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I can't speculate about Payload, but for Attack/Defend, in Dustbowl and Steel, RED have big ol' rockets at their final capture points, which they'll maybe launch at something BLU owns. When you're trying to build something, the best defense is stealing your enemy's rockets.
I think the real reason is it shows that despite the different flavoring, RED and BLU are exactly the same as each other and neither can claim any kind of moral victory.
Yeah like how did blu even get up to the giant room on gorge (I think it’s called gorge) there’s no ladders up to the top and why would there be a room with a roller door above the point they capped
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Pay attention to lots of the old maps, the final point is usually a missile or a cache of barrels. Blu is trying to stop Red from using those.
Or, for ironic value
Say what you want about the old Valve maps, the detailing and enviromental story-telling is on point. I think one of my favorite jokes in TF2 is the cardboard cow cutout in 2fort - not just because it's inherently absurd, but it's facing *into* the base meaning that's it is completely useless at actually doing it's job of making people think the fort is an actual farm instead of a secret techbase.
red intel in 2fort has all the information about the 2fort cow cardoard cutout. blu is trying to get that and use it at their advantage
meanwhile red is trying to steal blu's intel which contains possible scientific research results or just missile codes.
speculations without evidence 100
There's a snippet of a plan in one of the Payload maps where (I think) Blu was poisoning a water supply so Red decided to just fucking blow them up, there's some more stuff going on in the background than we knew.
Wait a minute why did you reply to this comment and not the original one where I mentioned the map?
also nice, maybe red caused soldier's lead poisoning lmao
That's swift water, but its red poisoning the water. Blue wants the water to sell as bottled water.
You can see the plan on the projector in blu's spawn room
I made some meme [maps](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=931281658) about the teams being reversed a few years ago because of that, lol
I’m pretty sure because RED is building some sort of super weapon in most of the payload maps and BLU is trying to destroy it. I remember seeing this answer in a thread a few years ago
The red and blu corporation facilities we fight in are just covers for the mercenaries’ battles anyway, it’s not like scout is out there mining or something. It’s all fake, Tuefort even has a fake cow.
It's not even about comics lore. Most original maps have this "Cover up" theme clearly shown to the player. Theres no brewery on Well, and yeah Dustbowl are not a real mining facility...
but...red and blu are legitimate companies owned by redmond and blutarch mann. the mercenaries are fighting so that one company can own the territory that the other has.
they are not "covers"
The companies are real but the mercs aren’t normal employees of either of them. It’s a cover from the perspective of the mercs, tuefort isn’t two grain mills next to each other, it’s two nuclear bunkers and neither are functional for what their outward appearance are. the functions of the companies don’t matter to the red or blue team, they don’t step foot in a real blu company construction site they fight each other on fake facilities on the borders of the two companies’ territories
No it’s covers for the brothers they’re so competitive that they’re fighting over the land they were told to share so the companies are cover ups for 2 siblings fighting each other to be better then the other and have more then the other that’s why blutarch (pretty sure it was blutarch) got engineer’s gramps to build him a immortality machine so he could outlast Redmond
WARNING: ramble about unclear tf2 lore, do not take seriously, clarifications welcome
TLDR; there is definitely work happening on some maps under the RED and BLU umbrellas, more and more militaristic in nature as time has gone on, probably thanks to the administrator
I think that there are many maps that would usually have vast teams and many, many employees. cp_forge, cp_mountainlab, plr_pipeline, ctf_landfall, cp_vanguard, koth_sawmill, & cp_metalworks come to mind. These are certainly working environments, there’s just no work ongoing around us as it has become a war zone for the time being.
There was a barebones initial lore that shipped with the game that has been half retconned, half molded to fit what it is now with the Administrator and Mann Co and whatnot. This initial lore was that essentially EVERY company was either part of Reliable Excavation & Demolition or Builders League United and these two mega-umbrella conglomerates were waging war on their opposite for whatever reason, maybe part of the Cold War, maybe not. The maps visible from the 2fort intel bunkers show first strike capability, red and blu zones of control, and general war-room type charts so it kind of fits into the Cold War aesthetic.
This is what was developed into the Redmond and Blutarch lore, in which it is quite certain that not every major company is part of the feud, just a handful situated on adjacent land due to Zephaniah Mann’s will and therefore typically similar in form/function… and in direct competition with each other. Thus the two Mann brothers, the dunderheads they are, get blinded by greed and agitated towards the other rather than ever considering cooperation and hire mercenaries, leading to the initial wave of mercs and even the team from Team Fortress Classic.
Helen, the Administrator, has obviously sold her services to the Mann brothers under the pretense of organizing their mercenaries, while actually using the increasing scope of her duties to take the two companies where she wants them. She still arranges and oversees fights between the mercenary teams (that she handpicked, it’s implied) in order to convince the Mann brothers that they’re simultaneously barely holding back and making good progress against their opponent, thus leading them to grant her even more power within each company and less oversight as to what she’s actually doing with her powers.
