Valve and Updates

So you may or not have heard that there is a major patch for TF2, a game by Valve coming out, on April 15th or 16th. Hm. Since this is the second delay, this is about the most trustworthy prediction. You see, Valve has a...history of really bad delays. First was the original Half-Life game, which was scrapped when it was done the first time so as to make it even more awesome. Yeah. They were "unhappy" with what they had made, and re-did the whole thing from the ground up. Yeah, again. Gives you a good idea of what kind of history we're working with here.

Next was Team Fortress 2, although it is technically latest in our timeline, so we'll cover it last.

So actually next is Half-Life 2, originally slated for early 2004, was actually shown at the E3 (A major gaming convention) that year, by Valve, and by Gabe Newell the quote-unquote "CEO" of Valve. Gabe saying it was coming out in 2004 was amazing. But, a...Russian hacker, I believe, managed to hack the source code and leak it to the internets. Shit. This forced Valve to re-do everything again so that people couldn't get spoilers on the story points. Thus, the game was released in 2005. And, yes, we did rejoice.

Half-Life 2: Episode 1 is the next link in the chain of betrayal by Valve to us loyal gamers. Episode 1 is the first in section of episodic sequels to Half-Life 2. In short, they delayed this one again. Despite the fact that it was about 5 hours long it took about the same amount of production time put into Half-Life 2. It made no sense, all they had to do was make new maps, make new animations, and record some more dialogue. Guh.

And the Orange Box is the latest major delay. The Orange Box was meant to come out summer of 07, and actually spring of 07 before that. The Orange box contained the possible cause of the curse on this one's release date (besides having been made by Valve) is that it contained TF2

Team Fortress 2 had been cursed until it was released. Just to help this make sense, we had been waiting for 9 years for Team Fortress 2. 9. Fucking. YEARS! It was all because we originally had TF, a Quake mod, and when Valve bought the people (Their company, not the people as slaves) they announced a sequel and made Team Fortress Classic to tide us over till TF2 was released. Great. The reason it kept being delayed is because they kept coming up with excuses to change design. First it was a regular sequel to TFC, then it got set in the Half-Life Universe, then...It disppeared. Sure, it was mentioned every now and then, but there were no major announcments for a while. Then we saw something in 2006. It was a simple trailer, showcasing very stern, 1950's cartoon style characters. But we later got another, slightly updated glimpse, but the Soldier still looked like some stupid Red Shirt. Sadly, death noises sounded idiotic, and the Scout had the most retarded weapon in existence. The fucking nail gun. Luckily, the earliest glimpse of what we know and love as TF2 today was in the Meet the Heavy video. What was great was that the game had lost some of that sternness of the characters. And later that year, Meet the Engineer came out. Awesome. And of course, Meet the Soldier. Both highlighted the humor the game was going for, and it was perfect. At this point, most of us who pre-ordered the Orange Box off of Steam were playing the Beta for TF2, and it was perfect. And of course, the rest is history. The Orange Box was released, and we got the Companion Cube meme, and one of the best online First Person Shooters in years. Oddly, I never thought I'd play TF2 that much, but it actually stopped me from playing Super Smash Brothers Brawl, it's so fun.