 👑
Replying to my own comment to add further thoughts: a) Really love the music choice here - that particularly remix of the SMW castle theme's a long favourite of mine, and the Timesplitter 2 OST is always a welcome gem. 2) Interesting that TF2 has followed the equal-opposite to Warhammer - a setting that started off pretty goofy and parodic, only to slide much more towards the serious, ultra-dark and turbo-gritty over time. I wonder why some works slide from one end of this scale to the other automatically, and how such opposite cases co-exist? iii) As a big fan of Timesplitters 2 and Goldeneye before it, I always wanted to play single-player and co-op missions in TF2 where the classes tackle archetypal FPS campaign levels - a raid on a facility, stalking the office of a shady corporation, an urban stealth mission a-la Neo Tokyo and so on. When you talk about the prospect of the original TF2 timeline (which I would argue is still completely canon, yet nevertheless effectively sidelined) as a source of genuine plot development, those sorts of missions come to mind.
@@lpsp442 Glad you liked the vid! And very interesting points. I've also had many a daydream of a 007-esque singleplayer campaign set in the early TF2 setting.
@@neighborhoodthreattv for some reason, I feel like TF2C has that goofy/community vision of the game rather than the 2008 game, I don't know what it is
The TF2 beta was much darker compared to the final version This is a reference to the Half-Life 2 Beta that invented the idea of betas being darker than the final version
This reminds me of tone differences from fallout 1 and 2. 1 is more darker with people struggling to get water. Monster's roam freely with little that could stop them. There is no governments but instead people band together in bombed out builds and struggle to survive as a small raider gang could wipe them out. Along with disappearances of people 2 can be dark but it is filled with jokes that ultimately destroy the tone along with the much more random encounters that are just references to tv and films. They are just different from each other.
Fallout 4 destroyed Fallout lore! No, wait! Fallout 3 destroyed Fallout lore! No, wait! Fallout New Vegas destroyed Fallout lore! No, wait! Fallout 2 destroyed Fallout lore! Ever considered maybe things just aren't what you wanted them to be? There's a Fallout Bible made by the original writers that canonizes a Harem vault with 99 men and 1 woman.
@@nikolaitheundying I never considered any of them to destroy fallout lore. I just said they were different in tone which can be good because of the different time periods or locations they are set in.
I'm glad you talked about this, everytime I notice how much more I loved the old artstyle I get people frothing at the mouth (like you said) about how it doesn't matter. I really got kind of confused when the summer war paints released and people said that they were "too tame". Did you want super bright, ugly obnoxious war paints??
I don’t think tf2 ever lost it’s grit, I started playing the game in 2020 and that was still the impression I got! That more serious tone (in my opinion) is what allowed the absurd comedy to thrive! It creates a great contrast, kinda like what the art style does if you ignore a lot of the hats.
Honestly surprised with how smart your analysis is on the original plot as people talk a lot about the death of TF2's artstyle, etc, but talking in-depth about TF2's old lore, I feel like both versions of the game are amazing in their own way, even though I do understand the thought of something being created one way being turned into something else without your own input, that just has to be weird, and the microtransactiony game we have now is also kinda a bummer.
I feel like since the tf2 comics are supposed to be JUST TELLING the story through mann co's vision like how the premium item is a copy of the game (?) and are still painting saxton as this crazy strong guy.
I completely agree. I liked it better when TF2 took itself somewhat seriously, but now that the game has become completely over the top and absurd, the suspension of disbelief has collapsed.
I think another part of why TF2 went the way it did was because of Garry's Mod, more specifically how the TF2 Characters became more of an exaggerated version of themselves. I'm saying this as a guy who started out with Meet the Medic, so I don't exactly have an idea on the 2007-2010 visual style. But I believe that a part of the Flanderization was in part due to how the community as a whole views the characters, or rather how they can stretch those characters to fit these ridiculous plots. On a counterpoint, I think TF2 having been able to stay as entertaining as it has been for the better part of 16 years *is* due to how malleable the setting as a whole is. For you, the draw for TF2 was the Incredibles-esque secret society using its mercenaries to continue its plot of world domination. For me, it was partially how ridiculous the TF2 Universe got because of the silly and outlandish explanations as to how their world functioned. I feel both viewpoints, and perhaps even more, are valid reasons to enjoy the game and the other works around this universe. And I'm gonna go for a controversial take, I think it was for the best that they did lean more into the ridiculous, since it helped give TF2 more of a unique identity beyond its comic book style, compared to the outright dystopian, dark setting of the Half-Life games and the more secretive and equally dark Portal. The plot and art also helped distinguish it from Counterstrike and TFC, as they are similarly serious games. However, the artstyle death is definitely something that was unfortunate, and while I don't exactly have as much of an idea about the entire thing as you, it is definitely something I will need to take into consideration. However, on the same end, I think that TF2 is getting a bit too ridiculous for its own good, mostly with the cosmetics and such. Halloween is one thing, but when new cosmetics that are equally ridiculous can become a part of the game full-time, then I think the shark had been jumped.
Exactly what I was thinking! Great video! It just sucks how the spytech aesthetic got pushed to the side as it’s so unique and as you said, “so beautiful”.
I'll say while tf2 is mostly a goofy hat game with spell books and burning banana hats, It still atleast somewhat retains some of its original gritty half of it's style, what with the (albeit very stylized) very abundant gore you don't really find in an fps pvp game, as well as many of it's environments not being the most joyous or colorful. I think the meet the team videos are where tf2 found a good balance between silly and gritty, the best example IMO being meet the spy. The main comics is when it started to really lean in to the goofiness of tf2. Overall though, I think tf2 still gives off a sense of grounded cartoon in it's visual design, minus the Halloweens maps. Also, in a game with mechanics like rocket jumping (or blast jumping in general), double jump, random critz, and a weapon that is just a jar of pee, I think the old gritty style wouldn't work with how the game has evolved.
blast jumping, random crits, & double jumping were all in the 2007 version of tf2, & jarate was added in the sniper vs. spy update, along with Hale. these all did work with the original style, even if a bit silly in concept. however, yes, with how the game has evolved, a lot of things wouldnt work with that original style
i love the lore as it is now, the original storyline the game had in its early days is very interesting and i wish it was explored more. you explaining saxton as more of this icon for the business rather than how he actually "is" was very eye-opening, neat video :D♡
See, I can see your point, but the most absurd cosmetics are holiday restricted, and whenever I do see some horrific monstrosity in game my first reaction is typically collapsing a lung by laughing so hard
fortnite is the perfect game for you my friend, im sure youll die laughing when you see travis scott and eren yeager kill and griddy on master chief and batman
I can see where you're coming from, I actually don't mind most of the absurd cosmetics as long as they're restricted to holidays. Halloween is like the only time out of the year that I Uninstall my no hats mod and just revel in the absurdity despite being an art style purist most of the time. However, there are a lot of cosmetics that should be Halloween restricted but aren't.
this reminds me alot of payday 2. they share a very simmilar story, with a good, grounded art direction which was destroyed in favor of goofy aliens and replacing the president's consciousness.
"an anything goes schizo game" One of the original concepts of the game was Man V. alien, you have them fighting hordes of robots who dont fit the artstyle of the retro tech. Litterally any "artstyle" argument has to by principle argue against almost all of tf2's updates. Litterally the year after release they gave heavy a sandwhich and natasha, a minigun that is way out of the 1960s aesthetic, its ltiterally a modern minigun in all black. THEY RELEASED *MEET THE SANDVICH* IN 2009. The game we call tf2 was always silly.
