An amazing 9-minute long film on YouTube has Half-Life fans shouting viral teaser. Is "What's In The Box" teasing something new from Valve, or is it just a damn fine homage?
Half-Life 2 sound effects, references to Black Mesa, and music from the television show Lost lead many Half-Life fans to believe that this first-person "demo film" is something more than a fan-made homage to the game, and the movie's website certainly lends itself to that idea. Whatsinthebox.nl features a pulsing cube with a question mark, along with credits naming Tim Smit as the primary creator of the video. Tim Smit is a young Dutch man who once won appeared on the Discovery Channel program Mythbusters, debunking a myth about phone books. The website's title promises that "Soon the world will find out", while poking about in the CSS files we find the phrases "Every medium, as its ancestors" and "Every pro, has his anti's, now you think about that."
Further poking about reveals an image, found here, which highlights some numbers in red and offers several lines of text, which YouTube commentors have discovered come from a variety of scientific papers.
So what the hell is going on? Honestly we've got no clue. It certainly could be a viral video of some sort, especially with the Game Developers Conference just around the corner, or it could just be a special effects demo for an up and coming effects studio, referencing the Half-Life series out of sheer love.
We've contacted Valve for comment on the video, but for now we'll just have to struggle over the initial question: What's in the box?
Thanks to everyone who sent this in!