All Aboard the Hype Train: "End of the Line" update arrives for TF2

[mauve]

You know what? Up until now, I totally would've been okay if James McVinnie's fantastic End of the Line trailer (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lmVsOl9qAhs) ended up just being a fake trailer. It had fantastic animation, wonderful atmosphere, and the believability of being a real movie trailer. It was so good that I was kinda worried an actual full movie of the thing wouldn't do it justice. I loved it, the internet loved it, and for the two of you who didn't know, Valve also loved it. The company was just as impressed by the trailer as the rest of the internet and supported it fully, coyly hinting at an entire update for Team Fortress 2 based on the fan film, which would be released when the entire movie was finished.

Today is that day, ladies and gentlemen. It ISN'T just a fake movie trailer, and it is fantastic. The End of the Line is live (http://www.teamfortress.com/endoftheline/), bringing with it the obligatory cosmetic items and taunts (the purchase of which benefits the creators, so that's nice), some kind of rubber ducky collecting thing, and most importantly, the completed End of the Line film. This puppy clocks in at a whopping THIRTEEN MINUTES with a ton of custom textures and models. Now we know why it took a year to complete.
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This is pretty fantastic. It's funny, has some beautifully animated action scenes (dat train wreck!), maintains the same amazing mo-capped posing as the trailer, pulls off some great thrills and moments of suspense, and boasts an original soundtrack (although I'm sure that was a prerequisite of being featured as an official TF2 update, since the trailer used the copyrighted Seven Nation Army as its theme song).

But, to be a fair review I have to put in a few negatives with the positives. Really, the only nitpicks I could possibly have with this film are that some of the quiet moments are a little clumsy or heavy-handed (no pun intended), but not to a degree where it detracts from the film. I also found it a little odd that the trailer and movie poster have Scout and Sniper as the main characters, when Sniper disappears from the film about five minutes into the story. Again, this isn't a sin big enough to take away from the overall experience.

All in all, I'd say this film is pretty much on par with anything Valve's done themselves, and McVinnie's team manages to pull it off with very little dialogue. Thirteen minutes with only a handful of spoken words from Valve's standard issue TF2 audio library is very impressive. McVinnie's already proven himself a fantastic animator (I believe he is/was a professional animator in the video game industry?) with past SFM short films like Practical Problems (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7RYeKYj4vEY) and No Mercy (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QSFnTHALtvw&list=UUah8NTcZ1Ct5ElESx5cQRlQ), so I guess a longer film is just the logical next step.

[Grandmaster_Skweeb]

The video was all around quite good. The rest of the update? Not nearly so much.

Valve dropped the spaghetti on this one somethin hard.

[mauve]

Yeah, but Valve's marketing it as a Community update like the Tomb Raider thing, rather than as a Valve update, so I guess I can pardon that. I certainly would've liked something bigger, like a map or gamemode from Valve itself, but everything here financially benefits the modders and filmmakers, so I'l give it a pass. Maybe there were legal complications that were solved by making this a community update rather than a full Valve tie-in.

[rpgdemon]

The benefits of doing it this way, as far as I can see it are: "Hype people up and get them to give us money without doing anything."

Cosmetic only updates make me unhappy.

[Grandmaster_Skweeb]

Yeah, but Valve's marketing it as a Community update like the Tomb Raider thing, rather than as a Valve update, so I guess I can pardon that. I certainly would've liked something bigger, like a map or gamemode from Valve itself, but everything here financially benefits the modders and filmmakers, so I'l give it a pass. Maybe there were legal complications that were solved by making this a community update rather than a full Valve tie-in.

That's the problem though. There was supposed to be a new map / gamemode but it was scrapped. The update was also supposed to be less focused on accessories and be more weapon focused. There have been other very successful community updates so there's no real reason why they let this one flop so hard.

All the community got out of it was a video, a scrapped map/mode, a single vanilla weapon reskin, more mehhhh accessories, reused halloween assets, and a paywall to the event. An update that was clearly marketed to be something quite tangible to TF2 turned out to be...ducks. Not so much that people are angry about it. More just really really disappointed. 'cause Valve can do way better than this. McV and crew deserved a better handled update too.

Here's hoping Valve redeems themselves with the Smissmas update 'cause they're going to need it after this travesty.

[Doc ock rokc]

To be fair McVee isn't an angel in all this ether. He slashed his team to pieces over drama and they exercised their rights to remove their assets from the video (which is why we don't have some of the scenes seen in the trailer/earlier versions.

The map is available for download and is a timed CP where the train would swoosh though near the end. IF red has a point captured a trap goes off and hurts the train. If blue has a point captured the trap is disarmed and the train goes through. the train loses a bit of health for each trap. This goes on for 3 stages but the train's health goes through. Red needs to only hold 3-4 traps to destroy the train and win while Blu needs only to get to the end with a bit of health. Whoever has the most health at the end of the second round wins the entire map.

This was scraped due to being complicated.

Other things like weapons were taking too long to balance (and required certain NERFS that were put into place earlier)

[Shyria Dracnoir]

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[Loyal]

This was scraped due to being complicated

Snowplow is literally an A/D map with some new UI elements and a train. If Valve OK'd Mannhattan and Robot Destruction, I really don't know how they decided Snowplow was too confusing.

[mauve]

To be fair McVee isn't an angel in all this ether. He slashed his team to pieces over drama and they exercised their rights to remove their assets from the video (which is why we don't have some of the scenes seen in the trailer/earlier versions.

The map is available for download and is a timed CP where the train would swoosh though near the end. IF red has a point captured a trap goes off and hurts the train. If blue has a point captured the trap is disarmed and the train goes through. the train loses a bit of health for each trap. This goes on for 3 stages but the train's health goes through. Red needs to only hold 3-4 traps to destroy the train and win while Blu needs only to get to the end with a bit of health. Whoever has the most health at the end of the second round wins the entire map.

This was scraped due to being complicated.

Other things like weapons were taking too long to balance (and required certain NERFS that were put into place earlier)

Ah, I hadn't heard that. That's too bad.