Greg A. Brown

It’s pretty awesome.

It’s always totally surreal when something makes the leap from fiction to reality and even moreso with the usually-exaggerated realism of video games, which I guess makes this video one of the freakier things I’ve ever seen.

A decade in the making, Team Fortress 2 finally came out early this morning. And while I’ve played only a few hours so far (still a staggering amount given that’s usually how much I usually play games over a month or two), it’s totally worth the wait. For those unfamiliar with the story, the original Team Fortress was developed for Quake, one of the first fully-3D games ever. Designed as a “modification,” it meshed Quake’s art and technology with new models, weapons, and game-rules that turned it from a one-size-fits-all shoot-em-up to a more complex system of complementing classes. Players could choose to take the role of a Spy or an Engineer or a Demolitions Expert, with mostly-different weapons and abilities available to each role.

The team set about developing the sequel as another mod for Quake but were hired by Valve shortly afterwards and redirected to developing it as a mod for Half-Life, Valve’s slickly-scripted game featuring a rogue physicist (yeah) fighting against aliens and other staple enemies. The concept they were working with then included a commander class and a distinctly realistic and military styling. Screenshots were released, and they look pretty impressive for the day (which isn’t saying much given today’s vastly-higher expectations). If they look familiar, it’s because a little mod called Counter-Strike aped the look of that level and the faux-realistic attitude and went on to become the most played online game ever. It was so popular that it spawned an entire genre of realistic-military stuff, and remains the most played game today.

But development slowed, as the “commander class” and other new features proved hard to both balance and raise the fun level from the previous installment. The growing complexity led to Valve splitting the game off to sell as a separate product, releasing an updated port of the original as an apology to the fans (and a demonstration of their modding tools that were an order of magnitude easier than previous generations).

This peace offering freed the developers to further inculcate themselves into the Valve culture, where complete reboots and redesigns of games aren’t unheard of and are actually encouraged if necessary. Half-Life was completely redone in such a manner less than a year before its eventual release, and Team Fortress Two would go through two such revisions. The first was a move to Valve’s new generation of technology called the Source engine and born and bred for Half-Life 2, Valve’s followup to their spectacular first game. With this switch, the developers moved to using the art style and models developed for that game with the idea of placing players within an epic war only hinted at in Half-Life 2’s backstory. But that idea didn’t pan out, with the only indication of its existence in a 2003 leak of Half-Life 2’s source code.

Instead, the developers had an idea for an experiment: what would a multiplayer shooter look like that was specifically designed for every aspect to be as easy as possible for players? Their answer is the final form of Team Fortress 2, revealed to the public about a year ago.

First, each player would be plastered with their team color, allowing others at a glance to determine whether they were a friend or a foe. As seen in the picture that opens this post and the silhouettes immediately above, each class in this new version would take the form of a distinct, easily-recognizable character. Each main weapon would also be distinct from the other choices, allowing the player to tell whether he or she faced a short-range or long-range weapon. With the goal of minimizing visual clutter, a stylized shading system was chosen similar to the ones used in The Incredibles. For a prettier and more technically-wordy version of that, just watch the art and technology showcase video Valve put out this summer.

Valve adapted their successful iterative design techniques they used on their Half-Life games, distilling it to a science, making all their choices towards the end of refining gameplay and goals. For example, take this excerpt from the in-game developer commentary:

When designing areas for high levels of combat, we try to avoid complexity and chaos. Complex geometry confuses players, making it hard for them to track enemies, and interfering with their movement and aiming during combat. The most chaotic combat tends to occur when the size of the room fails to support the number of players fighting in it. In this final area of the map, we wanted a freeform battle to rage for some time before anyone could achieve a decisive victory. To achieve this, we built a wide open area with several entrances, and gave players a variety of attack and defense options at various heights. Rather than depend on elevators and ladders, we relied on ramps, since these allow freedom of movement at all times instead of confining players. Through playtesting we made many changes to the dimensions of the room, the size of cover elements, and the size of the entrances, thus ensuring the area could accommodate a battle of many players.

Like all the best work, the amazing innovations Valve has packaged with Team Fortress 2 are unobtrusive, so elegant in their function that they don’t even exhibit any characteristic disadvantages that have to be explained away and papered-over. And on the player’s side, they all pay off to make the best multiplayer experience in years. Sometimes hagiographies are warranted; this is one of those cases.

After much gnashing of teeth and tweaking of configurations, I finally got my computer acting sensibly again, and celebrated by relaunching into Half-Life 2, a game from late 2004 by Valve Software that - while anachronistic - might be best described as Children of Men: The Game. There are more traditional sci-fi elements to it (like aliens, robots, etc.), but it shares the same dystopic, totalitarian aesthetic. Both works communicate the backstory through the environment, rather than any direct explanations to the viewer/player. The long-takes of Children of Men even seem to ape the continuous experience that one gets from a game, with one uninterrupted take for each play-session.

Did I mention that the Half-Life 2 is also incredibly fun? Sometimes that gets lost when one starts making grandiose (but deserved) comparisons to cinema, but it remains an important component for success, no matter how high-art your aim. And Half-Life 2 succeeds superbly at both tasks, earning its status as one of the most polished games ever. There aren’t many competitors to that crown, but the only one with an incredibly clear case to be made is the episodic sequel pictured above, HL2: Episode 1. It picks up immediately after the end of Half-Life 2, and by virtue of its shorter length (only 3-4 hours) manages to be even more concisely polished.

Of course, the reason for playing both the games listed above is that HL2: Episode 2 is coming out soon. Bundled with Team Fortress 2 and Portal, two other Valve-developed games that focus on stylized multiplayer and clever puzzle-solving respectively, Episode 2 will mark a significant change for the series: open environments. Some games like Far Cry and Armed Assault boast of having wide-open levels where problems can be tackled from a variety of approaches (both tactical and geographical). Episode 2 won’t go quite that far, but they are promising some bigger and more ornate environments that have been seen in the past. Valve (single-player) games have always been extremely linear in the past, so even this seemingly-modest change is a significant shift for their development style.

Will they succeed? I think the smart money is on yes, but even if they fail there’s still two other games there that look absolutely stunning. And the chance of all three being forgettable is unimaginably small, given Valve’s track record. October 10th should be a really good day.