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Three Mysterious Crashed Rockets Appear In Team Fortress 2

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If you went back through time all the way to 2001, to the then young Valve community, and asked the average fan what he loved in Valve, he might not have answered with “viral game promotions”. If you went back to 2011 and asked the average Valve fan the same question, there’s a good chance he might answer with that.

But they don’t do your average kind of viral advertising. Valve does these in a very interesting way: using the actual games themselves. The “Dinosaur ARG” that lead up to Portal 2’s announcement, the “Potato Fools’ Day ARG” that lead up to Portal 2’s release, and the brief lead-up to the Team Fortress 2 Uber Update that had players hunting for in-game doves. All of these.

Now it seems as if they’re doing all that again!

Three Mysterious Crashed Rockets Appear In Team Fortress 2

TF2 was just updated this morning. Three crashed rockets were added to three in-game maps: 2Fort, Badwater Basin, and Barnblitz.

This is rocket number 1, found in 2Fort:

This is rocket number 2, found in Barnblitz:

And here is rocket number 3, found in Badwater Basin:

The rocket’s game files are labelled “grocket_001”. Their exact purpose and nature are unknown. Fans have been able to take a closer look at these things in the model viewer: here and here.

We’ve got a rough guess. Maybe this is leading up to an update containing all of the things that were missing from the Uber Update due to time and filesize constraints: Raid Mode, Specialty Mode, the Junkyard Soldier (or Garbage) pack, the Mean Medicine (or Heavy Duty Medicine) pack, the Gardening pack for the Pyro and possibly, even far more. We hope bugfixes will be included.

Maybe Meet the Pyro is involved. Perhaps the Pyro was once an astronaut, and a failed re-entry lead to a grim accident that might have left him insane, obsessed with fire and possibly disfigured, much like the Fury, from Metal Gear Solid 3. Others speculate that this is the lead-up to a space-themed update that might reveal the Pyro is actually an alien. Lasers will be involved.

And as usual, some people speculate that this is, yes, Episode Three, despite the fact that the rocket in question bears no resemblance to the Titan-class rocket that was launched at White Forest in Episode Two.

In any case, we’re keeping an eye on this, and we’ll let you know of any new developments.

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7 Comments

  1. Yes, i was hoping valve would give us somthing to think about sooner or later.

    Im not gonna pin my hopes on anything though, TF2 ARGS are often TF2 related only

  2. I know this is far fetched..
    Three Rockets (Episode 3)
    Grocket -> (Garden) Gnome Rocket ? 😀
    Well, at least i tried

  3. …maybe it’s an update saying you need to pay for it again with meet the pyro 😀 Anyway I’m looking forward the information on them

  4. I’ll be disappointed if it will end up as an another game promotional event, I expect a cool update or something.

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