I have no interest in playing Valve's Deadlock game, but I'll definitely be here for all the fun "Meet the Team" movies they'll probably make about the characters.

Valve hasn’t confirmed or denied it yet, but everything indicates that its next game will be a hero shooter called Deadlock. Allegedly. I saw a few screenshots and a short tutorial video, and got a glimpse of some of the game’s characters. My thoughts fall somewhere between “huh” and “meh.” I guess in Year Of Our Gabe 2024, a 6v6 third-person shooter with MOBA pathways just doesn’t excite me.

I’m not saying it looks bad, although honestly the art style doesn’t do much for me, nor do its BioShock Infinite ziplines. A third-person shooter coming from Valve after a few decades of FPS games also seems a bit odd. I’m curious about Deadlock and I’m sure I’ll watch people stream it when (if) it comes out, but something tells me I won’t pick it up myself.

However, one thing interests me about Deadlock: the movies. If Valve creates little animated features for all these new characters like it did for Team Fortress 2, I’ll be there with popcorn.

15 years ago, we released our first film Meet the…, an animated short introducing us to Heavy from TF2, or “Heavy Weapons Guy” as he calls himself. The short video gave us details that the game itself couldn’t provide: his minigun was named Sascha, she costs $400,000 to fire it for 12 seconds, and he gets furious when other people touch it. As a character, the Heavy was already full of personality just from his bellows and screams during gameplay, but this 90-second video added so much more to his mythos and gave us a glimpse into the world in outside the maps.

Other short films followed, allowing us to get to know the nine characters beyond the carnage and checkpoints of TF2. We saw the Engineer’s gentle philosophy and guitar playing, the Pyro’s psychedelic hallucinations, and the Spy’s shocking relationship with Scout’s mother. We even met the Sandvich. Little by little, Valve created stories and built a world for TF2, which is difficult to achieve in a multiplayer game without a campaign.

Valve’s TF2 movies were so good that when Blizzard made their own version of TF2, they also made their own version of the TF2 movies, and now that Valve seems to be making their own version of Overwatch, I hope the tradition will continue. With 19 characters shown so far in the leak, there’s plenty of fodder for new shorts. I’m ready. Bring them.

The pyro, heavy and enlightening of TF2 in a childish dream world

(Image credit: Valve)

There’s that big bulky robot with a little head from the gameplay video, a little winged gargoyle, and a 1920s gangster with a machine gun and a fedora (who can also teleport). So the world is part fantasy, part science fiction, and part Prohibition era? This is going to take some explaining, and let me be clear: I’m not interested in reading a digital comic about this. I don’t want a developer blog about this either. I want a short animated feature film. Otherwise I won’t buy this game which I probably won’t buy anyway.

There are also some interesting hybrid characters, like a guy named Infernus who looks like a cross between Scout (speed) and Pyro (flames) from TF2. I would watch a short film about him. There’s also some kind of guy who has the power of ice but is also a healer. I will connect to this story. And there’s an archer…ok, Valve can skip that one. I’m pretty bored with archers at this point.

She’d better be voiced by Ellen McLain.

And Lady Geist? She carries a gun, looks like a rich heiress and has the power to drain the life from her enemies. I would watch a fun, short, animated video explaining her life and story, especially if it’s voiced by Ellen McLain. She Better Be Voiced by Ellen McLain. Why does Seven’s head look like a manhole cover? A movie about him would help explain it, I’m sure. The scary blue sniper doesn’t look very interesting, but Warden is because he looks like the soldier from TF2 as an old-school British cop. I will also watch his short film.

Maybe I shouldn’t schedule my little Deadlock film festival yet, considering we don’t even know for 100% certainty if it’s real or if it’ll ever be released. But it’s been too long since we received these first 9 “Meet the Team” videos. It’s high time we had 19 more.