[Kathy]

Well, he did predict it correctly.

Quote

You say who cares? You asked the question originally so presumably you do care, or did.

Yes.

[MrAdidaKing]

fuck 3d realms

[Kathy]

I miss these threads. Why wouldn't Gearbox announce DNF sequel already?

[Ronin]

Cathy, on 19 May 2013 - 01:03 AM, said:

I miss these threads. Why wouldn't Gearbox announce DNF sequel already?

They need to build up some good will with customers I think, imagine announcing a new Duke game after that Aliens fiasco, people would just laugh.

I would be surprised if we hear about a new Duke game from them within the next 2 years.

The future of brand new Duke games is bleak, Duke Nukem himself is the biggest joke in the gaming industry today according to many modern gamers who probably haven't even played Duke 3D.

He is known as that douche guy from that douchey game with the douchey boxart, sold by that douchey company who releases douchey broken games.

[Kathy]

Yeah...

Duke Nukem as a character is a blessing as mush as a curse. With a good game it's like a cake's topping, it makes the game cool and vibrant, but otherwise he feels like a complete joke and a flashy reminder of a game's failure.

I can't see how Gearbox could turn it around with their hype being as douchey as it could get. As much as I hate it, but somehow a prequel or origins game might not be such a bad idea if it tells why Duke Nukem is cool, not provided it as a fact without any explanation as it was in DNF(Duke Nukem's cool because he's cool).

Of course, all of this won't matter if level design and gameplay turn out to be shit. The moment Duke uttered that joke about Halo's armour he should have torn away regenerating Ego bar replacing it with proper % health. Otherwise, he should have kept his mouth shut.

[Hank]

Using a character are not a guaranty for success.

http://www.startrekgame.com/

Here is another sample of big times movie and entertainment names falling flat on their face.
I think Gearbox got that message, and hopefully is changing the focus from big name to make game first.


A little game maker opened up near my office. 6 people. Average age 20 ?. No web site, no forum, no hype, just making a game.

[Forge]

Duke character was a pop culture parody icon. It meshed all those horrid 80's-90's movies muscled-up, cheesy, tough-guy lead characters like stallone, schwarzenegger, lundgren, norris, van damme, etc., etc,. Mixed it with B-movie comedy like army of darkness, etc. Added in a dash of other popular references like Beavis & Butthead, star wars, indiana jones, etc. Made fun of its competitors (doom, heretic) - while being a similar game it still had its own style & atmosphere and added in things -like strippers with interactivity - to give it an edgy, naughty feeling.

Epically failing to follow through with updating the character/game atmosphere are the biggest failures. -or at least being more clever about it, i.e. instead of making fun of halo armor while being a cookie cutter halo game, etc. weak, lame, yawn-
The game could be complete crap (and in some people's opinion it is), but if they kept Duke "cutting edge" with parody, comedy, and icon reference, at least the character could have survived the back blast of negative response to a mediocre game that came out of developmental hell.

edit: back in those cheesy 80's-90's action movies the women were always in need of rescue by the tough guy. Trends have changed and usually the lead "hero" has a tough female side-kick, antagonist.
Keeping Duke a womanizing douchebag instead of updating was a bad idea. Leaving out Bombshell or toughening up the women reflects this.

[Hank]

I think, the original Duke character is relatable, even today, because it is not overpowering, in other words you can play the game and still have the Duke voice turned on. I think the fatal flaw with some game makers is that they expect the gamers to play a character and thus overwriting your own during play. The idea should be to play and put a bit of your own style into a game not the other way around. But for as long as multiplay is king, I have a hope in hell seeing a solid SP game in the near future, it\s all about making a quick buck. - No clue if this makes sense, but there is, my DNF rant for today.

[Kathy]

Forge, on 19 May 2013 - 07:29 AM, said:

Mixed it with B-movie comedy like army of darkness, etc.

Because AoD was in part a parody on an action hero movies. Duke was basically Ash but in video games.

Quote

edit: back in those cheesy 80's-90's action movies the women were always in need of rescue by the tough guy.

