Rare Talks Banjo Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts

As Rare's latest labour of love hits shelves, we hassle Lead Technical Artist, Neil Harrison, for a Banjo Kazooie chat.

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Kikizo: We're told you've struggled to complete certain parts of the game yourselves...

Neil Harrison: Yeah, we know how to get the Jiggies, but some of them we haven't managed to get the perfect score. And that's kind of cool because we're fairly confident that when the players get it, there's bound to be someone around the world who comes up with some crazy thing that we didn't think of.

Kikizo: How do you prevent that range of possibilities from overwhelming the player?

Neil Harrison: Some of the challenges are fairly simple - it's fairly easy to get the Jiggy; others are going to require a bit more effort to even get the Jiggy, and certainly before you can get a Trophy Thomas token, which you're going to need in order to unlock everything in the game. It's kind of a multilayered approach to designing the game - we're aiming at a broad audience.

Hopefully kids can pick it up - they can use the "L.O.G.'s choice" [pre-designed] vehicles, or they can build vehicles with the help of their parents. More advanced players, there's another level to it. If you're competitive the way I am - I'll spend hours and hours trying to beat these people on the leaderboards, and that's cool for me. So hopefully it'll appeal to lots of different people on lots of different levels.

Kikizo: And new vehicle components are fed to the player gradually?

Neil Harrison: Yeah. As you progress through the game you get more components, so maybe the first time I do a challenge I don't have wings, for example, so I had to do it in a land-based vehicle. But when I get access to the wings I might think "well now I want to go back and do that challenge, because I could have flown and got a better score."

Kikizo: Are there still traces of basic platforming?

Neil Harrison: In Showdown town there are certainly elements of platforming - collecting these crates, exploring the adventure element to the game. There are certainly set-pieces - tight ropes you have to walk along - so there are still elements of that, yeah.

Kikizo: Thanks for your time.

Banjo Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts is out now exclusively for Xbox 360.

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