The Lost Version of Meet the Spy

14 years ago we got this masterpiece gentlemen released in 2009 meet the Spy is one of valve's classic animations where we get to learn all about one of our favorite mercenaries this animation pretty much defined the character of the spy and how we still view him to this day the sneaky snoby Frenchman but what if I told you valve's original Vision might have been entirely different from the version we got and it could have completely altered how we View the Spy today I never even saw the lines of any other character there weren't there weren't lines interspersed with other characters at [Music] all contacts time there are 10 meet the team videos from 2007 to 2012 most of which are the mercenaries performing some kind of monologue I am heavy weapons guy do you even know who you're talking to I'm an engineer I'm a black Scottish Cyclops sniper a good job mate that is until 2009 where the animation started featuring dialogue from other characters and became more narrative driven did anyone happen to kill a red spy on their way here could you hold your rib cage open a bit but that thing it scares me this might have seemed like an obvious way to explore more of the TF2 world but what have I told you this this was not originally the plan [Music] medic then you're a field medic doing no harm is not H in fact I what you just saw is a video called called meet the medic outakes uploaded by a valve Dev and dubbed by Robin Atkin Downs it's an early version of Meet the medic featuring a monologue just like the others according to valve the meet the team videos were all based on The Voice actor's audition scripts which makes sense for all the monologues but then why is there no monologue out there for the Spy but what if I told you there is and after 14 years it's been found do you like video games law I mean look at the video you're watching right now of course you do well let me introduce you to today's sponsor hanai impact 3D the 7.2 patch just came out which is the last 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for lots of rewards and bonuses thank you to hanai impact for supporting the channel and projects go check it out in the description now let's get back to the video one year ago I was interviewing Dennis baitman for a video I wanted to make about his career where at one point we started talking about his audition for the Spy where he told me some really cool things it's been well over 10 years um that I first auditioned for the roles of spy and Pyro actually I think I auditioned online actually I did my voiceover audition for that online and I was uh I was booked I guess through that and then went down to record the the early early dialogue for the game we got to use a lot of uh improvisation and creativity in the auditions and even a bit in the um in the game itself I remember throwing in a few lines of my own that they liked so uh he didn't have to be any particular nationality so I tried very ious nationalities there might have been a spy who was a Brit there might have been a spy who was a Spaniard or an Italian or a German I think I tried all of those but it wasn't until I um hit on the Frenchman that they they said that's the one we want so the rest is history Dennis wanted to find his audition tapes and send them to me for my video but was unsuccessful however he was able to retrieve his first ever studio recording at Val so he sent me this at that time I was super busy with some other projects and when I finally had time to listen to it I assumed it would just be some alternative versions of the classic lines we have today so um if I if I Bobble something then I should just pick it up and in the beginning you can actually hear him talk to the valve guy about spy which is really cool I remember really enjoying this uh this audition frankly I thought I thought it was well you know it's it it was yeah it's well written you know I mean that's uh it's it's very it is very arod I mean this is an intelligent guy but then ours is a mean dark old world where some say a man can be whatever is man enough to be I'm here to tell you that there are limits oh my God it took me some time to realize but I couldn't couldn't believe what had just been revealed It lines up perfectly with something that could have been in the original addition script and honestly I just couldn't believe it I couldn't stop thinking about this alternative version of meat despy and what it might have looked like if they went with this version so I decided to gather a small team and bring this into reality Freedom First I worked with The Talented alternate where we talked about what it might have looked like and then we storyboarded our or Vision yes I know I'm an artist we went with the idea of red spy giving his team a pep talk in the intelligence room after a loss so it kind of looked like meet the Spy and then ultran nade would go off to start recording reference footage and start animating the amazing polybrow would then join us and work with us on a scar for the shot and it's a [Music] banger and after many months our vision of how meet the spy could have looked like was finally complete enjoy ours is a mean dark old world where some say a man can be whatever is man enough to be I'm here to tell you that there are limits oh I have no doubt that your hometown bars alleys churches and whouses are safer tonight for your absence alone any of you bad men could be the Caesar of his local sewer so what your individual strengths speed accuracy Brawn brain rage flame retardancy are matched by weaknesses we need not detail disorder the natural state of nature is cheap to create costly to overcome but you put paid to that debt nature abhors a team gentlemen and together we bold few we unnatural brothers are going to seize Mother Nature by the throat and choke the whole world out of that sorry [Music] [ __ ] now of course I'd imagine there would be an intro scene plus some extra scenes SL shots in the monologue but nonetheless I think it's very cool to see spy bringing everybody's Spirit up like this and I did not expect to hear spy saying Hall houses a [ __ ] but to be honest we have this in the original and now he's here to us so that's not that big of a surprise please go check out the animation and scull on their own on Ultra and Paulie's channels if we had gotten this version of meet the Spy I think we would look at spy very differently spy seems to actually respect his team and care for them and is like an actual leader not just a guy that has to take that role who thinks he's above everybody else now why did they not go with this version well it's pretty obvious honestly first of all they wanted to explore more narrative driven stories and just like the cut version of Meet the medic it doesn't really relate to the gameplay of the character we'd made a fundamental error in judgment did we explain the birth of the metagon