MusicallyInspired, on 06 February 2019 - 08:06 AM, said:
The mere existence of a backstory makes things too dramatic. Duke has never been about the feels as far as his character is concerned. It's too somber. Either that or it would be downright Mel Brooks/Leslie Neilsen ironic parody. Neither are appropriate.
Don't take this the wrong way but this opinion only tells me one thing: that you're not a man of nuance.
Just because Duke is more "grounded" (in a character sense) that doesn't mean that he becomes realistic, boring or a drama queen. In fact the great thing about entertainment is that you can walk a line where you can present ridiculous stuff in a semi-realistic fashion to really sell it.
Sorry for bringing up Resident Evil 2 again but the remake does this the right way: every single RE fan expects an RE game to be campy so the remake had to provide that content but Capcom also wanted to present the whole thing in a more serious fashion. So the atmosphere and visual design got a realistic tone and the characters got fleshed out a lot more too but their campy roots were kept intact. How? Easy: the new game uses camp to provide a bit of levity. You're descending into the terrifying sewers with Claire, she jumps into the water, says "Now I'm gonna smell like shit... literally!" and then you're like "oh, that was such a Claire thing to say" and you laugh not because the joke itself was that good but because you didn't expect it to be there.
The bottom line: if Duke's world and his character was presented in bit a more serious fashion even his one-liners would work better. When I played Duke 3D as a kid some of the maps and enemies were pretty terrifying to me and I loved that I'm playing as a dude who treats all of that like it was nothing... and I think that's why I like Duke's jokes honestly. That's the experience that's worth bringing back.
Edit: Also: I really don't like how some parts of Duke 3D and the entirety of DNF treats Duke as ha was an "action figure" visually. That took a lot of the grit away from him for me, the man should look more realistic, like this: