deuxsonic, on 26 August 2016 - 11:11 PM, said:
What if 3D Realms hadn't run out of money? Let's say in theory they had infinite funds. What would have happened?
At that stage in 2009 there was actually direction with the development of the game, it would have been completed in a more coherent and higher quality manner than the end result which was rushed by Triptych and Gearbox and constructed from the cobbled together parts of the game that were the most completed. It probably would have been longer, had a better score, better dialogue and narrative, been better paced, and just better overall but still pale in comparisons to the expectations of people and still gimped for consoles unless the possibility arose that community feedback was negative enough to necessitate retooling the game to have the previous system of carrying all weapons.
Most of the changes by 3D Realms themselves were to accompany the restrictive nature of that generations consoles, the changes by Triptych and Gearbox in addition to that were extremely comprehensive in order to deliver something playable. It's clear and has been confirmed by several developers in the past that what was delivered is a far cry from what 3D Realms were working on in May 2009 being more of a frankenstein-esque cobbling together of the most competed segments of the game with a narrative written around it.
It still wouldn't have been what we hoped for and people would still have been disappointed but I honestly believe the game would have been better overall, plus there'd probably be mod tools as 3D Realms always promised them and delivered SDKs/mod tools with the majority of their titles whereas Gearbox doesn't give a shit about modding. At that stage it would have still of been a let down but higher quality overall. Though this is all my opinion the information we have seems to align to that with the single player portion of the game being hastily put together by Triptych when 3DR released its development team.
Few will agree with me here because of the hatred towards him but Broussard knows Duke. I would want a Duke game with George and Scott at the helm but assisted by producers with an actual plan to deliver a game in a reasonable timeframe. It'll never happen but eh, maybe Gearbox will release something that isn't absolutely fucked.