Thomas Mahler's Sein

Assuming you haven't already, you'll probably be hearing a lot about this soon,. Thomas Mahler is a freelance character artist and cinematic artist for Blizzard, currently working on Starcraft II. In the meantime, he has also been developing his own independent title called Sein. Sein, Mahler says, is inspired "heavily" by the works of Team ICO and Eric Chahi (1991's Another World). The above image is a screenshot of Sein, which is pretty darn incredible I must say. You can view all of the screenshots of Sein as well as other work of Thomas Mahler at his official site. Mahler also writes a game design blog called The Banana Place.

Last but not least, Mahler has modeled a gritty version of the Heavy from Team Fortress 2, a game of which lately I am quite obsessed. If you want to play with me on Steam sometime, my username is Gryffin.

Source: Split-Screen

"Putting The Person Back Into First-Person"

Every once in a while an awesome game will slip past my radar; which is rare considering my keen sixth-sense for gaming knowledge. But never did I expect a game this awesome to pass by unnoticed. DICE is currently working on a couple of titles. One is Battlefield: Bad Company, the third/fourth installment in the Battlefield franchise. The other is a little-known game for PC, PS3, and 360, called Mirror's Edge.

Mirror's Edge, to be blunt, looks amazing. And not just graphically, though that too. DICE's new game is designed around an innovative, often ignored aspect of first-person games: the first person perspective itself. Truth be told, this is something that has always bothered me about first-person games, 99% of which are shooters. First-person-shooters are more so from the perspective of the gun than the person; at most players get a glimpse of the wrist. While there is nothing wrong with this in itself, you'd think more games would break out of the traditional first-person-shooter mold and try something new. Well, now they have. And its about time.

Mirror's Edge is an example of gameplay elements working in tandem. Always a beautiful thing to see. The game's take on the first-person perspective, the likes of which not seen since Ubisoft's canceled Killing Day, is not simply for aesthetic purposes, but wholely necessary for gameplay. Another de-emphasized aspect of most first-person-shooters is movement. Generally, players can strafe and jump short heights. But thats about it. Mirror's Edge, on the other hand, is all about movement, or, more aptly, motion. Taking a cue from Assassin's Creed, the focus of Mirror's Edge is parkour, or "the art of moving through your environment using only your body and the surroundings to propel yourself."

As you run, you can see your arms swing in rhythm with your gait and your feet kick out as they hit the pavement. Players are in the eyes of the protagonist, not the gun. Though this may seem confusing or dizzying, the effect is likely quite natural and smooth. What's fascinating is that, though given a limited framing of our character's body, we are able to interpolate the rest of the body's position, given our experience with the first-person perspective (aka, our whole lives). Or at least thats how it seems to me. I haven't actually seen the game in motion. But I have faith.
Speaking of which, players assume the role of a "runner," named Faith, tasked with delivering intel throughout a utopian futuristic city. Propelling you through the levels are enemies at your heels, forcing you to stay moving. Fortunately, you have at your disposal a handy-dandy firearm with which to dispose of your foes. But unlike many other first-person-shooters, fire fights in Mirror's Edge aren't slowly paced pain-staking stake-outs; the emphasis is constant movement, so even the act of shooting will match the deliberation of running. "Run N' Gun" has a whole new meaning. The city itself is highly sanitary and brightly colored, making not only for nice and simple running environments, but representative of story themes as well. The writer of the Edge preview explains:

There’s a sense of underlying menace that is perfectly communicated by the city’s sterile perfection, an austerity compounded by the splashes of primary colour, which begin to look like transparent attempts to enliven a world that is emotionally dead, its diversity stifled, its people subjected to draconian unity of thought and behaviour.

Aside from thematic issues, the simplicity of the game environment is not only appealing but also conducive to gameplay.

Sidebar: Everything Should Be Conducive To Gameplay!

The artistic style is reminscent of Portal and Team Fortress 2, simplistic geometry and a small, bright color palette, designed to work in tandem with the parkour elements. The game moves at a fast pace. The whole point is to run through a city quickly; so the environment and level design need to work in conjunction with the game's speed. And here is what is so amazing. I'll just quote the section. First quotation from Senior Producer Owen O’Brien; post-line break continuation, the article's editor.

“We wanted to get that feel into the game, seeing the world as a she would see it; stripping out everything except that which would be important to her. We want the player to move through the world very quickly, and we want the player to know what their options are. All the things that are important to you will pop out.”

