[Lynnvisibruh]

Hiya! Back when I first played DN3D, the darkness (like plot-wise, not the lighting. Well the lighting too) of the second episode with all the babes in pods and cocoons have stuck with me ever since.

Then came The Birth. That intro, it was something else. I think it awoken something f-ed up in me XD

Fast forward to now, and I'm an aspiring artist drawing not-so-safe-for-work stuff on Pixiv, I wanted to look deeper into Duke Nukem with all it's wonderfully horrific material. I hope for this discussion thread to be a source for inspiration for all artists, whether drawings or storytelling.

I hope we can have an interesting discussion!

[Ninety-Six]

I'd be lying if I said a portion of my brain hadn't been dedicated to figuring out exactly what was going on over the past 20 years. The only thing that was made clear was that the women were meant to be birthing factories.

On its own that makes enough sense. The Birth is where things get...really complicated. Babes are no longer being captured, as you don't see them anywhere. Was their goal to create the Queen? I guess that would be the ultimate baby factory, but the other women were just...smaller factories...? But if the Queen is the ultimate baby factory, why does it only spawn drones during the final boss?

And then where exactly do the eggs/protozoid slimers fit in to the scheme? Are they birthed by the women who don't become queens? These massive eggs about the size of their whole adult body?


DNF made it even worse, by bringing in the Pregnators, octababies (which mean the women aren't birthing the eggs so where the hell are the slimers coming from and it also implies the other women are meant to just produce other aliens but also the Queen is there and they're capturing women still???), and most confusing of all, the Alien Empress (I don't even know where to begin)

[jimbob]

i figured they worked kind of like the 'alien' lifecycle of things, egg spawn slimer, slimer impregnated female, wich produces aliens, and ultimately a queen. but i think that overcomplicating things, the story is... there.. and episode 4 just has an aliens like alien and queen as a reference i guess and they never considered the implications of it story wise.

[gibfrag]

I think none of it is supposed to make common sense. We're not the aliens, and they're not human. They aren't thinking like we do. It would be like trying to explain yourself to an ant colony. Whatever they plan to do with the women, Duke isn't having it.

[Lynnvisibruh]

Oh wow! Wasn't expecting to get replies, not this many XD.

Yeah it seems like the game leave these things vague. Perhaps even on purpose. I kinda understand why though. It's a shooter game, not eroge. Then again, curiosity will be the death of me. If we're notngoing to get an official answer from the source, let's craft our own theories.

A game theo-

Sorry.

[Ninety-Six]

 DNSKILL420, on 08 March 2022 - 01:39 PM, said:

I think none of it is supposed to make common sense. We're not the aliens, and they're not human. They aren't thinking like we do. It would be like trying to explain yourself to an ant colony. Whatever they plan to do with the women, Duke isn't having it.

While I would normally be among the first to champion this viewpoint, and acknowledge some of the Alien/Xenomoprh DNA present in these creatures (mostly the Queen and Protectors), I must disagree here. I think it's a fair argument that these particular aliens are much more comic book-like, rather than a serious attempt at a genuine alien race. They do a few too many things akin to humans for me to accept them as truly alien. They shit like humans do and even use toilets, they have a firm (and natural as opposed to computerized) grasp of the English language to the point of being able to write with it (which does not seem like a necessary skill if their goal is to exterminate anyone who isn't a supple young woman, which the manual implies as such) they have a very recognizable imperial hierarchy with footsoldiers, captains, commanders, and most obvious an Emperor (or maybe several...? That's again DNF making things muddy which I think is more due to a cobbled-together script than actual intentional design), are implied to be rather petty at points (Episode 5), appear to partake in the same kind of fun humans do (as implied across various levels), and also seem to have a flair for the dramatic given how they decided to electrocute Duke as opposed to just shooting him.

[Lynnvisibruh]

To be fair, I'd drop Duke Nukem Forever altogether XD. That said, I think I've read somewhere (probably on the Duke4 Discord) that the aliens are like some sort of long-lost human colonists? Hence the ability to reproduce with human females (implied, at least, with the woman at the beginning of E4 The Birth).

Also, in the intro to The Birth, didn't general Graves said "This video was shot by and UNDERCOVER OPERATIVE"?

