Duke Nukem Forever back on! Gearbox wrapping up the legendary production

When Duke Nukem Forever was cancelled early this year, we in the games journalism biz thought, “finally we can stop writing about this game we all knew would never be finished.” Sure, some recent rumors popped up about Gearbox, developers of Borderlands, was now working on the game after 3D Realms' closure, but we all knew it was bullshit, right? No way could this actually happen, right? DNF was dead, dead, dead, left in our sexually frustrated childhood, wasn’t it. Then some images came in from the Penny Arcade Expo:


Above: No f**king way! (fromShacknews)

Then 2K Games started streaming Gearbox’s press conference at PAX, and Randy Pitchford took the stage, explaining that yes, this is really happening. After talking about his personal history with 3D Realms and Duke and howGearbox was now justpolishing the game. After mentioning that DNF is coming in 2011, he unveiled a trailer, for which no video was allowed, but hopefully we’ll have an official version soon.


Above: Here’s the live stream that was showing the demos

On the live stream they showed some lucky players getting their first hands-on with it, but many there, despite playing the game, seemed unbelieving that the game actually was coming out. The game looked good from what we saw through the live stream, featuring shotguns and murdering, as we saw Duke run around and shoot/punch things. Sadly it had no audio, so we couldn’t hear all great one liners Duke spouts off. We wonder what action films he’s stealing dialogue from this time.

In a couple interviews, Gearbox devs let loose some details, such as Gearbox’s relationship with 3D Realms and getting their blessing to finish the product. Also, that they are pushing the M-rated envelope as close to AO as possible. Stay tuned, we’ll have more info as it develops and hell freezes over.

Sep 3, 2010

Henry Gilbert

Henry Gilbert is a former GamesRadar+ Editor, having spent seven years at the site helping to navigate our readers through the PS3 and Xbox 360 generation. Henry is now following another passion of his besides video games, working as the producer and podcast cohost of the popular Talking Simpsons and What a Cartoon podcasts.