Banjo will meet Gears of War 2 in Late 2008 battle
Rare reiterates BK3 release for holidays
Well, it’s not like we didn’t already know it, but Rare have reconfirmed the tentative -and vague- release date for Banjo Kazooie 3, already set by Shane Kim on “Holidays 2008.”
This not-really-new titbit came this time from Community Manager George Kelion when answering to some NeoGAF users after the recent release of the BK3 teaser website: “The game IS scheduled for a Holidays 2008 release – barring the coming of the four horsemen of the apocalypse, you should be playing Banjo 3 before the end of the year (providing you buy the game, that is),” Kelion firmly asserted.
Moreover, when the company was accused of developing titles only for a youth audience, he didn’t hesitate to add that he could “assure that we haven’t been focused on 4 year-olds when creating the new Banjo game. We hope that you’ll be pleasantly surprised at what we’ve cooked up.” That doesn’t mean a ‘conkerific’ reconversion of our fave bear, since last Xmas the development team maintained that “it’s pretty safe to assume that the new Banjo game will also be E-rated, although Banjo fans will be pleased to know the same ‘rough around the edges’ humour will remain.”
In any way, from our point of view it looks like Rare is facing a déjà vu at the end of this year, with another of their flagships meeting the Locust hordes again. If in 2005 the milion-selling Gears of War was released only two days before Viva Piñata, this time the highly expected sequel from Epic to their fabulous masterprice will also be the first to hit the stores, on November. Only some months ago, Rare’s Justin Cook blamed Microsoft for not giving enough support to Piñata in favour of Gears: “so much of the money went towards Gears of War, which is going to sell millions anyway.” We hope they don’t need any more promotion lessons.
On another note about BK3, George Kelion pointed out that Gregg Mayles is still its lead designer (which shouldn’t be anything new for Rare fans either) but also recommended “not to base your ultimate judgements of the final Banjo model from what you’ve glimpsed on the teaser site” while hinting that “all shall be revealed in due course, not that long to wait now…”
Somehow related news
- Leafos, Piñata’s hostess, best female character of the year ()
- Banjo-Kazooie 3 was shown to selected media last week ()
- Piñata developers complaint against Gears of War campaign ()
- Shane Kim rules out Banjo and Piñata as big hits this year ()
- Viva Piñata gets six nominations to AIAS awards ()