Isn't it an overstatement? I don't remember many Arnie's movies where it was needed to save women.

[Forge]

Cathy, on 19 May 2013 - 08:50 AM, said:

Isn't it an overstatement? I don't remember many Arnie's movies where it was needed to save women.

?
women who need to be saved or are weaklings in:
True Lies
The Terminator
Commando
Predator
many more with minor characters that are "saved" by getting them away from the main bad guy.

some the women have to "toughen up", others the women are "helpless" and have to be protected

there are a few arnie movies with tough women. Conan 1&2, Red Sonja, later terminators, total recall

but the focus isn't arnie, the focus is the hero persona Duke is modeled after where the women are completely incapable of defending themselves and need the macho guy to come to the rescue. It's an outdated character model.

edit: of course the game is based on "rescue the women and kill the baddies, but they should have dumped the womanizing and focused more on the cynical, above the law

[Kathy]

Okay, I thought you were talking about main quest to save damsel in distress. Either way, using word "always" isn't always right.

But in almost all of those Arnie movies women ended up being not so weak after all. Not in Duke's case.

[Flying Techbot]

3D Realms should have kept with their original design document, and kept with one of the original two engines. I still don't understand why they kept revising the story, when they told PC Gamer back in 1999 that they hired a Hollywood scripwriter to write the game. I was under the impression that the scripwriter wrote the dialogue in the 2001 trailer. Maybe they should've just stayed with the original 98 story: it was probably sketchy, but it was already an awesome concept. DNF already looked great then, so why did they have to revise over and over again? (Sigh) Although the retail game is flawed, I do believe it might have been more fulfilling if 3D Realms had finished it themselves... Okay, that was wishful thinking, I'm guilty of that. I'm still upset after realizing that George was doing more than revising engines, but all of the content of the game as well. It's a strangle devolutionary pattern: it went from a totally different Duke Nukem experience to a rehash of the origjnal game in a different setting.

Duke didn't used to be a womanizing douchebag. Yes, if the player chose, he killed strippers intentionally or by friendly fire, but he never had much opportunity to womanize. He flirts with the strippers, hookers, and singers with money, and that's it. He never even had much interactivity with the other sex in the first two Duke games, unless you count Oprah... You know, I'm beginning to wonder if Oprah was the first girlfriend he ever had back in the near futuristic 90s... Anyway, he was once just a cutesy character who blasted robots with a nuclear pistol, and then he blasted an entire alien planet run by slug people, and they were all MALE. DNF was the first game where Duke's suppressed sexuality was unleashed upon discovering the dancing pixelated women, and all he could do was either give them money or shoot them in game. Giving money to women is the closest thing to sex in Duke 3D, and that's just really sad and unhealthy for a hero who was kept away from anything female (except for Oprah) for two games... I'm really not too sure if he is actually happy with the women he is with in the retail DNF, since the final developers deprived him of the one woman who was supposed to be the female equivalent of him.

The current DNF just needed more interactivity with NPCs, wide open explorable city levels and environments, and original boss fights. That, and more freeform and spontaneous special attacks and takedowns, rather than needing to press a special button every time you need to punch an Battlelord in the groin or rip out a pig's tusk. That, and at least Bombshell and Gus to juxtapose with Duke's self-satisfied ego.

All the more reason why the retail DNF needs workable editing and modding tools, that way we could see how if DNF can be molded into the game we want it to be.... Or we could just to another awesome Eduke mod, and convert it to Duke Nukem Reloaded, IF DNR will released.

[Kathy]

I remember Duke having sex at the end of Duke 3d.

[Flying Techbot]

Cathy, on 27 May 2013 - 06:37 AM, said:

I remember Duke having sex at the end of Duke 3d.

Indeed he does... But with who? And does she know about his awkward history with the female NPCs, dancing or infested?

[Kathy]

Why do you think Duke doesn't have sex life outside of games?

[Flying Techbot]

Cathy, on 27 May 2013 - 07:01 PM, said:

Why do you think Duke doesn't have sex life outside of games?

