Mayles on Nuts & Bolts’ cheating and Banjo-Fourie ideas
Edge indicates where the Stop 'n' Swop eggs will have effect
TeamXbox is home to the latest Gregg Mayles interview, where he shares with us a couple of new ideas and reflections regarding his latest labor of love.
He notes that the first third of the game can be “possible for pretty much any player to complete using the vehicles you can find in the game. And then it’s only beyond that where we expect the player to maybe take some of the vehicles we’ve built and start adding bits to them to enable them to get further… and then go whole hog of creating their own vehicles from scratch.” Better start your “creative” genitalia designs now, folks.
One of the biggest worries of Trouble in Paradise pre-release was having the Vision Cards with piñatas defeating the purpose of the game in terms of progress versus having an easy way out. With the blueprints in Nuts & Bolts, the similar issue arises: “even once you’ve got that blueprint, you’ve still then got to use it to complete the challenge. It’s someone giving you a good piece of equipment, and then you’ve got to use that equipment to achieve your objective,” Mayles said. He continues: “It’s completely up to the players, as well. Some players will refuse that sort of help from any source —they want to build their own vehicles… they want to do things their own way. They won’t even entertain getting blueprints from anyone else. And then there’ll be other people at the completely opposite end of the spectrum, where they’ll say, “Okay, I’m maybe not good enough to do this challenge. I’d like that blueprint and then I’ll have a go of doing it that way myself.” I think there’s enough freedom there for the player to make a choice of whether they want help or not.” Couldn’t agree more; like Trouble in Paradise, players determine their enjoyment.
However, one aspect that TiP didn’t have that N&B does are the replays, which can be considered another form of cheating, depending on who you ask. In this case, Mayles obviously responds: “People play games in different ways, and I think that’s what’s great about games. Banjo supports that. At the end of the day, the player’s paid their money to buy the game, and however they see fit to get their entertainment out of that, who is it for me or you or anybody else to say, “This is how you should play the game. You will do this. You will play it properly. You will not cheat.” It’s like, I’ve bought it and if I want to cheat, I’m perfectly capable of doing so.”
”Getting into the vehicle is only one step of it. Obviously, it’s a big step and a big advantage, but you’ve still then got to use the vehicle. You can watch the video and see what the player’s done, and that might give you an incentive to actually heed them. But maybe you can take their vehicle and beat the score using his vehicle, and upload that to the leaderboard. You’ll probably end up with a leaderboard where they’re all using one person’s vehicle, but he’s been relegated to tenth and then there’s nine people above him who’ve all taken his vehicle and done better than him,” he comments.
Questions about DLC have been frequently asked, and in response to new areas and parts, Mayles states that “it’s easy to envision that we can have more pieces and different abilities. How we approach that in the future I don’t know yet, but there’s certainly a lot of ideas of what we could do with it.” He even mentions that there were parts taken out of the game “because we felt that [we wanted to] get the player introduced to the building element. We didn’t want to over-confuse people by saying, “We’ve got these really cool, complicated ideas for parts. Have the whole lot,” and then suddenly it’s, “Oh, well, that’s too many. I don’t know what to do with all this.” It’s almost a temptation to put more in, but we had to reluctantly say, no, let’s go one step at a time. It’s like learning to drive a car, and then once you can do that, you learn to drive a car around a race track. They’re two completely different things.” However, he mentions that if the game sells well, “there’s certainly a lot more” they can do: “We’ve barely scratched the surface of what we can do.”
Last but certainly not least, the traditional sequel question answered: “At the moment, we’d rather just finish the game instead of considering what we can do. With a game like Banjo, we can pretty much go down any of those roads: Yes, we can do an update. Yes, we can add a few more bits. Yes, we can look at a completely new game. In the next few months, we’ll look at how well the game has been received and how we feel we should progress.” Those who are worried that Banjo-Fourie might take another 10 years to make shouldn’t fret, as Mayles believes that “new ideas come through so fast and it’s suddenly like going all the way back to the drawing board and trying to reinvent the wheel to come out with a new game in like two, three, four years’ time is not necessarily the best way of doing things anymore.”
More tidbits, such as Mayles’ admission to self-depreciation can be found in the complete TeamXbox interview. For something moderately different (and reasonably shorter), the latest Edge magazine has a feature dedicated to Nuts & Bolts. Most of it is what you’ve seen, read, and heard before, but there are more intricacies which will now be presented in the intricate list form. Lovely.
