Valve announced the newest update to long-running online competitive FPS game Team Fortress 2, entitled Love and War, via a teaser site for the patch. The site contains a fifteen minute video short known as Expiration Date and a list of new features to be added to the six-year-old shooter, which adopted a free to play model two years ago in June 2011.
Team Fortress 2 is one of Valve’s most popular titles and, as such, has received twenty-seven major content patches over its lifespan prior to Love and War. While the core gameplay has remained centered around combat players controlling one of eight classes fighting for either the RED or the BLU team in variety of game modes, TF2’s numerous updates have added countless weapons, maps, cosmetic customizations, and social features to the game. It seems almost certain that Love and War will follow in this tradition. Although its current feature list is rather sparse, Valve has indicated that the current announcement is only the first in a series of Love and War teasers, so many major features may be yet announced.
Love and War was announced by Valve after a two day long countdown on their website. The first day of the reveal has brought little information; its feature presentation, Expiration Date, doesn’t offer many hints as to what the expansion might bring to the game, although the short film is the longest and most ambitious of Valve’s signature promotional shorts to date. The announced features include a laundry list of bizarre special emote animations and achievements, including the ability to conga dance, square dance, flip other players in the air, and play rock paper scissors. What more substantive features the Love and War patch might come packaged with are not yet known, although it seems likely that there is more to the update than what has currently been announced given the amount of effort Valve has put into building hype for the expansion.
If you’re interested in exploring Team Fortress 2: Love and War for yourself, you can watch Expiration Date below or on YouTube. Team Fortress 2 is available for Windows, Mac, and Linux PCs free of charge through Valve’s Steam game distribution system. An official release date for Love and War has not yet been announced.