A Decade of Team Fortress 2
Team Fortress 2 is finally upon us, but how long exactly have people been waiting? For some it has been over a year, but for others it has been nearly a whole decade i.e. WAY too long. Steamfriends.com decided it was time to delve into the metaphorical filing cabinet labelled Everything Team Fortress 2 and found it has quite a history.
Back in the 90s
The first signs of Team Fortress 2 were originally way back in 1997, when it was to be a complimentary mod supplied with Quake II. However in 1998, Valve, then an upcoming game developer, employed the whole team working on the game and development switched to the Goldsource/Half-Life engine and it was decided that Team Fortress 2 would be released as a retail standalone game in the form of a modern war game.
A year later, Team Fortress 2: Brotherhood of Arms was shown to the public for the first time at the 1999 E3 and picked up several awards including Best Action Game. The game showed many new technologies which were only just being implemented into games at the time and, with no release date given, fans were left to fill forums with anticipation.
The Six Year Drought
Unfortunately during 2000, Valve announced that Team Fortress 2would be delayed, for the game was apparently moving to a new engine which is now known as the Source engine. Then there was nothing. For a whole six years, there was pretty much no news, no screenshots, no word of Team Fortress 2. In 2003 three models from the game were leaked onto the internet via the Half-Life 2 source tree, but the rumours soon died out. Also around the time of Half-Life 2s release, Valves Director of Marketing Doug Lombardi suggested that Team Fortress 2 WAS still in development, but could not give any details on the project.
And Finally
Then, on July 13 2006 at the EA Summer Showcase, the new Team Fortress 2 was unveiled to the public the cel-shaded beauty you see today. Apparently it had taken the team an extremely long time to come up with what they decided was THE Team Fortress 2 they wanted, scrapping three to four other attempts in the process. The final decision to choose this graphically style was inspired by three American illustrators, J. C. Leyendecker, Dean Cornwell and Norman Rockwell.
So to today, where, on this very morning (10th of October 2007), The Orange Box has been released to the public and the wait is finally be over.