How the hell do you go undercover in an Alien base, take a video, and get it back out???

[gibfrag]

 Ninety-Six, on 09 March 2022 - 05:45 AM, said:

While I would normally be among the first to champion this viewpoint, and acknowledge some of the Alien/Xenomoprh DNA present in these creatures (mostly the Queen and Protectors), I must disagree here. I think it's a fair argument that these particular aliens are much more comic book-like, rather than a serious attempt at a genuine alien race. They do a few too many things akin to humans for me to accept them as truly alien. They shit like humans do and even use toilets, they have a firm (and natural as opposed to computerized) grasp of the English language to the point of being able to write with it (which does not seem like a necessary skill if their goal is to exterminate anyone who isn't a supple young woman, which the manual implies as such) they have a very recognizable imperial hierarchy with footsoldiers, captains, commanders, and most obvious an Emperor (or maybe several...? That's again DNF making things muddy which I think is more due to a cobbled-together script than actual intentional design), are implied to be rather petty at points (Episode 5), appear to partake in the same kind of fun humans do (as implied across various levels), and also seem to have a flair for the dramatic given how they decided to electrocute Duke as opposed to just shooting him.

I get what you mean here. I was specifically referring to why they do what they do to the women, though. Their master plan feels quite complicated. While we see a woman birthing the queen in Ep4, I don't think this was what all the women were being used for. Perhaps they're being used as slaves, a food source, or to reproduce octabrains like in DNF, or a maybe a bit of all of that. In the official strategy guide, it states their true intentions are to essentially drain the Earth's core to collect raw resources they need. That makes sense, but why go through all the trouble of taking out Earth's population if you have the technology to drain the core, which would essentially kill everyone here soon enough anyhow and what does the moon have to do with it? That's why I feel they are thinking on a different level than humans. Their plan must make perfect sense to them, but I also think the game left most of this vague on purpose.

[Aleks]

In DNF this is all more explicite, with impregnators hatching from eggs spawned by the queen and impregnating human women, which then give birth to octababies. In Duke 3D, I'd go with DNSKILL420, seems their entire plan is not entirely clear, maybe they capture more of the babes just to have fun with them, after all they are invading a foreign race. Slimers seem more like just rats/parasite tagging along, but maybe they can be also used to preserve the women, hence why the other aliens don't mind their brethren being occassionally eaten?

Quote

In the official strategy guide, it states their true intentions are to essentially drain the Earth's core to collect raw resources they need. That makes sense, but why go through all the trouble of taking out Earth's population if you have the technology to drain the core, which would essentially kill everyone here soon enough anyhow and what does the moon have to do with it?

I think that's why there's Battlelord's ship inside that cave, but I believe the alien technology isn't so much above human's, hence they couldn't just drain the core like that and would be opposed by the EDF. Also when that failed, they kind of had no other option but to just launch a full scale attack.
Am I the only one who finds it amusing that this thread was started on the Women's Day?

[Ninety-Six]

 Lynnvisibruh, on 09 March 2022 - 08:00 AM, said:

That said, I think I've read somewhere (probably on the Duke4 Discord) that the aliens are like some sort of long-lost human colonists?

I think that was just the prologue to the fanmade "The Gate" TC.

 Aleks, on 09 March 2022 - 10:03 AM, said:

In DNF this is all more explicite, with impregnators hatching from eggs spawned by the queen and impregnating human women, which then give birth to octababies.

This makes sense up until the Alien Empress is brought in.

 Aleks, on 09 March 2022 - 10:03 AM, said:

Am I the only one who finds it amusing that this thread was started on the Women's Day?

I didn't even notice but now that you've mentioned it...

Well, you're certainly not the only one anymore.

[Lynnvisibruh]

 Aleks, on 09 March 2022 - 10:03 AM, said:

Am I the only one who finds it amusing that this thread was started on the Women's Day?

I'm doing my part!

[OpenMaw]

Fuck DNF for a second.

In Duke Nukem 3D, and I'm using the Duke Nukem 3D strategy guide as a reference;

1. The ship in the San Andreas fault is a drilling ship. It's why Los Angeles is having all the Earth quakes throughout the first episode as you get closer to the ship. The ship is boring down into the fault line to get at the Earth's core, and the Overlord's ship is later seen firing a large MAC gun at the San Andreas fault. The goal was to blow the planet open so that they could easily mine the resources.

