July 16, 2008 - Did you happen to see the Apogee and Deep Silver press release about how they're releasing DS and PSP versions of a new Duke Nukem Trilogy? Yeah, not really expected. We had a chance to catch up with Terry Nagy, CEO of the resurrected Apogee Software, to find out what was going on.
"Now 3D Realms is a totally separate entity from Apogee Software. Apogee is a brand new company, we're using the old logos, the things that everybody remembers," said Nagy. "We want to bring back Duke and of course we have some other things in the works that old Apogee people are going to be really, really excited about."
Nagy wouldn't talk about any projects other than the Trilogy.
"Everyone's clamoring for a new Duke game," said Nagy.
Right, like Forever?
"Duke Forever, I mean, I can't say too much about it. It is what it is and it'll come out when it comes out. Apogee is totally different from that now. We've already committed to a date of summer of 2009 so the consumer knows 'ok, they're not going to take forever to work on this, they're committed to the summer of 2009 and that's when it's going to come out.' The plan as far as the trilogy is concerned is to make sure another Duke game is on the store shelves as the first one is starting to fall off the shelves."
The Trilogy's parts are called Critical Mass, Chain Reaction, and Proving Grounds. Are they shooters?
"Well, no, not exactly," said Nagy. "We're doing something called multi-mode. So we're taking all the great sequences of different types of gaming. You know, first-person and third-person over-the-shoulder, and no Duke game Duke without a jetpack, so there's going to be a top-down scroller action going on there. We're talking about some isometrics, isometric 3D and on the DS there'll be the side-scroller action as well."
Can you explain that bit more?
"On the DS you'll be playing along in side-scroller mode and then there'll be an option to go into like a cover-fire position. And so Duke'll be able to play in a cover-fire position and then Duke will have the option to walk down that alleyway and go into a third-person over-the-shoulder type mode. And then you play the game in that mode for a while."
Do you choose to switch modes or is it directed?
"Right now it's directed."
How different are the PSP and DS versions?
"The PSP, more mature, more hardcore of gamer, third-person, first-person, top-down scroller type of stuff. It'll have less play modes than the DS, I just can't see a side-scroller working on the PSP."
Each of the three games takes place during different time periods, each of which means different kinds of weaponry will be available.
"In the first game Critical Mass, Duke is in the future so there's going to be some really cool futuristic weapons that Duke gets and is going to be able to kick ass with. Chain Reaction takes place in current day Earth and it's going to have the weapons that we create for it will be really cool and futuristic type things. The one that I'm excited about is Proving Grounds, it takes place back in 1945, Duke is going to become the Forrest Gump of World War II. Duke is going to be responsible for the sinking of the Bismarck. It was really Duke that raised the flag over Iwo Jima. He's going to be using period style weapons within this game."
Expect miniguns and pipe bombs.
What about an ESRB rating?
"It's not going to be E for everyone. We're shooting for a T for the DS. For the PlayStation Portable we're going for a mature rating."