sort of did anyone really want the metagon explained not necessarily play testing made us realize that we'd invested a huge amount of screen time on the nuts and bolts of the birth of an inanimate object when we should have been focusing on our star we scrapped the origin story of the metagon and went back to basics when people think of the medic what do they think of what's the iconic image the medic Uber charging a heavy valve is very good at perfectly balancing gamling character so that we both fall in love with the character but also really want to play as them like which which would you rather play as wait what he was a spy all along he can disguise himself as others a uh wow this guy is a pretty wise that's why they decided to just stick with the basics of spy personality and do the big twist at the end which is just amazing because it's the only meet the team video about the blue team but it's actually about the red team because it shows how spy can infiltrate the enemy and it just perfectly shows the spy's character both in game and law wise and they chose to reserve spy moment as an inspiring authority figure for other media like expiration date because spy speech in that is very similar and I'm pretty certain this is the inspiration for that we have 70 hours to leave for most men no time at all we are not most men we are mercenaries we have the resources the will to make these hours count honestly it makes me so happy to know how fleshed out the characters were from day one which is insane for a 16-year-old game about eating sandwiches and stealing suitcases but it's also what makes it so Timeless you know the team loved working on the game and its characters and they also had a lot of fun with it you can even hear the valve guy Tell Dennis to have fun with it and make it his own which he did when uh we got down there and met the folks from Val and saw the scripts that's when I started to think this is really something different you know this is special it was it was kind of like the Golden Age of of early video games there and I think the TF2 was one of the ones that was very forward thinking this has brought us such amazing and iconic characters that have inspired countless fan creations and even valve had so much more planned for it there's multiple scrapped animations such as a little animation of medic hitting one of spy cigarettes midair and pinning it to the wall an animation of a spy being out Ed and hunted by a medic then falling into demoman's sticky trap silly stuff like that but then there's also scout being chased by an army of soldiers and being saved by The Medic in aing helicopter who steals a soldier's rocket launcher and uses it on them what this would have gone so hard chinator has an iceberg video on this and I think you should go check it out there's of course also the infamous scraped Adult Swim show where we only got expiration date that was supposed to serve as a pilot the meet the Team videos made us want to be a Onan Army as the heavy place the perfect sticky trap as Demo Man completely fool the enemy team as the Spy we saw something on the screen and said wow I want to do that and we did this perfect balance ying and yang between gameplay and character is what truly makes Team Fortress 2 a Timeless Masterpiece I mean classic thank you all so much for watching this was a huge project for me and my friends and I hope you all enjoyed in this outro I'm going to tackle a few topics that I want to get out of the way first of all is that this is you know a theory but a lot of things Point towards this being like a beta scraped version of Meet the spine valve have also specifically pointed out that Meet The Heavy is almost line for line from the audition script which means you know the others probably earned and not altered and I think you can tell by you know the upload date like the early ones are probably way more similar to the original Edition script and it is very clear that once they had established what the meet the team videos were they were not going to go with the Spy monologue and I just want to make sure everybody knows I never thought that they intended to go with this once meet the team had been established it's not like they all of a sudden just wanted to change narrative it's kind of because they needed to and I think it made it so much better same with me the medic and also I want to bring up that the monologue is pretty evident that it's not the one from the audition script or it's a re recording because again the version we have with Robin's voice is redubbed over the valve one it could have been that you know the valve people made their own voice from his audition script but because it was paced wrong they had to you know redo it themselves before they then got Robin to do it but it's it's convoluted so it might might not be you know but what we do know is that there are original audition scripts out there and imagine if we could see them I think that would be so exciting because rather than being completely different we would actually see like an alternative version where they say different stuff they might say something very offensive and out there I don't know I mean spice has H houses and [ __ ] in his monologue so I I don't know but I would be so excited to see that if we could and also I really want to thank hanai impact third for sponsoring the video they're the reason I can make my big project in less than a month I'm flying to America to shoot meet the real sniper and some other cool things and I'm very very excited I reinvest pretty much everything I make from YouTube into these big videos I might not be financially smart but I'm a filmmaker at heart all right so I've already invested thousands of dollars into meet the real sniper and thousands more will go into it I hope you guys are excited I hope I don't go broke this time and being able to make a living off this now means the world to me so I want to thank all of you guys you know I do all the writing the storyboarding and of course the editing which is one of my favorite things but what I do not do is the animation and music and that's why I want to give a huge shout out to altrade and po BR please go check them out we've work together on other stuff like we work on charity the recent T of connect charity event and that's just great and of course huge thanks to my patreons who helped me fund thumbnails and stuff for other videos and that means a lot to me um I guess subscribe if you like the video um we're almost at 300,000 subscribers which is insane thank you all but other than that have a great day bye-bye and of course huge shout out and thank you to Dennis baitman the best spy in the world I love [Music] him [Music] n

Channel: ShorK

Views: 488,761

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Id: qls2PveoId0

Length: 16min 12sec (972 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 23 2024