The babes being taken in Duke3D are more of a distraction for Duke. Literally even says that in the end of episode, along the lines of "While Duke was distracted..." The taking the babes thing was more a bit of fun the aliens were having while they mine and tear the planet apart.


As to DNF, it's all about being rapey. It really is. The pregnator "positions" sketch put that into crystal clarity for me. When I saw that I realized the women being taken had gone too far. It was no longer some background flavor, it was a fully attended idea that was about raping women. So tonally all over the place. It doesn't know whether it wants to be I Spit On Your Grave or Mars Needs Cheerleaders. Women stripped naked, screaming, and crying = horror, but then they say things like "Daddy said it was okay to swallow." which is campy goofy shit... and yet they actually depict actual rape in the game with the pregnators literally "mounting" the women in different positions.

All of which could have been forgiven to a point of the character of Duke Nukem himself had been written as a heroic figure who was enraged and ready to absolutely DEMOLISH the aliens for what they had done. Instead he has one line along that path, and then everything else is either awkward silence or goofy comedic lines.

I liken this to the film Django Unchained in a way. Tarantino talked about the types of violence on display in the movie. Anything involving the slave trade, with whips and beating black slaves was depicted seriously... Because it wasn't a joke. Any violence perpetuated against the likes of the slaver brothers, Calvin Candy, or any of his workers = over the top, past eleven. Bigger blood geyers, comedic squibs, dudes flipping end over end when blasted with a gun. Catharsis. We want to see them get as jacked up as possible.

That's where DNF fucked it up. The women stuff should have been a straight-line of serious tone. With the catharsis coming in Duke's attitude about it and the delight he takes in taking the fight to the aliens.


As to the reproductive cycle making sense, not really. In Duke 3D the babes seem to be found near and around egg pods. Are they producing the eggs? That's never made clear. The Area 51 level makes some kind of a vague connection between babes and slimers, but it's not clear... and the slimers only seem to suck the brains out of male victims. Are the slimers a larval form of the Octabrain? Maybe. Maybe they're like catapillars and have to go into an unseen intermediate state to become the brains. It seems clear to me that this has nothing to do with the rest of the aliens we're encountering, beyond an alliance. The troopers/Commanders/Lords all seem to be different species, or sub-species of alien that are unrelated to the eggs. They protect them, but they don't seem to do anything more than that. And episode 4 only seems to complicate things. The pod girls vanish, but now there's a queen producing protector drones... To me, this seems like yet another alien sub-species not related to the slimers. The nature of the woman being impregnated was, also, likely very different. ...Some form of twisted direct mating with an alien? Who knows. Someone with a more perverse mind will have to fill that gap in on their own.

[Ninety-Six]

 OpenMaw, on 11 March 2022 - 05:15 PM, said:

Literally even says that in the end of episode, along the lines of "While Duke was distracted..."

I think that was more in reference to Duke going after the Overlord and the main dreadnought, which gave time for the Emperor to lead the next assault on L.A.. "While X was distracted" is a common villain line that isn't always meant to be taken literally, and more in reference to an acceptable setback. After all, the Overlord was specifically titled "the moon assault Overlord," and losing your main orbital gun is hardly a "distraction."

[OpenMaw]

 Ninety-Six, on 11 March 2022 - 07:22 PM, said:

I think that was more in reference to Duke going after the Overlord and the main dreadnought, which gave time for the Emperor to lead the next assault on L.A.. "While X was distracted" is a common villain line that isn't always meant to be taken literally, and more in reference to an acceptable setback. After all, the Overlord was specifically titled "the moon assault Overlord," and losing your main orbital gun is hardly a "distraction."

I'm just saying what the official strategy guide has to say and using some of the elements of the game itself as supporting evidence. After all, it is the sight of the cocooned babe, and the opening line of episode 2, that kick the events in Episode 2 off. Then again, since picking up my cop of the strategy guide and reading that it just became a more likeable theory. It reminds me of the Deadites in Evil Dead always pulling tricks on Ash. The idea that the aliens might try to draw him off with women while they do their dirty work makes a lot of sense to me.

