Behind the scenes of Meet the Medic and what could be coming to TF2.

Apr 19, 2009
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Introduction

Hi my name is The Political Gamer or TPG or whatever variation I need to use to fit the character limit, you may know me from such threads as Back from Valve but today I have come to talk about 1 thing and one thing only. The stuff I could't say about Meet the Medic till now.

My viewing started by being taken into a dark room were everyone was working on Source Filmmaker related videos including what would later be the Portal 2 Investment Opportunity videos but that's not what I was there for. I was sat down on a couch along with Robin and another member of the TF2 team. The version of Meet the Medic I saw was not a complied version like what you all saw but a un-rendered version missing minor details. (Watching a "making of" a Pixar movie should give you a good idea what it looked like for me.) As the video went on I spotted all the things I just knew people would love such as the Spy in the fridge. As the video went on the jaw had a hard time keeping attached to my face as the one-liners and visual jokes hit me one after another. After the video was other Robin asked me what I thought. Naturally I responded that it was fantastic and that the TF2 community would love it but then things took a turn for the interesting.

A time before TF2

As some of you manged to figure out this was the Medic's first uber but that would mean that Meet the Medic along with possibly all other "Meet the" videos sans maybe Meet the Sandvich and The Mac update video take place in a world before the TF2 we have today.

Now I want you to think about that for a second, what would the TF2 world be like without an uber or possibly without other weapons. That almost all the stock weapons at some point had prototypes and the quick fix is one example.

Now this is were the TF2 Emporium and other model makers step in. Next time you are building a weapon and having a hard time coming up with an idea think back to this time. So go forth and shape what TF2 was even before the first Beta, before the "Meet the" videos. However, weapons were not the only thing was a blast from the past...

The clones, the clones!

Now if anything stood out among the fantastic jokes its the large mass of soldier descending upon the hospital. This was the first time since the since the 2nd trailer that more then 1 class was shown multiple times on the same screen. Now back in the 2nd trailer this was just a way of making the guns look really powerful and at the time the TF2 team had no idea what was coming down the road. But this is 2011 TF2, a TF2 with a back-story where many of the unknown of release TF2 has been explained but not this.

So I asked Robin what I thought was the most logical explanation on why there are so many soldiers and while he didn't really give a defiant answer it promoted me to push harder at the idea of clones. Why do both teams have the same people on both sides, why is it that when you re-spawn your not a new person but identical to what you looked like when you died. The only logical explication... clones! Now I know some of you are thinking that I am looking to hard into this and I would agree with you if Valve didn't bring this back up again themselves. By putting this army of soldiers into a video like this Valve has verified that there is something more to re-spawning as the same person and I think I might know why.

Theory crafting is in this year

Before going into this section keep in mind this is my own speculation biased on what I saw at Valve and what I guess biased on the back-story we have so take this analysis with a few grains of salt as Valve may pick to tackle this problem in their own way.

Now we know both BLU and RED are run by 2 brothers Blutarch Mann and Redmond Mann the twin sons of Zepheniah Mann. These 2 men have been going at it since the 1850s or possibly even before. We also know that Blutarch first assembled the BLU team before Redmond assembled his but this may be irrelevant. Now fast forward to the 1960s and the RED vs. BLU war is still going on. For years these companies have been fighting with a near limitless supply of men in clearly abandon bases, but how? As I indicated in my early chapter this was done by the use of clones but who makes these clones? My guess would be Mann co. as the Australians could theoretically have the the technology to produce clones while supplying the teams with identical weapons. So here we are in an endless war of men, clones vs. clones, an ever-changing war of hats and control points fueled by the innovation of Mann co. all created to please Blutarch's and Redmond's desires to crush the other brother and take over the world. So next time you spawn in TF2 think about this, did you just waste another clone or is something even more sinister afoot. That is something for Valve to create and for us to sit back and watch the fireworks.

Pointless Trivia and Whatnot
  • When I asked Robin if the new Medic backpack was the quick-fix he responded with a "could be."
  • The medigun and backpack looked less detailed then it does now.
  • The map Meet the Medic takes place on its a modified version of Badwater
  • The video ended with a few seconds left on the timer possibly hiding the F2P announcement.
  • The soldiers did not originality have hats on or different weapons, they were all the same.

Oh and last but not least have a video of Robin Atkin Downes recording his lines for Meet the Medic

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qPmo0gxdMCc
 
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StickZer0

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Nov 25, 2008
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I was just talking to my friend about how I thought the only plausible explanation for all those soldiers was "clones" (and how I hated that explanation) yesterday, heh.

Interesting read though
Also "I can queses biased on the back-story" - wut?
 

grazr

Old Man Mutant Ninja Turtle
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Mar 4, 2008
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I was quite content continuing to translate the limit on differing player characters as a game mechanic and subsequently overlook it with willing suspension of disbelief. It would be impractical to have different avatars for the same class and goes against the initial design ethics the TF2 team had when developing the game.

IE the customisation of Brink avatars was not a design goal of Valve's, in fact it was the opposite; so it's only natural the class characters are identical.

Edit: Explaining it feels largely needless unless there's actually some interesting TF2 lore behind it. The whole demoman-soldier war puts massive holes in it. Mrs Pauling couldn't possibly have personally delivered every Eyelander and DH to the thousands of soldier's and demoman that all eventually died, not to mention it seems silly that every demoman would have a counter-part soldier best friend; and where the hell are all these clones living, they quite clearly have homes and families and are never seen beyond their 9 class make up. As in you never see more than 1 of each class at a time represented in the comics.
 
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