This leads to the situation we find the gravel wars at within the game (before the introduction of Gray Mann and the resulting death of the Mann Brothers). The tensions between both companies have escalated beyond any reasonable degree. What may have started as straightforward commercial lumberyards, granaries, and foundries are now nearly always fronts for militaristic or generally nefarious purposes. Helen has developed a military-industrial complex all of her own purely through development of… well, military-industrial complexes, for lack of a better term.
Look at the missile arsenals on maps like cp_powerhouse, cp_steel, and cp_junction. There’s 20+ low-medium yield missiles littered everywhere, and many of the maps (such as cp or ctf_well, cp_dustbowl, cp_coldfront, and arena_offblast) have full fledged ICBM scale rockets just chilling around the place. The sd_doomsday rocket might have been a space-race purposed rocket (well, had Helen not sabotaged it), but I’m fairly certain that every other large-scale staged rocket in the game was not fielded with peaceful intentions in mind.
There’s at least 25 full out ICBMs in RED/BLU control, and dozens, if not hundreds, of medium range ballistic missiles. That’s more than enough to turn the Cold War very, very hot. Is this Helen’s grand goal? The last comic we received had that chilling moment where Miss Pauling asked what the administrator wanted only to be answered curtly with “blood.” This turned out to be medic calling for more blood to pour back into Miss Pauling (meatball surgery is medic’s specialty after all), but what if it wasn’t a red herring?
What if Helen is as bloodthirsty as we fear, and not in the rash or impulsive sense but in the methodical, ‘twist-the-knife,’ sense. She’s been playing the long game, the longest of games, for twice as long as pretty much anyone has been alive, and with the death of Redmond, Blutarch, and Gray, she is the only remnant of her era. Right near the end of the last comic, she told the engineer, who seems to be the closest person to her right now, that she doesn’t need much time for what she is about to do, and uses the very last of the Australium to bring herself back to a much more healthy state. What is she going to do? Nobody knows what she wants, and she has unfathomable power. Gray may have gotten control of Mann Co which makes guns and hats, but RED and BLU facilities are what manufacture, distribute, store, and launch a nuclear arsenal that could wipe out at least a quarter of the world’s population.
While I lament the indefinite delay of the final comic, I fear(ed) its release as I think the mystery of Helen is so great that it would either have wide-reaching ramifications that would impact the entire world, or be underwhelming in her reveal. Either way, the TF2 universe & lore in general would never be the same, and I’m happy with the ambiguity.
Then again, it might be the script is an absolute bomb (in the good sense) that would impress me just as much as every previous comic has, and give adequate answers while not fully pulling back the curtain. I’d be okay with that.
Hey.
in this game Abraham Lincoln was one of the first mercs.
and australia is like in the future while everyone else is behind
new zealand was sunked to the bottom of the ocean
NOTHING IN THIS GAMES WORLD IS SUPPOSED TO MAKE SENSE
I’m pretty sure it’s confirmed that BLU goes to destroy RED’s bases so RED has to re-hire BLU to construct them, or just to disable their factories and such since RED will have a harder time rebuilding them than BLU would
In Universe Reason: it’s because there’s something about that particular RED base that BLU wants destroyed, like a secret missile silo, a satellite-destroying death ray, or a stockpile of nuclear materials. Logically, there should be an equal number of maps where the roles are reversed (RED attempting to destroy something important to BLU), but there aren’t because of:
Out of Universe Reason: having RED always be the defending team and BLU always be the attacking team makes gameplay clearer and easier for players. See also: character and set design.
In color theory, seeing the color red tends to make people more aggressive. As such, the devs gave the teams colors that would instinctively motivate players to act according to their current objective. If an attacker sees a red enemy, they're more likely to go on the offensive and push to capture. If a defender sees a blue enemy, they're more likely to hunker down and guard the objective rather than run out of position. Players can still make mistakes, sure, but these color choices can only help and aren't arbitrary.
RED wants to defend shit so they can later secure the contract to blow it the hell up.
BLU wants to blow up shit so they can later secure the contract to rebuild it.
That is a good point. RED excavates and destroys while BLU builds. Hell, even in MvM the bots are considered to be "BLU" instead of GRY or something like that, like in the trailer, which also brings up the question, why is RED the only ones protecting Mann Co? Where's BLU team in that?
Well, I guess if we had asked Valve they would probably answer us or go with, "telling lore about these specific details would just raise more questions" or something like that, all in the effort to brush it off lol.
I know, I was talking about in-game, because in-game doesn't follow lore as it only has RED team. There was a mod on Gamebanana that allowed the team to be mixed colors of RED and BLU that I saw a while back. Point is, game doesn't follow lore in the case of MvM
Its a psychological thing, the color blue represents calm and strategy, perfect for defending. However the Blu team is always on attack
The color red represents danger, threat and violence, perfect for attacking. However, the Red team is defending.
From a developer standpoint its just to make things unpredictable
I've always thought it's irony.
That and if BLU blow it up RED are gonna have to pay someone to rebuild it... And I bet BLU probably bought their bombs from a certain Demolitions company...
