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PCGAMESN: The making of: Duke Nukem 3D  "George Broussard Interview"

User is offline   Mr. Tibbs 

#1

Some interesting tidbits, including cut content which referenced Tim McVeigh.

http://www.pcgamesn....f-duke-nukem-3d

Quote

“I'd say we initially set out just to feature clone Doom,” says Broussard of making the leap to 3D. “There weren't any reference points apart from Doom, really. We were all in uncharted territory. So, you just made things quickly and kept what was fun and what worked, and removed things that didn't. We did try to push as far past Doom as we could with features like slopes, lots of big moving sectors, jumping, ducking, jetpacking and interactivity. After a while you just have a big toolkit of features and you sculpt a game out of it, test, and repeat.


On Forever:

Quote

“It was just a very hard project,” admits Broussard. “By the time we got to the point where we were actually making the thing, we ran out of road. We stopped working on in in mid 2009 when we shut down. I didn't touch it beyond that and wanted to bury it in the desert but business realities and complications compelled it to ship and from there momentum took over. It shipped in 2011 the first month it physically was able to. The core issue tracks back to changing engines (more than once) and having technical issues that stalled us. I would never switch engines on a large project again. Ever.
- Well, that's good know!

This post has been edited by Mr. Tibbs: 30 October 2015 - 05:24 PM

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#2

Quote

...character who made sense within the bounds of a 1996 videogame...
Today, it’s arguably a different story...
...it was grossly dated, both aesthetically and thematically.

Emphasis mine.

The lack of imagination people exhibit when they make these sort of comments is astounding. Duke consistently gets the "it was ok then, but we're above that now" treatment. All they are doing is playing it socially safe.

To be honest the pendulum swing is ripe for "Duke Done Well" to capitalize on the sort of things TB brings up here and feel fresh to a current audience. We're unlikely to be so lucky so it'll be someone else who does it and then all the smarty-pants will talk about how they knew it could be done.

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User is offline   Mr. Tibbs 

#3

View PostWieder, on 30 October 2015 - 06:57 PM, said:

Emphasis mine.

The lack of imagination people exhibit when they make these sort of comments is astounding. Duke consistently gets the "it was ok then, but we're above that now" treatment. All they are doing is playing it socially safe.

True, but it's exactly what I expect from the majority of the game writers. Most of the time, they're just adding a weak introduction to a publishers press release. Like last month, not a single major news site reported that Bethesda laid off the majority of Battlecry Studios. They just reposted Zenimax's "quality concerns" update. Wouldn't want to miss out on that Fallout 4 review code! If you speak up and offer legit criticism (see Tom Chick), publishers just put you on the shit list and refuse to cooperate.

Videogames can be fantasies. Fantasies can be stupid, disrespectful, unrealistic, and divorced from social agendas, or even contrary to them. It's as if people are unable to distinguish between Frank Frazetta from Larry Flynt.

I don't think it even comes from any particular burning desire for change or social agendas, rather than predictable apathy and relying on what's already been written over offering any original observations. The lack of transparency in games is so fucking lame.
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#4

View PostWieder, on 30 October 2015 - 06:57 PM, said:

Emphasis mine.

The lack of imagination people exhibit when they make these sort of comments is astounding. Duke consistently gets the "it was ok then, but we're above that now" treatment. All they are doing is playing it socially safe.

To be honest the pendulum swing is ripe for "Duke Done Well" to capitalize on the sort of things TB brings up here and feel fresh to a current audience. We're unlikely to be so lucky so it'll be someone else who does it and then all the smarty-pants will talk about how they knew it could be done.


Very well said. It doesn't really make any sense to me when people look at the Duke character like it's some serious statement, like they have no concept of satire. I honestly don't understand how Duke could be considered offensive and dated. It'd be like saying Monty Python is offensive and dated. The author of this article, I just have no idea how they could be so clueless. They describe Duke like he is an 80s straightforward movie hero cliche, but he's a send-up (and homage) to those characters. In a nutshell, he just doesn't get it.

Another example is when he says it's surprising that a video game nerd would write a macho character. So... is he surprised that mild minored authors write books about warriors for example? All in all just kind of odd how much this guy doesn't get it.

Very cool interview though.
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User is online   Jblade 

#5

I get genuinely kind of angry when I see people dismiss Duke3D out of hand because that game was insanely innovative and had so much life put into it. When RPS excluded it from their top FPS list and dismissed it as dated trash, the site was going downhill at that point anyways but to dismiss a landmark game because of some content you find objectionable (please, Duke is absolutely pedestrian compared to stuff you see in the Witcher series) is fucking childlike.

I do like George B but I think he's had most of the fight long taken out of him at this point and I imagine he'd just toe the party line about Duke's content. I don't think Duke was intended to be a satire honestly, I think he WAS made as the all American hero - the problem is nowadays apparently that's seen as a very bad thing and if your protagonist doesn't have a soul-searching frown on his face at the end of the chapter to show how emotionally deep they are (Despite killing about 500 fucking guys throughout the entire game - see the new Tomb Raider for that dumb shit*) than critics will shit on it. It's very clear that as far as video games are concerned there's still a big divide between critical opinion and the audience opinion - A Duke game that doesn't tone it down and make him a joke or do what DNF did with mostly poorly-written crud would do a lot better.

*as an aside, Rise of the Tomb raider looks ridiculous because Lara has no life or fun to her whatsoever, it's still trying to present her as this pained survivor but at this point she's probably killed half a battalion of people. It's just insanely retarded and shows how stupid modern gaming can be.