You’re mixing up silliness and schizophrenia. TF2 has always been silly but it hasn’t always been a diagnosed schizophrenic. I also don’t understand how TF2 Invasion is a point because it’s literally just Half-Life 2 but silly. Everything else you mention represents the games slow build up to utter insanity
This is all fascinating and now I'm genuinely hoping TF2Classic is actually going with the original plot you're talking about. It would be incredible to see TF2Classic make some story to go along with their future updates.
im not sure but i feel like emesis blue is actually set in the "le blu and red contrl le half le world" version of tf2, in one of the scenes we see that half the street is set in a red lighting while the other half is set in a blue lighting.
So with early TF2 lore, I know that some of the direction of it's story is actually inspired off of Rooster Teeth's Red Vs Blue web series. I remember hearing that Valve based Soldier's personality on Sarge's. (Or at the very least, people in TF2 lobbies back in the day making the comparison.) Pretty early on in RvB's series, (2004-2005) it's established that both the Red and Blue teams are one in the same as they both share the same high command. This can be paralleled with 2007-2009's TF2's RED & BLU both being subsidiaries for the same company despite fighting each other. Funnily enough, as RvB tried to take itself more seriously, TF2 became more ridiculous.
At least they haven't changed the designs of the mercenaries, and in the later comics there is still a good bit of grittyness about the mercenaries. Spy is an asshole to his team and looks down on them, heavy's main motivation fir fighting is to provide food for his family, and demoman is an overworking alcoholic who his mother keeps yelling at him to work harder
While I do agree with all the points made here, a lot of people (maybe including myself if I can remember my first match of tf2) were really brought into the community by the wacky plot/artstyle/characters. Still, the early artstyle is great in it's own right, and deserves a revisit in some future cosmetics.
I actually would've loved to see TF2 go in a more mature direction because looking back at the footage from the 2007 version, it does give a different more grounded tone to it despite its visuals. But the goofier side has introduced a lot of elements and characters that in many ways, feels kinda difficult to go back on. It's strange to say but I can't imagine a world where TF2 exists the way it does but characters like Saxton Hale and Merasmus, or big story events like Mann Vs Machine just don't exist in it. Or at the very least, exist in the world but only as fictional characters featured on propaganda posters and comics. And it's not like these characters couldn't feasibly still exist within a grittier tone either, Half-Life and Portal specifically showed me that there can still be sillier or more fantastical elements to its world and characters, while still having an overarching narrative that's a lot darker. Granted that might be also due to the character designs still being grounded to their respective art styles and not going over the top with it but in some ways, I think that gives TF2 a bit of an advantage since it's definitely more stylised than the latter 2. It may sound silly when saying this but Saxton Hale still being a shirtless macho man with Australia-shaped chest hair beating up endangered species could still theoretically stay intact with a more mature Spy story that TF2 originally wanted to go for.
For a long time i was portraying in my head a nonexistent steath game - game where you are a spy in TF2 universe, but not an online game, a singleplayer game where the main thing to do would be explore and observe this world of "SpyTech"-styled secret operations of opposing company, while trying yo achieve nominal objective. Something between dishonored and hitman, only very strongly based on TF2 features, and revolving around interacting with everything around you in a way a TF2 universe character would. And this concept was just like what you said in this video - mich more grounded and serious, while sometimes still going for absurd humor and idealisation of it's concepts, game about sexretly ongoing cold war between not governments but private companies, resorting to smaller groups of nore casually looking mercs. Maybe one day i would make something like this, if i learn game dev science, the concept seems just too good to throw away...
That's really funny because I imagined something very similar to this when I first started playing tf2 as a kid. A stealth-action single player TF2 where you play as the spy working toward some objective. Its a lot like normal spy gameplay but far more fleshed out mechanics like having to hide bodies, the world is more interactive like having to use control panels to open those big secret vaults that lead deeper into the spytech parts of the facilities, even getting spotted would sound the alarm like what happened in Meet the Spy. Guess the cold-war/spytech aesthetic really resonated with a lot of us far more than we think, eh? It's funny because I never even played stealth games as a kid. It just somehow felt "right" to me.
The live service decay of an artstyle is just a video essay waiting to happen, it happens to all live service games, it starts as one silly item being added that opens the flood gates for the artsyle and direction changing and decaying.
I assume that if they went down the 2007 path the hats would be more like the soldier's stash then the banana hat thing and soldier would probably be a real soldier and not comically stupid.
You know what could actually fix it all - Saxton in a suit. Any official or even fanart like that. One man, one suit. And maybe figuring out what happened with Olivia once Gray Mann died
not sure if anyone else has this opinion, but i absolutely love things that are crazy and just extremely wacky things (though i can see where there needs to be limits) tbh in my opinion i love how funny its became and not something serious
this is something that has always mildly bothered me and i wasn't expecting a video explaining more or less how i felt. i started playing this game in 2011, so i got to experience first hand as hats and the lore kept slowly getting more and more egregious with each update. by 2014's halloween, i couldn't help but feel put off by how stupidly zany the game got, and i actually quit (coming back for a checkup like 2 or 3 times a year) until 2017. in retrospect, the art style really had nothing to do with me quitting the game. looking back, what really killed they joy for me was spending so much time trading. that really sucked the life out of the game for me. i kinda falsely attributed my burnout to the new direction the game was taking. nowadays, while i do love the original vision for this games art style, i definitely prefer what we have now. tf2 is just oozing with the trademark valve magic and humor, and while it didn't turn out as sophisticated as it was originally planned, it's hard to deny that it's a miracle that this game's art style holds up as good as it does. i mean, tf2's art style essentially survived multiple methaphorical suicide attempts, and it's still standing strong, save for a "wutville" or a "corpse carrier" here and there. to me, that means that at least some trace of that original vision remains at the very core of the game
Good stuff Mr. Overtime, it's nice to see some appreciation for what we've unfortunately lost. _Also, the Zesty mention/meme gave me a good smirk/chuckle, so thank you for that_
Interesting take but, ultimately the charm of the funnier side of comics is what makes the game's story so memorable. There are hints of that grittier side in the story in the main comics with the administrator and her debt that we'll hopefully see eventually with #8. I'd like to think the game wouldn't have lasted nearly as long as it ended up taking itself too seriously. I, too, have felt the need to escape from modern tf2 to games like TF2 Classic and Open Fortress, just maybe not with a Fempyro mod.
looking at the workshop shows how much TF2s artstyle has decayed. like you can see things from about 10 years ago follow the artstyle way better than what is made now
I think tf2 started to take the turn to goofiness when that medic x heavy audio was blasted in voicechat. Then uploaded by Bl4ckDmon1 February 10th 2008. Like not even half a year after not goofy game was released. It's just the natural way everything went to survive. 2008 tf2 would've died very soon without that goofiness. Also what? How could people play Fortnite and OW when they took inspiration in artstyle and gameplay from tf2? The gaming landscape would be different, what a bold statement! So i think the metaphor should be people using shit and duct tape to fix up cracks in an old house that was once beautiful.
I don’t like people who either don’t care about it or prefer the goofy stuff because it’s spoils it’s original style which is what made tf2 well tf2. This seems to happen with every book, movie and game it goes on too long being handled by too many people who don’t understand what made it great.
