Speaking at a panel during PAX last weekend, Gearbox Software CEO said that when his studio got hold of Duke Nukem: Forever, which had been in development for over 12 years at that point, he expected to see a trainwreck, but was actually quite pleased with the work 3D Realms had done up to that point. Gearbox finished the game after one additional year of development, with Pitchford adding that he’s proud of the additions his studio made to the game.
He finished by adding that now that Gearbox has acquired the IP to the Duke Nukem franchise, the studio wants to develop its own Duke game, though that is something that would be talking about “soon, [..] but not today.” Kotaku has a transcript of all of Pitchford comments with respect to Duke Nukem: Forever, which are also available after the jump.
“It’s such a polarizing thing… There was this one guy that mapped out the different review scores. Here’s the number of people who gave it a zero to 10. And here’s the number of people who gave it 11-20, 21-30, and so on and so forth. And most games have a perfect bell curve, you know, where the center of the curve is the average score. Duke had two curves. There were people who panned it and there were people who kind of liked it. And Alan [one of the long-time developers on the game] pointed out: ‘It looks like a pair of boobs.'” That was our plan from the beginning! That actually happened. That’s a true story.
“I hope some people kind of enjoyed it. When I dug through all the stuff that 3D Realms had done, I expected a trainwreck and I was actually quite pleased. I had a lot of fun with it. It was fun for me, and I’m really glad that we not only rescued the franchise but took the time to make sure the world could see what those guys had been doing for all of those years. And I’m also proud of the things we added to it. I think we did some things to make it a little better.
“I liked it. And we’re not giving up. We’ve updated the game. I know the load times weren’t very good on the 360 and so some of the patches improve that. I don’t know if you guys noticed.
“And then, we also have some DLC coming. It’s pretty cool. It’s pretty fun. So if you likeDuke… I think you’re really going to like the DLC coming out that’s being developed by the guys that actually made Duke Nukem Forever—the guys at Piranha, the guys at Triptych. The Triptych guys are the ex-3D Realms developers. And they’re still working at our studio on the 10th floor, and they’re committed. They’re going to go all the way.
“And then soon… I know that you guys figured out that, when Gearbox acquired the franchise, we didn’t do it just to make sure we could all play Duke Forever, but because we wanted to make our own Duke game. Soon, we’ll talk about that, but not today.”
WHy not? I think Gearbox on their own are a great developer(didn’t like Borderlands much but still) I think they should have a go.
Being honest I had Duke Nukem Forever and as a Duke Nukem game it stank like rotten ____(noun, haha =P) but as a game on it’s own… I’m only joking it still stank =/
Time to Kill will always be my favourite but I hope Gearbox do a new one, maybe even ‘reboot’ the series, just have an option to play in either 1st person or 3rd person like Elder Scrolls IV Oblivion, one of the reasons I prefer Time to Kill is the 3rd Person, looking forward.