Micky C, on 24 August 2016 - 08:04 PM, said:
The problem with that statement is you're saying that women are incapable of saving themselves/avoiding danger.
xMobilemux, I see what you're saying. My personal standing is that if I had to choose between a duke game with awesome gameplay with little focus on the character, and a duke game full of character with terrible gameplay, I'd choose the former. To this day there has yet to be a game that equals or exceeds Duke 3D with its combination of the right elements in the right amount. Many games do specific elements better, but haven't achieved the full package.
Personality is a key component of that, but for me is lower on the priority list than say, gunplay or exploration.
Alternatively he could leave all the babes to die as that'd demonstrate that women possess the ability to remove themselves from fatal situations and need no help from men.
(sarcasm, my initial post was an attempt to get a rise out of someone to begin with)
In all seriousness I'd prefer politics be left out of the Duke franchise as far as any attempts to merge into the modern day 'politically correct' attitudes go but balance in required. Duke Nukem was never about being a giant dickbag which is what Duke Nukem Forever portrayed him as but more of a Schwarzenegger/80s & 90s action movie inspired badass. Sure there's babes around but it was only a small element of the franchise which Duke Forever inflated and marketed to an unnecessary degree.
If Gearbox is going to move forward with the franchise they should focus more on being badass and cool as opposed to a parody of itself. Duke3D, Zero Hour, and Manhattan Project all succeeded in being action driven titles that came off as being cool and stylish while Forever drifted into this weird sort of comedy focused thing throwing tits into your face and saying/doing things that came off as being unnecessary, out of character, and often in poor taste. You want an alien hive full of tortured women who've been impregnated by aliens? Sure, go for it but don't try to throw comedy in there and have the women moaning 'daddy' and the Holsom Twins joking to Duke about their 'first time with an alien'. There's a right and a wrong way to execute certain scenarios, that's a fantastic example of the wrong way. It could have been a fantastical environment to explore with a sense of dread and visuals and sound design delivering an overall tone of despair and horror, instead it was played for jokes, overdone and just all round unnecessary.
It's alright for elements of sexuality, humour, and irreverence to be there to a degree but to exclusively focus on those things is distracting and often falls flat due to the subjective nature of comedy and taste (poop teaser, babe teaser). There's a huge difference between the occasional witty one liner that serves to demonstrate that the character you're playing as is cool, and perhaps even a bit tongue in cheek but constantly spurting pointless references, nonsense, and other drivel that holds absolutely no relevance to what's happening gets tired quickly especially when the dialogue in question is repetitive and drawn out which is a problem that I saw occur in Bombshell that attempts to pull off the same sort of oneliner driven character as Duke Nukem does. 'How many aliens does it take to screw in a lightbulb? None because they're all dead' is a great example of a drawn out, unfunny, repetitive line that grinds on you exceedingly quickly as you play the game. The correct way to execute a one-liner is to keep it short and to the point while avoiding repetition.
Outside of the handful of cutscene segments in Duke3D the one-liners were kept exceptionally short and not spouted frequently which manages to never reach the point of bothering the player. In Duke Forever it was a great relief when the Duke shut the fuck up and stopped saying stupid shit constantly, the issue of which was exaggerated by the terrible, un-funny, drawn out dialogue delivered by Jon St. John whose voice sounded a lot less like Duke than it did in previous titles (Manhattan Project comes to mind) which seems to be the result of Gearbox Software not directing him and instead giving him freedom to deliver the lines as he likes. Sorry to break it to you Gearbox but there's a reason you direct voice actors and that's to get a high quality end result that doesn't feel effortless or 'wrong'.
In my mind the perfect Duke game would be a cross between the earlier versions of Duke Forever (2001/2002) and Duke3D but powered with something on the cutting edge like Unreal Engine 4. The freedom, interactivity, the vehicles, the badass vibes delivered from the 2001 trailer, a more serious world similar to the 2001 trailer and a character that doesn't come across as a jackass all delivered with the latest version of Unreal Engine 4 exploiting all the graphical features possible for high-end PCs and Xbox Scorpio/PlayStation Neo
In summary: everything I'd want from a new Duke game is a complete pipe dream with the current people who hold the franchise who are completely unwilling to put the money into it, accept that fans of the franchise probably have a better understanding of the character and world than they do, and Randy Pitchford who is completely unable to accept criticism and use it to improve going forward. If I had unlimited money I'd buy the IP, hire everyone I could from the Duke3D days/early DNF days (including Broussard/Miller, though under order to follow a development plan & accompanied by experienced producers), and a dozen kick-ass artists and programmers, and an awesome composer like Jeremy Soule, and develop the Duke game I'd want to play. So once again, a fucking pipe dream.
Instead we are destined to the likes of 'greasy hamburgers' and 'bazinga!' Thanks Randall.
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