Potential paths and objects that Faith can use to propel herself through the environment are indicated with vibrant splashes of primary colour. Routes that will lead to certain death tend to be marked with shadow, while safe paths are illuminated, giving the player an instinctive sense of how to navigate the perilous rooftop paths without having to stop and check ahead.

I just love that. Good game design is so awesome. Whether or not safety in regards to light and darkness is instinctive is debatable. However, the use of light and darkness as a highly-effective principle of gameplay is genius. Running through environments at an intentionally quick pace requires necissarily guided pathways. Not a big arrow in the center of the screen pointing the correct direction, but subtely, like, oh, I don't know, lighting. Otherwise players are guaranteed to run off the edge and have to restart from a checkpoint of some sort and memorize each level via trial and error. Which, again, is actually ok for some games, but is bound to suck away the fun in short order. Trial and error is still likely to play a role in Mirror's Edge, however, but more so from player error than game; this isn't gouls and ghosts. And player error is an ok thing. The learning process is unquestionably one of the greatest aspects of video games.

Back to lighting. Think of the lighting ques as the dashed yellow line along the road. In a racing game, just because you know a road is going to turn a certain way doesn't mean you're going to make the turn without hitting a wall. Lighting conveys necessary gameplay information to players quickly; players will, presumably, be able to discern which route to travel very quickly. Running the wrong way is no fun.Light design will work in two, subtle ways. It will cue players to run in a certain direction while simultaneously allowing them to feel they are actively deciding their course of movement. And they are. You could run into darkness but who knows what monsters lurk beyond the lights glare.

Mirror's Edge looks really cool. I can't wait to get some more information on the game. Everything in this preview was deduced from Edge's excellent preview and the unnofficial fansite, On Mirror's Edge. Go read the preview for some more stuff I didn't cover. Like control, and slow motion, and really cool concept diagrams. All good stuff. I'm also pretty excited to see a fansite already up and running, check out their forums for some more focused discussion.

Team Fortress 2 Statistics

Now here's something awesome: a series of graphs and maps showing statical analyses of Team Fortress 2. I haven't had a chance to play yet, unfortunately, but the information is fascinating nonetheless. For example, the Scout is the most played class. More interesting, the final graph shows the team balances of each map. Your not the only blue player getting owned on dustbowl. There is something I'm curious about, though, how does the Sniper have the most points/hour, but not the most kills, captures, or assists? Do headshots warrant extra points? Let me know. Also, if, like me, you don't know every detail about the game, check out this expansive guide at Custom PC.

Kind of makes me want to take a statistics class. You?

Team Fortress 2 Statistics

Seamless Presentation

When Michelangelo sculpted The Pieta, he chose to make the figure of Mary larger than that of Jesus. This decision by Michelangelo was that of a specific presentation. Michelangelo is showing Mary as prominent over Jesus, literally, through her size. This unique presentation of a classic Biblical relationship leads admirers to reflect upon The Pieta's meaning and the significance of Michelangelo's decision.Game design encompasses the same issues of presentation and meaning. Like sculpture, painting, or music, game design is an art open to possibilities and options. Presentation is one aspect of design that is increasingly paramount in importance, and only limited by designers' imagination in terms of all the forms it can assume. As with all aspects of game design, a game's presentation must be designed in cooperation, or along with, the remainder of its elements. While there are countless ways of presenting information to players, the zeitgeist of gaming is shifting towards a more seamless approach. This shift reflects the western gaming culture's expectations of next-generation gameplay. Seamless presentation, as opposed to other approaches, is unique in its pursuit of an ideal immersive gameplay. These terms are synonymous; the choice to present a game seamlessly is the desire to create a highly immersive gameplay experience. Seamless presentation is by no means the be all, end all, of game presentation, but it is certainly a viable approach that is rapidly becoming more and more popular in the design community.

But what exactly are designers looking to present anyway? The answer is everything. For truly, presentation is a continuum. For the purpose of discussion, though, I've divided presentation as a whole into three parts: information, theme and story, and interaction. I will briefly discuss each of these points individually, then expound upon these basic explanations with specific examples from modern video games. As rivulets flow together to form rivers, once these three elements are presented in a similar seamless manner, they mesh and cooperate with one another to create a whole, immersive gameplay experience.Players need information to play a game. The style of presentation is the form in which any given information is fed. The most common form of information conveyance is the HUD, or heads-up-display. Generally, the HUD includes things like resource statistics, the ammo of a firearm, or the health of a character. And even simple information like these can be presented in varying forms. Take for example a vehicle's speed in a racing game. Designers can choose to feed this knowledge to players with a speedometer, or through a more simple numerical count.