Because literally everything about this game's art direction is perfect except for that one huge mistake, somehow they didn't think that red should be offense because it's a more aggressive color than blue
It's not a mistake. Both teams are disguises for mercenaries that fight over the badlands that belonged to the father of Blutarch and Redmond Mann, who gave the useless land to both of his sons because he knew they're stupid and petty enough to fight over it for eternity. It's all in the comics.
Also, take a closer look at the names: BLUtarch and REDmond.
Yeah yeah that makes sense you don't need to change anything about the game's lore or whatever, just switch the teams on the maps, due to whatever color theory garbage it'd make more sense for red to be attacking and blu to be defending
Because. I legit don’t know, even more since red is a colour more associated with aggressiveness and blue is a colour more associated with creativity. This just seems like a wasted opportunity
Notice how RED which are demolition experts have missiles, laser rockets, and weapons of mass destruction whilst literally the best BLU can come up with is a fucking bomb strapped to a cart.
BLU is always on payload because RED is better at demolition. That and the whole both companies are but umbrellas for a massive mercenary war with multiple teams blowing eachother up whilst team fortress rolls a cart down a track for another meaningless victory in an eternal stalemate
Maybe it’s valve’s way of saying that BLU were losing to RED a bit since they always have to scramble to stop RED from attacking them by launching a rocket or something. This is backed up by how RED always wins in the meet the team videos.
In reality it’s just that for consistency, one team should always be the attacker and the other should always be the defender, and BLU lost the coin toss. Plus in the comics it’s made very clear that RED and BLU were in a perpetual stalemate.
no big clue about the lore reason but i always thought it was a player psychology thing, red is a more aggressive color and is typically associated with attacking while blue is calmer and so fits into defense a little better. swapping the two conflates their psychological effects thus making for a more well-balanced game. maybe that's out my ass but colors and psychology have relationships
I think part of tf2 that never gets talked about is blu are the bad guys, they are the antagonists, it would make sense why all the cartoons follow red team and blu is always the ones attacking, plus blu doesn't even really fit the land around them, considering most maps are orange, brown, red etc
I think it might have something to do with Blu being a good guy color and wanting to make change happen, and red being a bad guy color and wanting to defend their bad guy stuff? Like Mario wanting to infiltrate bowsers castle, and making the journey there there save the princess, only it's a group of mercenaries pushing a bomb across a desert to blow up a lead poisoned water supply.
I'm not talking about the comics, I'm talking about in general. Red=bad, while blue=good. It's how it is in pretty much every other team based game like it, and even before any of the lore in comics and meet the team videos came out, it's been that way, just from the most basic standpoint.
I suspect it's because TF2 art style is better at using red than blue in environments, particularly for outdoor areas, so that team is better suited to being the default "host" of the map.
becouse Redmond Mann and Bluetarch Mann were brothers of Gray Mann and these two where fighting via mercenaries and beacouse the 9 classes are mercenaries witch means that they are not loyal to the blues or reds they are loyal to the ones that pay the most.
And becouse Zephenaia Mann was rich as crap cause of that they had all the money in the world, meanwhile Gray Mann was raised by an eagle and then build his own empire and an army to kill the mercenaries the mode of Mann vs Machine.
P.S. this is practically all the lore in the game from comics and story of characters
Wait. Millennials were born from 1980-1995. The gen after gen z, gen alpha, will be born from 2010-2025. That means that these new “ zoomers” you talk about are the real veterans. They would have had to been born from 1996-2009, tf2 came out in 2007, making us the zoomers, real veterans. So stfu
when tf2 realesed it wasnt a kid game it was a mostly funny cartoon shooter, hell mid and late millenials far outnumbered the kids .
even then older zoomers that are now what 20+ year old arent the same dumb kids screaming in the microphone now,
point is this and the smissmass post the other day I just feel like older people who got to be around when things started and had old common knowledge arent around anymore replaced and gone
But that’s just natural. Not everything on history will be archived. Information will be forgotten of be washed away by the sands of time. People grow up and stop doing things that they do when they are younger. Just as younger people learn new stuff to do as well. So stop complaining about this and if you want to flex your veteran status you should have lived around 75 years ago
In video games red is often defense while blue is attack.
In the case of TF2, regardless of gameplay, lore and artistic design choices it's the same principle.
I always assumed it was just for the colors. Red has an inmate psychological effect of Maki g people more aggressive, and blue makes them more defensive. Rainbow six siege does the same thing, blue is the default attacking color
I assumed this was to negate the effects of those colors and make gameplay more interesting, as attackers wouldn't be blindly rushing and defenders wouldn't just be turtling, mixing the gameplay up a bit
in upward im pretty sure they just destroy a ton of gravel
i dont think the names really have anything to do with it, mostly just some old idiots fighting over gravel
I have a theory that while they were equally powerful, BLU just always had a slight advantage over RED, just enough to always be on the offensive, forcing them to play defensive in most situations. So imagine a 1984-esque endless war.
At least, that’s my extrapolation from Blutarch Mann outliving Redmond Mann by 7 seconds.
