The sad story of Duke Nukem Forever. 14 Years of Agony – review

Dizzy with success

But they did not take into account one important point. Series Mario always responded to the spirit of the times. Moreover, she did not hesitate to define it herself. And time in the late nineties flew faster than ever. Technologies emerged, developed and became obsolete at a breakneck pace. id Software managed to announce Quake 2 Engine (aka id Tech 2). But Build lost even to the original Quake engine! And here George Broussard and Scott Miller, Duke’s fathers, made their first mistake. Perhaps the most important in the history of 3D Realms. They decided to change their own Duke Nukem Forever engine to the Quake 2 engine. This stone kicked off the avalanche that buried another dream game.

Although at that time, in principle, nothing terrible happened. The finished engine, even if bought for some fabulous money, seriously accelerated the business. In fact, the developers had only to create content – levels, models, weapons – to glue it together with some kind of plot, spice it up with John St. John’s husky baritone and vulgar jokes, and the fourth game about Duke Nukem would go to the shelves, at the latest, by November – December 1998. The authors worked with enthusiasm, shared screenshots with the public, and even showed a gorgeous trailer at E3 in May. Airplanes were falling, trucks were rushing around, everything around was burning and exploding to a gorgeous soundtrack. It looked brilliant, and the fans were almost shaking with impatience.

1997 Duke Nukem Forever Bullshot

George Broussard wanted to turn the game into a feast of cutting edge technology. At the same time, attention was paid to every detail, right down to the realism of the smoke coming from the fires. Sounds great, of course … until you start thinking: how important is this aspect for a game that is not a firefighter simulator? It was this striving for perfection that played a cruel joke with the developers. After all, it’s better to release an average game on time than to endlessly chase an unattainable ideal.

Work on Quake 2 Engine was going well, but then Unreal Engine came out – and Duke Nukem Forever moved to a new motor. The decision, of course, was difficult. Still, for the second time in a year to change the engine and actually start all the work from scratch! But, with licensing costs in the region of half a million bucks, Unreal Engine had its advantages as well. In particular, he worked better with open spaces than id Tech 2. And he was also great for animating dancing strippers using motion capture, creating snow levels, scenes on the engine in the spirit of the same Half-Life, and generally implementing any new idea of ​​Broussard. And he gave out ideas with the speed of a machine gun – and each one certainly had to be implemented in the game. It is not surprising that with this approach it did not come out either in November, or in December 1998, or in January 1999. It was not shown at E3 1999 – and it was a really wake-up call. But that was not the worst thing.

Finding out the potential part of Duke Nukem in this screenshot is quite difficult.

Duke Nukem Taking Forever

The trouble was 3D Realms could afford it all. Duke Nukem 3D has become a truly successful game. And she herself, and the additions to it, and even her engine, the very outdated Build on all fronts, sold well. Money flowed like a river, so Miller and his associates did not look into the mouth of the rich publisher. They planned to publish a potential hit on their own – and it was only supposed to come out when Broussard thought it was ready. From GT Interactive (and later – from the one that replaced it Take-Two Interactive) they didn’t need financial help or a cannonball, but only marketing support and CD printing. However, this did not stop 3D Realms from getting an advance payment of $ 400,000 for Duke Nukem Forever. There was even more money – and the release automatically moved even further.

To calm down at least the latter a little, they decided to bring the game to E3 2001. The trailer was, without exaggeration, great. Duke drove a bike, fired a golden pistol and, of course, saved chicks from nasty aliens. If the game came out around this time and in the form that was demonstrated at the exhibition, Broussard would be forgiven for everything. However, at the end of the video, instead of the normal release date, the treacherous “When it’s done” still surfaced. Well, instead of at least some kind of game, we got silence for several years.

3D Realms executives saw no opportunity to finish development in 2001 or 2006. People were leaving the studio – and it wasn’t even about money or an empty portfolio. Designers and programmers simply burned out from this Sisyphean labor. Moreover, by the middle of the 2000s, the game was almost ready and, according to those rare lucky ones who managed to touch a working build, it felt just fine. She was beautiful, technological, driving, diverse, funny. An exemplary game about Duke Nukem. She lacked only one thing – normal management. The person who would bang his fist on the table and tell the developers: “You have six months and not a minute more!” Neither Miller nor Broussard were such people. They tried to expand the team so that newcomers would speed up development and at least keep their perfectionism in check. But there was little sense in it. And 3D Realms finally ran out of money.

In 2009, the studio still had to bow to the publisher. But it was not possible to reach an agreement with Take-Two. On May 6, 3D Realms announced the closure. The ensuing lawsuit finally destroyed the studio and seemed to put an end to Duke Nukem Forever.

Manufacturing Hellraiser

The main unfinished construction in the history of the gaming industry has finally come out. 14 years of waiting are over. During this time, dozens of game series of the AAA level were born and died, three console generations changed and eight other games about Duke Nukem were released – this is not counting countless mods, add-ons and conversions of Duke Nukem 3D!

But what the developers of the Duke Nukem Forever itself were doing all these years was completely unclear. The game looked very old and very tired. The wretched plastic models of the enemies glittered as if rubbed with Vaseline. The ubiquitous “soap” almost physically stung the eyes. The physics was pathetic, the textures were blurry, and the claustrophobic levels were gray and boring. In total, all this was drawn to a maximum of 2007, or even 2005. The developers have clearly lost the race for technical excellence. Well, it wasn’t graphics that made Duke Nukem 3D a cool game, right?

As a result, we got a game that didn’t know what it wanted. Indistinct flirting with tactics. Empty episodes with transport. Free unnecessary puzzles and other elements of the quest. There is almost no normal shooter about Duke Nyukem – dynamic, funny and boorish – in all this jumble. The most offensive thing was that they were waiting for the game! Almost with ticks they pulled out grains of information from the developers. They looked for video clips and at least some screenshots. Wooled on foreign forums. Almost a decade and a half. As it turned out – completely in vain.

Duke Nukem Forever would be fine without racing episodes