Idk man. Judging from mecrs voice lines on release, meet the team videos and all of early uptades with wacky weapons its seems that tf2 team had already adopted a more comedic and cartoony vision even before the game had been released
I mostly agree with this. However I think that both "versions" of the game are beautiful and fun sounding. I'd love to play the original spy thriller-esque TF2 it was originally advertised to be. I started playing about 3 years ago, and am aware of games like TF2 classic, but something about the original TF2 just...captivates me. It's quite interesting to see someone like you explain what you think, they are all very good points. Keep up the great work! 👍
I do love where tf2 did go, i would KILL to see a mod like tf2 classic take this version of the story, and go with it much more. It would be super cool to see almost as a "what if" situation
personally I do love the goofy over the top nature of TF2’s current lore, and I think overall it was probably a good move to do that, but damn what could’ve come from the og lore is such an interesting prospect. It would be cool if we could somehow get interviews with valve about it, but that would obviously never happen. A mann can dream.
sup yall now that im a little less tired I wanna clarify again that this vids just my drowsy opinions and speculation :)
also, looking back on this, framing it as though Moby would definitely hate modern TF2 was probably in poor taste, since as far as I know he hasn't actually publicly expressed anything like that
I was just trying to make a point about how meticulous the style originally was and how far it's fallen in my opinion, if you disagree and think its Epic now thats fine i dont rly care
damn, you are using the Fem Pyro Mod~
@@VaporeonGaming i would too
Call you a poopyhead? ok, Poopyhead.
@@VaporeonGaming who doesnt?
I would also like to see tf2 take itself more seriously, like just imagine a story of heavy's backstory growing up in a gulag, or scouts life on the streets in a single parent household or demoman dealing with his alcohol addiction. all of these tragic stories we'll never see because it wouldn't be "silly".
He's actually one of the only Australians who doesn't get their power from a metal. And personally I like saxon hale and he could of also been grounded in cartoonly reality too.
His belt buckle might be australium though.
his belt buckle is clearly australium
The way I see it, in TF2's early days, there really wasn't much of an intended lore. It was more like there was a vague, basic lore that was born from the game's initial aesthetics. I think the comics themselves don't feel all that jarring from the early ideas through dialogue and concepts from TF2's lifespan, but rather an extension and further exploration of those ideas. I believe the Sniper vs. Spy update marked the beginning of the creative team for the game finding their footing with what they wanted to do with this the lore, because I think that really was the best way forward in making a unique universe.
As for the game's artstyle itself, I think this was moreso disrupted by the ever-increasing saturation of cosmetics and weapons in the game, not so much the lore. While there was some non-game media that supplemented this, these were mostly designed as tongue-in-cheek promotional material, because you'll notice in the mainline comics, you don't really see much from the plethora of stuff added in the updates since the game's launch. They team still chooses to focus on the game's base aesthetic with the addition of the witty writing that early 2010s Valve was sort of known for.
i would love to see a comic series or animation series based on the original tf2 storyline
samee
@@CF-or3ci They were a retcon to the original storyline though, did you even watch through the video?
@@portalguy48 the whole "two hypercompetent mega corporations" thing sounds awesome, yes.
Funfact:there actually was a tf2 animated series based on the comics that was supposed to come out (i think on adult swim ?) However it was scrapped after valve lazed around and DIDNT DO A SINGLE EPISODE , and allegedly expiration date was the series pilot but it was released on youtube after the series was scrapped
Loyk thas eva gonna happn
"THE TF2 BETA LORE WAS DARK AND GRITTY"
Dark and griddy?!
I personally like the way TF2 went (not nesscarily the destruction of the art style just more so the goofiness) over the original idea, but I won't deny that the original idea is intriguing to me and I respect that you like it more.
Its like other valve seqels. FIrst it starts as Dark and more depressing game/story but over time or with another version it becomes goofy . You can see this transition from games like l4d to l4d2, hl2 beta to hl2, and other valve games like older cs to CS go. They are lost a bit of charm and what made them more sirius storiea/games , but all of theri fans plays this game cuz then not becomed bad.
There was no original idea as implied in this video.
@@malleableconcrete wrong.
“the half life 2 beta was dark and griddy” type beat
jokes aside, this video makes perfect sense and the 1960 spy movie aesthetic is just badass
This is the second comment misspelling gritty, and it's directly underneath the first one I saw.
@@ZoofyZoof oh shit
idk, valve took quite a "right foot creep" with the art direction
@@ZoofyZoof thats bc theyre referencing the dance griddy
@@benjistyles19 No, they're not. The context matters. In this context, nobody is referring to the griddy. They misspelled gritty, and their reaction to me pointing that out is perfectly enough evidence of that.
Nobody says "dark and griddy", that doesn't even make sense. Google the definiton of gritty, and suddenly "dark and gritty" immediately makes sense.
I think one aspect that actually changed in the other direction was heavy. I always see people joke about how he's actually "one of the smartest characters" despite how fans seem to portray him but the fan interpretations at times actually feel more accurate to what he originally was to be honest.
The comics and various things nowadays portray him as quiet and intelligent when that is quite literally the exact opposite of how he acts in the game. He's loud and crazy. It's pretty clear that it's not just him being bad at English. He's supposed to be insane like the rest of them.
Many of the original shorts (especially meet the spy which makes him out to be as dumb as soldier) definitely don't make him act like this. Heavy is one of the goofiest characters in the game who literally eats lunch mid-battle. I think it's a bit weird how they seemingly tried to make him one of the more serious characters.
Pyro I also think is handled a bit iffy. Mostly because the original joke was sort of thrown out the window when it comes to pyroland. They make him too obviously child-like and everyone else is seemingly aware of it too. But what made the original short so funny is that it's not obvious what's going on in his head and others are terrified of him because of that. In the original short he might be dancing around and acting goofy but when it cuts back to "real life" he's portrayed to be a lot more sinister.
It's sort of understandable why the game itself doesn't try to do this because then you would never really see much of the pyroland stuff but I feel like everything else probably should had stuck to how it originally was.
With heavy in comic you can see him turning crazy when he gets his gun. There's clear difference in how he act in and out of battle.
@@Игорь-щ4г2з I always thought that would be a good way to try to work in that kind of personality back into the comics (he loses control when he has sasha or something) but if I remember correctly he only has it for a few panels at most and there isn't really enough time to really do anything with that. So I wouldn't really say that's necessarily the case.
It still doesn't really change the fact that heavy is pretty dumb in a lot of the original shorts so it still doesn't make all that much sense to have him act this way in the first place.
@@ShowinGrowin i could argue that only heavy acting dumb would be blu heavy, but that would require explaining the fact that there are multiple instances of multiple different people. Also agreed, they could explore more of his personality, but for comic series that short(and abandoned) i don't see it happening, heavy is side character unfortunately.
well, Team fortress 2 is actually a sort of dramatized documentary game, the game makers probably thought that the RED team was good enough for promo while the BLU team could look completely different.
Did you forget about Meet the Heavy, his introductory video? In there, he is mostly serious and almost even somber when he is giving the interview (except for his overreaction at someone touching "Sasha"), but the moment he is on the battlefield, he goes bananas, mowing down enemies left and right and having an absolute blast while doing so. And that aspect of him never goes away. Whenever he is fighting, he acts like a barbarian overdosing on testosterone. Whenever he is chilling after a mission, he is chill and serious.
Old different art style, old darker story, Does this mean we can say that TF2 was going to be dark and griddy now?
Based
Dark and Driddy
Tf2 bout to hit the griddy
Griddy🗿
I always loved tf2's unmatched americana feel, and i think the loss is most notorious with maps, we went from beautiful dessert landmarks and 60's spy tech, to... Maps like Venice and bread space, which, from a gameplay perspective are cool as heck, but... Yeah they completely forget what made tf2... Also, on that same note, I think saxton hale does fit in with the 60's style, but not from a spy movie perspective, but rather from a 60' superhero comic perspective
Also, fempyro on a video complaining about the loss of tf2's style lol
Hale fits because he’s literally a parody of Charles Atlas ads from old 60s comics. He makes the same pose and everything, which is why all of his comics are parodies of old Marvel comics, in fact his personality is a bit like Stan Lee in a way.
