After his lacklustre return, can Duke finally be revived...?

As I'm sure most of you know, Duke Nukem Forever wasn't the triumphant return that we were expecting. The game had some potential, but ultimately it was brought down by dated mechanics, poor load times and an unfinished feel. Gearbox software, the games developers, seem to have acknowledged this, and have strongly suggested that they are working on a second Duke, one that hasn't been tainted by 12 years of stalled development.

Gearbox's chief games developer, Randy Picthford, spoke at the recent Penny Arcade Expo, and addressed the shortcomings of DNF: "I hope some people kind of enjoyed it. When I dug through all the stuff that 3D Realms had done, I expected a train-wreck and I was actually quite pleased."

It seems that while Gearbox has the best of intentions for DNF, they admit that what they had to work with was less than stellar. But they haven't given up on it yet, and they are still standing by those fans that do. "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."

Randy also talked about some new DLC coming for DNF: "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."

The final - and most interesting announcement - was that, while Gearbox bought the franchise with good intentions; "we didn't do it just to make sure we could all play Duke Nukem Forever ". It seems like their intentions from the start were to do DNF the justice it deserved, but then to take the series into their own hands. "We wanted to make our own Duke game. Soon we'll talk about that, but not today".

This seems like a pretty clear announcement of a new Duke, but it looks like we're going to have to wait a little while before we get any more details. Hopefully this time around the King will get the star treatment he deserves, but even if he doesn't, as long as it takes less than a decade I'll count the game a success.

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