raz, on 16 February 2024 - 02:36 PM, said:
(I also think you can infer that from the ending where Duke holds the clock up seemingly relieved, although it's actually on 0:00 so should have exploded lol. Makes me wonder if they rendered it all and someone said "it should have stopped on one second" but they'd run out of time to re-do it).
Maybe by destroying the Cyberkeef the timer just glitched out. Although I think they might have actually been going for that half-instant where it displays 0:00 before it go boom.
raz, on 16 February 2024 - 02:36 PM, said:
I'm now wondering if this small fragment of the plot might have been in a magazine at the time - that actually used to happen fairly often back then, that a developer would tell a magazine some explanation for something in the game during development and then in the final game there would be zero explanation.
And strategy guides too, apparently. Someone here like a year ago or so mentioned the official Duke 3D strategy guide said the plot of the first three episodes was that the aliens were trying to crack open the Earth with a MAC cannon to strip-mine it. Which was why episode 1 had so many earthquakes, and what the gun in the Overlord's boss room was (and then episode 3 was like plan B I guess, take advantage of the fact that Duke's on the moon to take hold of L.A.) It wouldn't be the first time a strategy guide had more plot details than what was ever shown in-game, though I always did wonder if such info came from the original developers or if the guide writers were making inferences.
That said, the explanation provided certainly does explain
a lot, so I wouldn't be surprised if that info
was sourced from 3DR. Likewise, I can totally see PnP's plot being in a magazine, or maybe even in a TM strategy guide as well.
If either such could be tracked down, maybe we'll get our answers.
raz, on 16 February 2024 - 02:36 PM, said:
And that they ran out of time to model new pigs and shoved the Pig-in-a-Dress into Nightmare Zone as a vague Lara reference (two pistols, "female").
I always did think the Pig-In-A-Dress as Lara was weirdly biting. A bit below-the-belt, which just seemed uncharacteristic.
Incidentally I don't think there were any Pigs in that diner. I'll have to play it again to double check, but I think the first pigs in the level were in the garage just outside it. Otherwise it was just what we call Assault Generals, Captains, and Enforcers. Though with the way the custom pigs were set up they probably would all be in that getup no matter where they were in the level.
raz, on 16 February 2024 - 02:36 PM, said:
Certainly the secret area in Nightmare Zone where the pigs are presumably dressing up is full of Lara outfits that don't match the pink waitress dress, but then again there's assault troopers in that area about to get dressed as bears and we don't see any bears either, so who knows?
I think it's less that the dressing rooms were for the aliens, and more for Lara Croft herself, and her enemies. Like she and her game were a movie or something, hence why the bear costumes were inert, and why there's an outfit checklist on the wall. Duke and the aliens both just stumbled onto the set and the backstage area.
raz, on 16 February 2024 - 02:36 PM, said:
It's worth noting that Alien Rendezvous seems to have been the last map created for PnP:
https://tcrf.net/Pro..._Total_Meltdown and people have noted it just seems like a generic Duke3D PC usermap, so might have just been dropped in last minute to bulk the episode, and might or might not have been intended to have a unique pig.
Alternatively, it just didn't have enough time in the oven to make it look like more than a user map (though the centrifuge was cool, and I can't take that away from it).
raz, on 16 February 2024 - 02:36 PM, said:
While I'm here speculating, and it might be a stretch, but I'm pretty sure the DJ aliens on Ministry of Fear are supposed to be a reference to Tom Rowlands from the
Chemical Brothers, two UK DJs / dance musicians that were big in the 90s and would definitely have played at Ministry of Sound. I can remember thinking this even when seeing the final assault trooper-type version of the DJ at the time, just because his long hair was like his signature look. Seeing that in the prototype he was human and had shades too makes me feel even more sure:
Probably. Given just how much the British clubbing scene is present all over that level, at this point I think it's more of a stretch to assume something isn't reflective of that somewhere.
raz, on 16 February 2024 - 02:36 PM, said:
Magnum P.I.G. (worth noting that although this does seem to be a reference to Magnum P.I. the model also works as someone dressed for going clubbing in the 90s)
This was yet another thing that raised questions about the level, and once again your contemporary cultural knowledge has provided a fully satisfactory explanation.
raz, on 16 February 2024 - 02:36 PM, said:
(Faces of Death it seems obvious to me was a quick and cheap way of bulking up the episode facing time constraints, so no unique pig)
(Or any pigs at all, for that matter.)
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