I mean just because he plays with a silly mod doesnt rlly invalidate his point
@@zOOpygOOpert Complaining that the game is silly while using a silly mod does invalidate his point
@@putridmoldyman306 how?
venice and bread space along with being unfitting are some of if not the 2 worst maps in the game layout wise. venice is literally a csgo map made by someone who had 80 hours in the game (most of which were probably testing and viewing the map itself rather than actually playing)
as such it has a whole ton of confusing sections that make no sense for a tf2 map and tons of open areas for snipers.
as for bread space... does anyone actually like playing that map??? literally sniper heaven, the entire map is just wide open areas with no cover that are twice as big as they should be
I get where you're coming from, but I disagree about this being a problem. Retcons aren't inherently bad, and in this case, the only thing that was truly changed from the established lore was the scale of the conflict, from a war for world domination, to a war over pointless gravel. It's not like there was a plot there to begin with, just vague details about the world. As for Saxton, he was introduced in the same update as Jarate of all things; things had already gotten pretty silly. Does it really matter if the macho Australian character wasn't meant to be how Saxton Hale after normally, when he sells kidney-enlarging pills to people for the purpose of "jar-based karate"?
valid
Thing is, The Administrator still has her fingers in the whole world basically, and the comics were building up to a reveal of the Administrator's true plans. I don't think the scope of the conflict got any smaller, but rather more indirect with the impact. The gravel wars are a small, but vital piece of a larger mostly off screen plot, headed by a woman powerful enough to force world leaders to cover up her dirty dealings.
I actually like the new TF2 better cause yeah the old style was cool but if the game stayed 100 percent serious there is a chance it would have died out, yeah the gameplay alone is cool as hell but thats not the only reason people stayed its a game where you can just have dumb fun one of the few games left where this is the norm and not taken as serious as a WWIII.l
i think the term gravel in the lore is an euphimism for natural resources and land
@@FrancisDoubleA I think gravel can actually be used in munitions production, so less so an euphemism and more so a less apparent but lucrative value.
Hale's first real appearance ended with him getting into a fight with Steve Jobs, the man that invented piss-throwing that scares the enemy for life, might just have been designed to be silly to the core
I think his point is that he is meant to be silly, but they forgot he was meant to be a one off joke
3:53 I absolutely love the ying/yang dynamic of that description. BLU constructs, RED demolishes. One creates, the other destroys those creations. In a never-ending cycle.
The one thing that bothered me even if it's a bit pointless to overthink it is that RED is the demolition team, thus they should be the attackers. It also probably makes more sense if you think about the theming of the teams: RED is rustic themed, BLU is industrial; Maybe BLU would be trying to take over the planet to make everything into a factory machine, all they care about is money - On the other side RED are the common poorer people who are concerned about that (but still probably maniacs who want world domination too, to fit into the wackiness of the game) and want to destroy BLU. I think whenever someone thinks of TF2's mercs they probably default to the RED team colors for no reason, with this theoretical AU that I just pulled out of my ass, it would make sense to see them as the heroes/protagonists and BLU as the villains/antagonists. Again, I'm overthinking it but food for thought I guess.
@@its_cookie_man I think it was more for the irony. Lets take payload for example, blues attacking because they want to blow it up and be called in to reconstruct it. Red defends the place because they want to be called in to demolish it themselves.
@@qwaden yeah I know, I was going to say some reason instead but that wasn't right either. Still, even Valve chose RED as the "default".
@@prantosadnan7852 It's an interesting theory, but what about other modes like control points? Well.. actually in that case I guess it's just about domination idk.
@@its_cookie_manGood point, I honestly dont know the lore reason for control points in the first place. Maybe territory reasons? It just seems odd compared to capturing intel and pushing bombs
There is a decaying hole in my heart with the way tf2’s art direction was thrown into a furnace
I don't think I'll ever understand why this bothers people...
@@ZoofyZoof richter literally explains saying, it’s like building a house just for it to get peed on, the concept artist took his job seriously, and made fantastic displays of the world, it had some brilliant style to it, and now the structure which he had created has been completely obscured by the garbage piled on top of tf2, its just sad to see a masterpiece be wasted
yeah i love tf2 and trust im poured hours and hour into it, but i will never understand this either@@ZoofyZoof
@@DR.Narbacular See, that is exactly the thing that makes people not understand. A lot of people simply see that as a positive. They don't see the house being peed on, they see a house having been remodeled. Because that's what it was. Remodeled, not peed on. Nothing ever stays the same, and being wacky and ridiculous was what made TF2 stand out, and still stand out. That, and solid gameplay with lots of room for customization.
If you don't like the house how it is, it's alright. You can leave the house, you can accept it for how it is, you can even share what you don't like about it, but trying to denigrate others for liking the house better now is petty.
@@M4x_P0w3r Remodeled in to a toilet, you mean? The artstyle was never supposed to be over-the-top goffy game for kids. That's one of the things that Richter is criticizing.
In fact i see a trend with old games that goes like this: a serious game, which has some funny little details as a compliment, releases; over time, some people take the funny little details and start to over exaggerate them, to the point where they are hindering the original idea of the game; after that when somebody mentions that the game used to take itself more serious, he is categorised as simply being a nostalgic old man, who needs to catch up with the new times.
You cannot argue that the artstyle we have now can compete with the original one. There are many videos on the topic that explain this.
And it's fair to question somebody's tastes, when their actions have changed a good art piece. "You can leave the house"? Yeah, thanks for coming to the same house that we both live in and incouraging it's degration. Now I have to search and settle for a new home, until you come here and start feeding the mice all over again. How about you leave, if you don't like the original design of the house?
Or I can just "accept it" and quietly mumble my opinions, while you do your "pissing" and reply with the relativist answear of "I respect your opinion, but i will continue to do what i'm doing".
this video is pretty eye opening to me (and honestly a bit depressing) knowing that for years ive agreed with the sentiment that the enthralling world of tf2 has stood the test of time only sidestepping the sorta recent 5 or so years of updates. since i only joined near the tail end of tough break, i considered everything before hand to be sacred and beyond me, therefor it is good without question. but to have your perspective of things really opens my eyes to the fact my version of tf2 is the one doing mannrobics on the grave for the piece of art based in a spytech world being torn apart in a proxy war headed by the worlds strongest shadow government, played from the perspective of the very last chain of command hired to kill through the romanticized lenses of some of the worlds greatest commercial artists painterly styles.
damn.
if i remember saxton was supposed to be a one time gag that was brought back because of how popular he was.
Like in that original 60's realistic sketch of him, it honestly looks like a middle aged man puffing up his chest for a photoshoot and not much of a real brawler, it adds to that thought that he was more of a character and different outside a persona, and all other portrayals, cartoony, or later in person, show him massively more buff and towering and grizzly, adding to the thought that later portrayals really believed a persona was the real him
tfw vs saxton hale was so influental it defined saxtons entire character in jungle inferno
bro's playing with the fempyro mod and thought we wouldn't notice.
