It feels like we have been waiting forever and a day for Borderlands 3 to be announced. Multiple major events, including many E3s, The Game Awards shows, and events such as Gamescom, X0, and PlayStation Experience, have all gone by, and we still haven’t seen a peep of that game.

As a matter of fact, we’ve seen nothing of what Gearbox, the developers of the franchise, are working on since the high profile failure of Battleborn (we know they’re not working on a new Halo game, at least). It’s almost certainly Borderlands 3–but when, if ever, will we see it?

According to Gearbox themselves, it might be next month, at the Penny Arcade Expo East. No, they didn’t actually say that in as many words—instead, they just promised “never before seen reveals” at their panel on PAX’s website. So—Borderlands 3? Or is it just some neat development tidbit? Time to make your bets.

Battleborn players, you may all want to make sure you play the game this weekend- Gearbox have confirmed that they will be handing out Double XP this weekend to all players, from Friday, May 20 at 8am PT/11am ET/4pm UK. It will be available worldwide, until Wednesday, May 25, through to 8am PT/11am ET/4pm UK. During this event, players will earn double Command Rank and Character Rank experience in all Story Mode missions and Competitive Multiplayer matches.

That’s not all, either- Alani, the warrior-monk healer, will be released on May 31 for all platforms. She can be unlocked for 47,500 credits which are earned in-game. Players who played the beta for the game on PS4 will get a Hero Key to unlock Alani instantly, without needing to earn and spend credits- similarly, Digital Deluxe and Season Pass holders will receive one Hero Key which they can use to unlock her as well.

Battleborn is available now on PS4, Xbox One, and PC.

In order to reward gamers who continue to pay the company with their hard-earned money, Gearbox has confirmed to IGN that it will be raising the level cap sometime in the first quarter of 2013.

That’s not all though, as Gearbox will be looking to deliver more new characters and more DLC once the first season of content is finished (Sir Hammerlock’s Big Game Hunt is the third of four DLC packs to be released).

As of now, it’s unsure whether Gearbox wants to raise the level cap past past Level 50 in the next DLC or as part of a separate download, but they’ll be doing so in such a way that insures most gamers will want to replay the game again. Not that anyone would mind really.

However, all is not lost. Gearbox has acquired the franchise now, and they mean to make more Duke games. And it’s not as if some parts of Duke Nukem Forever weren’t fun. Who knows, with the talent Gearbox has got, they might actually be able to salvage the franchise, bring it back from the grave.

But what must be done to ensure that Duke’s next outing isn’t as pathetic as Duke Nukem Forever? Will, we have compiled a list of seven things we believe Gearbox must do (or not do) in the next Duke game for it to be actually good enough to redeem the franchise. So enjoy the list, and tell us what you want to see in the next Duke game, and how you like our suggestions, via your comments below.

Don’t go overboard with the cheesy dialogue

Duke Nukem is know for his cheesy, over-the-top dialogues, but DNF took it a bit too far. Some of his quotes were cringe worthy, too perverted or in your face, and the fact that the voice acting was horrendous did not make it any less crass. We don’t want Duke to become a saint in Duke Nukem 5, but we do want his to return to his original glory, with dialogues as awesome and balanced as they were in Duke Nukem 3D.

It’s a shooter, give us more shooting sections

Skip to 00:59. That’s one of the few shooting sections in the game, and that’s not even a shooting section. You get my point? Duke Nukem Forever was supposed to be a First Person Shooter, but it had little to no shooting, and the little bit that it did have was horrible. There was no “oomph” in the shooting, and the feedback was just terrible. Next time, we don’t just want an actual shooter, we want a good shooter.

No more platforming or terribad driving

Not only did Duke sound like an irritating insect in those “tiny Duke” driving sections, the handling of the cars was also pretty bad, and it was just plain boring. And the platforming sections… don’t even get me started on them. The controls and the physics of the game are already broken, and we’re supposed to do platforming with those? The worst part is that they comprised the majority of the game. Do us a favour, Gearbox, and remove the platforming and driving sections in the next Duke game, and if not, then at least make them good. And don’t go overboard with them.

]]> https://gamingbolt.com/7-ways-to-redeem-the-duke-nukem-franchise/feed 1 44166 https://gamingbolt.com/gearbox-we-want-to-make-our-own-duke-game https://gamingbolt.com/gearbox-we-want-to-make-our-own-duke-game#comments Tue, 30 Aug 2011 17:10:07 +0000 http://gamingbolt.com/?p=42139

Duke Nukem Forever sucked. We all know that. But Gearbox says they did not just acquire the series to see the development of Duke Nukem Forever through. Of course not- they have big plans for the series, and they want to make Duke Nukem games of their own. And they will be announcing that soon, but not just yet.

“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,” Gearbox boss Randy Pitchford said at Gearbox’s PAX panel. “Soon, we’ll talk about that, but not today.”