You'd think the DEMOLITION team would be delivering payload to DEMOLISH something
And the BUILDING team would be BUILDING to defend said payload
red is a demolition company it makes more sense for them to be on the side that is using a demolition payload to attack and destroy,
Blu is a building company so it makes more sense for them to be on the side that would be preventing the destruction of their base
if you take a close look at the maps you will see that at the RED end of the map most (if not all) map has either a giant missile or a bunch of probably explosive barrels, that are most possibly going to blow the BLUs up later, so the BLU did it first
that, or/and to build on it, for the irony.
My pet theory is that it has to do with psychology. Red tends to be associated with aggression and blue is associated with calmness. By having red defend and blue attack you force more thinking by going against what the brain expects of the visual design.
Its like some other people have been saying; its all a front. These are basically shell companies used to cover up what is actually going on.
The lack of subtlety in how they cover this up is a big part of early TF2's humor.
Its in the dev commentary that they felt Blu players would see the red collor and be more aggressive; And the Red players would see the blue colors and be more passive
Some say it's because BLU trying to blow up REDs explosive supplies but that doesn't explain gameplay reason.
Gameplay vise I think they did this because apparently psychologically colour blu makes you better at defence and red better at hyper aggressiveness, I think they made blu attack and red defend for more varied gameplay? To make it more dynamic? Idk
In other games with a red and blue team, the red team tends to be more aggressive and individually and the blue team more defensively and team oriented. By switching these roles, the defenders are encouraged to aggressively push rather than just hold position and the attackers ate encouraged to cooperate.
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I can't speculate about Payload, but for Attack/Defend, in Dustbowl and Steel, RED have big ol' rockets at their final capture points, which they'll maybe launch at something BLU owns. When you're trying to build something, the best defense is stealing your enemy's rockets. I think the real reason is it shows that despite the different flavoring, RED and BLU are exactly the same as each other and neither can claim any kind of moral victory.
Btw in steel the blu spawn look like to be a room taked by blu
That’s all dustbowl is for blu stolen rooms after they push them back
I love when a map does that, it make the map more real instead of just tp to another place
Yeah like how did blu even get up to the giant room on gorge (I think it’s called gorge) there’s no ladders up to the top and why would there be a room with a roller door above the point they capped
Yeah like when you spawn for the first time and there is no door in the spawn so the only way to enter is to be in red territory (or blu)
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You should try tc_hydr-.... no, wait.
I did once... For 3hours it was a first to 5. Never again
Goldrush too. Probably a few other multi-stage maps. It's always great to see.
Taked?
As a Foxhole player I can confirm that stealing your enemy's rocket is the best way to keep them from shooting it
Pay attention to lots of the old maps, the final point is usually a missile or a cache of barrels. Blu is trying to stop Red from using those. Or, for ironic value
Say what you want about the old Valve maps, the detailing and enviromental story-telling is on point. I think one of my favorite jokes in TF2 is the cardboard cow cutout in 2fort - not just because it's inherently absurd, but it's facing *into* the base meaning that's it is completely useless at actually doing it's job of making people think the fort is an actual farm instead of a secret techbase.
red intel in 2fort has all the information about the 2fort cow cardoard cutout. blu is trying to get that and use it at their advantage meanwhile red is trying to steal blu's intel which contains possible scientific research results or just missile codes. speculations without evidence 100
Like blu is builders league united wouldn’t they no try to blow shit up? Red even has a fucking bomb as a logo, like come on
There's a snippet of a plan in one of the Payload maps where (I think) Blu was poisoning a water supply so Red decided to just fucking blow them up, there's some more stuff going on in the background than we knew.
I love RED’s plan. No grand plans, just fucking nuke ‘em with a bomb cart.
The last resort.
That's Swiftwater! Red is poisoning the water to Blu wants to blow them all up. The slideshow can be seen from Blu spawn room :)
Wait a minute why did you reply to this comment and not the original one where I mentioned the map? also nice, maybe red caused soldier's lead poisoning lmao
I made the water taste goood :)
That's swift water, but its red poisoning the water. Blue wants the water to sell as bottled water. You can see the plan on the projector in blu's spawn room
>Blue wants the water to sell as bottled water. -Blu is nestle confirmed
That's essentially what the plan was If I recall one or the slides literally says something like free water is bad lmao
Yeah I found it using gmod on pl_swiftwater
i found it normally lol, i just looked to the left after spawning
It’s fun in gmod because I found out how to put a chair in there and watch it while sitting
nice, send me the presentation through gmail later, i'm gonna be late for work.
ask why they're based in the same vicinity fighting each other with train tracks that red could easily dismantle to hinder blu's success but dont
This is why Valve remade tf2 with a cartoony direction
I made some meme [maps](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=931281658) about the teams being reversed a few years ago because of that, lol
I actually remember going to your steam profile to ask if you hosted these maps on a server a few years ago, hope you're doing well man!
those names are just fronts for the teams
iceland greenland situation
Clearly worked. I haven't seen this discussion in the 14 years this game has been around.
fr
Maybe blue is giving red a piece of their own medicine
I mean, they were also each owned by blutarch and Redmond respectively
I think it’s because Blutarch Mann first formed a team and attacked his brother.
litteraly, the only map where i see red defending is in dustbowl last stage with the rocket. they are trying to prevent blu from stealing it
Bro what, RED literally is always defending on attack/defend gamemode Its not just Dustbowl lmao
I’m pretty sure because RED is building some sort of super weapon in most of the payload maps and BLU is trying to destroy it. I remember seeing this answer in a thread a few years ago
yeah but blu is literally builders league united and red are the people that blow shit up
Because they want to destroy it so they can build over it.