I'm just being silly. Because the hint of sex wasn't introduced till Duke3D, I like to make it seem that Duke has only just discovered womankind in a warped kind of way.

[Metalwolf]

Ronan, on 19 May 2013 - 04:52 AM, said:

They need to build up some good will with customers I think, imagine announcing a new Duke game after that Aliens fiasco, people would just laugh.

Well, any fallout from the Aliens thing will be entirely their own fault. Nobody put a gun to their head and said, "You're gong to dick about with this game and send it to some obscure developer when you guys are supposed to be doing it, and do all this other stuff that will look shady. Muhahahah." Nobody forced them to do it, they did it of their own free will.

Regaining customers' good will? They have more chance of winning the lottery then doing that if they continue on with what they're doing. They might as well suck it up and publicly say what they did was wrong, and that they won't do it anymore. Otherwise they'll keep on looking untrustworthy, with no compunction about screwing around with someone if it suits them.

@Flying Techbot,

Duke didn't used to be a womanizing douche, but that's who many people see him as now. I think the hard part is going to be undoing the damage while keeping him as recognizably Duke. I thought on this, and what you mentioned (DN3D's interaction with the strippers, flirting) had been optional, not forced like it was in DNF. Maybe that's why Duke came across as a womanizer, because there was no choice but to interact with the women and hear all of Duke's pickup lines.

Open environments and more interactivity with NCPs? I agree. Since the original DN3D I've seen some real doozies of games that pull off these elements quite nicely, and these games are before DNF came out. Stuff like enemies roaming the maps and hunting you, and calling up additional (and tougher) reinforcements should you run into and take down a number of them. (Grand Theft Auto, Jet Set Radio) Wide open maps with several ways of going through them and finishing, with a ton of weapons at your disposal. (Left 4 Dead, Half-life 2) And I don't think these even require tons of memory, just efficient AI and world building.

An Editor for DNF? Not likely to happen, sadly. At least not through Gearbox's hands. I'm guessing if Gearbox allows modding but simply was prevented from adding an editor, then there are a number of ways to get around this issue. If not, then it is a no go legally.

[Flying Techbot]

Metalwolf, on 29 May 2013 - 11:36 AM, said:

@Flying Techbot,

Duke didn't used to be a womanizing douche, but that's who many people see him as now. I think the hard part is going to be undoing the damage while keeping him as recognizably Duke. I thought on this, and what you mentioned (DN3D's interaction with the strippers, flirting) had been optional, not forced like it was in DNF. Maybe that's why Duke came across as a womanizer, because there was no choice but to interact with the women and hear all of Duke's pickup lines.

Open environments and more interactivity with NCPs? I agree. Since the original DN3D I've seen some real doozies of games that pull off these elements quite nicely, and these games are before DNF came out. Stuff like enemies roaming the maps and hunting you, and calling up additional (and tougher) reinforcements should you run into and take down a number of them. (Grand Theft Auto, Jet Set Radio) Wide open maps with several ways of going through them and finishing, with a ton of weapons at your disposal. (Left 4 Dead, Half-life 2) And I don't think these even require tons of memory, just efficient AI and world building.

An Editor for DNF? Not likely to happen, sadly. At least not through Gearbox's hands. I'm guessing if Gearbox allows modding but simply was prevented from adding an editor, then there are a number of ways to get around this issue. If not, then it is a no go legally.

The "womanizing douchebag" was used by another user about Duke, I used that phrase again to dispute the idea that Duke is essentially that kind of character. I don't mind him being lucky with women: I just think the dialogue with him and the women around him is rather hollow and too accommodating for Duke Nukem's enlarged bubble reputation in the game. I do like how the strip club is done, though it could do without all the NPCs saying "This place rocks!" or "I am glad to be stripping for Duke!" It's still was a good cool down level after defeating the Queen, but I would have like even more interactivity and exploration in that level. I still miss the strip club layout from the '98 trailer, and the promise of unique interaction in the 2001 trailer, but whatever. I did think it was appropriate for Duke to express regret when he killed the infested women, despite him always trying to sound cool while saying it, because he knows that they are far gone (kind of like in Prey when Tommy expressed regret when he killed the crazed human captives, or when Ridley killed infested Tom Skerritt in Alien). His reaction to the twins being infested was rather harsh and dispassionate, and their responses about "first time with an alien" and "promise to lose weight" were rather painful to hear. At least Duke more emotion when his girlfriends exploded.

