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Gearbox Software ruined one of the best running jokes in software when they brought Duke Nukem Forever to market. At a recent developer conference in Brighton, they talked about working with independent developers to revive the character.
From Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford:
"I did not acquire the franchise merely to make sure we could all experience Duke Nukem Forever," Pitchford said. "That was sort of the toll we had to pay." He then explained that while Gearbox has carried out some concept development for the franchise, they'd need to work with the "correct developer" to make a new game.
One of the pitches:
Sam Barlow (Her Story)
Duke Nukem goes into a Vegas strip club at 4am, and it's kind of empty, and there's only two strippers working. He throws some money at them. Then, because there's no one else around, they sit down and they talk to him, and Duke sits there and he listens to this stripper talk about her life, why she's stripping, her family back home and how they live a state away but she flies into Vegas for two weeks of the month to earn money, then she goes go back and looks after her kids.
Then after an hour of this conversation, of him just listening to the woman talk, she asks Duke about his life, and then it flips. It's the first time anyone's actually asked about him, and he's forced to look inside himself and understand why he does these things, why he feels the need to kick ass, and it's just a lovely moment that they share. He walks away from it feeling like he understands himself a little bit better, but the ending is kind of ambiguous. We see Duke leave the strip club and we don't know what happens next.
What's your pitch, Soylent?
Original Submission
(Score: 4, Insightful) by LoRdTAW on Saturday July 18 2015, @04:26PM
The reason Duke Nukem 3D was such a successful and memorable game was because it combined camp, an arsenal of insane weapons, jet packs, adult themes, interesting maps, and Ken Silverman's Build Engine. It was pretty advanced for its day and packed in a lot of fun game play and interesting graphics. This was in ye old days before a game even needed a story. Hell, DN3D barely had a story and continued off where the old 2D side scrolling DN left off (which I never played). But who cared right? It was the PC game golden years before true 3D revolutionized gaming with Quake. It was just fun as hell to play.
What would I like to see? Good game play, camp but not "Duke getting blown by two chicks while playing his own video game" cheesy. That was such a cheap attempt at humor it was one of the reasons I turned it off. As for a story? It doesn't have to be anything amazing, perhaps a little absurdity like his pet chihuahua is kidnapped by aliens. Get people to write a few original duke-esk one liners and steal a few from some films like the original. That's all there is to it for writing. A new Duke Nukem should offer expansive maps to run around, good AI, interesting game mechanics, fun ambient interactions and most of all, an array of weapons. Also, some realistic vehicles that dont explode when they take too much damage would be fun.
The most important part is the game play. I still fire up Crysis every now and then and play the first half of the game (the really good half). Great AI, fun game mechanics, weapons galore, and the maps are both beautiful and expansive with multiple ways to approach each section. I love the super suit, punching people to death, grabbing and tossing people around, etc. Hell I set the game to the hardest setting and went through the whole first half without ever firing a shot. I just punched everyone to death. How's that for enabling a flexible approach to game play? Farcry 3 had some really good game play. I mean how fun is it to bait a tiger along with rocks and then get it close the the bad guys and watch it rip them apart? Though, what partly ruined it was the obnoxious characters, crap story, and awful dream sequence boss fights. Other games give you too much linearity like the other two Crysis games. Crysis 2 was complete shit. Got half way through the game and got bored with its overly linear maps and rail shooter like game play. Never bothered with the third.
(Score: 2) by TheRaven on Sunday July 19 2015, @11:21AM
Good game play, camp but not "Duke getting blown by two chicks while playing his own video game" cheesy. That was such a cheap attempt at humor it was one of the reasons I turned it off.
Exactly. I enjoyed the 2D side scrollers, Duke3D, and Manhattan project. Duke never came across as misogynistic in those - he was just so full of himself that other people were just there to provide an audience while he reminded everyone how great he was. That's a fun character to play - and, honestly, if you got to spend as much of your life blowing stuff up as Duke and still be the good guy, you'd be pretty full of yourself too! In Manhattan project, the ego serves as a stand-in for health and the power-ups are 'babes' with bombs strapped to them that you rescue. The dialogue is full of innuendo but not directly sexual: Once rescuing someone has reminded Duke how awesome he is, he's got more important things to do (mutants to kill) than spend any more time with them.
Duke3D was one of the first first-person games to have working mirrors, just so that Duke could look at himself in them and make smug comments. The gadgets in all of the games were fun (gloves for climbing and boots in the 2D ones, jetpack freeze- and shrink-rays in 3D).
sudo mod me up