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 TF2 blog, 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 different updates as well as a series of “Meet the Team” shorts 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.
Source Filmmaker 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, bread. After a Team Fortress 2 patch on June 11th, 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: Team Fortress 2 Blog
