Progress on the latest Banjo-Kazooie game, Nuts & Bolts, is coming along quite nicely. Lead artist, Neill Harrison, and senior animator, Elissa Miller, took time out of their busy schedules to talk to CVG about what gamers can expect from their upcoming game.
There's still plenty of additional interview to be read. Simply head on over to CVG for the rest of the engaging read.
Do you think you've fulfilled your original vision for the game?
NH: Yeah, I think we've fulfilled what we wanted to do. What we didn't want to do was to just do another Banjo Kazooie which was exactly the same and that's actually we started doing at the beginning.
We thought well, we'll just do another platform game as Banjo Kazooie. We did that for a bit and as gamers and as developers, it just felt a little bit stale. It felt like it didn't fit in today's market. With the 360, there's just so much more we can do, we thought we'd try something different.
Were you worried about the reaction from Banjo fans?
EM: There are always concerns. We wanted to make a game that was innovative, basically. We just thought with the old games, platforming had hit its peak. If we had rehashed and done another platformer, people would have moaned at us for doing that. So we thought we'd do something innovative and something pushing gaming. We're hoping old Banjo fans will really enjoy it and we think they will.
NH: I'm pretty confident they will when they play it. They just have to give it a chance.
EM: People are always resistant to change. I think like Neill says, once you pick it up and have a play around with it, you'll realise why we made those changes and we actually needed to make the changes to the Banjo franchise.
Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts is coming to the Xbox 360 on November 14 in the US and November 21 in Europe.NH: Yeah, I think we've fulfilled what we wanted to do. What we didn't want to do was to just do another Banjo Kazooie which was exactly the same and that's actually we started doing at the beginning.
We thought well, we'll just do another platform game as Banjo Kazooie. We did that for a bit and as gamers and as developers, it just felt a little bit stale. It felt like it didn't fit in today's market. With the 360, there's just so much more we can do, we thought we'd try something different.
Were you worried about the reaction from Banjo fans?
EM: There are always concerns. We wanted to make a game that was innovative, basically. We just thought with the old games, platforming had hit its peak. If we had rehashed and done another platformer, people would have moaned at us for doing that. So we thought we'd do something innovative and something pushing gaming. We're hoping old Banjo fans will really enjoy it and we think they will.
NH: I'm pretty confident they will when they play it. They just have to give it a chance.
EM: People are always resistant to change. I think like Neill says, once you pick it up and have a play around with it, you'll realise why we made those changes and we actually needed to make the changes to the Banjo franchise.
There's still plenty of additional interview to be read. Simply head on over to CVG for the rest of the engaging read.