You're talking about a "gritty" and "dark" realistic TF2 but here you are playing with a fempyro mod lmao
exactly
based
Based, to be honest
Griddy
based
Whenever I learned about tf2 I didn't own a pc. The only way I was able to play was on the PS3 edition of the Orange Box. For those who don't know, TF2 is stuck on a 2008 version of the game on the PS3. I always thought that the game felt much darker and grittier compared to the version of the game I would see everyone else play. I just brushed it off as me just mixing up the atmosphere after playing Half-Life 2 and Portal on the same disk. Looking back at it now though, that thought was absolutely true. The lighting system was changed over the years to remove much darker shadows. Many textures on the charaters and weapons would get brightened up. Instead of subtle hints to the 60s spy tech, the game has gone almost fully sci-fi with it's technology. Artwork and advertisements started using less of the pastel color scheme and started uing much more saturated colors. And don't even get me started on hats. Don't get me wrong, I love the tf2 of today, but sometimes I just want to boot up my old Orange Box version of the game just to experience that atmosphere once again, with it's much more subtle design choices, something modern tf2 has abandoned. Thanks for the video, and have a great day.❤
Finally I am not alone in adoring what TF2, USED to be..
Till today I regret not knowing how to get TF2 as a kid, or just in general not being born earlier to get the experience right.
Personally I like the more goofy aspects of tf2. I like how absolutely insane it is and silly it is. I grew up with the tf2 being this silly insane world. I definitely get your point but I just prefer it this way.
go back to fortnite
@@dkskcjfjswwwwwws413
Go back to overwatch you walking condom advertizement
@@dkskcjfjswwwwwws413 This game had Meet the Sandvich in 2009, around two years after its release. I don't think your argument holds up.
@@dkskcjfjswwwwwws413u have bonus ducks as ur pfp bro
@@bulletcola7890because meet the sandvich is wacky silly on the same level as the shitty retcon comics that have a billion plot holes
That point about how slightly misreading source material can complete change the direction of something?
Welcome to the world of being a 2000s Sonic fan lmao. We’ve dealt with the same shit and we feel you, brother.
Bruh the new writers of the sonic games didnt even play sonic games in the first place
@@IslamHany-dg6xiwhat about Ian Flynn tho? He wrote the comics and now worked on Frontiers.
@@erickrafaelfloreslara8501 idk i didnt play frontiers lol
@@IslamHany-dg6xi I mean Sonic Lore is a mess as it is, but i think Frontiers did a good job at trying to unify it all. And besides, since Ian Flynn worked on it, every character was written very well compared to the previous games.
@@erickrafaelfloreslara8501 they are the only games i played btw
I learned a lot from this video, like TF2's original storyline and how Saxton Hale was probably meant to be a mascot/caricature to help Mann Co sell more weapons before being misinterpreted as literally being a buff Austrailian shorts guy. It makes a lot of sense the way you put it and this was a good watch.
While I love the current TF2 lore, I respect your opinion, and never even realized this!! This is so fascinating!!
Did you forget that Moby Francke has made a portrait for Saxton Hale in the same style as the other 9 class portraits that depicts him with a big mustache and a big ass hat
I literally said this at 5:10
This should be on the main channel
To be honest, the reason I even started playing tf2 in the first place was because of the silly and goofy stuff in it. I do find a more serious version of it very interesting tho. To me at least, the current state of the game with its goofy nature is what gives its charm for me accompanied with great gameplay as well. And without it, we might not get the mercenaries we know today with their silly and iconic personalities.
I would say that change of hands in writing was jay pinkerton
(according to his wiki) he started working at valve in 2008 which kind of lines up with the change of tf2's writing (and supposedly he also wrote the comics)
he also worked on portal 2 and hl:alyx, if you compare portal 1 to portal 2 those two games also has notably different writing and characters and so does hl1/hl2 and alyx aswell
jay pinkerton ruins everything he touches how has that mans humor not changed in the last 15 years
compare hla to any other half life game its ridiculous
@@dkskcjfjswwwwwws413 The worst actually is the the one who wrote Portal and Left 4 Dead but for different reasons, i think his name is Chet or Chell
i still like the fact that they fight over a fucking gravel pit
i do like how tf2 is now but the version youre talking about is really cool sounding
I really like the images of the precursor tf2 you show us in this video. While I'm impartial to spycore, I'm absolutely a fan of more muted colors. I think that's something that stands out even among more cartoony modern games, which tend to be brighter and shinier as opposed to the duller colors tf2 has.
A shame about the lime green though, if it was a darker green it would fit much better. The faded purple seems decently in line to me, but lime green seems odd, especially when there's colors closer to the airstrike or the liberty launcher to use.
I feel the original tone of TF2 was always to play it straight but be a bit cheesy and have some subtle jokes. Spy's a perfect example of this through his art, story, and gameplay design. He's an international man of mystery and often portrayed as the most competent mercenary alongside sniper...but his plans can be completely foiled by turning around or the most insane mercenary pyro doing the bare minimum to foil Spy. He wears a suit and is well kept...but wears a clashing ski mask because how else would he keep his identity a secret from teammates and enemies alike?
He's kind of like Batman, cool in many aspects but also a bit ridiculous when you think about it.
Also why were you playing with a fempyro model ,':\
he also disguises with a paper mask
honestly? i wish the original storyline merged with the current(?) storyline, it sounds so awesome, i wish it stayed like that maybe a bit longer.
P.S poopy head
they would simply have to state somewhere in the comics that both Mann brothers eventually bought most of the United States, and it grew from there in secret. I don't really think it would be too dificult to convince us of this, since there are a lot of maps that don't take place in the badlands, and a lot of what happens behind closed doors has always been kept secret. They'd just need to make it clear that with time, the gravel wars grew to be something world-wide. This could even work with the whole Administrator plotline
Slightly bonkers would be cool, imagine the “Saxton was a persona to sell” happened alongside the “wtf why has this wizard interrupted my lakeside match 30 times in the past 5 minutes”
@@Salithin MERASMUS! (LEVEL 15) has appeared!
Holy shit no wonder we love Emesis blue it’s so close to an OG tf2 style it’s crazy
What I more meant to an OG style is its Realistic Nature like shown in this video I really wish we got more of a real TF2
Emesis blue is overrated
@@JcoleMcwell, "Rated" would be a more fitting term.
@JcoleMc it's rated about as well as it should be, you just hear about it alot because of how little high quality fan content the tf2 community gets, so when something to Emisis Blue comes out, of course people are going to talk about it alot.
@@pebbles4195
>little high quality tf2 community gets
You know that there are more people making high quality sfm projects?
You're not alone. I distinctly remember thinking the plot of TF2 was really cool. With big Iluminati corporate overlords fighting for world domination.
Then I read the comics and went "wait... what? That's lame af."
The whole "gravel " thing kind of gave me The Last Jedi vibes in retrospect. Felt like it was mocking and "subverting" the old lore.
it was always silly, claiming it isn't is just fucking stupid
@@mr.monkey354
Yeah, and James Bond was always silly too. But it's a different kind of silly. TF2 at the start was more true to the 60s kind of silly, while the new TF2 style ended up feeling more modern (not worse necessarily).
@mr.monkey354 Its a retcon which turns a worldwide arms race into two greedy old men fighting over gravel. That is fucking stupid.
@@mr.monkey354 he never claimed it wasn’t? He just thought that two corporations fighting over the world was more cool than fighting over gravel.
And plus the new map’s kind of support the old lore
I don't mind the plot changes... especially when at first plot was vague and nearly nonexistent.
But as for the artstyle... i have to agree that it's getting out of hand a little. That's why the only cosmetics i buy are the ones that are more "grounded" and don't take away from character's personality. Basically something they would actually wear if they had chance to
Honestly? I think a Gritty TF2 would be a lot worse than the goofy thing we have today, because there are, already, way too many Gritty shooters. Hell, 99% of shooters are gritty, or at least have a “gritty undertone”. And TF2 being this goofy-ah storyline, where Pyro manages to become a CEO and a giant Muscle Man kicks the hell out of Yetis and where New Zealand is an Atalntis-esque kingdom? It just feels *right*. It feels fresh and funny.