After playing the game for awhile, I appreciate a lot of what had been done in DNF, and I see that DNF's engine has the potential for creating the kind of Duke experience we've been after. I agree with the Lazy Game Reviewer's assessment that DNF might sell more if Gearbox allows Duke fans to mod and edit the game. What are Gearbox's reasons for not allowing modders to mod DNF again?

[Minigunner]

Flying Techbot, on 30 May 2013 - 02:45 AM, said:

What are Gearbox's reasons for not allowing modders to mod DNF again?

DLC.

[NightFright]

Minigunner, on 13 June 2013 - 11:20 AM, said:

DLC.

Which are finished by now...

[Minigunner]

I feel that the weapon limit should have opened the door to a lot more weapon variety (read: many more weapons than what Duke3D had). However, we just got stuck with a weapon set that could easily fit in a number-slot ala Duke3D, just limited to 2 (4 on PC) that can be carried at once. I think they could have been able to fit plenty more weapons in the game while maintaining the unique purposes of each one. For example, the M16 that got scrapped for the Ripper should have stayed in because it has something the Ripper doesn't; an underslung grenade launcher. It also might have been more accurate and have a slower rate of fire.
On another somewhat-related note, while the pistol has a regular version for pigcops and the EDF, I think the shotgun should have been different for them too, primarily in that the shotguns not directly given to Duke should have lacked a foregrip.
Also, the fists should have been twice as fast, and the melee attack for the fists be the Mighty Boot.

[Tea Monster]

NightFright, on 14 June 2013 - 06:52 AM, said:

Which are finished by now...

This.

[Minigunner]

They stopped caring about DNF after releasing the DLC's anyways. I'd doubt they'd want to take up the task of preparing the editor for release, then patching it up afterwards.

[Player Lin]

Minigunner, on 13 July 2013 - 09:29 AM, said:

They stopped caring about DNF after releasing the DLC's anyways. I'd doubt they'd want to take up the task of preparing the editor for release, then patching it up afterwards.

I never believe Gearbox will do that shit...

[NightFright]

Well, this is a sad example for what happens if you deny modding power to the community. DNF could still be in the talks if people were able to create custom levels, mods etc for it. Frustrating and disappointing that Gearbox doesn't realize that. Maybe better if Apogee got the Duke rights...

[MusicallyInspired]

All in all, I don't think getting DNF released was worth selling the whole IP to Gearbox. So far it's not paying off.

[Minigunner]

I wouldn't want the rights given back to Apogee/3DRealms because George Broussard is the biggest reason for the DNF fiasco. I personally think that Triptych deserves it, given they aren't already completely assimilated into Gearbox.

[Ronin]

Does anyone else feel like the wait never really ended? I am still waiting for the true sequel to Duke 3D. Seeing how Gearbox operate, this wait will go on for a long time.

[OpenMaw]

MusicallyInspired, on 16 July 2013 - 05:04 AM, said:

All in all, I don't think getting DNF released was worth selling the whole IP to Gearbox. So far it's not paying off.

Before DNF's release Duke at least retained something of a "used to be a great video game franchise" air. Now it's like "That shit went down hill hardcore."

[Ronin]

Commando Nukem, on 16 July 2013 - 02:19 PM, said:

Before DNF's release Duke at least retained something of a "used to be a great video game franchise" air. Now it's like "That shit went down hill hardcore."

It's even worse than that, a lot of people don't know about Duke 3D and more still didn't play it when it was mind blowing in 96. People just think he's that dick from that ropey game. What's funny is that a lot of people seem to have picked up DNF for real cheap recently and are surprised that it's not the worst game they ever played.