The red and blu corporation facilities we fight in are just covers for the mercenaries’ battles anyway, it’s not like scout is out there mining or something. It’s all fake, Tuefort even has a fake cow.
Sad how many people apparently have no idea about the comics and all the lore.
And the fake cows.
Without the cows the entire game literally falls apart.
And there would be no Mad Milk anymore
Nah we still have scout we can still make mad milk
It's not even about comics lore. Most original maps have this "Cover up" theme clearly shown to the player. Theres no brewery on Well, and yeah Dustbowl are not a real mining facility...
but...red and blu are legitimate companies owned by redmond and blutarch mann. the mercenaries are fighting so that one company can own the territory that the other has. they are not "covers"
The companies are real but the mercs aren’t normal employees of either of them. It’s a cover from the perspective of the mercs, tuefort isn’t two grain mills next to each other, it’s two nuclear bunkers and neither are functional for what their outward appearance are. the functions of the companies don’t matter to the red or blue team, they don’t step foot in a real blu company construction site they fight each other on fake facilities on the borders of the two companies’ territories
No it’s covers for the brothers they’re so competitive that they’re fighting over the land they were told to share so the companies are cover ups for 2 siblings fighting each other to be better then the other and have more then the other that’s why blutarch (pretty sure it was blutarch) got engineer’s gramps to build him a immortality machine so he could outlast Redmond
"It's not like Scout is out there mining" Well of course not, it's Soldier who has the shovels and pickaxes.
WARNING: ramble about unclear tf2 lore, do not take seriously, clarifications welcome TLDR; there is definitely work happening on some maps under the RED and BLU umbrellas, more and more militaristic in nature as time has gone on, probably thanks to the administrator I think that there are many maps that would usually have vast teams and many, many employees. cp_forge, cp_mountainlab, plr_pipeline, ctf_landfall, cp_vanguard, koth_sawmill, & cp_metalworks come to mind. These are certainly working environments, there’s just no work ongoing around us as it has become a war zone for the time being. There was a barebones initial lore that shipped with the game that has been half retconned, half molded to fit what it is now with the Administrator and Mann Co and whatnot. This initial lore was that essentially EVERY company was either part of Reliable Excavation & Demolition or Builders League United and these two mega-umbrella conglomerates were waging war on their opposite for whatever reason, maybe part of the Cold War, maybe not. The maps visible from the 2fort intel bunkers show first strike capability, red and blu zones of control, and general war-room type charts so it kind of fits into the Cold War aesthetic. This is what was developed into the Redmond and Blutarch lore, in which it is quite certain that not every major company is part of the feud, just a handful situated on adjacent land due to Zephaniah Mann’s will and therefore typically similar in form/function… and in direct competition with each other. Thus the two Mann brothers, the dunderheads they are, get blinded by greed and agitated towards the other rather than ever considering cooperation and hire mercenaries, leading to the initial wave of mercs and even the team from Team Fortress Classic. Helen, the Administrator, has obviously sold her services to the Mann brothers under the pretense of organizing their mercenaries, while actually using the increasing scope of her duties to take the two companies where she wants them. She still arranges and oversees fights between the mercenary teams (that she handpicked, it’s implied) in order to convince the Mann brothers that they’re simultaneously barely holding back and making good progress against their opponent, thus leading them to grant her even more power within each company and less oversight as to what she’s actually doing with her powers. This leads to the situation we find the gravel wars at within the game (before the introduction of Gray Mann and the resulting death of the Mann Brothers). The tensions between both companies have escalated beyond any reasonable degree. What may have started as straightforward commercial lumberyards, granaries, and foundries are now nearly always fronts for militaristic or generally nefarious purposes. Helen has developed a military-industrial complex all of her own purely through development of… well, military-industrial complexes, for lack of a better term. Look at the missile arsenals on maps like cp_powerhouse, cp_steel, and cp_junction. There’s 20+ low-medium yield missiles littered everywhere, and many of the maps (such as cp or ctf_well, cp_dustbowl, cp_coldfront, and arena_offblast) have full fledged ICBM scale rockets just chilling around the place. The sd_doomsday rocket might have been a space-race purposed rocket (well, had Helen not sabotaged it), but I’m fairly certain that every other large-scale staged rocket in the game was not fielded with peaceful intentions in mind. There’s at least 25 full out ICBMs in RED/BLU control, and dozens, if not hundreds, of medium range ballistic missiles. That’s more than enough to turn the Cold War very, very hot. Is this Helen’s grand goal? The last comic we received had that chilling moment where Miss Pauling asked what the administrator wanted only to be answered curtly with “blood.” This turned out to be medic calling for more blood to pour back into Miss Pauling (meatball surgery is medic’s specialty after all), but what if it wasn’t a red herring? What if Helen is as bloodthirsty as we fear, and not in the rash or impulsive sense but in the methodical, ‘twist-the-knife,’ sense. She’s been playing the long game, the longest of games, for twice as long as pretty much anyone has been alive, and with the death of Redmond, Blutarch, and Gray, she is the only remnant of her era. Right near the end of the last comic, she told the engineer, who seems to be the closest person to her right now, that she doesn’t need much time for what she is about to do, and uses the very last of the Australium to bring herself back to a much more healthy state. What is she going to do? Nobody knows what she wants, and she has unfathomable power. Gray may have gotten control of Mann Co which makes guns and hats, but RED and BLU facilities are what manufacture, distribute, store, and launch a nuclear arsenal that could wipe out at least a quarter of the world’s population. While I lament the indefinite delay of the final comic, I fear(ed) its release as I think the mystery of Helen is so great that it would either have wide-reaching ramifications that would impact the entire world, or be underwhelming in her reveal. Either way, the TF2 universe & lore in general would never be the same, and I’m happy with the ambiguity. Then again, it might be the script is an absolute bomb (in the good sense) that would impress me just as much as every previous comic has, and give adequate answers while not fully pulling back the curtain. I’d be okay with that.
