It’s been a long time coming. (About 5 years, in fact.) But now, it seems that Valve is ready to release the long-awaited “Meet the Pyro” video for their popular First-Person Online Shooter, Team Fortress 2.
In 2007 — when Team Fortress 2 was released on The Orange Box — Valve released a set of hilarious shorts featuring the character classes from their online FPS. Each class received their own 2 to 3 minute short that allowed the characters to describe themselves and gave a small background to their capabilities in the arena.
But for some reason, the final short featuring the Pyro class was never released. Valve writers did state that they were developing the final short earlier this year, but until last week that was all that was known.
Last week, TF2 received an update that prompted an ARG (Alternate Reality Gaming) in which fans solved a set of puzzles — in typical Valve fashion — to release more information about an upcoming major event. Portal 2 had a very popular “Potato Fools Day” ARG last year prior to it’s April release. The solution to the TF2 puzzle gave fans a transcript from a Senate hearing involving a monkey by the name of “Poopy Joe” being sent into space. Then, Adult Swim in conjunction with Valve announced they would be releasing “something you’ll probably enjoy,” this week.
So after numerous hints and lots of side-stepping, Valve officially announced today that the “Meet the Pyro” short will be coming in three days. To celebrate its release TF2 is experiencing “Pyromania” with a bunch of new updates and features. The first new update to celebrate is the release of the new map and game mode, “Doomsday”. The goal of the new game mode: “Both teams will attempt to get the necessary fuel up a preposterously slow-moving elevator and into Poopy Joe’s Australium-powered rocket to the stars.” And thus the mystery of why we were reading the transcript of a Senate hearing on Poopy Joe is solved.
From the countdown on Valve’s TF2 website, it seems that we have at least one more TF2 update before the release of the “Meet the Pyro” short. And then there’s the question of what the “Meet the Pyro” short might bring. Will be a new announcement for TF3? Or just a long-lost promise finally being kept?
Knowing Valve there might be a good ulterior motive hidden under all of this, but there is no telling until that clock finally winds down to zero.