Few stories in videogaming last as long as 13 years, but there has been a crucial saga that has made us gamers stand to attention and weep. The Duke Nukem Forever saga has been rumbling along since 1997, and the internet thought it was finally dead and buried in May 2009 when 3D Realms terminated the DNF development team.

Well, I’m pleased to say that Duke Nukem Forever is now back. Take-Two showed off the game today at PAX over in a little place called North America. Gearbox Software (Brothers in Arms, Borderlands, Half-Life: Opposing Force and Half-Life: Blue Shift) will be taking up development duties on the game and they will be finishing up what 3D Realms started all those years ago. It will be running on the Borderlands engine and 2K Games will be publishing it.

Randy Pitchford, CEO of Gearbox Software said: “Clearly the game hadn’t been finished at 3D Realms but a lot of content had been created. The approach and investment and process at 3d Realms didn’t quite make it and it cracked at the end. With Gearbox Software we brought all those pieces together. It’s the game it was meant to be.”

“Aliens come and say they’re going to be our friends and Duke knows this isn’t going to work out,” Pitchford says. “Duke once again is in the pivotal spot and it’s up to him to save the world.” He went on to say: “We’re in the polishing phase now. This is a game where we cannot make a promise we cannot fulfil. We need to get past the shock and awe and then we can go to all the retailers and first parties and work out a launch plan.”

Duke Nukem Forever is now expected to ship in 2011 (we’ll believe it when we see it). We’ll be updating this post with pictures and video whenever we get it. We’ll probably turn the front page into a shrine to Duke with a load of posts about the news if anything else exciting breaks.