[Lynnvisibruh]

 OpenMaw, on 11 March 2022 - 09:05 PM, said:

I'm just saying what the official strategy guide has to say and using some of the elements of the game itself as supporting evidence. After all, it is the sight of the cocooned babe, and the opening line of episode 2, that kick the events in Episode 2 off. Then again, since picking up my cop of the strategy guide and reading that it just became a more likeable theory. It reminds me of the Deadites in Evil Dead always pulling tricks on Ash. The idea that the aliens might try to draw him off with women while they do their dirty work makes a lot of sense to me.

Huh, never thought of it like that myself. It does make some sense though for the aliens to use the babes as distraction as they know Duke would come knocking. The woman in Ep.4 might be an exception of being abducted for the specific purpose of breeding an Alien queen, unlike the other ones who are simple distractions.

Also, at the beginning of "The Queen", are we in the operating room that was shown in the intro cinematic? There's blood and body parts on a table, so I'd assume that the babe in the cinematic went *splat* ? How did Duke get in anyway...

[OpenMaw]

I would certainly assume that was the intention, though it's impossible to say for certain give that the cinematic is basically a black void with an overhead light. The implication seems pretty solid though.

And that's one of my bigger beefs with Episode 4 is the lack of extra-level continuity. You seem to just appear in places out of nowhere.

[Ninety-Six]

A thought occurred to me. If we accept the strategy guide's presentation of the story as canon (sometimes they get it from an official source, other times they make stuff up it's kind of 50/50; I'm not saying that's what happened here, I'm just cautious about taking it as written but let's just assume it is for the sake of the following argument), then episode 3 kinda doesn't make as much sense. If their goal is to crack open the planet, what exactly are they doing so heavily entrenched into L.A., to the point where the Emperor himself is leading the attack? There aren't even any alien structures in Los Angeles. A few terraformed nests but that's it. Los Angeles is itself actually a good distance from the fault line. It's certainly close, but not close enough where I could see taking the city being a move of strategic importance. Indeed, that's why the alien ship would be found out in the desert.

Something else I'd like to note. Because of how small the targeting display is on the gun platform, the MAC could just as easily be aimed at L.A. itself.

[MusicallyInspired]

The writing definitely ruined the experience of the whole game in DNF, but particularly that area I agree.

[Merlijn]

 OpenMaw, on 11 March 2022 - 05:15 PM, said:

Fuck DNF for a second.

In Duke Nukem 3D, and I'm using the Duke Nukem 3D strategy guide as a reference;

1. The ship in the San Andreas fault is a drilling ship. It's why Los Angeles is having all the Earth quakes throughout the first episode as you get closer to the ship. The ship is boring down into the fault line to get at the Earth's core, and the Overlord's ship is later seen firing a large MAC gun at the San Andreas fault. The goal was to blow the planet open so that they could easily mine the resources.

That's really interesting, I never read the strategy guide but that does fit with the events in E1 quite well. E3 is a bit harder to fit in as Ninety-six mentions. But perhaps they thought taking over LA would be a tactical advantage for them.
This would also mean that Independence day 2 stole its plot from DN3D

As for the babes, I personally like to imagine that there's some crazy scientist types among the aliens who just like to perform experiments on every life form they encounter.
After all they didn't only steal chicks, they also mutated the police into pig cops for.. reasons. On that note, one of the coolest details in E2 is the laboratory with the dead pig cop on the table.

[Ninety-Six]

 Merlijn, on 29 March 2022 - 10:57 AM, said:

After all they didn't only steal chicks, they also mutated the police into pig cops for.. reasons.

That one's actually explained in the manual/on-disk manual (take your pick).

In short, the pigs are made in order to track down and eliminate any remaining human opposition within alien-occupied territory. It's inferred that the aliens targeted the police due to their training and thus it's easier to co-opt their skills to serve their new alien overlords, plus they can apparently make them pretty quickly given how they just seem to take humanity by surprise (and that the aliens needed to dissect one or two to study their own work). Worth noting that hatred of humans and blind rage upon detection of human scent is genetically encoded into them.

To give DNF some credit here, the game does actually portray the pigs accurately to this description. Once de-armed, or if they were never armed in the first place, the pigs are just angry bruisers that are as stupid as they look. Almost sort of implies that that's what they become if they mutate civilians into pigs vs. the more tactical and controlled police officers and EDF troopers.