But I will say, I’d be intrigued to see an alternative more gritty storyline
what, every game is becoming colorful now
valorant, overwatch, fortnite, even cs2
This is what Richter overhisrelevantstage refuses to understand. The game would quickly die without the wackiness.
My guy forgot to uninstall his fempyro skin lmao
i actually installed it just for this vid lol
@@richterafterhours2628 nice
@@richterafterhours2628 if pyro really is a woman, what would that make fempyro
@@scoutdude4455 A tighter suit? 🤷♂
@@bananashoplifter3440Do You realise how little that narrows it down?
I actually believe that the grittier plot is still canon, and that the administrator is in fact running Tf industries by having Red and Blu compete and that that's why red and blu have expanded beyond their simple gravel origins and brother rivalry, like a rivalry taken to the next level that is fueled purely by the animosity of the 2 brothers and nothing else which led them to expanding worldwide in many different companies and subsidiaries and produce. It's still canon, but the origin of that expansion came from the brothers like "our founder" plaques in the main offices. And the Abraham Lincoln rocket jumping origin and other "whacky shindig" in tf2 likely came from the history books of teufort who's population drinks lead water. And I feel that tf2 definitely still retained that grit in the Meet the Team videos, but in those videos had a good balance between humor and seriousness, because there needs to be some comedic cartoonish aspects to justify game mechanics like rocket jumping. This is where I feel the comics differentiated with their balance of the 2 where the Meet the Team and Expiration Date videos didn't in that the comics are too goofy and ridiculous, but it can probably be retconned and australium can be treated as an actually fascinating mysterious element that powers the spytech, and that the "wacky history" is just the town's belief of what happened, or something along that line.
Edit: Pyrovision was literally just a metaphor for pyro's joy and euphoria and enjoyment of his cruel and atrocious actions. And also I feel people forget that tf2 is a franchise that CAN be taken seriously in characters and plot and explained in a somewhat realistic sense despite the goofiness and cartoonishness, and that sfms like spy's disguise and emesis blue or winglet's fedora chronicles prove people do want to see enjoy tf2's grittier side and doesn't have to be ALL comedy and ALL gags, but a balance between the 2 like in the official Valve sfms. For example maybe saxton was using these comics to market his products, but decided to try and actually be like his mascot version of himself and shave his chest to resemble australia and do the stunts and play the character and eventually went overboard, or halloween being some kind of mass hysteria due to perhaps an experimental brain washing device akin to the many spy tech devices in the various facilities they fight over located in the mountain lab that made the mercs hallucinate the facilities as carnivals, spooky mansions, and etc around the same time of Halloween, and that demoman's connection with merasmus and monoculus is because he was one of the first people experimented on and the comic is what he thinks he remembers from his childhood, and all that jazz. The goofiness and cartoonishness of the game is simply a way to have more leeway on the background and story, gameplay mechanics, overall game design, and writing and comedy, and a homage to both movies and cartoons and culture, and allows the franchise and artstyle to be timeless and extremely flexible (but not too flexible tf2 fans.) For example rather than australium being a super human influencing substance that gives australians power we can see it as an actually mysterious and powerful and unstable ALMOST super natural element that can quite literally make people crazier and influence the psyche or consciousness of the people that come across it, like saxton hale, grey mann, and the administrator. Saxton hale perhaps handled australium which made him crazy enough to believe he is the character he was marketing, or australium drove greymann to killing his brothers and taking over tf industries, or it drove the administrator to dominating the world, potential explanations like those.
Meh, I wouldn't like the idea that we'd go so overboard as to say "This substance caused everyone to do this highly specific thing". They did it because they wanted to or were always that way.No need to sugarcoat it. Let people murder other people because they want to. Other than that, pretty accurate, as with Pyrovision.
How is it that a self-confesed TF2 maniac and avid lover and collector of the art that is me has literally NEVER heard the name Moby Francke before watching this video?! I don't know if I'm a tool for not noticing, if there's been a glitch in the timeline, or if Mr. Francke just avoids all the press he can. Absolute king of *style*. 👑
Replying to my own comment to add further thoughts:
a) Really love the music choice here - that particularly remix of the SMW castle theme's a long favourite of mine, and the Timesplitter 2 OST is always a welcome gem.
2) Interesting that TF2 has followed the equal-opposite to Warhammer - a setting that started off pretty goofy and parodic, only to slide much more towards the serious, ultra-dark and turbo-gritty over time. I wonder why some works slide from one end of this scale to the other automatically, and how such opposite cases co-exist?
iii) As a big fan of Timesplitters 2 and Goldeneye before it, I always wanted to play single-player and co-op missions in TF2 where the classes tackle archetypal FPS campaign levels - a raid on a facility, stalking the office of a shady corporation, an urban stealth mission a-la Neo Tokyo and so on. When you talk about the prospect of the original TF2 timeline (which I would argue is still completely canon, yet nevertheless effectively sidelined) as a source of genuine plot development, those sorts of missions come to mind.
@@lpsp442 Glad you liked the vid! And very interesting points. I've also had many a daydream of a 007-esque singleplayer campaign set in the early TF2 setting.
Honestly I really want to play an exact copy of 2008 version of tf2. Like something that isn’t like tfclassic. Just a 2008 version of tf2.
When I first heard of TF2C that's what I assumed it was. Can't express the disappointment I had when I learned what it actually was.
I don't think The Orange Box was ever updated
maybe try getting your hands on the console version, I dont think it was ever supported after launch
@@neighborhoodthreattv for some reason, I feel like TF2C has that goofy/community vision of the game rather than the 2008 game, I don't know what it is
@@TheAntiBarrelit was untill 2009, so same experience but even more stock.
I cant imagine a more serious tf2 plot, its hardwired in my brain that its all just silly and goofy
The TF2 beta was much darker compared to the final version
This is a reference to the Half-Life 2 Beta that invented the idea of betas being darker than the final version
This reminds me of tone differences from fallout 1 and 2.
1 is more darker with people struggling to get water. Monster's roam freely with little that could stop them. There is no governments but instead people band together in bombed out builds and struggle to survive as a small raider gang could wipe them out. Along with disappearances of people
2 can be dark but it is filled with jokes that ultimately destroy the tone along with the much more random encounters that are just references to tv and films.
They are just different from each other.
Fallout 4 destroyed Fallout lore!
No, wait!
Fallout 3 destroyed Fallout lore!
No, wait!
Fallout New Vegas destroyed Fallout lore!
No, wait!
Fallout 2 destroyed Fallout lore!
Ever considered maybe things just aren't what you wanted them to be? There's a Fallout Bible made by the original writers that canonizes a Harem vault with 99 men and 1 woman.
@@nikolaitheundying I never considered any of them to destroy fallout lore. I just said they were different in tone which can be good because of the different time periods or locations they are set in.
Wow I really didn't know about original plot direction and it all makes sence now! I'd really like to see where it could lead with that start idea
6:20 lmao bro turned from angry at the train to happy by the fempyro pose
I'm glad you talked about this, everytime I notice how much more I loved the old artstyle I get people frothing at the mouth (like you said) about how it doesn't matter. I really got kind of confused when the summer war paints released and people said that they were "too tame". Did you want super bright, ugly obnoxious war paints??