But rudimentary information is not all that needs presenting to players. We all know games are more than just lives and top scores. Games evoke emotion. They have stories and plot lines and themes. Games have characters, landscapes, and environments. All of this must be presented to players. The original format for story presentation was the text-scroll. “All your base are belong to us” was as effective as it got back then. But technology has improved. And with it, game design. Since the days of text-scrolls, the continuous arrival of superior technology has inspired new opportunities for different kinds of presentation. The next-gen systems offer previously impossible or unavailable possibilities. Seamless presentation is profiting the most from these advancements.

The last area of presentation is interaction, which many would likely argue is the largest contributory element to gameplay. The presentation of interaction refers to how, or in what ways, players effect, manipulate, or respond to a game through control. Video games have always been about interaction. But just like other aspects of the medium, interaction can be presented in various ways. As we delve deeper into the next-generation of video games, a more immersive seamless approach to interaction is beginning to take hold.
The HUD or user-interface has been around since games were invented, but video games are increasingly presenting this very same information in a more seamless manner. One example is Lionhead Studios' Fable 2. The game is yet to be released, but already it is apparent that most everything the RPG has to offer will be presented with immersive gameplay in mind. This presentation includes seemingly basic information like player location and navigation. In Fable 2, players assume the role of young boy during his growth into hero or villain. During the game, players are accompanied by a pet dog to train, play, and fight with. The dog is more than just some superficial addition; governed by complex artificial-intelligence, dog and player can complete realistic and intelligent interactions. In his 2007 Game Developer's Conference presentation, Peter Molyneuax, head of Lionhead Studios and lead designer of Fable 2, demonstrates and discusses the dog as a functional aspect of gameplay.

“We ask what is his job here. What sort of gameplay can we get out of this dog? His job at this stage, he stays in front of me. That's very important. Quite often with co-op characters in games they stay to the side of you, or behind you. He's in front, he's scouting, he's looking for treasure, he's looking for new things. That's very important.”

“You'll notice that something is missing in this [television] screen. And what is it? It is, it used to be here [pointing to the top-right of the game screen], the mini-map. God I hate that thing. I hate the fact that in Fable 1, you could play the whole of Fable 1 with the mini-map. The millions of pounds and hundreds of hours of work that we put in the world were worth nothing cause you were playing the whole thing on the mini-map. Can we get rid of that mini-map? Can't he be your guide [pointing at the dog]? When you come to a junction like this can he point you down there? Now he's not a complete solution, but he's a partial solution.”

The mini-map is a standard piece of game presentation. It shows players their relative position, their surroundings, and usually their destination as well. And it serves these purposes nicely. But as Molyneuax suggests, the mini-map is so convenient, it actually interferes with a players' immersion in the game world. The dog in Fable 2 achieves the same purposes as the mini-map, but presents them in a much more seamless fashion. Instead of a mini-map showing a bird's-eye view of nearby paths, the dog will run ahead of players and actually trace the paths out and, to the best of the AI's knowledge, dynamically lead players to their destinations. Moreover, the dog, being a dog, has heightened senses and will recognize the presence of nearby enemies, and as any good hunting dog would, will bark and alert players to their presence. This is contrasted with red dots representing enemies on a circle in the corner of the screen. The dog is just one example of Fable 2's seamless presentation. The dog immerses players in their surroundings through player-interaction and the emulation of a real-life creature. At the same time, the dog is seamlessly presenting to players vital gameplay information with its behavior.

