This isn't a review of a game that ended up released from the smoldering ruins that were Duke Nukem Forever, as I've already reviewed it. It might not be AS bad as people make it out. Still, it's not great either: it's monotonous, boring, ugly, muddy, annoying, and overall, poorly designed in a way, that it's obvious there were a lot of ideas, but the poor bastards who ended up cobbling it up, didn't really know what to do with any of those elements, so they just slapped together something from the mess that was originally started in 1997 and ended up released in 2011.
What I'm really interested in is the history of DNF and in that, I will be talking about the bland mess that Gearbox released in 2011. It's kind of an ugly bowtie upon an ugly mess that was supposed the be a humongous improvement over Duke Nukem 3D (1996).
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| Images from the Quake engine versions of Duke Nukem Forever. Released around 1997-1998 |
What prompted this little write-up, was the leaking of the fabled Duken Nukem Forever 2001 build, which was developed then brand new Unreal engine. This leak enabled people to see how close to release DNF was back then and the answer isn't probably a surprise: it was nowhere near close to being release-ready back then, people have theorized it could have taken at least a year of development in the shape it was in. I think it might have taken longer than that... hell, it actually did take longer than that. The build itself is available through Internet Archive.
Duke Nukem 3D was a fun little FPS. Instead of having a strong, silent protagonist like every other FPS was doing at the time, 3DRealms had opted to do something different: Duke Nukem was a cliched, onliner spewing action hero, who singlehandedly destroyed the impending alien invasion. It had crude humour, a bit of titillation, and a lot of 80s action movie machismo. The game didn't take its story or the character too seriously and the main idea was to offer something different atop of solid gameplay. Duke himself was previously starred in a couple of 2D platformers, but now that he had been transferred into an FPS game, he became a bonafide gaming action icon. What it did, it did very well, despite it was pretty soon technically outshone by Quake and emerging full 3D-based FPS games that followed.
Of course, there was controversy on the violence and even claims of sexism and misogyny, which are easy to understand. Only women in the game are either strippers or nude, half-cocooned alien victims, begging for Duke to kill them, which is something he can do. As for strippers, he can stick a couple of bucks down their bra and they'll show him boobies. In the 1990s, that was crossing the line for some people, games were seen as something for the children. Despite all the hullabaloo, there's actually no real nudity in Duke Nukem 3D: the strippers actually have tassels on their nipples. What comes to nudity and misogyny, Duke Nukem Forever's 2011 release is actually much worse: it tries to poke fun with both but manages to only come out sleazy in a bad b-movie manner.
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| Duke Nukem Forever, 1999, Unreal Engine. The difference between the Quake-powered versions is quite noticeable. |
Anyhow, Duke Nukem 3D ended up as a big hit, so 3DRealms started planning a sequel. Then Build engine used for Duke3D wasn't up to the task, as by then, proper 3D engines had popped up after Quake (1996) had been released by Id Software. In 1997, 3DRealms started working with the Quake engine and manage to work with it until December of that year, when they change to the Quake 2 engine, which also means ditching a lot of work that had been done. Prior to this change, they had intentions to release Duke Forever in 1998.
Here's where the early days of quickly evolving 3D engines come to play. A mere year later, 3DRealms announced, that they had decided to change engines from Quake 2 to a much spiffier looking Unreal engine. George Broussard estimated, that this change would delay the game by a month or so, but that it could come out as soon as 1999. By now, you might be thinking, yeah, and pigs fly. This would be the right line of thought, as in 1999, it was announced, that Duke would move to a newer version of Unreal Engine. But hey, at least they stated, that it might come out in 2000.
I do understand why it was delayed. 3D engines kept improving quite quickly and Broussard had ambitions. He wanted to provide an experience not seen before, but before he could get there, the pesky engines kept aging in his hands. That said, all engine swaps started a dangerous spiral, where a lot of stuff that had been made had to be trashed and remade, causing increasing delays. Each new FPS title showed them what else could be done and features kept creeping in, despite the game itself wasn't even playable yet.
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| DNF images from the 2005 version of the game. By this time, the game ran on Doom 3 engine and didn't look half bad. After this version, the game starts looking more like the version that was finally published. |
It actually would be interesting to know, how close to release-ready every iteration of the game was. Was the Quake version close to being ready? Was the first Unreal version close to being ready? Were any other versions close to being ready, only to be side railed by new ideas that were constantly pouring into the genre at the time. The answer, most likely, is, that it never was close to being ready. Or if it was, it was way back in 1997, when they were using the Quake engine. I'd really love to see both, Quake and Quake 2-based versions in action, but doubt that's ever going to happen.
The leaked 2001 DNF build was done with a modified Unreal Tournament engine. While there are playable levels in it, they aren't really finished, but interestingly enough, some aspects of that design are still to be found from the 2011 release. So, as far as design goes, not all was trashed on the way, even the much-maligned EGO meter is found there, so that was in the books for a long time.
By 2004, it was reported, that Duke Nukem had, again changed engines. 3DRealms had swapped back to ID tech and was now using the brand new Doom 3 engine. If the released images are anything to go by, the story might have been changed as well by this point, as from here on, the released images feature more heavily on the pig cops and other aliens as enemies instead of EDF soldiers. The old prospector featured in the 2001 build as well as in the previous Quake pics isn't present either anymore. The engine was swapped again to Unreal 2 somewhere around 2006-2007 and seems to be the last engine change for the project. Before Gearbox took DNF under its wings in 2010, 3DRealms has been taken to court by Take Two, who was angry the game wasn't still ready.
