7 Video Games That Survived Development Hell (And How)
3. Team Fortress 2
After the franchise began life as a mod for 1996’s Quake, its creators were employed by Valve to make it a fully-fledged, stand-alone Team Fortress title. Team Fortress 2 was announced at E3 1999 as an online military shooter with a realistic, modern war aesthetic.
Shortly after the announcement that the game would be switching over to the Source engine in mid-2000, though, everything went eerily silent. And silent things remained for six years until, in 2006, Team Fortress 2 reared its head.
Reintroduced during EA’s Summer Showcase event, Team Fortress 2 was revealed as a drastically different game to the one shown seven years previous. Gone were the realistic, modern war visuals and in their place was a gorgeous, cartoon-inspired aesthetic. According to Team Fortress creator Robin Walker, the development team built “three to four different games” before settling on the final design.
No wonder it took so long!
Team Fortress 2 finally released in October 2007 as part of the video game bundle The Orange Box alongside Half-Life 2: Episode 2 and Portal. And though indecisiveness saw the game take ages to release, it didn’t take critics long to fall in love with the game – it was received with near-unanimous praise.