Developer: 3D Realms
Publisher: GodGames
Release date: Second half of 2001
Check latest prices
What's so high-tech about it: It has the most heavily modified Unreal Tournament engine to date that will allow for a new level of interactivity in a first-person shooter.
"Las Vegas seemed like the obvious place for the next Duke Nukem adventure," says Matt Wood, level designer for Duke Nukem Forever. "Lights, money, gambling, and, of course...the girls. It was too good to pass up. Duke's a charismatic, flashy show-off, a man's man who loves to drink, test his chances with Lady Luck. Duke and Vegas are a match made in heaven."
 | 
Click for full size
image |
3D Realms has staunchly kept mum about the specific surprises it has in store for Duke Nukem Forever. What little is known is that the game will, like Max Payne, use photo-realistic textures. Compared with the previous Duke games, 3D Realms has avoided depicting any art that looks cartoonish. But the main selling point is that the Duke's latest adventure could be the action game that does for the Unreal Tournament engine what Half-Life did for the Quake II engine or what Elite Force did for the Quake III engine--expand the original engine's capabilities in unexpected ways. Sure, the action role-playing game Deus Ex already pulled off a number of impressive feats with the UT engine, but Scott Miller, one of 3D Realms' founders, says that Duke Nukem Forever's modifications go further. He proudly boasts, "For the past year, I've joked that Unreal licensees should be licensing from us, not Epic, because our version of the code is much faster and more feature packed."
| 
Click for full size
image |
Miller hints that they have added "a ton of bells and whistles" to the interactive end of the UT engine. Remember how virtually every element--from light switches to urinals--could be activated in Duke's first foray into 3D graphics, Duke Nukem 3D? Expect much more of the same in this sequel and consider that the most prominent stages of the game are set in a wicked parody of Las Vegas, which could make "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" look like a family Sunday outing. "Part of the game takes place in casinos. Wouldn't it be lame if all those slot machines were just there for decorative purposes?" Miller teases.
| 
Click for full size
image |
"Some people can't imagine how an FPS could possibly be more interactive than what has already been done on the market. There was a time when even we had been stumped on what we could do," admits Wood. "We started simple and took every idea we had done in the past and took them to the next level. At some point, the floodgates opened, and every idea we have ever had or wanted to implement came to the surface, and before long, we had more ideas and designs than we had programmer power to implement.
"That's when we realized that two programmers on a game of this scale just wasn't going to cut it, and we soon hired more. Before long, the programmers were working so fast that the artists and mappers sometimes had a hard time keeping up. But I think we can all agree that not enough cool stuff is far worse than the alternative...more interactivity than you can shake a two-by-four at."
Keeping pace with the programmers isn't the greatest challenge when dealing with new technology in game development. For the industry as a whole, Miller says, "The big problem is that games are so expensive and time-consuming to make that publishers are reluctant to open their wallet to fund anything that's not a sure and safe hit. The result is we're seeing more sequels and less risk-taking." Duke Nukem Forever might be one sequel that defies this.
