Team Fortress 2 15 Minute Short is a "Lead-Up to Update"

Mike Hoffman

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Sep 25, 2013
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Team Fortress 2 15 Minute Short is a "Lead-Up to Update"

Team Fortress 2 short film "Expiration Date" is fantastic and is the first lead-up to Love & War.

A mysterious timer appeared yesterday on the Team Fortress 2 website that ended this evening with the release of a new short. On the [a href="http://www.teamfortress.com/"]TF2 blog[/a], the team states this is just the beginning of a lead-up to a new update named Love & War. Also, bread is of indeterminate importance.

Team Fortress 2 shorts are not a new thing. The team behind the game has created a number of videos for [a href="https://www.youtube.com/user/teamfortress/videos?sort=dd&view=0&shelf_id=2"]different updates[/a] as well as a series of [a href="https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLHy7G7ndrUmpWqBkNKjJRT5urGiPW63Iq"]"Meet the Team" shorts[/a] for the different playable classes. But "Expiration Date" is special.

While all the other shorts are never more than a couple minutes long and are fairly simple, "Expiration Date" is fifteen minutes long and features seven speaking characters, including Miss Pauling. This is the first Source Filmmaker appearance of Miss Pauling, who is voiced by Ashly Burch of Hey Ash, Whatcha Playin'? and the voice of Tiny Tina in Borderlands 2.


[a href="http://www.sourcefilmmaker.com/"]Source Filmmaker[/a] is Valve's freely available video capture and editing application that works with games powered by the Source engine. Valve has made promotional content for its games Team Fortress 2, Left 4 Dead 2, and Portal 2 using the Source Filmmaker.

As far as the Love & War update is concerned, there isn't much to say. The Team Fortress 2 blog simply states that "Expiration Date" is the "Day One lead-up" to the new update. The blog also shares that some new expressions that will become available once the (almost certainly) free update drops, including dancing, flipping, and Rock, Paper, Scissors. Given the phrasing on the blog post, it seems that Valve may have new treats for Team Fortress 2 fans as we approach the update's unknown release date.

And yeah, [a href="http://wiki.teamfortress.com/wiki/Bread"]bread[/a]. After a Team Fortress 2 [a href="http://wiki.teamfortress.com/wiki/June_11,_2014_Patch"]patch on June 11th[/a], bread began to occasionally appear in-game after using a teleporter. The bread doesn't appear to affect the game and was not mentioned in the patch notes, but this kind of quirk leading into something bigger is not uncommon for the Team Fortress 2 team. Appropriately, bread plays an odd yet significant role in "Expiration Date".

Source: [a href="http://www.teamfortress.com/"]Team Fortress 2 Blog[/a]

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TheYellowCellPhone

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Sep 26, 2009
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Thought it was hilarious, extremely quotable, very enjoyable, love how much they fleshed out Miss Pauling in this short, the animation was flawless, the action scene was really really good. Some voices were off compared to their in-game voices, but that's nothing much. Pyro, Sniper, and Demo never got a speaking role, which sucked.

But why did it primarily have to be about Scout getting tail?

If they spent fifteen minutes having the team doing everyone's bucket list wishes one at a time, there would've been no way to improve it! But instead they focus it around the most annoying character and his stupid love interest. grararar

I don't care about the update because this video was so good. It's been over a year since a new weapon and several long months since a new map or weapon rebalance, and I don't care, this video is too good.
 

Scorpid

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I have a question. Why doesn't valve make its own series and sell it to Netflix or something? Even if the graphics are a little dated with the game its still obvious that Valve has a talent for humor and SFM can obviously handle it. I would love to see more of these characters, especially Soldier. "I have done nothing but teleport bread for 3 days." Thats the first time in a long time I laughed so hard I was having trouble breathing.
 

Mr.Mattress

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Jul 17, 2009
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General Torg said:
Do we get new weapons this time? Please....please say yes.
They've definitely been hinting at a Parachute Secondary for the Soldier, so I believe that will be revealed sometime soon.

Anyways, this Short was great, but the Engie's Voice seems off to me, and it was because of that short I learned that Soldiers VA has throat cancer. I hope he gets better soon...
 

Vigormortis

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Thoroughly loved this short. Animation was great, voice acting was stellar, and the pacing was pitch perfect. Laughed throughout.

However, I almost fear the memes this may start. There are just so many quotable lines in there.
 

Darren716

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This is probably my favorite of the TF2 shorts to date and ironically it mostly involeved my least favorite character, they really did work hard to make you try and side with scout, not to mention the humor was top notch I will probably be quoting this thing for months. I hope they are going to announce the new weps for the update tomorrow, we already had a post about a parachute for soldier and there seemed to be quite a few weapons hinted at in the short (Pauling's pistol, there is a knife in a painting in the spy's smoking room that hasn't been seen before).
 

Xman490

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May 29, 2010
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General Torg said:
Do we get new weapons this time? Please....please say yes.
Maybe there's a new kind of 2-barrel pistol or something,
that Miss Pauling was using while fighting the bread monster, which could be some sort of "final boss".
 

RJ 17

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Nov 27, 2011
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Spy: "This...is a bucket."
Soldier: "Dear god!
Spy: "There's more."
Soldier: "Nooo!"

Soldier: "You haven't read my card yet."
Spy: *sigh* "Does it say you want the bucket?"
Soldier: "Yes."

Soldier: "I have done nothing but teleport bread for the past three days."

xD Soldier was hilarious.
 

Soviet Heavy

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It's too bad that Rik May has throat cancer, I love him as Soldier and Nolan North just cannot pull off the gruff without sounding like his Deadpool voice. However, Nolan was surprisingly spot on as the Engineer.
 

Not G. Ivingname

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Nov 18, 2009
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Awesome! :D

...

