Duke Nukem Forever 2001 - Nearly Complete
Apparently there is am ongoing squabble between 3d Realms and Randy Pitchford over the release of the infamous Duke Nukem Forever that was shown in the E3 trailer. The long short of it is that 3d Realms inherited the legacy backup drives for their old games - and 3d Realms VP Frederik Schreiber has looked through them and found that the December 2002 build was an 80-90% finished game. He paints it as a much darker game than the DNF that finally shipped - and from the sounds of it, it was part Deus Ex and part Survival Horror with a hub based open world and some vehicle gameplay as well. Apparently it was about 25 levels spread across 5 or 6 zones, and mostly complete with the exception of the last zone (Area 51). The original claims happened on a Duke Nukem Discord discussion - https://discordapp.com/invite/qccgJ9v and some images and such made there way to this discussion - https://forums.duke4.net/topic/9930-dnf-2001-build-was-apparently-almost-complete/page__pid__295897#entry295897 as well as http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?threads/have-any-of-the-builds-of-duke-nukem-forever-ever-leaked.120567/ From what I can tell this is legitimate - and 3d Realms wants to release it for free including making it stable for current windows builds and offering mod support to fans so that they may finish it. But Randy Pitchford is saying they have to buy a license to release it even for free - as they own the IP now. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M9du-Wdimj4 Seriously - I have always loved that trailer, and reading about this now makes me hope that this gets at least leaked or even better - finished. The DNF that was released always felt like a parody of a fan mod for Duke3d - the tone is way off and while the game is better than reviews would have you expect it is still a poor shooter with lots of pacing issues and a terrible narrative. If it is true that they were nearly done with it in December 2002 - and the ensuing madness that happened is because they wanted to keep up with the dynamic lighting and shadows of Doom3 - I am heartbroken. Because I think had DNF come out based on the trailer at that time - with the high level of immersive and interactive environments it would have been a huge hit despite being somewhat dated. Edited the title - I just watched a bit of this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6JephRoi3os&t=41m10s Randy Pitchford comes across as not unreasonable, I think there is just a lot of legalities in the way. LOL