I don’t think tf2 ever lost it’s grit, I started playing the game in 2020 and that was still the impression I got! That more serious tone (in my opinion) is what allowed the absurd comedy to thrive! It creates a great contrast, kinda like what the art style does if you ignore a lot of the hats.
you started in 2020 you have no right to talk about anything pre meet your match
@@dkskcjfjswwwwwws413 least gatekeeping tf 2 player
real@@stanislavkoshkin6224
@@stanislavkoshkin6224 gatekeeping is good
@@dkskcjfjswwwwwws413I doubt you played before gun mettle, stfu
Honestly surprised with how smart your analysis is on the original plot as people talk a lot about the death of TF2's artstyle, etc, but talking in-depth about TF2's old lore, I feel like both versions of the game are amazing in their own way, even though I do understand the thought of something being created one way being turned into something else without your own input, that just has to be weird, and the microtransactiony game we have now is also kinda a bummer.
I feel like since the tf2 comics are supposed to be JUST TELLING the story through mann co's vision like how the premium item is a copy of the game (?) and are still painting saxton as this crazy strong guy.
I completely agree. I liked it better when TF2 took itself somewhat seriously, but now that the game has become completely over the top and absurd, the suspension of disbelief has collapsed.
my brain active rebels against the notion that this game ever took itself seriously
my bro had the fempyro tf2classic mod turned on in actually footage, you truly are a man of culture
I think another part of why TF2 went the way it did was because of Garry's Mod, more specifically how the TF2 Characters became more of an exaggerated version of themselves. I'm saying this as a guy who started out with Meet the Medic, so I don't exactly have an idea on the 2007-2010 visual style. But I believe that a part of the Flanderization was in part due to how the community as a whole views the characters, or rather how they can stretch those characters to fit these ridiculous plots.
On a counterpoint, I think TF2 having been able to stay as entertaining as it has been for the better part of 16 years *is* due to how malleable the setting as a whole is. For you, the draw for TF2 was the Incredibles-esque secret society using its mercenaries to continue its plot of world domination. For me, it was partially how ridiculous the TF2 Universe got because of the silly and outlandish explanations as to how their world functioned. I feel both viewpoints, and perhaps even more, are valid reasons to enjoy the game and the other works around this universe. And I'm gonna go for a controversial take, I think it was for the best that they did lean more into the ridiculous, since it helped give TF2 more of a unique identity beyond its comic book style, compared to the outright dystopian, dark setting of the Half-Life games and the more secretive and equally dark Portal. The plot and art also helped distinguish it from Counterstrike and TFC, as they are similarly serious games. However, the artstyle death is definitely something that was unfortunate, and while I don't exactly have as much of an idea about the entire thing as you, it is definitely something I will need to take into consideration. However, on the same end, I think that TF2 is getting a bit too ridiculous for its own good, mostly with the cosmetics and such. Halloween is one thing, but when new cosmetics that are equally ridiculous can become a part of the game full-time, then I think the shark had been jumped.
That does make sense. The spy thriller setting fits perfectly with the cartoony 60s art style
Exactly what I was thinking! Great video! It just sucks how the spytech aesthetic got pushed to the side as it’s so unique and as you said, “so beautiful”.
i see the new story as a cover up done by administrator.
I'll say while tf2 is mostly a goofy hat game with spell books and burning banana hats, It still atleast somewhat retains some of its original gritty half of it's style, what with the (albeit very stylized) very abundant gore you don't really find in an fps pvp game, as well as many of it's environments not being the most joyous or colorful. I think the meet the team videos are where tf2 found a good balance between silly and gritty, the best example IMO being meet the spy. The main comics is when it started to really lean in to the goofiness of tf2. Overall though, I think tf2 still gives off a sense of grounded cartoon in it's visual design, minus the Halloweens maps. Also, in a game with mechanics like rocket jumping (or blast jumping in general), double jump, random critz, and a weapon that is just a jar of pee, I think the old gritty style wouldn't work with how the game has evolved.
blast jumping, random crits, & double jumping were all in the 2007 version of tf2, & jarate was added in the sniper vs. spy update, along with Hale. these all did work with the original style, even if a bit silly in concept. however, yes, with how the game has evolved, a lot of things wouldnt work with that original style
3:39 Actually now that I think about it now it makes more sense why there is Worldwide Maps (Like Asia and Europe) and not just U.S.A Maps in TF2
i love the lore as it is now, the original storyline the game had in its early days is very interesting and i wish it was explored more.
you explaining saxton as more of this icon for the business rather than how he actually "is" was very eye-opening, neat video :D♡
See, I can see your point, but the most absurd cosmetics are holiday restricted, and whenever I do see some horrific monstrosity in game my first reaction is typically collapsing a lung by laughing so hard
fortnite is the perfect game for you my friend, im sure youll die laughing when you see travis scott and eren yeager kill and griddy on master chief and batman
I can see where you're coming from, I actually don't mind most of the absurd cosmetics as long as they're restricted to holidays. Halloween is like the only time out of the year that I Uninstall my no hats mod and just revel in the absurdity despite being an art style purist most of the time. However, there are a lot of cosmetics that should be Halloween restricted but aren't.
this reminds me alot of payday 2. they share a very simmilar story, with a good, grounded art direction which was destroyed in favor of goofy aliens and replacing the president's consciousness.
"an anything goes schizo game" One of the original concepts of the game was Man V. alien, you have them fighting hordes of robots who dont fit the artstyle of the retro tech.
Litterally any "artstyle" argument has to by principle argue against almost all of tf2's updates. Litterally the year after release they gave heavy a sandwhich and natasha, a minigun that is way out of the 1960s aesthetic, its ltiterally a modern minigun in all black. THEY RELEASED *MEET THE SANDVICH* IN 2009. The game we call tf2 was always silly.
"Litterally any "artstyle" argument has to by principle argue against almost all of tf2's updates." Yes bro, yes.
You’re mixing up silliness and schizophrenia. TF2 has always been silly but it hasn’t always been a diagnosed schizophrenic. I also don’t understand how TF2 Invasion is a point because it’s literally just Half-Life 2 but silly. Everything else you mention represents the games slow build up to utter insanity
This is all fascinating and now I'm genuinely hoping TF2Classic is actually going with the original plot you're talking about. It would be incredible to see TF2Classic make some story to go along with their future updates.
I feel like TF2s tone was supposed to be more like a dark comedy but (Richter) overtime became just a comedy
counter point :
piss in a bottle
im not sure but i feel like emesis blue is actually set in the "le blu and red contrl le half le world" version of tf2, in one of the scenes we see that half the street is set in a red lighting while the other half is set in a blue lighting.
I feel like there should be a balance between 60’s spy art style and the goofyness that we know today
So with early TF2 lore, I know that some of the direction of it's story is actually inspired off of Rooster Teeth's Red Vs Blue web series. I remember hearing that Valve based Soldier's personality on Sarge's. (Or at the very least, people in TF2 lobbies back in the day making the comparison.)
Pretty early on in RvB's series, (2004-2005) it's established that both the Red and Blue teams are one in the same as they both share the same high command. This can be paralleled with 2007-2009's TF2's RED & BLU both being subsidiaries for the same company despite fighting each other.
Funnily enough, as RvB tried to take itself more seriously, TF2 became more ridiculous.
the tf2 beta was dark and gritty
At least they haven't changed the designs of the mercenaries, and in the later comics there is still a good bit of grittyness about the mercenaries. Spy is an asshole to his team and looks down on them, heavy's main motivation fir fighting is to provide food for his family, and demoman is an overworking alcoholic who his mother keeps yelling at him to work harder
While I do agree with all the points made here, a lot of people (maybe including myself if I can remember my first match of tf2) were really brought into the community by the wacky plot/artstyle/characters.
Still, the early artstyle is great in it's own right, and deserves a revisit in some future cosmetics.
I actually would've loved to see TF2 go in a more mature direction because looking back at the footage from the 2007 version, it does give a different more grounded tone to it despite its visuals.