Incidentally, the Enforcers fulfill the same role in the alien army; patrolling alien-controlled territory to suppress any remaining opposition. I guess the advantage of the pigs is that they can strike from within a targeted area as opposed to waiting for the front lines to catch up to them. Speaking of the front lines seem to primarily be made up of the assault troopers and captains, the assault commanders, and the battlelords.

It's funny to me that the most common, middling (and iconic) enemies are the ones that canonically hang back more.



With all this in mind, it seems that the aliens don't attack with all their forces at the ready. They create their own forces to supplement the relatively fewer infantry, through the creation of pig cops and additional troops once the assault has already begun (my god they're like every RTS game where the battle starts where neither side has any troopers ready to go somehow). I guess through this lens the capturing of women does make sense, as they just create more soliders to be used in the assault.

The Queen seems to be more of a "bonus" but a dedicated thing; they weren't necessarily aiming to make one during the first three episodes, but after Duke kicked their asses, killed their leading generals and Emperor, and presumably destroyed their main dreadnought, they needed a Queen to produce more troops at an accelerated rate to make up for the losses.

It dawned on me much later after my initial post in this thread why you only see the Queen spawn Protector Drones during the battle against her. They're called Protector Drones. Felt kind of stupid after that one.

[screamingahhhhh]

 Ninety-Six, on 29 March 2022 - 12:12 PM, said:

That one's actually explained in the manual/on-disk manual (take your pick).

In short, the pigs are made in order to track down and eliminate any remaining human opposition within alien-occupied territory. It's inferred that the aliens targeted the police due to their training and thus it's easier to co-opt their skills to serve their new alien overlords, plus they can apparently make them pretty quickly given how they just seem to take humanity by surprise (and that the aliens needed to dissect one or two to study their own work). Worth noting that hatred of humans and blind rage upon detection of human scent is genetically encoded into them.

personally for me i always saw the aliens in duke nukem as compressed of a few different speices.

i mean they have passing similarites but troopers look nothing like octobrains besides having a similar color, i always thought the women were kinda needed to make the more humaniod ones while the queen made things like the octobrains.
maybe coming up with a name for the alien speices wasn't really something the team had in mind but not giving them one always struck me as odd, like i know they're put into catagories for what they do, like troopers but we don't really have a term to refer to the aliens as besides just "aliens" and "alien invaders" (it's also a little annoying from a writing viewpoint, especially if you want to introduce a different alien race but i'm getting off topic)
another thing that also struck me as odd about the babes is how many situations the devolpers put them in where they can be easily killed, yet you are punished for killing them, if i'm not supposed to kill them then why would you put an alien right next to them and an explosive?

[Ninety-Six]

 screamingahhhhh, on 30 March 2022 - 03:26 PM, said:

personally for me i always saw the aliens in duke nukem as compressed of a few different speices.

Yeah, the way I've always seen it was either all the different species were either conquered races, or were like pig cops and were the mutated forms of other aliens that were conquered.

 screamingahhhhh, on 30 March 2022 - 03:26 PM, said:

maybe coming up with a name for the alien speices wasn't really something the team had in mind but not giving them one always struck me as odd, like i know they're put into catagories for what they do, like troopers but we don't really have a term to refer to the aliens as besides just "aliens" and "alien invaders"

Honestly, that always was weird to me, too. It wouldn't bother me as much if the alien invaders in the previous game (Duke 2) weren't also given a name. But they were; the Rigelatins. They're even referenced in DN3D's intro text, by name.

Of course a name for the invaders wasn't necessary but it did stand out that the most famous and iconic alien invaders of the old school FPS never had a name when their direct predecessors did.


The most commonly used fan-name for the aliens is usually the Cycloids, named for, of course, the Cycloid Emperor. I mean I think we all know the "cycloid" part refers to him being a cyclops, but he is still the leader so applying his rule to the rest of the empire as a name, it's really just the best we have.

Besides, if he's the emperor it's hardly a stretch to maybe assume other true cycloids would be a privileged class too good to be fighting on the front lines (until the Emperor is killed and you fight other cycloids in episode 5).

 screamingahhhhh, on 30 March 2022 - 03:26 PM, said:

another thing that also struck me as odd about the babes is how many situations the devolpers put them in where they can be easily killed, yet you are punished for killing them, if i'm not supposed to kill them then why would you put an alien right next to them and an explosive?