When asked what he felt about Duke Nukem Forever, he said he was “proud” of what the team delivered, despite the panning.

“I hope some people kind of enjoyed it. When I dug through all the stuff that [original development studio] 3D Realms had done, I expected a trainwreck and I was actually quite pleased.

“I had a lot of fun with it,” he added. “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.”

Let’s hope Gearbox is not the same level of “proud” with the next Duke game, which we sure will be cautious- yet expectant- about.

2K recently announced that Borderlands 2 was in development, and that it would be released next year for the Xbox 360, PS3 and PC. They have now released some details for the game. They’re given below.

– Co-op will probably be 4 players
– Vehicles will have variety
– One vehicle: Bandit Technical
– One vehicle will have four seats
– Eridium – enhance weapons
– Eridium is a form of currency
– Salvador: Gunzerker, can dual-wield with any weapon
– Vault Hunters from the first game will be NPCs
– Bandits can access their own type of weaponry
– Unique styling, color, personality for each manufacturer
– Custom decals/enhancements for weapons
– More responsive enemies, more varied, better AI, improvement so that they interact with each other better
– NPCs will also be improved, will move around more
– Interacting dialogue for players
– Skill tree will be similar to the first game (3 branch system)
– Claptrap seems to be returning
– Apparently there won’t be any old weapons
– Story missions won’t be static
– Some pickups will provide temporary buffs

So, looking pretty good so far. Stay tuned for more info.

[Source]

Recent rumours have suggested that a Borderlands sequel is in development, and according to a report at Eurogamer, Borderlands 2 will be releasing next year for the Xbox 360, PS3 and the PC.

Borderlands 2 is already in development at Gearbox, said ‘a source close to the game’.

“I can tell you that myself and everyone at Gearbox LOVES Borderlands and we have been absolutely thrilled at the reception it’s gotten from our customers and the fact that it’s sold over four million units now,” he said.

“So you can see that we supported the game like mad with lots of great DLC and you can imagine that we’re going to want to do a lot of things with Borderlands in the future.

“But we’ve only announced what we’ve announced. If we haven’t announced it, it doesn’t exist.

“Plans and efforts towards the future always exist with a forward looking studio like Gearbox, of course,” he continued, “but brainstorming and blue sky research and development should never be allowed to be construed into a customer promise.

“A customer promise should not be made until that promise becomes sufficiently clear and ready and the commitment is there to deliver upon the promise.”

Stay tuned to GB, we’ll keep you updated.

Continuing on with the E3 goodness, Gearbox have revealed a new Brothers in Arms game, titled Furious 4.

“A new take on wargames and a new take on World War 2” is promised in the title, and the four characters shown in the trailer will presumably offer different abilities.

At least it’s trying something different, but I can’t say I’m overly excited by another WW2 shooter.

The scans show some new screens from the game and carries of host of new information about the game.

We’ll mine out the important tidbits for you later. For now, enjoy the scans and let us know if you find something interesting yourselves.

These also carry the first ever multiplayer screenshots for Duke Nukem Forever.

Here are some important details which we’ve collected for you below:

• 4 gameplay modes will be there in multiplayer: Dukematch, Team Dukematch, Capture the Babe and Hail to the King (King of the Hill mode).
• 8 player max, 4 vs 4 in case of team based matches.
• In ‘Capture the Babe’ when you grab the other teams babe sometimes she’ll start to freak out as you take her back to your base, so you have to give her a gentle smack to quieten her down
• 10 maps at launch, maps include; remade Dukeburger where all Dukes are miniature running around a giant world, ‘Morning Wood’ old west town, Vegas Casinos, etc.
• Jetpack only shows up in some multiplayer maps, isn’t in single player
• Holoduke will be just like Duke 3d, but this time around the player becomes cloaked, allowing for sneak melee kills
• Steriods allow Duke to do one hit kill punches, also allows for faster run speeds, cannot use weapons, not sure if their immune to Shrinker anymore like in Duke 3d.
• When shrunk by the Shrinker, the mini-Duke can still use weapons, but they only do 10% of the normal damage
• You can plant trip bombs on players and enemies
• Confirmed weapons; pistol, shotgun, ripper chaingun, pipebomb, rpg, shrinker, railgun, freezer, devestator, tripbomb. Can only use 2 primary weapons at once along with pipebombs and tripbombs.
• As you kill other players you gain experience points, which, when acquiring enough of them, you can spend the points on customizing your Duke. Basic kills get basic points, but specialty one time achievement kills like killing someone when using the holoduke or funny kills like killing yourself with the pipebomb by accident, gives you bonus points.

Thanks, Martin for rounding it up for us.

Scans don’t do justice to this feature. Go out and buy a copy of OXM right now!

Duke Nukem: Forever releases in April for PC, PS3 and Xbox 360.