There was a time when Valve would just tell you what was in their updates, but nowadays the developers have taken to sneaking information out in bits for the fans to reassemble – it’s more fun that way. The latest Team Fortress 2 update patch landed with no patch notes and started depositing strange items into player’s backpacks. They’re building up to something.
While all the items are mysterious, the least mysterious of all is the “Damaged Capacitor”. It’s feeding into the current TF2 community’s “the next update is a robot update” obsession that Valve have planted: not only is it a bit of technology, but it has “MVM” scratched off at the side. It has numbers on its side: “6.22V1500”. June 22nd? That’s this Friday, the perfect time to get people playing their game over the weekend. It’s description reads: “How did it get damaged? Who damaged it? What is a capacitor? Better get your tickets ready, because the mystery train is leaving the station. Or did it already leave? Another mystery!”
The rest of the items include Goldfish, Pocket Lint, Cheese Wheel, Banana Peel, Barn Door Plank, and a Secret Diary. None of them have any obvious meaning attatched. The Secret Diary’s reads: “Unlike other games we could mention, owning this won’t trigger a sound file narrating secret diary entries. Why? Because we RESPECT THE PRIVACY of our characters. What are they hiding? Truly we live in MYSTERIOUS TIMES.”
MYSTERIOUS! Ahem. I’m betting by this weekend we’ll know the details of the “Mann vs Machine” mode, and that my Steam Wallet is about to take another pounding.