As I recall that was mostly a Levelord trick to probably give the player a hard choice between detonating the eggs and fighting angry respawns, or to fight carefully around the explosives but inevitably let all the eggs hatch.

In-universe, seeing as that mostly happened in the third episode, you could argue it was the aliens basically creating hostage situations for Duke. Either the eggs hatch or the women explode.

[duke3d.exe]

I think the entire episode 2 is a big hommage to the Alien movie basically. They didn't bother much explaining what the protozoa eggs are for instance, they just wanted an aesthetically similar enemy to the alien facehugger thing. The new monster in episode 4 as well as the queen are also Alien inspired.

[Danukem]

 Ninety-Six, on 30 March 2022 - 04:00 PM, said:

Honestly, that always was weird to me, too. It wouldn't bother me as much if the alien invaders in the previous game (Duke 2) weren't also given a name. But they were; the Rigelatins. They're even referenced in DN3D's intro text, by name.

This bothers me too. As you know, the canon of Alien Armageddon takes Duke 3D as a starting point and expands on it without blatantly contradicting it. However, I think it is fair game to reinterpret certain things. That said, here is my canon for AA, which people are free to accept or reject as it pertains to Duke 3D proper:


The lizard troopers are Varanoids from the planet Varanos. They are a highly intelligent reptillian species with an interstellar empire. Enforcers and Fat commanders are part of the same genetic family, and are about as closely related to lizard troopers as we are to gorillas. On earth, the closest thing we have to such reptiles are monitor lizards, which belong to the genus varanus. Monitor lizards are highly intelligent and dangerous.

All of the other enemies seen in Duke 3D are not varanoids -- they are either members of conqured species from other planets, mechanical, or they are the products of mutagens, surgery or extreme genetic engineering. The Varanoid empire enslaves species from other planets and uses them as soldiers or gladiators. A good example of this are the cycloids. The cycloids are a primitive species that were conquered. They make great gladiators and can be trained to fire rockets from their arms once their lower arms are surgically removed and replaced with launchers. The one we call the Cycloid Emperor was a tribal leader before he was surgically altered and forced to fight Duke in an arena. The stage name "Cycloid Emperor" is a great way of selling pay per views while also mocking an enslaved race.

All the Aliens inspired content involving eggs, slimers, slimed babes, the queen and the protectors drones -- it's a little harder to explain. Even if we confine ourselves to Duke 3D and don't accept DNF as canon for these purposes, the Aliens stuff doesn't fit neatly into my expanded canon. For starters, there's no logical reason why the Varanoids would need human women for anything. The varanoids evolved on a planet hundreds of lightyears away and they didn't even encounter humans until relatively recently, so clearly they didn't need humans. It's also unclear what purpose it serves for the varanoids to have clutches of eggs on a planet they are conquering (earth). The slimers will eat the aliens, too -- quite a hazard to have around.

[The Battlelord]

 Danukem, on 02 April 2022 - 05:15 PM, said:

All the Aliens inspired content involving eggs, slimers, slimed babes, the queen and the protectors drones -- it's a little harder to explain. Even if we confine ourselves to Duke 3D and don't accept DNF as canon for these purposes, the Aliens stuff doesn't fit neatly into my expanded canon. For starters, there's no logical reason why the Varanoids would need human women for anything. The varanoids evolved on a planet hundreds of lightyears away and they didn't even encounter humans until relatively recently, so clearly they didn't need humans. It's also unclear what purpose it serves for the varanoids to have clutches of eggs on a planet they are conquering (earth). The slimers will eat the aliens, too -- quite a hazard to have around.

I've always thought this:
As the more the better, aliens wants to create new mixed races, so they kidnap babes (or maybe just for experimental purposes, to study human's weakness, but then why just women?).
Also, support from creatures with the ability to use rays-mental blasts like Octobrains is well accepted, but these ones, like parasites, needs other species to breed, or maybe their "puppies" (slimers) needs to eat at least 8 brains to become "octo"brains lol (once again, why just women?), but the protozoids don't understand so they eat up whatever no-floating iife form they meet on their way (useless they are up to behaviours like Matriphagy?), so only Octobrains are "officially" allowed to stay in those dangerous places, until the slimers become Octobrains, then the old ones with more experience can go out to support the aliens, hunt new preys and colonize new areas.