Wait. It's called Expiration date, about the team now all having incurable tumors before they all die, and taking one last shot, ONE last epic finale to end all their adventures?

Is this... this the last update? After 7 years, is this the end? Seven years of new gamemodes, new weapons, hundreds of balance changes, a thousand hats, is THIS the final curtain on a game that has completely engrained itself into gaming culture, making nine iconic characters that each could stand among the greats of the medium?

TheYellowCellPhone said:
But why did it primarily have to be about Scout getting tail?[/i]
My best guess the Scout's voice actor was free the longest/the cheapest/the one who still sounds the most like the original character.
 

Neverhoodian

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Soviet Heavy said:
It's too bad that Rik May has throat cancer, I love him as Soldier and Nolan North just cannot pull off the gruff without sounding like his Deadpool voice. However, Nolan was surprisingly spot on as the Engineer.
Wait, what?! Damn, that's messed up. I hope he gets better.

On a more positive note, I'm psyched for this update. Apparently Valve has been teasing this one for years, with cryptic bread references popping up here and there. The last time they did something like this was when they introduced Mann vs. Machine mode, one of the largest content updates in TF2's history.

Honestly, Ms. Pauling was probably my favorite part of the short. I always liked her in the comics, but her depiction in this was stellar. It felt so natural that at times it seemed like she had been "one of the guys" from the beginning. A part of me expected to see her in the class lineup when I fired up TF2 earlier.

To those wondering about more weapons, pay close attention to what the characters wield in the short. Valve loves hinting at new content in their TF2 promos.
 

GamerLuck

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Jul 13, 2009
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I really, really, REALLY hope this is gonna be official Valve released playable female classes... Cause was it just me or did Miss Pauling wield weapons that looked a whole lot like what Scout usually does? And with her new found enjoyment of shooting at and blowing up things... Yeah I am gonna go out on a limb and guess that this is gonna be the first of many female equivalents to current classes. Taking bets now.
 

Headsprouter

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Nov 19, 2010
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Soviet Heavy said:
It's too bad that Rik May has throat cancer, I love him as Soldier and Nolan North just cannot pull off the gruff without sounding like his Deadpool voice. However, Nolan was surprisingly spot on as the Engineer.
I noticed both of their voices sounded weird at one point. Specifically at 10:03 and 12:25. Soldier was very off, sounded like he was on helium. It's funny, maybe May's development of throat cancer came from his career as a voice actor, doing all those gravelly voices and such. Probably. He can no longer scream lines, which is why he replaced that bit. I hope he gets better.
According to the wiki, Goodeve was just unavailable. I hope that's all. No specific points are referenced on the wiki, though, they just say that his new lines were voiced by North. If that means all of them, save one or two, he did a fantastic job.
 

NuclearKangaroo

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best animated short valve has ever made, they really outdid themselves

man all the characters were spot on and hilarious, glorious

RJ 17 said:
Spy: "This...is a bucket."
Soldier: "Dear god!
Spy: "There's more."
Soldier: "Nooo!"

Soldier: "You haven't read my card yet."
Spy: *sigh* "Does it say you want the bucket?"
Soldier: "Yes."

Soldier: "I have done nothing but teleport bread for the past three days."

xD Soldier was hilarious.
"WE CANT TELEPORT BREAD ANYMORE!"

some other less quotable lines also got me, such as

spy: "you are ready!"

scout: "really!?"

spy: "no, everything you just said was insane"

Soviet Heavy said:
It's too bad that Rik May has throat cancer, I love him as Soldier and Nolan North just cannot pull off the gruff without sounding like his Deadpool voice. However, Nolan was surprisingly spot on as the Engineer.
yeah read that earlier, totally killed my mood after this amazing animation, specially since i love this man's performance as the soldier, hes my favorite character

and yes nolan north did surprisingly well as the engie, i say we change the name of the "voice actor" career to "nolan north impersonator", the man has an incredible range of characters
 

Shinkicker444

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GamerLuck said:
I really, really, REALLY hope this is gonna be official Valve released playable female classes... Cause was it just me or did Miss Pauling wield weapons that looked a whole lot like what Scout usually does? And with her new found enjoyment of shooting at and blowing up things... Yeah I am gonna go out on a limb and guess that this is gonna be the first of many female equivalents to current classes. Taking bets now.
I was getting a similar vibe to, that and Miss Pauling is hilariously awesome. It's been something a lot of people have been asking for for a while now.
 

Doom972

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Shinkicker444 said:
GamerLuck said:
I really, really, REALLY hope this is gonna be official Valve released playable female classes... Cause was it just me or did Miss Pauling wield weapons that looked a whole lot like what Scout usually does? And with her new found enjoyment of shooting at and blowing up things... Yeah I am gonna go out on a limb and guess that this is gonna be the first of many female equivalents to current classes. Taking bets now.
I was getting a similar vibe to, that and Miss Pauling is hilariously awesome. It's been something a lot of people have been asking for for a while now.
This is a perfect timing for that. Right after Ubisoft saying how difficult it is. I hope that it's the case, though I suspect it probably isn't.
 

Shinkicker444

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Doom972 said:
This is a perfect timing for that. Right after Ubisoft saying how difficult it is. I hope that it's the case, though I suspect it probably isn't.
Yeah, with a name like Love and War it sounds like its an absurdly late Valentines Day thing, which would also help the idea of playable females along. Sadly though I agree that it probably won't be the case of playable female characters.

Just have to stick with the (out of date) mods.
 

Kingjackl

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Nov 18, 2009
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So, that was completely brilliant! What are we thinking with this update? My money's on playable Miss Pauling or Tumor-Bread-Monster as a boss.

Actually, all I really want is the Spy's "SEDUCE ME!" line as a taunt.