A second game offering seamless presentation of information is Valve's soon to be released Team Fortress 2, an online-multiplayer first-person-shooter. Team Fortress 2 is all about class-based team competition; players join opposing teams to fight as any of nine different character classes. Each class plays differently, possessing several inherent strengths and weakness that deign them either prone or resilient to other character types. Therefore, it is essential that players immediately acknowledge who are their allies and also who are their enemies. Team Fortress 2 is a fast paced game, players need to process player-class identity quickly to tactically adapt to any situation. To achieve this end, Valve employed a unique, pervading art direction which was fully-integrated with gameplay. In an “illustrative rendering” video featurette, a Valve team-member discusses the art design of Team Fortress 2:

“Through very intentional art direction, this goal was supported by designing characters with distinct silhouettes that can be easily identified even with no lighting cues. The body proportions, weapons, and silhouette lines were explicitly designed to give each character a unique silhouette. In the shaded interior areas of the characters, the clothing folds were designed to echo silhouette shapes in order to emphasize the silhouettes as observed in the commercial illustrations which inspired our designs.”
The individual character models are directly incorporated into the game world and gameplay, making for a seamless presentation of meaningful information. This art direction is not limited to characters alone but is indeed applied to the game's entirety, including an allowance for quick discrimination of team color and map location:

“For the architectural elements of the world associated with each of the two teams, we defined specific contrasting properties. While the red teams architecture tends to use warm colors, wooden materials, and angular geometry, the blue teams buildings are composed of cool colors, industrial materials, and orthogonal forms.”

By designing gameplay around a united art direction, Valve is immersing players more fully into Team Fortress 2. Valve's greatest achievement is their integration of gameplay with visuals. Every aspect of the game works in concert to both immerse players and give them the information they need to play well.

As we discussed before, information is only one area of game presentation. Our second type is equally important: theme and story. An excellent example of this is Shadow of the Colossus, an action-adventure title designed by Fumito Ueda and developed by Sony's SCEI studio. Shadow of the Colossus is about self-discovery, and more importantly, is about self-discovery through gameplay. Several themes are presented to the player via seamless means; among these are solitude and compunction.

In Shadow of the Colossus players become a man known only as “Wander.” The player's only mission is to resurrect a girl named Mono. To complete his quest, Wander must destroy sixteen different colossi, gigantic living stone creatures. With the help of a horse named Agro, players explore and traverse an expansive world to individually locate and defeat each beast.
In their search, players are meant to feel alone, isolated. In addition to the main character's name, Ueda presents this isolated feeling in a few ways; all of which are very simple but highly effective. In all of the game world there are only two characters aside from Wander and Agro. This in itself makes for a feeling of loneliness, being unable to interact with other people. A second effect is the size and desolation of the game landscape. Wander is dwarfed not only by the colossi but by the environments as well. The environment is constructed largely of big rock cliffs and deep, long valleys, presenting to players a sense of barrenness and emptiness. The third technique is silence; there is never music playing while Wander and Argo are traveling the land. Only the sounds of hoof beats and wind are emitted. These elements of desolation are naturally integrated into the world, seamlessly presenting a feeling of isolation to players.

Another game that has fantastic presentation of story and theme is Irrational Games' (now known as 2K Boston) recently released BioShock. BioShock takes place in desecrated underwater city called Rapture. What was intended to be a paradise has been destroyed by greed and madness. During their exploration of Rapture players must find a way to survive while searching for the reason behind the city's fall.
Players are wholly immersed in the world of BioShock. Visually, aurally, and interactively, players experience Rapture as if it were real. The story is presented to players primarily through audio-clips, being one of the most advanced pieces of technology available to Rapture. These audio logs were recorded by individuals of Rapture and are strewn throughout the game world, waiting to be discovered on desktops, dead-bodies, and enemies. Players are able to play each tape they find and as they do so learn more and more about Rapture's history. The varying denizens of Rapture offer differing accounts and perspectives of the city, allowing players to formulate their own opinions. This piece of story presentation is both functional and natural, immersing players in the game world while at the same time conveying necessary and interesting information about it.

As players explore Rapture they discover the primary theme of BioShock: no place is perfect for everyone, there is no eden for all. Players realize this theme through personal experience simply by walking through Rapture . Rapture is falling apart, ethically societally, and literally. Rapture was built to last forever, underwater and separated from other imposing societies. But in the cities negligence and metaphorical implosion, the beauty that was has been all but destroyed. Statues of grandeur once lining the walls are now nothing more than heaps of broken stone. Paintings are torn, wood is splintered and burning, the entire city feels forsaken. Even worse, the walls are leaking. No matter how well contained they build Rapture there will always be leaks.
The world of Rapture and this play experience serves to reflect the game's themes. Levine and the team at Irrational Games are presenting to players a world of moral corruption by allowing them to directly and representationally experience the effects of Rapture's greed. BioShock immerses players in Rapture with immaculate graphics and sound effects, seamlessly presenting players the story of Rapture and the themes and messages meant to be taken away.