This post has been edited by Jblade: 31 October 2015 - 12:18 AM

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#6

View PostJblade, on 31 October 2015 - 12:15 AM, said:

as an aside, Rise of the Tomb raider looks ridiculous because Lara has no life or fun to her whatsoever, it's still trying to present her as this pained survivor but at this point she's probably killed half a battalion of people. It's just insanely retarded and shows how stupid modern gaming can be.


There aren't enough likes in the world to show how true that statement is.
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#7

View PostWieder, on 30 October 2015 - 06:57 PM, said:

To be honest the pendulum swing is ripe for "Duke Done Well" to capitalize on the sort of things TB brings up here and feel fresh to a current audience. We're unlikely to be so lucky so it'll be someone else who does it and then all the smarty-pants will talk about how they knew it could be done.



Absolutely.

I think it'll only happen via a small/new game developer as they are more likely to take a chance - modern games seem to involve pumping in extraordinary amounts of development cash so tend to get stuck in a low-risk rut of not trying anything new, or in this case old.

I don't really play many modern games - only Postal 2 and Serious Sam I & II and I don't think they are as good as Duke's gaming environment, and the fact I refer to those as "modern" says much how I can't be bothered with the latest games which are so linear, have no interactive environments to speak of, and as said in the video, the exploring and variety of weapons. Obviously, my opinion is based on the clips seen on youtube or advertised on the telly.

I do, however, think that as far as modern game development goes, Duke Nukem itself should be left to retire. But the creativity and gameplay of Duke Nukem/ Shadow Warrior should definitely be noted by modern game developers.

TTFN,
Jon

PS: Perhaps a new game in the style of Duke Nukem but this time the central character is Duke's daughter to bring it up to date? Potential for different humour, plus the politically-correct brigade are far more likely to accept men being the target of jokes than vice versa. Instead of Arnie-meets-Schwarzenegger-meets-Eastwood, we get Jolie-meets-Jovovitch-meets-wossername-out-of-Kill-Bill (first one not the dreadful sequel).
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#8

View PostJblade, on 31 October 2015 - 12:15 AM, said:

I don't think Duke was intended to be a satire honestly, I think he WAS made as the all American hero


I'd say he's a bit of both, satire and homage. Like he said in the interview, the game was never supposed to be too serious. Duke is a genuinely badass hero character, but he's also a funny character, and that he embodies those cliches so much in an over-the-top way, I think satire is a decent word to describe it. At the very least the game itself has a satirical tone, or a comedic one at least, with the pig cops, aliens stealing our babes, all that fun stuff. Though it has serious stuff as well, women who say "kill me" like in that Alien deleted scene etc. But overall the funner side wins out in Duke 3D in my opinion.

But as with the DNF stuff you mention later, which I disagree with, we've all discussed the tone of the Duke series a lot before and it is a bit subjective I guess, since the imagination is used to fill in some of the gaps of Duke 3D's world.

Not to make another topic about the ol' what should a next Duke game be like topic, but while it would be good to be less completely comedic than DNF, it also shouldn't be completely serious. But if Duke doesn't have satire in his DNA, he can't use parody law as an excuse to use all those movie lines, and they may have to remove them from Duke 3D. :)

This post has been edited by PsychoGoatee: 31 October 2015 - 06:38 AM

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User is offline   MrBlackCat 

#9

It is my opinion that the audience that is able to appreciate "a good game" is too small to matter now. Good now is a social thing, and most things truly mainstream social, are shallow. That isn't my opinion, that is a fact.
Complexity and shallowness are very different things. Metaphorically speaking it would be like using a TINY brush to paint a big circle with tons of carefully overlapping brush strokes... when finished, you still have a plain circle and the complexity in its construction is not really relevant. All your modern shooters have great complexity of engine and coding, but actual gameplay is far more simple than the Shadow warrior video above... which is appropriate for some game types.

Again, I think they are catering to a different market than the gamers of the 90's.
Making a hybrid of a Treasure Hunt and Action Shooter game hasn't been done since the 90's I don't think... the DooMs, Dukes, and Warrior of Shadow style games seem to be gone at least in their previous form or format. I do find all the elements in other games of course, but not assembled in the order or balance of some of these games from the 90's.

MrBlackCat
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User is offline   OpenMaw 

  • Judge Mental

#10

View PostPsychoGoatee, on 31 October 2015 - 06:33 AM, said:

Not to make another topic about the ol' what should a next Duke game be like topic, but while it would be good to be less completely comedic than DNF, it also shouldn't be completely serious. But if Duke doesn't have satire in his DNA, he can't use parody law as an excuse to use all those movie lines, and they may have to remove them from Duke 3D. :)


I've always taken the philosophy, serious world - Duke is the splash of color. DNF 01 still shows the strong dramatic tones and verisimilitude that the world should probably have, with just a few "cute" touches here and there, and then Duke brings in the suave, cool, radio DJ wit and the comedy. His reactions to things.

VinsaneOne always used to point out the scene in Abyss, an otherwise fairly serious, moody, atmospheric level, had one of the best Duke moments in it. When you happen upon the San Andreas fault and everything starts tumbling down, and Duke let's out a "Holy shit!" It's hysterical.


A film example that springs to mind is Ghostbusters of all things. The general framework of the story is a serious apocalyptic event. The comedy comes from the four shlubs who are dealing with it and in way over their heads.
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