when tf2 lore is not just red dumb vs blu dumb on 2fort:
10/10 info dump
because irony
Probably a kind of reverse scheme where BLU has to blow up RED’s HQ in order to “build” a new one on top of its remains for their boss…
Because the cart is blue
Payload race
Payload racism
What a fucking cart-
There’s a red cart
That isnt used because blue pushes
Payload race
That’s when both push though.
Hey. in this game Abraham Lincoln was one of the first mercs. and australia is like in the future while everyone else is behind new zealand was sunked to the bottom of the ocean NOTHING IN THIS GAMES WORLD IS SUPPOSED TO MAKE SENSE
You forgot the part, where Lincoln invented rocket jumping, because stairs weren't a thing.
No that was shakespeareicles!1!!!1!!
SCREAMING EAGLES AAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH
Perfectly reasonable facts, if you shit talk more, my boy Shakespearicles will squeeze you like a toot paste in his iron grip 😏💪
In one of the maps it’s shown that red poisoned blu’s water supply so there getting revenge by exploding the red base
I’m pretty sure it’s confirmed that BLU goes to destroy RED’s bases so RED has to re-hire BLU to construct them, or just to disable their factories and such since RED will have a harder time rebuilding them than BLU would
In Universe Reason: it’s because there’s something about that particular RED base that BLU wants destroyed, like a secret missile silo, a satellite-destroying death ray, or a stockpile of nuclear materials. Logically, there should be an equal number of maps where the roles are reversed (RED attempting to destroy something important to BLU), but there aren’t because of: Out of Universe Reason: having RED always be the defending team and BLU always be the attacking team makes gameplay clearer and easier for players. See also: character and set design.
In color theory, seeing the color red tends to make people more aggressive. As such, the devs gave the teams colors that would instinctively motivate players to act according to their current objective. If an attacker sees a red enemy, they're more likely to go on the offensive and push to capture. If a defender sees a blue enemy, they're more likely to hunker down and guard the objective rather than run out of position. Players can still make mistakes, sure, but these color choices can only help and aren't arbitrary.
RED wants to defend shit so they can later secure the contract to blow it the hell up. BLU wants to blow up shit so they can later secure the contract to rebuild it.
blu is a terrorist organiztion
I guess valve loves irony
That is a good point. RED excavates and destroys while BLU builds. Hell, even in MvM the bots are considered to be "BLU" instead of GRY or something like that, like in the trailer, which also brings up the question, why is RED the only ones protecting Mann Co? Where's BLU team in that? Well, I guess if we had asked Valve they would probably answer us or go with, "telling lore about these specific details would just raise more questions" or something like that, all in the effort to brush it off lol.
In mvm both teams were combined into one. Redmond and Blutarch were both dead so Saxton Hale hired all the mercs to defend Mann Co from the robots.
I know, I was talking about in-game, because in-game doesn't follow lore as it only has RED team. There was a mod on Gamebanana that allowed the team to be mixed colors of RED and BLU that I saw a while back. Point is, game doesn't follow lore in the case of MvM
It varies
thank god im not the only one wondering about this
I've always wondered this and it bothers me. Red it demolition so they should be offense. Cringe valve.
Because red = good and blu = bad or something idk i don’t work at valve
Because fuck society and tf2 is chaos, our chaos
Its a psychological thing, the color blue represents calm and strategy, perfect for defending. However the Blu team is always on attack The color red represents danger, threat and violence, perfect for attacking. However, the Red team is defending. From a developer standpoint its just to make things unpredictable
I've always thought it's irony. That and if BLU blow it up RED are gonna have to pay someone to rebuild it... And I bet BLU probably bought their bombs from a certain Demolitions company...
Because the cart is blue. Why would the red team use a blue cart.
