Duke Nukem Whenever
I was cleaning out the library today, getting ready to turn it into a sound studio, and I came across a whole bunch of old games. Diablo, Populous, Syndicate, Requiem, Colonization, just a lot of great games that I hadn't thought of in years.

Then I came across Duke Nukem, and I paused. You know, for the time it came out, Duke Nukem was one of the coolest games around. At the time, people were saying that first person shooters were the closest games to reality. All there was at the time was Doom, and some Doom rip-offs, all of them dealing with shooting demons, usually in space, surrounded by occult imagery. Now along comes this game where the player had a character, the indomitable cross between Clint Eastwood, Schwartzenneger, and Ash (from housewares). Suddenly, the player had lines to say, witty quotes to throw at the bad guys. It pulled the player in enormously.

For the first time, we were playing a fps in an urban setting, with real props that mirrored the real world. There were inside jokes, references to popular movies (remember Tom Skeritt's "Kill Me" from Alien? It's in there), and lots of attitude. Sure, you were still shooting aliens, but this time, you were shooting them in a titty bar, or in a darkened alley, or porno store!! It was the coolest thing!

They made some sequels, just add-ons really. You might still be able to find "Duke it out in DC" in the bargain bin. But the big promise would come later, in '98, when 3D Realms announced that they were making a real sequel, Duke Nukem Forever. They were going to use the Quake II engine, and the demo looked astounding. Then, they decided they were going to use the Unreal Engine instead. And, if you've ever worked with the two engines, you'll know that kind of conversion requires almost a complete rewrite just to keep your framerate up.

Okay, so the rewrite slowed them down, but even after a decent interval, we still didn't hear anything about it. People started mumbling that there were problems with the game, that it was in danger of being shelved, or just relegated to vaporware. Then at E3, in 2001, they came up with some more clips, which showed how well the game was moving along. The clips had some amazing screenshots of a plane crashing into a building, and one of a woman falling to her death (presumably jumped from the building). In light of the September 11th attacks, 3D Realms had to go back to the drawing board a bit for that.

So, one would figure by conservative estimates, that means they would ship in late 2002. Or early 2003? Maybe make the Christmas rush of 2004? No.

Even though we occasionally hear about them incorporating new features (there are rumors that they are moving to the new Unreal engine, which would mean another rewrite, or that they have some new fangled engine of their own), this game has been on the vaporware hitlist for too long. In fact, it has been MIA for so long, magazines don't even list it in the vaporware awards, because it wouldn't be fair to the other competitors.

So I started thinking. At this point, if I was 3D Realms, I would ignore the issue completely. After all, anybody who's played it probably played it from 1996 - 98, which was nearly a decade ago. Chances are, they've forgot about it. We don't have to even think of it as a sequel anymore. If we think of it as a totally new game, then we don't have to watch the clock at all. Anyone who played the game is probably an adult now, and most of them have given up on games.

So, thinking of it as a totally new game, rather than a sequel, we can rehash the same old jokes, make the same old characters, and even use the same maps. The only thing we can't do is let it be technologically lacking. It has to be up to par with Half-Life 2, Unreal 3, and Doom 3 (funny that ID managed two iterations of Doom and an entire Quake enterprise in the same amount of time that 3D Realms has taken to NOT release one sequel).

So, the needed direction is obvious. Get some good voice acting, rehash the story, use the old levels as a basis for the new ones, and license one of the new heavy hitters. But, whatever you do, don't rush. Because, after all, there's no hurry. It's not like anybody's expecting you to FINISH the game, after all.
- posted by BrandG @ 10:03 PM