Valve's announcement regarding Team Fortress 2 and especially the comparison of its visuals to those of a pixar-animated movie has caused some commotion and the company has now released further TF2 information, as well as a basic Team Fortress 2 image.
Valve's Gabe Newell has also taken the opportunity to praise the episodic model claiming, by evolving our development process to an episodic approach, we're able to reduce risk from things such as schedule and funding and invest more in new types of gameplay. Mr. newell aslo added that using this model Valve can focus on producing, ...innovative titles such as Portal and Team Fortress 2 and deliver them in a timely fashion to customers along with Episode Two.
To view the first Team Fortress 2, full size, image follow the Screens tab above.
Valve has described Episode Two as the story of Dr. Gordon Freeman who, armed with new weaponry and vehicles, must race through a countryside riddled with an increasingly fierce Combine threat. This, of course, hints at the larger open environments that, as we reported earlier, will be a part of Ep. 2.
Team Fortress 2, an all-new version of the title that spawned team based multiplayer action games, will feature the most advanced graphics of any Source-based game released to date. Players will choose from a range of unique character classes such as medic, spy, sniper, or engineer and must work together to complete a variety of tactical objectives.
Portal is a new type of single player game that changes how players approach, manipulate, and surmise the possibilities in a given environment in a manner similar to how the Gravity Gun changed our approach to how an object may be leveraged in any given situation.
Team Fortress 2 and Portal will be included with all retail and Steam versions of Episode Two for the PC. In addition, these products plus Half-Life 2 and Episode One will be available in one tremendous offering for the PC, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. New videos from Episode Two, Portal, and Team Fortress 2 will be released next week.