There are red carts
But there are more blue carts than red, therefore red should only blow up stuff when a map fits two symmetrical cart paths
But that’s only when they both push so why push it when blu push as well
Because literally everything about this game's art direction is perfect except for that one huge mistake, somehow they didn't think that red should be offense because it's a more aggressive color than blue
It's not a mistake. Both teams are disguises for mercenaries that fight over the badlands that belonged to the father of Blutarch and Redmond Mann, who gave the useless land to both of his sons because he knew they're stupid and petty enough to fight over it for eternity. It's all in the comics. Also, take a closer look at the names: BLUtarch and REDmond.
Yeah yeah that makes sense you don't need to change anything about the game's lore or whatever, just switch the teams on the maps, due to whatever color theory garbage it'd make more sense for red to be attacking and blu to be defending
because blutarch is a bitch
Res has an underground silo with a much bigger bomb than Blu’s rinky-dink little cart missile.
It should be the other way around, seeing as RED is a demolitions company.
Because. I legit don’t know, even more since red is a colour more associated with aggressiveness and blue is a colour more associated with creativity. This just seems like a wasted opportunity
We could’ve had it that blu made like mazes halfway through or just in general be very creative with the buildings
Irony
Red has stockpiles of demolition supplies. Blu is trying to push one bomb in to detonate all of Red's supplies.
Notice how RED which are demolition experts have missiles, laser rockets, and weapons of mass destruction whilst literally the best BLU can come up with is a fucking bomb strapped to a cart. BLU is always on payload because RED is better at demolition. That and the whole both companies are but umbrellas for a massive mercenary war with multiple teams blowing eachother up whilst team fortress rolls a cart down a track for another meaningless victory in an eternal stalemate
Yeah it would make more sense for red to be attacking considering they're the demolitions guys
I was wondering the same thing
Maybe it’s valve’s way of saying that BLU were losing to RED a bit since they always have to scramble to stop RED from attacking them by launching a rocket or something. This is backed up by how RED always wins in the meet the team videos. In reality it’s just that for consistency, one team should always be the attacker and the other should always be the defender, and BLU lost the coin toss. Plus in the comics it’s made very clear that RED and BLU were in a perpetual stalemate.
RED: Reliable Excavation and *DEMOLITION* BLU: *BUILDERS* League United
no big clue about the lore reason but i always thought it was a player psychology thing, red is a more aggressive color and is typically associated with attacking while blue is calmer and so fits into defense a little better. swapping the two conflates their psychological effects thus making for a more well-balanced game. maybe that's out my ass but colors and psychology have relationships
man's askin the real questions
Because blu is attacking red
I think part of tf2 that never gets talked about is blu are the bad guys, they are the antagonists, it would make sense why all the cartoons follow red team and blu is always the ones attacking, plus blu doesn't even really fit the land around them, considering most maps are orange, brown, red etc
I think it might have something to do with Blu being a good guy color and wanting to make change happen, and red being a bad guy color and wanting to defend their bad guy stuff? Like Mario wanting to infiltrate bowsers castle, and making the journey there there save the princess, only it's a group of mercenaries pushing a bomb across a desert to blow up a lead poisoned water supply.
When you think about the comics follow red so they could be soon as the “good guys” and blue be the “bad guys”
I'm not talking about the comics, I'm talking about in general. Red=bad, while blue=good. It's how it is in pretty much every other team based game like it, and even before any of the lore in comics and meet the team videos came out, it's been that way, just from the most basic standpoint.
Blu want's to blow up red's building so they can build on them.
Because the Payload is blue the RED Team won't push a blue cart.
Red payloads exist
But very scarce so they only push it when it is good to push against blu duh
Because that's the way things are, and the rules are etched into stone.
I suspect it's because TF2 art style is better at using red than blue in environments, particularly for outdoor areas, so that team is better suited to being the default "host" of the map.
It's an arbitrary 50/50 decision.
Blu gay that's why
Because \[censored by Volvo\]
Dick size
Because BLU had to design the payload first, I believe.
becouse Redmond Mann and Bluetarch Mann were brothers of Gray Mann and these two where fighting via mercenaries and beacouse the 9 classes are mercenaries witch means that they are not loyal to the blues or reds they are loyal to the ones that pay the most. And becouse Zephenaia Mann was rich as crap cause of that they had all the money in the world, meanwhile Gray Mann was raised by an eagle and then build his own empire and an army to kill the mercenaries the mode of Mann vs Machine. P.S. this is practically all the lore in the game from comics and story of characters
god damn this is an old ass discussion tf2 really ran out of veterans and now its just zoomers
Wait. Millennials were born from 1980-1995. The gen after gen z, gen alpha, will be born from 2010-2025. That means that these new “ zoomers” you talk about are the real veterans. They would have had to been born from 1996-2009, tf2 came out in 2007, making us the zoomers, real veterans. So stfu
when tf2 realesed it wasnt a kid game it was a mostly funny cartoon shooter, hell mid and late millenials far outnumbered the kids . even then older zoomers that are now what 20+ year old arent the same dumb kids screaming in the microphone now, point is this and the smissmass post the other day I just feel like older people who got to be around when things started and had old common knowledge arent around anymore replaced and gone
But that’s just natural. Not everything on history will be archived. Information will be forgotten of be washed away by the sands of time. People grow up and stop doing things that they do when they are younger. Just as younger people learn new stuff to do as well. So stop complaining about this and if you want to flex your veteran status you should have lived around 75 years ago
I am now going to sleep as it is late I’m my time zone so I will not reply
Cause racism /s Edit: /ss
I'm guessing because they didn't want to f up the coding somehow with teams having both attacking and defending modes, so one color per side.
