July 2, 2010 - TF2 Team

Since our announcement of Team Fortress 2 on the Mac, we've received literally thousands of emails from over seven people, curious as to how the Apple comic shown in the update fits into the ongoing TF saga. Did Saxton Hale really buy the Apple company? Can Heavy's gun actually shoot email bullets now? Who was that mysterious figure? And why were Valve's lawyers so insistent that he remain mysterious?



Some good questions. Good enough, anyway, that when we angrily confronted our writers with them, they got that look animals get when they're walking across a road in the middle of the night, headlights appear, and they realize they're about to lose their jobs. Following a frantic search through the internet for fancy excuse words, they came up with an answer.



Apparently the Apple comic was non-canon. Think of it like a "commercial". Then imagine yourself removing the quote marks around "commercial", because it was a commercial. "Ah, now I get it," you're saying. Just in case you're lying, here's another example: Say Team Fortress was Hercules. Our class updates would be all of those times that Hercules fought gorgons or suplexed an evil king into a mountain. The Apple update would be like the time Hercules enjoyed a jalapeño popper platter at Applebees.







Since this announcement creates a canon-shaped void in the lives of TF2's biggest story fansour writerswe let them "imagineer" (their words) an epic Engineer story spanning three generations.