As you might remember, 3D Realms and Interceptor are mostly notable for silly lawsuits over Duke Nukem these days. But they’re also a game company, and they’ve got a game to put out, but no character to put into it. What to do? Completely half-ass it and drop a trailer!
Meet Shelly “Bombshell” Harrison. She’s a former bomb disposal expert with a bionic arm, a bad attitude, zero ability to emote, and a robot arm with a Terminator reference etched onto it, because 3D Realms lives in a magical world where the ’90s never ended.
Honestly, more than anything else, this is kind of embarrassing. It’s fairly clear Bombshell is an attempt to salvage Duke Nukem: Mass Destruction, being as it’s a top-down action RPG with a suspiciously similar plot. If that weren’t enough, there are clearly assets recycled from recent versions of Duke Nukem in the trailer, and it’s clear they didn’t have time to give our heroine here any facial animations.
We get it: Interceptor has probably put a ton of money into this game. They need to salvage what they can. But it’d be nice if they were a bit more honest about it.