The final point of seamless presentation is interaction. One title that has become very popular this past year exemplifies seamless interaction quite well: Wii Sports. Nintendo's Wii was specifically designed to be highly interactive and Wii Sports takes advantage of this goal quite well. Wii Sports is actually five games in one, featuring simulations of sports titles tennis, golf, boxing, bowling, and baseball. While some of these simulations are more successful than others, they all were designed with the same principle in mind: immersive interaction. With Wii Sports, Nintendo is presenting an alternative to analog sticks and buttons; they are presenting interaction that is more involving and in effect more seamless in its emulation of real-life activities.
In the tennis side of Wii Sports players swing the Wii remote as if it were an actual tennis racket, and similarly in baseball mode, swing the controller like they would a bat. In golf, players tee-off and putt as if holding a club. The remote becomes a virtual ball in bowling. And in boxing players grip and punch the nun-chuck and remote like they are truly throwing hooks.
Naturally, each of these games require different input methods or swings to play. But Nintendo designed the game to be simple renditions of each sport. Nintendo chose to present the games such that players can intuitively grasp the means of interaction. A controller pad as an interface does little to imitate playing tennis; swinging a remote, however, is physically fairly close to actually swinging a racket. By closely emulating reality, and requiring more active input on part of players, Wii Sports avoids the seams of button configurations and instead allows players to become immersed in their gameplay experience.

My final example of seamless presentation, and of seamless interaction, is Okami. Okami was released this time last year and developed by now disbanded Clover games. Players of Okami become sun goddess Okami Amaterasu in the form of a white wolf. The fantasy world of Okami has been invaded by a demon named Orochi and infested with a dark substance, polluting the land in a purple haze. Like Team Fortress 2, Okami was designed with very distinct, pervasive art direction inspired by the sumi-e painting style. The world's landscape is like a painting of its own, formed of large brush strokes and colored with pastels. Amaterasu exists in a living painting. Though this is cool in itself, the amazing thing about Okami's art style is how it crosses the gap from being purely aesthetic to wholly interactive.
As Amaterasu, players possess whats called a celestial brush that allows them to interact with and directly effect the game world. By holding R1 the screen becomes a canvas for painting. Manipulating the face buttons and analog stick, players are able to maneuver a paint brush and interface with the canvas as they please. Brush strokes from a finished canvas are transposed into the game, assuming form, shape, and function. Painting a line through the ground, for example, will create a stream of flowers, while painting a dot will plant a seed that quickly sprouts into a tree. Throughout the game, players learn new brush techniques which allow for new and helpful interactions. Painting a circle in water will create a large lily pad for Amaterasu to stand on; painting a spiral will create wind that blows out fire; and filling in the broken gap of a bridge will repair the damage.

Clover has synergized art-style with interaction. The celestial brush not only matches this feeling but is integral to gameplay, allowing players to naturally transform their painted world as needed. Okami is not special in allowing players to interact with the world, but rather is so for its presentation, the style by which players interact. The immersion as a player is derived from painting on a world that looks and feels just like a painting. Okami allows players to interact with the game seamlessly, using a paint brush as a means to affect a painted landscape.

Presentation is the form in which information is appropriated to players. Seamlessly presenting information is to do so in an immersive manner, allowing players to feel more absorbed within the game. I could go on about the dialogue system of Mass Effect, or the free-running or Assassin's Creed, or the minimalistic style of Defcon; but if we simply open our eyes we will see more clearly how many games involve players more completely and bring about a rich, enthralling gameplay experience for them. By seamlessly presenting information, story and theme, and interaction, we can immerse players more fully into our games and come that much closer to meeting, even exceeding, our definition of next-gen gameplay.

Image Sources
The Pieta
GRAW 2
Team Fortress 2 Characters
Team Fortress 2
Okami
Fable 2
Bioshock
Wii Sports

So Much For The Mopping Now For Some Justice!

Hey everyone, I'm back home alive and well. For vacation, the family and I went driving all around Nova Scotia; hills, beaches, it was great. Much has happened with gaming in my absence. Primarily, the release of BioShock and the Liepzig event. I'm dong my best to catch up and get back to blogging regularly. I'm also starting my fall semester on monday, so I'll be heading back to school this weekend. Thanks for being patient over the past couple of weeks.

And here is a return present just for you.