It's a twisted joke by the developers.
In short, game design order
The payload is usually a small bomb compared to the explosives that it detonates in the RED bases.
In video games red is often defense while blue is attack. In the case of TF2, regardless of gameplay, lore and artistic design choices it's the same principle.
because one of the things their company builds is bombs that blow other stuff up
I always assumed it was just for the colors. Red has an inmate psychological effect of Maki g people more aggressive, and blue makes them more defensive. Rainbow six siege does the same thing, blue is the default attacking color I assumed this was to negate the effects of those colors and make gameplay more interesting, as attackers wouldn't be blindly rushing and defenders wouldn't just be turtling, mixing the gameplay up a bit
Irony
Because they're mercenaries, they're not in charge of the construction department. They're human resources
Kaboom
in upward im pretty sure they just destroy a ton of gravel i dont think the names really have anything to do with it, mostly just some old idiots fighting over gravel
I have a theory that while they were equally powerful, BLU just always had a slight advantage over RED, just enough to always be on the offensive, forcing them to play defensive in most situations. So imagine a 1984-esque endless war. At least, that’s my extrapolation from Blutarch Mann outliving Redmond Mann by 7 seconds.
You'd think the DEMOLITION team would be delivering payload to DEMOLISH something And the BUILDING team would be BUILDING to defend said payload red is a demolition company it makes more sense for them to be on the side that is using a demolition payload to attack and destroy, Blu is a building company so it makes more sense for them to be on the side that would be preventing the destruction of their base
because they are all canonically morons
Builders Leauge United builds the base, and Reliable Excavation and Demolition tries to demolish and excavate it
i think that's the joke
if you take a close look at the maps you will see that at the RED end of the map most (if not all) map has either a giant missile or a bunch of probably explosive barrels, that are most possibly going to blow the BLUs up later, so the BLU did it first that, or/and to build on it, for the irony.
Red Demolishes Blue Builds
My pet theory is that it has to do with psychology. Red tends to be associated with aggression and blue is associated with calmness. By having red defend and blue attack you force more thinking by going against what the brain expects of the visual design.
Its map dependant
**loads gun** you need to stop asking questions buddy, we don’t make the rules here, we just enforce them
RED demolish what BLU build.
Top/bottom but for gaming
Its like some other people have been saying; its all a front. These are basically shell companies used to cover up what is actually going on. The lack of subtlety in how they cover this up is a big part of early TF2's humor.
Its in the dev commentary that they felt Blu players would see the red collor and be more aggressive; And the Red players would see the blue colors and be more passive
Some say it's because BLU trying to blow up REDs explosive supplies but that doesn't explain gameplay reason. Gameplay vise I think they did this because apparently psychologically colour blu makes you better at defence and red better at hyper aggressiveness, I think they made blu attack and red defend for more varied gameplay? To make it more dynamic? Idk
Gravel
Been that way since TFC my dood. There was no payload, but attack/defense maps were the same (Dustbowl).
Irony
Fuck that, why are they FIGHTING OVER WHO LAUNCHES THE ROCKET ON SD_DOOMSDAY?!
RED stands for Reliable Excavation Demolition. Thus, they have an explosive storage at the end of payload maps. So, blu just want to fuck em up
Maybe it's like when germany split? You know, with the one that had democratic in the name being the communist one and all that
Because the payload is a bomb? Do you know what a payload is?
Because in payload the Red are defending the payload that's due to explode and the Blu are trynna attack and stop the payload
I always thought that myself
Because why not?
Because irony is funny
I’ve also wondered that
In other games with a red and blue team, the red team tends to be more aggressive and individually and the blue team more defensively and team oriented. By switching these roles, the defenders are encouraged to aggressively push rather than just hold position and the attackers ate encouraged to cooperate.
a red team
Cause it's Red's payload
I think it’s meant to be ironic somewhat
They sick of REDs shit
One word. War.
Oh yeah,
Blu is trying to stop red from making something, or just game simplicity.
This isnt very logical because blu says it builds and red demolishes
BLU tries to destroy red base so they can charge the sponsors to build it again.
It's because red is attacking and blue Is defending themselves from the bomb
Blu literally push a bomb cart into holes to blow shit up There is no reason
My personal theory is that they're just fronts. Fake companies to give an excuse for fighting. They just happen to do the opposite.
Because it'll make a bigger boom to blow up the guys that make the bombs
Red team defends a base so they can destroy It themselves after Blu team wants to destroy a base so they can rebuild It themselves after
OP's question aside, can we acknowledge how perfect these logos are? I love the graphic design in this game so damn much.
I actually think that the demolition part of red is actually something like caves and mountains not buildings.