First, you have talked a lot about how you and Gearbox came in to basically save Duke Nukem Forever after 3D Realms shut down its development team. Was there any worries inside the company that taking this project on could be too much for Gearbox to handle?

Well, I've been asked a lot about what had happened and how things came to be and I've tried to be forthright and answer questions as best as I can from my point of view. There are a lot of points of view, though, including the feelings of the different people throughout our studio. As we saw what had transpired at 3D Realms and had talked to many people there, we felt that we were in a position to help and we knew there were enough of us that were very motivated to get involved. I don't think there was anyone within Gearbox that was concerned about whether or not we could make the project successful if we set our minds towards it. We did go through a period where we all came to grips with the implications of the decision and through that process consensus was built sufficiently to have confidence that our collective commitment would be natural and substantial.

Duke Nukem, at least as a character, was written as a satire on 1990's movie action heroes. How hard is it to convey that fun and satirical aspect to the character yet make him relevant to a 2011 audience?

Randy Pitchford: I think it's been pretty easy. Many imagine that Duke began as a cliche or amalgamation of the prima-facie heroes during a great era for action heroes. Since then, we've sort of witnessed a pussification of our heroes in action movies. They have become complex, emotional characters. Duke, being incredibly one-sided and super badass, now stands out, not as a cliche, but as a unique and fresh character rising through a tide of emo. Haha.

Fans are of course expecting a balls-to-the-wall action-packed shooter. Are there aspects of Duke Nukem Forever that you think will surprise fans when it is released?

Yes. Surprise is a good word. There is a lot of that. Other good words: Shock, Astonish, Engage, Amuse, Entertain, Entertain, Entertain.

Much has been made about the game's interactive environments. Can you give us some examples of how the player can manipulate the environment in the game?

No spoilers :) The fun comes from finding unexpected but logical behavior from the kinds of objects and set pieces and things you see in the environment in games that in pretty much every other game is there as a backdrop piece and doesn't function the way it would in our world. But, since abstract concepts aren't very exciting, here's one meaningless spoiler: you can put a bag of popcorn in a microwave and cook it and then eat it. Then, if you hunt around, you might find a rat hiding in the back of a grungy kitchen floor cupboard and you can pick it up. Then, with rat in hand, you might look back towards that microwave and have some wicked thoughts... It's fine. Do what you're thinking. It's funny. And it's a videogame... It's not like you would ever do such a thing in real life.

We know that a lot of of the classic Duke Nukem 3D weapons will be back for the new game but are there any other new and wild weapons that we can expect to see in Duke Nukem Forever?

Yes. It's best if you discover them in the game :) Are there plans to beef up the game's textures and graphical features before it is released?

I think the graphics in Duke Nukem Forever are incredible. While there are many ideas, concepts and features in the game that have been honed and matured over a long period of time, the content is all fresh and very new. There is still a lot of work to do in getting everything high fidelity and strong, but everything fits very well. When you're playing the game, you'll be surprised and astonished from time to time about how good it looks, but for the most part playing Duke Nukem Forever is about the experience - experiences unlike anything you've ever had in any other game. Duke Nukem Forever does not fall into that trap that many games that priorize graphics the highest fall into. While tremendous investment has gone into and is going into making sure the game looks incredible on all platforms, the priority is in the game play and the experience.

Are there any hints that you can give about the game's multiplayer features at this time?

There's a great competitive multiplayer component to Duke Nukem Forever and details about that will be shared before we ship. The key thing to think about is that in addition to playing the campaign and becoming Duke Nukem and saving the world if you know you're also going to want to get on-line with your friends so you can freeze them and break them into little icecubes or shrink them and step on them or lay traps and things with weapons like pipe bombs and trip wires that you're going to have several fun game modes and a bunch of kick-ass maps that you're going to get to have that experience in. It's a blast and we'll be talking more about it soon and sharing some more about features and such.

How close are we to playing the game's promised beta/demo at this stage?

That will go out before the game ships. The game is going to ship in 2011, but we have not yet announced a specific date. We're not trying to be coy with that information, it's just that the specific information doesn't exist yet and we're still coordinating worldwide plans for marketing and launch of the game and there are still some details to be sorted out. I have an idea of around when we'll be doing each step, but we feel it's really important for us to be clear and accurate when we talk about dates with this particular game.

So, that the information we've released already that Duke Nukem Forever will launch in 2011 is clear and accurate. The fact that the beta/demo will launch before the game does is also clear and accurate. We'll be able to more precise soon.

Gearbox now owns the Duke Nukem license. With Duke Nukem Forever finally coming out next year are there any plans to have things like new action figures, novels, comic books and other tie-ins in the near future?

Yes, we'll be doing that kind of stuff and there are some specific, exciting things in the works. The priority is the game and some of those things are in the works to support the game. Some of those things are happening because it would be awesome for them to exist and there are certain creators in the world who do just such amazing work that we're excited to help that happen. We're just big fans of things that are awesome and awesome people who make awesome things, so we're enabling efforts along those lines.

Any hints that you can give us about upcoming Gearbox Software game announcements?

Heh. We'll be talking more soon about our Aliens: Colonial Marines project and we are very excited about our partnership with Sega and 20th Century Fox on that game and can't wait to show more of what's being developed there. It's very exciting. Beyond that, we're not ready to announce any other things that we have in development, but will in due time.

Finally is there anything else you wish to say at the moment about Duke Nukem Forever?

Well, I would, but I promised my friends in marketing that I would only answer 10 questions :)