New Weapons Soldier
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About
New Weapons Soldier is a character based on the Soldier from the online first-person shooter video game, Team Fortress 2. The character appears in a series of Garry's Mod videos focused around impressions toward each major update to Team Fortress 2 where new weapons are absent. Since New Weapons Soldier's debut, the character gained popularity among the Team Fortress 2 community for parodying Valve's apparent reluctance to add new, unique weapons to the game.
Origin
On December 8th, 2014, Valve released the End of the Line Update to Team Fortress 2[1] in promotion of a fan-made Source Filmmaker production of the same name (shown below). The update was anticipated to include a series of new in-game weapons contributed by players via the Steam Workshop, and a community-created map based on the production.
Upon release however, it was revealed that the new weapons, with the exception of one reskinned melee weapon, were ultimately scrapped for failing to make the quality cut, and the map was also cut for, according to Valve, being "too confusing and challenging for new players"[2] (though it was added later on in the Gun Mettle Update on July 2nd, 2015[3]). As a result, the update was met with widespread disappointment and criticism among the community upon release.
The following day, YouTube user Genowhirl70[4] uploaded a video titled "End of the Line update in a nutshell" (shown below). The video, animated in Garry's Mod, shows the soldier asking Merasmus for new weapons, but instead receives rubber ducks, to which he responds by screaming loudly in frustration. The soldier is shown to be on the RED team, wearing the in-game cosmetics, the "Antarctic Parka" and the "Condor Cap". As of March 2016, the video currently has over 600,000 views.
Spread
Following the popularity of the original video, Genowhirl70 produced similar videos corresponding to each following major update to Team Fortress 2 in which new, unique weapons aside from cosmetic reskins are absent (shown below). Although these videos introduce other similar characters such as Out-Of-Touch Sniper and Hipster Spy (voiced by YouTube user Dr. Lazlo[5]), New Weapons Soldier still remained as the most popular factor. The most popular of these videos is Gun Mettle, with over 800,000 views as of May 2016.
The music used during New Weapons Soldier's appearance (shown below) is a custom-made chiptune song called "Sky Funk". It was made by YouTube user Raxxo[6], but it was posted on his alternate channel Raxxo2[7]. The song had approximately 10,000 views until July 2015 when it gained a noticeable rise in popularity following the release of Gun Mettle.
Search Interest
External References
[1] Team Fortress 2 – End of the Line Update page
[2] TF2Maps – Joe "Fr0z3nR" Radak's forum post regarding the map's cut
[3] Team Fortress 2 – Gun Mettle Update page
[4] YouTube – Genowhirl70
Top Comments
Freddy "Love" Valentine
Jul 14, 2016 at 04:01PM EDT
Bill-Stan, Gaijin Supreme
Jul 14, 2016 at 03:43PM EDT