[Aleks]

 Ninety-Six, on 30 March 2022 - 04:00 PM, said:

Honestly, that always was weird to me, too. It wouldn't bother me as much if the alien invaders in the previous game (Duke 2) weren't also given a name. But they were; the Rigelatins. They're even referenced in DN3D's intro text, by name.

I actually always kinda liked the fact there's no official name for the aliens in Duke 3D - literally only a few of them seem to be able to talk (well, Pig Cops, but that doesn't count, and also Battlelord and Commander), so it would be probably pretty difficult for them to even introduce themselves to humans. They just come and conquer the shit out of the planet without getting into negotiations. Also, as much as I love Star Trek, I'd assume that really any other species from a different planet would refer to themselves in their own language as "humans", so perhaps the aliens don't have a distinctive name in English either and come from a far away planet which was not given any name yet.

 Danukem, on 02 April 2022 - 05:15 PM, said:

A good example of this are the cycloids. The cycloids are a primitive species that were conquered. They make great gladiators and can be trained to fire rockets from their arms once their lower arms are surgically removed and replaced with launchers. The one we call the Cycloid Emperor was a tribal leader before he was surgically altered and forced to fight Duke in an arena. The stage name "Cycloid Emperor" is a great way of selling pay per views while also mocking an enslaved race.

I kinda like how you're subverting the expectations here and making the cycloids a conquered race used as gladiators for once rather than the other way around as pretty much everyone else would see it. However, not sure if it's not contradicting Duke 3D lore, as there's pretty clear (well, as clear as you can have on a few ending screens) hints that Cycloid Emperor was the one commanding attack on Earth and even using Overlord for a decoy to lure Duke away. Also DNF makes this even more clear (unless you just take that out of the equation).

[screamingahhhhh]

 Aleks, on 03 April 2022 - 03:48 AM, said:

Also DNF makes this even more clear (unless you just take that out of the equation).

Might be a hot take but personally i take forever out of the equation when speaking on things like aliens in the Duke Nukem universe, not just because it's bad, it just doesn't explain things, like how the pigcops are supposed to be the mutated L.A.P.D but we see pigcops in the game with E.D.F uniforms on, but if they're actually mutated soldiers is never explained to us.

 Aleks, on 03 April 2022 - 03:48 AM, said:

so it would be probably pretty difficult for them to even introduce themselves to humans. They just come and conquer the shit out of the planet without getting into negotiations.

I mean, actions speak louder than words, to learn an entire new language when you're just gonna kill the entire race is pointless and a waste of time.

[Aleks]

 screamingahhhhh, on 06 April 2022 - 05:59 PM, said:

Might be a hot take but personally i take forever out of the equation when speaking on things like aliens in the Duke Nukem universe, not just because it's bad, it just doesn't explain things, like how the pigcops are supposed to be the mutated L.A.P.D but we see pigcops in the game with E.D.F uniforms on, but if they're actually mutated soldiers is never explained to us.

But it's explained quite well in DNF - everyone can get mutated, and it's assault commanders that shoot the mutating ray on people. It's done in the first encounter with commander in casino, where he mutates some EDF soldiers, then also during Duke Dome when he mutates the crane operator.

[Ninety-Six]

 Aleks, on 09 April 2022 - 12:03 AM, said:

But it's explained quite well in DNF - everyone can get mutated, and it's assault commanders that shoot the mutating ray on people. It's done in the first encounter with commander in casino, where he mutates some EDF soldiers, then also during Duke Dome when he mutates the crane operator.

They were being mutated? I thought they were just being annihilated by his rockets.

[Aleks]

 Ninety-Six, on 09 April 2022 - 01:04 AM, said:

They were being mutated? I thought they were just being annihilated by his rockets.

Yeah that yellow ray the commander shoots from his hand seems to mutate people into pigs (pig cops). Here's a good example - the crane operator was going to deliver Duke safely, but then... https://youtu.be/vFXxyF_GOhk?t=180