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Duke Nukem Forever Article
PC Xbox 360 PlayStation 3 Article by Rob Fahey
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The last serious bit of information came out of the studio in 2002, and concerned another, final, change in engine technology. Dropping almost every component of the Unreal engine, 3D Realms claimed to have rewritten 95 per cent of the code, crafting what was essentially a brand new engine from scratch. Then we heard nothing for nearly five years.
Every now and then, either Miller or Broussard would pop up to give an entirely content-free interview, or answer questions on a forum, which always seemed to suggest that the game was in the latter stages of development and just needed a quick polish before it would be ready to launch. So starved of information were we that even news about licensing a new physics engine seemed exciting, if only because it proved that the corpse still had a pulse.
Then, suddenly, in December 2007, a trailer
! Heavens above, a trailer, an actual trailer!
Except... Well. It was actually just a long circling shot of an oddly proportioned Duke (seriously - he had a huge body and a tiny, tiny head) pumping some iron, with a couple of split-second clips of famous monsters from the series interspersed. They looked pretty decent, but unlike the 2001 E3 trailer, it's clear this wasn't gameplay. It's a teaser, not a trailer, and teasers generally don't imply the game is on the home stretch.
The 2007 Duke looks a bit Scandinavian if you ask me.
The past year and a half, since that teaser appeared, has gone roughly the same as the previous five years. We've had a tiny bit of camcorder footage on Jason Hall's online TV show, which showed a small chunk of a level and a handful of enemies and weapons - vastly more up to date than the 2001 footage, but literally only a few seconds long and showing little of how the game actually works. Various statements, mostly from Broussard, have continued to point at an imminent release - just like they have since 2002. There were a couple of screenshots hidden in the Xbox Live Arcade version of DN3D. Little seems to have changed at 3D Realms.
Until today. 12 years after the official announcement, perhaps as many as 14 years after Duke Nukem Forever commenced development, today's news is that 3D Realms is shutting its doors. As I write this, it's unconfirmed - but the silence from the company's usually vocal bosses is deafening.
So what could have killed 3D Realms? The studio ran on two commodities - money and patience. It could have run out of either of those things. However, despite online scuttlebutt, the fact is that long-suffering publisher Take Two, which ended up with the rights to Duke Nukem after taking over Gathering of Developers in 2001, couldn't have killed the project. DNF has always been directly funded from within 3D Realms, and publisher input seems to have been minimal, perhaps even non-existent - Take Two's job would simply be to take the finished game and put it on shelves. If 3D Realms has gone down, and DNF with it, then it's a decision which has been taken by Broussard and Miller, not by Take Two.
Well, it wouldn't be a Duke feature without a stripper shot. Goodbye girls. Don't get captured.
Even after all the jokes - Duke Nukem Forever and Ever and Ever and Ever, Did Not Finish, and a million other examples (my favourite is this huge list of things which have happened since DNF was announced), I never quite believed that Duke Nukem Forever simply wouldn't appear. Yet, even for those of us who remember Duke Nukem 3D fondly, it's hard to escape the fact that its strippers, dreadful one-liners and oh-so subversive depiction of the police as actual pigs seemed a hell of a lot more entertaining when we were teenagers, although others at Eurogamer would definitely beg to differ.
More importantly, if you're much younger than 25 or so, you probably don't remember Duke Nukem at all. Once, DNF could have sold itself on the strength of the brand - now it would face an uphill struggle to convince a whole new generation that this slightly twee self-parodying action hero is actually worth a second glance.
Of course, there's always the possibility that what 3D Realms has been working on for all these years is actually amazing - a groundbreaking, stunningly conceived and realised game that would kick the FPS up the arse (or rip its head off and you know what). We kept the faith with Duke Nukem Forever for years; for all the jokes and snarky comments in the past decade or so, we'd love a happy ending and a great new game.
Yet somehow, that fairytale ending just doesn't seem to fit with the story so far. Instead, I suspect that this may be my obituary for Duke Nukem Forever - my most-wanted game of 1998.
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TheTingler
07/05/09 @ 15:48
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Read this? Could well be true. It gives some answers, like why it took so impossibly long and where the hell 3D Realms got their money from.
Then again, I'm not sure about that very exciting ending. Surely Game Developer Conferences aren't that thrilling in real life? |
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Sad to think that it'll never really appear. As Shinji so rightly said in the artlcle, a whole new generation of gamers won't even know who Duke Nukem is, and even if a new game appeared wrapped around something like the Unreal3 engine, it'd be an impossibly tough sell to all those industry critics and writers just ready and waiting to bare their teeth and sink their fangs into whatever abortionate creation ended up being shat into existence.
I would've actually liked to have played the 2001 versh just for the sheer garish ugliness of it. I always thought "The Return of Matt Hazard" was more than a close tongue in cheek parody of the whole DNF thing. And that's generated about as much excitement as the next swine flu report, so maybe it's better that Duke Nukem Forever becomes Duke Nukem Never |
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This has got to be the pinacle of game news, the death of a 12 year vapourware game that so many had looked forward to (me included).
The news has make me chuckle ever since I learnt of it. I have no sympathy for them over this,no game should have 12 years spent on it and gawd knows how many man hours spent on it. Utter utter farce of the highest order. |
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DN3d had the best start to a game ever. If, like me, you hadn't read any documentation & hit start straight away you're just dropped on top of a building & the only exposition is that "those alien bastards are gonna pay for shooting up my ride"
still generated a huge laugh when playing the XBLA version |
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the_dudefather
07/05/09 @ 16:26
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Duke nukem forever 2001 trailer...
