Hail To The King – Duke Nukem Forever Is Finally Coming Out!

Posted May 4th, 2011 by Keadin
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You've been waiting, some of you for 14 years. Duke Nukem Forever is finally coming out (or so it seems). Randy Pitchford of Gearbox Studios was kind enough to spend some time and take the community's questions about developing the legendary game and what it's like working within a title that has so much history.

Can you give us some of the history behind Duke Nukem Forever's delays, death and ultimate resurrection? How and when did Gearbox get involved and how has the studio helped finally get it to release?

I'm not the best person to speak to what took place at 3D Realms between the middle of 1997 when I left that studio and May of 2009 when the story broke that 3D Realms was shutting down its internal development operations. I can, however, talk about my own involvement. My studio and I became involved again with Duke a while before the story of May 2009 and when that happened we were shocked and stunned. I began talking with George Broussard and Scott Miller about strategies where Duke could live on in a big way. Within a relatively short period of time, perhaps a month or so from when we first seriously started talks, we formulated the strategy that we employed. It took a little while longer to complete the business that involved Gearbox purchasing Duke Nukem, including Duke Nukem Forever, from 3D Realms. From that point, I was able to engage with 2k Games, which held the publishing rights for Duke Nukem Forever, and it took about another six months to finish a business agreement with them and with their parent corporation, Take Two, that enabled all of us to work together to follow through and finally deliver the game. Gearbox has become the owner of the brand, the responsible party for Duke Nukem Forever and the producer and developer of the project. We've been working very closely with a couple of other developers in our production role who have also been critical in the completion of the game.

When I worked at 3D Realms in early 1997 when the project began, the idea that it would take place in Las Vegas and in the areas of Nevada there was already established. The idea that the aliens would come back and that Duke would have to once again save the world was also felt to be the right story. I don't know what transpired between 1997 and 2009 exactly – I only watched from the outside like everyone else – but I was really fascinated that the basic premise made it through all that time. The game, however, is all new – all modern. I imagine that pretty much all of the actual content in the game has been developed extremely recently and I can't really see anything anymore that is more than three or four years old. The goal I set for Gearbox when we took over wasn't for us to change the game into something else, but to do everything we could to deliver on the promise and vision that was developed and iterated on at 3D Realms as it existed in May of 2009 and carried through and assembled and arranged by the guys from that team who are still part of the project – the "Triptych" team.


Working as digital necromancers on a project like this must be very different than creating a brand new game from scratch like Borderlands. How do the development experiences differ and what are the high and lows of each?

It's really interesting. I think it has been helpful for us to be a bit divorced from the creative vision and intent. We've certainly taken control and ownership and responsibility for it, but we all feel that it's the 3D Realms vision that is precious – not our own vision. So this has given us a lot of objectivity in our role that is rare when it's our own pure creation. The effort has been mostly technical and production oriented. There's a lot of creativity in problem solving and engineering, of course, and there is some content and creative work that we've done to help modernize and beautify some of the content, but this effort has mostly been a production challenge – which is quite engaging and rewarding. With Borderlands we certainly had many production and technical challenges – those are natural when you invent a procedural system that can generate millions of weapons. But we also had tons of creative ambitions and stylistic ambitions that meant a tremendous amount of freedom, but also complete responsibility and personal attachment to every aspect of the game and vision and promise. So while there is plenty that is the same because they are both video game development projects, Borderlands and Duke Nukem Forever are really two totally separate beasts.

The goal was to not pull any punches. The guys behind the creative were extremely clever and seemed to have naturally found that perfect spot right on the line of decency. As such, nothing really needed to be censored or cut and the game has successfully found ratings (all mature ratings, of course) that make it legal and proper with every territory it will launch in world wide. There is some material that I'm sure some people may find to be controversial, but when the game is played and when the context of the world and the characters is considered, it all feels very appropriate and authentic and natural. There is a lot of fun and a lot of laughs, but it's not there for shock value – it's there as parody and commentary and satire for our entertainment. I think it succeeds incredibly.


What sort of cool opportunities are going to be available for players on Xbox Live? Is Duke bringing anything really unique to the multiplayer world?

The competitive multiplayer modes are a LOT of fun. The four game modes include classic Deathmatch and Team Deathmatch, of course, and there are some other modes as well including a clever Capture the Flag with some new angles to it that I think are best when discovered in game and a King of the Hill game mode that is called "Hail to the King", obviously. Another fun thing the game supports is customize the rules within each game mode – there are a lot of options there… too many to enumerate in the scope of this interview. I think my favorite thing in multiplayer is using all of the unique weapons and gear to set up traps or humiliate my opponent. I like to set up some pipe bombs and hide around a corner and then when someone comes along, just detonate them. Another fun thing is to use a Holoduke to trick opponents into thinking I'm somewhere I'm not and then come behind them and hit them with a shrinker so I can step on them and squish them like a bug. It's also sometimes just a lot of fun to grab a rocket launcher and a jet pack and just fly around the map blowing everything up. The on-line mode also allows you to complete challenges to unlock new goodies for your character – like customer sun-glasses, hats, T-shirts and those kinds of things to customize your look. Some of the things you can unlock are really rare and valuable and difficult to earn – you have to be really good. So when you see them on someone else, you know they're just completely badass. Some of that stuff is just for fun. I once saw a Duke running around with an afro, Elton John style glasses and a T-Shirt that had duckies and bunnies on it. Hilarious.

At this point, only an act of nature can stop it. I know, though… It's hard to believe. Sometimes I can't even believe it. But it's true. It's real. It's happening. I feel humbled and honored to be right here in this seat for this moment of video game history going down. Duke Nukem Forever is going to ship.