LM f*cking AO you guys are so easy to troll into investigating "rumors". Here's something that's actually true.. no really.
Hey, my dad has a friend who has a friend and he knows someone who used to work at 3DR.. He has a copy of what DNF was in late 2002.. it was pretty advanced for its time, I'm not sure why they scrapped it. Concerning interactivity it was like Duke3D times a thousand... if you wanted to you could actually go back to Duke's motel and change your outfit which did surprise me
There was also a level in it of an old Western town (much like the one in the leaked footage)... but it had a lava-spewing volcano in the vincinity. Towards the end of that you'd have to run away from all the hot lava and all, it was some really epic stuff. Too bad it got scrapped.