But the goofier side has introduced a lot of elements and characters that in many ways, feels kinda difficult to go back on. It's strange to say but I can't imagine a world where TF2 exists the way it does but characters like Saxton Hale and Merasmus, or big story events like Mann Vs Machine just don't exist in it. Or at the very least, exist in the world but only as fictional characters featured on propaganda posters and comics.
And it's not like these characters couldn't feasibly still exist within a grittier tone either, Half-Life and Portal specifically showed me that there can still be sillier or more fantastical elements to its world and characters, while still having an overarching narrative that's a lot darker. Granted that might be also due to the character designs still being grounded to their respective art styles and not going over the top with it but in some ways, I think that gives TF2 a bit of an advantage since it's definitely more stylised than the latter 2.
It may sound silly when saying this but Saxton Hale still being a shirtless macho man with Australia-shaped chest hair beating up endangered species could still theoretically stay intact with a more mature Spy story that TF2 originally wanted to go for.
For a long time i was portraying in my head a nonexistent steath game - game where you are a spy in TF2 universe, but not an online game, a singleplayer game where the main thing to do would be explore and observe this world of "SpyTech"-styled secret operations of opposing company, while trying yo achieve nominal objective. Something between dishonored and hitman, only very strongly based on TF2 features, and revolving around interacting with everything around you in a way a TF2 universe character would.
And this concept was just like what you said in this video - mich more grounded and serious, while sometimes still going for absurd humor and idealisation of it's concepts, game about sexretly ongoing cold war between not governments but private companies, resorting to smaller groups of nore casually looking mercs.
Maybe one day i would make something like this, if i learn game dev science, the concept seems just too good to throw away...
That's really funny because I imagined something very similar to this when I first started playing tf2 as a kid. A stealth-action single player TF2 where you play as the spy working toward some objective. Its a lot like normal spy gameplay but far more fleshed out mechanics like having to hide bodies, the world is more interactive like having to use control panels to open those big secret vaults that lead deeper into the spytech parts of the facilities, even getting spotted would sound the alarm like what happened in Meet the Spy. Guess the cold-war/spytech aesthetic really resonated with a lot of us far more than we think, eh?
It's funny because I never even played stealth games as a kid. It just somehow felt "right" to me.
Counterpoint: We are the meat headed mercenaries and TF2 as it is now is our warped delusion of the spytech one.
The live service decay of an artstyle is just a video essay waiting to happen, it happens to all live service games, it starts as one silly item being added that opens the flood gates for the artsyle and direction changing and decaying.
I agree but its unfortunately just another "what if" that we cannot hope to go back to.
Based Femme Pyro mod gameplay.
I assume that if they went down the 2007 path the hats would be more like the soldier's stash then the banana hat thing and soldier would probably be a real soldier and not comically stupid.
You know what could actually fix it all - Saxton in a suit. Any official or even fanart like that. One man, one suit.
And maybe figuring out what happened with Olivia once Gray Mann died
imagine if hale was just a really smart businessman that put on a persona to sell his guns and comics
not sure if anyone else has this opinion, but i absolutely love things that are crazy and just extremely wacky things (though i can see where there needs to be limits) tbh in my opinion i love how funny its became and not something serious
tf2 beta was so dark and gritty
this is something that has always mildly bothered me and i wasn't expecting a video explaining more or less how i felt.
i started playing this game in 2011, so i got to experience first hand as hats and the lore kept slowly getting more and more egregious with each update.
by 2014's halloween, i couldn't help but feel put off by how stupidly zany the game got, and i actually quit (coming back for a checkup like 2 or 3 times a year) until 2017.
in retrospect, the art style really had nothing to do with me quitting the game. looking back, what really killed they joy for me was spending so much time trading. that really sucked the life out of the game for me. i kinda falsely attributed my burnout to the new direction the game was taking.
nowadays, while i do love the original vision for this games art style, i definitely prefer what we have now. tf2 is just oozing with the trademark valve magic and humor, and while it didn't turn out as sophisticated as it was originally planned, it's hard to deny that it's a miracle that this game's art style holds up as good as it does.
i mean, tf2's art style essentially survived multiple methaphorical suicide attempts, and it's still standing strong, save for a "wutville" or a "corpse carrier" here and there. to me, that means that at least some trace of that original vision remains at the very core of the game
Good stuff Mr. Overtime, it's nice to see some appreciation for what we've unfortunately lost.
_Also, the Zesty mention/meme gave me a good smirk/chuckle, so thank you for that_
Interesting take but, ultimately the charm of the funnier side of comics is what makes the game's story so memorable. There are hints of that grittier side in the story in the main comics with the administrator and her debt that we'll hopefully see eventually with #8. I'd like to think the game wouldn't have lasted nearly as long as it ended up taking itself too seriously. I, too, have felt the need to escape from modern tf2 to games like TF2 Classic and Open Fortress, just maybe not with a Fempyro mod.
Bro has that pyrocynical mod
one difference between TF2 and other cartoon style videogames is that TF2 has gore effects rather than trying to be safe about killing
looking at the workshop shows how much TF2s artstyle has decayed. like you can see things from about 10 years ago follow the artstyle way better than what is made now
"I love the TF2 art style"
Shows gameplay footage with the fempyro mod.
In all honesty I like the video but it felt weird to just have that
Fempyro is based.
W h y are you using the fem pyro mod⁉️ 🤨🤨🤨
I'd like to see if TF2C would add in this original storyline to it as they update the game
> complains about tf2´s decline in art style
> uses a fempyro mod
🤡
I love how he use the fempyro mod while talking saxton hale
I think tf2 started to take the turn to goofiness when that medic x heavy audio was blasted in voicechat. Then uploaded by Bl4ckDmon1 February 10th 2008. Like not even half a year after not goofy game was released.
It's just the natural way everything went to survive. 2008 tf2 would've died very soon without that goofiness.
Also what? How could people play Fortnite and OW when they took inspiration in artstyle and gameplay from tf2? The gaming landscape would be different, what a bold statement!
So i think the metaphor should be people using shit and duct tape to fix up cracks in an old house that was once beautiful.
I don’t like people who either don’t care about it or prefer the goofy stuff because it’s spoils it’s original style which is what made tf2 well tf2.
This seems to happen with every book, movie and game it goes on too long being handled by too many people who don’t understand what made it great.
3:29 bro is using a certain mod of culture
Idk man. Judging from mecrs voice lines on release, meet the team videos and all of early uptades with wacky weapons its seems that tf2 team had already adopted a more comedic and cartoony vision even before the game had been released
I mostly agree with this. However I think that both "versions" of the game are beautiful and fun sounding. I'd love to play the original spy thriller-esque TF2 it was originally advertised to be. I started playing about 3 years ago, and am aware of games like TF2 classic, but something about the original TF2 just...captivates me. It's quite interesting to see someone like you explain what you think, they are all very good points. Keep up the great work! 👍
I do love where tf2 did go, i would KILL to see a mod like tf2 classic take this version of the story, and go with it much more. It would be super cool to see almost as a "what if" situation
too bad tf2c takes 20 years to get updates
Now that I think about it, TF industries has been COMPLETELY retconned and removed
technically no, i think is still referred in engineer's sentry, and maybe other stuff than i forgetting
Its never mentioned again tho I wonder what happened to it since its not a spy thing anymore@@SaintRedFox
It’s still considered as the organization the admin works for
personally I do love the goofy over the top nature of TF2’s current lore, and I think overall it was probably a good move to do that, but damn what could’ve come from the og lore is such an interesting prospect. It would be cool if we could somehow get interviews with valve about it, but that would obviously never happen. A mann can dream.