Duke Nukem is a video game figure that is still a recognizable name among gamers, despite the commercial and critical failure of the character's last title, Duke Nukem Forever. Most gamers know of Duke Nukem either from his games or his status as a memetic 90s time capsule. While there have been no continuations of the character's legacy ever since Forever flopped, a former employee recently revealed some original concept footage regarding one of Gearbox's canceled games to reboot the franchise.

The first mention of this reboot was from a canceled attempt once the production of Duke Nukem Forever was finished. It was known as "Duke Begins" in the late 2000s, with it only being a rumor. However, once Forever flopped hard, followed up by legal disputes between 3D Realms and Gearbox Software, the project was canned and never showed up ever again. Not much about the game has been shown off until recently.

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A few years ago, former director Gregor Punchatz, showed off a brief CGI trailer of the canceled Duke Begins in a demo reel of his past works. The footage seen in the past clip shows off a younger Duke Nukem fighting off an invasion of various aliens using all matter of weaponry such as his rocket launcher or shrink ray. Most of the footage that was shown off is also seen in this extended concept trailer for Duke Nukem Begins, but more details of what was planned were revealed here too.

One of the first things seen is a level where Duke is fighting back against an army of Pig Cops, taking place in a neon-drenched alleyway, in a third-person perspective. Duke's able to use two guns at the same time, being able to aim in two directions at once and independently shoot. The footage then goes into a bar area, where more of the double pistol gameplay is shown.

Duke is then ambushed from behind and uses some close combat to disarm a Pig Cop and proceed to beat enemies with the enemy's severed arm as a melee weapon. Other weapons shown off included the aforementioned Shrink Ray and Freeze Ray, both of which were also in Duke Nukem Forever, along with a multiplayer mode, where players fought against waves of Pig Cops.

As this was only a concept trailer created entirely from CGI, there's no telling how good these concepts would have translated into an actual game. Gregor Punchatz, according to the video description, was confident that the game could have been made. He said that they were proud of the work poured into this cinematic trailer and were crushed when the game's cancelation due to the legal battles regarding Duke Nukem at the time. He ends off the video description saying that he hopes that the concept could somehow be resurrected with the release of this video.

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