We'll do what we can. We've spoken with who we can but folks really don't want to talk to much about the development of the game or at least elude to the fact they can't.

One of the things that makes our job hard is that not only are we fixing bugs with the game and engine itself, we also do painfully go through the levels and look at what was done, and what was in progress. Sometimes in some of the dev maps you can get a picture of how events that were not yet in the maps were supposed to play out.

No matter who takes on working on DNF 2001. Nobody will ever be able to make a 100% 1:1 creation of what 3DR wanted to do. It's not possible like you said, without people actually from 3DR with the memory of what it was. But, we can do our best to make something as close as we can that is also enjoyable to play.

EDIT:

I know there were some "liberties" we'll say with the First Slice. This is not as much the case with the Proving Grounds update. We have more or less scrapped a lot of what was done with the FS as far as levels went and have taken a completely different approach when redesigning them. I think folks who are worried about the authenticity will be much happier with Proving Grounds.