The video that made me dream of the world's most awesome game.... It's a shame that all this hampered Duke from getting a proper sequel, but games like Shadow warrior and Blood filled the gap (in terms of build engine based games with awesome environments to explore) |
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I remember playing the original back in the day, and had always looked forward to the Duke's return. I guess ultimately incompetence must have killed this game off finally. Either that or the developers just spent all their time gaming. Or maybe they actually just got other jobs, never intended to release this, and pulled the biggest hoax in gaming history!
If managed correctly the Duke Nukem game could've turned into a long running series like Doom or Castle Wolfenstein, possibly even spawning a movie! It could still make a comeback if anyone involved cared enough. But I guess in truth they don't, and as such, why should we care now. |
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IronCladChicken
07/05/09 @ 16:30
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@JensonJet
It spawned a movie, called 'They Live' - it was released back in 1988 |
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"By today's standards, the video looks positively archaic, and even then - with games like Half-Life having raised the bar significantly for first-person shooters - it didn't look like a huge leap forward."
Nah, the E3 2001 DNF trailer is still one of the most exciting promo clips of an FPS ever. Graphically it's ancient (Unreal engine 1 and all that) but in terms of content it showed scenes everyone wanted to play, even now I'd still like to ride a donkey while blowing a squidmutant head off with a shotgun or slide under a truck with a Harley Davidson. The only other trailer at the time that generated as much excitement (back then) was the WarCraft III one, which was pure CGI and didn't even represent something that came close to actual in-game scenes or gameplay. "More importantly, if you're much younger than 25 or so, you probably don't remember Duke Nukem at all. Once, DNF could have sold itself on the strength of the brand - now it would face an uphill struggle to convince a whole new generation that this slightly twee self-parodying action hero is actually worth a second glance." I think the 25+ years old crowd is a big part of the market. I am not saying DNF would have been a most-wanted game like it could have been many years back but a lot of people are still interested in this. Hopefully some other dev can finish it. |
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I think the 25+ years old crowd is a big part of the market.
It is, of course - but this is where I think DNF falls between two stools. You've got teens who have never heard of it, and a big chunk of older guys who just feel like they've grown out of it. Personally, I've got rose-tinted glasses for Duke, but I'm not sure how much of the rest of the world, outside of the hardcore forums online, would share that view. |
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foreverafternothing
07/05/09 @ 16:44
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The 2001 trailer wasn't genuine gameplay footage, for what it's worth.
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Actually, I think this may ultimately be good for Duke fans (I count myself as one). My logic being that the brand may move to another software studio and actually be taken forward.
The risk being they would not be as adept at the sense of humour element that 3DR seem to have got right with D3D. I think there is still a market for this type of game and in fact the modern world is perhaps more rich in terms of satirical content. |
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The 2001 trailer wasn't genuine gameplay footage, for what it's worth.
I've seen claims that it was all just tiny chunks of levels and models specifically made for the E3 video, and that none of it was actually running in the game. That's never been confirmed or substantiated, so it didn't seem worth digging it up in this article. (There are tons of conspiracy theories which circle around DNF - although the one about Tim Sweeney beating people up which is linked earlier in this thread is one of the most amazing ones yet! - but frankly, down that path lies madness, and the most straightforward explanation is still basically that a terribly managed, over-ambitious and uncontrolled project just finally fell off the rails.) |
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CapnCloudchaser
07/05/09 @ 17:45
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25+ plus huh.. I turned 25 this year and I remember playing Duke Nukem on the Saturn. I feel so incredibly old :(
The legend surrounding DNF has always been incredibly entertaining and I hope it continues on for many more years! At this point it's probably nothing more than a much loved project, if still in development, but what is so wrong with that? Not everything has to become a commercial product. Lots of people design their own games all the time, companies build up their own projects that never see the light of day. We'll probably never see DNF, but I'm always interested to hear about it's development anyway, because game dev stuff is pretty fascinating on it's own merit, regardless of the end product. I wouldn't go so far as to calling them a failure. They're just perfectionists ;) |
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byron_hinson
07/05/09 @ 17:47
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If your company hasn't produced anything in 12 years yet continued to be paid for producing nowt - you'd surely expect to be unemployed at some point.
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The 2001 trailer wasn't genuine gameplay footage, for what it's worth.
All the talking bits were scripted for the trailer (but were ready/planned to go in the real game), just like the Worm, but the rest was taken straight out of the game according to Charles Wiederhold (said it on the 3D Realms forum somewhere recently). But hey, 3D Realms scrapped that incarnation of the game anyway, we're not going to see that 2001 version anymore and I don't even know if a complete transfer to the Doom³/UE3 engine/whatever mutated hybrid Broussard came up with would have been better...
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most recently on 07/05/09 @ 18:49
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Although I don't celebrate the thought of anyone being out of a job, this really is the most fitting end for the whole DNF story.
The game could never have been 12-years-waitings-worth of good, and now it stands as the most visible reminder of what happens when you dont manage a project, and believe your game is 'too big to fail' (or however you want to put it - I guess that phrase is more for the banking sector than the games industry). To everyone who worked on it - best of luck with the future and I hope you all find new jobs soon. To 3DRealms as a collective entity - piss off, dont come back, and dont try pulling that shit ever again. |
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@raion: Guess there might be some truth to that story. I guess he exagerated some things (like the ending, which would make quite a nice scene for a mobstermovie, really) but still it's quite the interesting read. Wonder if anyone is willing to dig deeper into that stuff, even though it's his word against that of the other guys...
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