Pretty darn sweet. I actually found this originally at GamePlanets, which has a really awesome DivX version that darkens your screen. Check it.

Team Fortress 2 Class Overview

IGN has up a great summary of the Team Fortress 2 classes. I posted on Team Fortress 2 a couple of months ago, in regards to class based gameplay. You can read it here. IGN's article goes over each class individually, with commentary from both the Valve and IGN teams. Check it out. There is also a very humrous video available about The Heavy Class.

Defining Class: Team Fortress 2

Team Fortress was a first-person-shooter mod for the original Half-Life over 10 years ago. The game enjoyed much popularity and sucess, and apparently, still does. But with a second Half-Life already well established, Valve is re-creating Team Fortress for a whole new generation of gamers and PCs. GameInformer online recently ran a great three-part series of articles on Team Fortress 2. The Valve team first spoke to GI about Team Fortress Classic; the team seemed rather disappointed with the game's design. Their primary criticism (of their own game. It is important to look at one's past work objectively) was that there was not a clear definition between the player classes. The abilities and values of each class was of marginal significance. And at times, a class's intended skills could be outperformed by a different class altogether. Similar to the employment of categorization by WarioWare: Smooth Moves, Valve has approached Team Fortress 2 with a focus on class definition and differentiation.

Classes left to right: Pyro, Engineer, Sniper, Spy, Heavy, Demoman, Medic, Scout, Soldier

Every class is designed play differently from another. Robin Walker was a co-creator of Team Fortress Classic and is now a designer on TF2. Walker said the following of class differentiation.

With TF2 I think we’ve been much better about making sure everyone has those weaknesses. As a Soldier you really worry when that Scout starts jumping around you and you’re trying to hit him with your rocket launcher. I think we’ve done a better job through hundreds of small changes of ensuring that everyone has those weaknesses so that no matter what class you are, you have something to fear. You have this Achilles heel that you have to keep watching for, and making sure your core nemesis hasn’t shown up in some way. . . .We don’t internally think of it as rock-paper-scissors, we’re making sure that each class has well defined strengths and weaknesses, and hopefully they’re exposed well at every sort of level.

As Walker explains, the balancing is not so much rock-paper-scissors as it is a well-defined set of weakness and strengths. I don't believe in comparison, I like things to be appreciated based on their own merits. Even so, each class is best at one trait, and worst at something else. The Heavy will have hard time actually hitting the Scout, for example, whereas the Scout will be susceptible to the Pyro. The reasons for this are not so much class specific, as they are in ability. The Heavy aims slowly, the Scout moves fast, the Pyro has a wide range of fire (literally!). Valve is working very hard at creating an accute and fair balance. In addition, each class is marked at the selection screen as either offensive, defensive, or support. This is primarily for noobs, it seems, but the added "classification" is a most welcome feature. Balance in general is sensitive, but I feel even the most creative of players will have a hard time offsetting it. This is because of Valve's dedication towards clearly marking the territory that each class can make claim to.

Prepare. To Get. PWN3D.

Aside from ability, the other aspect of class differentation is graphical. It goes without saying that each class is distinct in their physical attributes. Walker explains more:

I should be able to, as a new player, look at the Scout and see that he’s weaker relatively to the Heavy Weapons Guy, just looking at him, clearly, that guy is much tougher and can take a heap more damage. Besides, his gun tells me something too. Everything about the game has to tell the player about those strengths and weaknesses.

Each class has a distinct height and apparent weight, clothing style and weapons loadout. Each class is even uniquely animated. It will be impossible to see other players with out immediately knowing the ability and limitations of their class, and whether or not to turn-tail and run. The flip side is that teammates will also know a classes specific ability, and will be able to formulate tactics on the fly. The graphics in Team Fortress 2 are completely integrated with the gameplay. Aside from the awesome art style, the characters and their skills are immediately announced with a quick glance. Also, the teamwork that will arise from this game will be extrordinarily interesting. People are creative, they will most certainly discover unique and effective class combinations with which to battle. See you in the Dustbowl (I'll be the one by whom you just got Sniped)!

Its going to be scary as heck to turn the corner into this behemoth.

Welcome to Class
What is the purpose of defining each class so distinctly?
How does the approach differ from most other multiplayer first-person-shooters?
-Do you think this approach is better than others?
What class will you be?

GameInformer Articles
Team Fortress 2: History
Team Fortress 2: Evolution
Team Fortress 2: Game Test