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| The Latenight Show scene from the 2001 build and from the released version. The beginning of the game was probably always going to be somewhat similar, with Duke being a celebrity, cooped in his own casino before the aliens strike again. |
The game which was finally released in 2011, had changed back to Unreal. Unreal 2-based engine, to be more exact, which is actually pretty interesting, as, by 2011, Unreal was already on its 3rd version. That had been released in 2006, to be more exact, so it seems it wasn't the engine changes by then that were the main culprit for the continuous delays. The project was most likely a huge mess in every other way, but at least it seems that the engine might have been locked by that point.
It does spring to mind, that maybe UE2 was the newest engine Gearbox was able to make the game assets work, or perhaps by then, 3DRealms had spent a lot of time modifying the engine for the game and it would have taken far too much time to port everything to a newer engine, despite it could have brought improvement as well. But, anyways, yet another engine change wasn't really in the cards by then, Gearbox didn't want to spend another decade in making the game that was already a laughing stock of the industry. Besides, UE2 and UE3 lived side by side for quite a while, so it's not that UE2 was a bad engine.
The 2001 build is woefully incomplete. It was still a long way from being finished, but it does offer some interesting insights into the game and its released version. There are many similar locations, like the Duke Casino, the late-night show segment, Hoover Dam, a ghost town, and a mine. Originally the story was going to be different, the main enemy would have been the corrupted Earth Defence Force, which shows here, as the enemies in the 2001 version are alien-infested EDF soldiers. So, with that in mind, the 2001 version had EDF base, area 51, and Moonbase as locations, as well as some additional Las Vegas locations. All in all, it does seem that DNF was supposed to have more levels than it ended up having.
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| Note that the EGO power meter was already in the 2001 version, so that was most likely always going to be a thing. |
There are two motorcycle-based test levels as well as one level, where Duke is manning a turret on a speedboat. The motorcycle idea was probably distilled into the worst part of released DNF, the levels, where Duke drives a massive monster truck to the Hoover Dam. The speedboat was most likely turned into a short segment, where Duke is on an EDF plane, using a turret.
The 2001 levels are in varying degrees of completeness. I don't think any of them are 100% complete, as even the levels with enemies seem incomplete. Most levels are completely empty and can't be even played through. Some have rather interesting ideas and visuals, but all in all, none of them make me feel like this game could have come out in 2002.
From the graphical side, a couple of interesting things that found their way to the released DNF are the touch screen panels. They use the same graphics, though in the 2001 version they also acted as minigames. There are also many casino slot machines, like video poker, slot machines, and so on. The video poker uses more or less the same graphics, though it's likely, that 3DRealms upgraded them to a bit higher resolution at some point.
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| Some familiar things from the 2011 release can also be found in the 2001 build. You can play video poker on both versions and the FingerMe touchpanel is usable too but had even more use in the 2001 version, where it also contains a hacking minigame. |
Graphics are actually pretty good at their best. I'd say, at its best, it definitely looks better than Quake 2 or the 1st Unreal. It's obvious why the engines were changed despite that was something that created the death spiral of the game. But graphically speaking, if the game would have looked consistently as good as it looks it best, it would have been a decent looking game for at least through 2002-2003. For this version of the game, 2003 would have probably been the last possible release window, at least in terms of graphics.
From the released pictures of the various versions of DNF, it does seem that the 2011 version is heavily based on the builds made from 2007 to 2010. Gearbox might have added some additional flare, but I don't think they remade much of the game meshes, they finished the game with what there was. It's a sensible approach, as there was too much money sunken into DNF already, they just wanted to kick it out the door so that the saga would finally end. On that same note, I actually prefer the 2009 version screenshots to the released version, which looks ugly and muddy in comparison.
As for gameplay, that's a harder thing to evaluate here. The 2011 version didn't do anything spectacular. It was, in the end, rather by the numbers shooter, that just happened to have Duke Nukem as the main protagonist. If you don't count being able to throw your own shit around, it didn't do anything special. Even the 2001 version had the ability to piss around at will.
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| Exiting from the Duke casino in 2001 and in 2011. The game had so much more colour originally. |
The gunplay in the 2001 version is decent. nothing special, really. Then again, there's no huge variation in the enemies either and you mostly just use Duke's golden pistol. You probably do find a couple of other guns and apparently, you can use cheats to get them all. Speaking of guns, unlike in the 2011 version, where Duke can carry on 4 guns, in 2001 he could carry all of his guns.
There are some environmental puzzles in place, but other than some gunplay and a couple of puzzles, there's actually very little actually playable stuff. The little there is comes out more as a test to see what can be done. Nothing here is finalized.
2001 leak of DNF would have needed several years to be complete. While it does offer an interesting insight into what could have been, it's also impossible to say that what is shown here could have ended up as a better game than what was finally released. All this build is, is a sack full of ideas in varying levels of development. It could have been something interesting, had it been released when it was originally planned to be released. It might be, that the original Quake-engine-based game would have been the jackpot. Perhaps not. There's no way of telling.
The Saga of Duke Nukem Forever works like a cautionary tale. It tells of a developer, who was unable to lock in the technology and the features he wanted, and instead of his dream game, he ended up producing anything but. It's a story of a game, that should have had its production halted long before it came out, as, in the end, DNF is a far more interesting idea in its never unreleased form. That way, it could have forever remained as the best game never to be completed.
Oh, well.
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