- Mark Betteridge states that the bigger the development team, the more it takes to work on a project. Originally, Banjo 3’s core idea “purposefully had no artists on the team whatsoever. The art was drawn by a programmer on his lunch hour while he was eating sandwiches.”
- Tim and Chris Stamper’s departure, while saddening, has not had any negative effect on the company. Betteridge describes why: “I’ve known Tim since I was 14. I miss them more on a personal basis than a day-to-day business basis. Obviously we’re 200 people strong here, with a lot of people who were trained by Tim and Chris. We’ve kept that vision- it wasn’t a big change, like switching the lights off. We’re still going in the same direction.”
- [Spoiler ahead] Last but not least, Stop ‘n’ Swop. While they didn’t reveal what would happen out of spoiling the surprise, Edge did mention something to begin speculation… “with each egg unlocked in the XBLA game having an effect on Showdown Town.” Whatever effect it is, it better make up for the 10 year absence with the game that wasn’t originally intended to connect with.
Somehow related news
- A Banjo-Fourie would “probably expand” Nuts & Bolts’ concept ()
- Gregg Mayles to answer BK fans today ()
- Your Pocket Paradise doubts, answered next Tuesday! ()
- Rare is looking for new designers to work on Natal ()
- Rare to answer your Trouble in Paradise questions next week ()
10 Comments
More into detail of what i wrote it shouldnt be exactly like the old ones but some of the old enemies and worlds i hope kazooie will still be able to come out of his backpack and walk around like in Banjo-Tooie. I also wonder if Banjo-Kazooie:Nuts & Bolts will be basically all about driving and building vehicles or will it be a little bit of the original Banjo-Kazooie but also a little new concept.
Comment by Banjo-Kazooie — 15.Oct.08 @ 3:02 am
I can’t wait to start creating weird vehicles when the game comes out.
Just imagine all the crazy videos of destruction people are going to post on youtube. It should be a riot!
Comment by Rinx — 18.Oct.08 @ 3:46 am
i prefer number 1 & 2 sooooo much more.. i LOVEDDD them so much.. nuts and bolts is nothing like the 1st one.. the graphix are fantatic but i dont like it. i like the way you played the other oness better
Comment by Katie — 15.Mar.09 @ 3:05 am
i think that banjo-fourie be a lot different. i hope that rare learned from it’s mistakes.
Comment by litterboxer — 06.May.09 @ 4:34 am there is proof there will be a banjo fourie. but the plot is still unsaid. just go to logbox 720 in banjo kazooie nuts and bolts and looks on the banjo kazooie disc. it says “comback in 2018″
Comment by litterboxer — 15.Jun.09 @ 5:09 pm
I want a new Banjo-Kazooie but I would like a platform.
And L.O.G. isn’t a good character: Grunty search to be beautiful, L.O.G. is magic and stop Gruntilda…
Don’t anyone think that if Gruntilda is working in the L.O.G’s factory that she might take over it. She will take over it by releasing other characters from other Rare games like”Viva Pinata, Grabbed by the Goulies,and maybe other previous Banjo games.If this happens it would be so cool!
Comment by Hoi Truong — 20.Jul.10 @ 6:24 pm
I Think it would be highly beneficial for RARE to develop a new Banjo based on what their followers are asking for. If they went back to their beginning roots, to where it all started, with the latest X-Box technology, they could develop an amazing new platformer. My suggestion to Rare…Please stop trying to re-invent the wheel and give the people, your loyal millions of followers a new amazing Banjo Fourie Platformer and watch how you’ll rake in all the successes of the first and second in the series.
Comment by Diablo23 — 17.Jul.11 @ 5:38 am
I suggest you put more worlds in this case 15: One of a village shaman, a residual cavern underground, a holiday hotel, an ice factory, a process of deforestation forest, a desert-themed West, an American-style carnival , a cove with sunken ships, a retro gaming casino, a mossy swamps, snow-covered mountain vaporized inside a volcano, a military camp, the basements of a port and Gruntilda aircraft with different compartments, and much to do in each.
Comment by anonnymous — 06.Dec.11 @ 10:08 pm
If you make a banjo 4 i think it should be just like the original where it has puzzle pieces and awseome worlds nothing where you make things in mumbos shop mumbo should just transform banjo and kazooie like the old ones and it would be great to have old characters and worlds but it probably wont happen. im not even sure if banjo-kazooie 3 will be good or not but im getting it anyway.
Comment by Banjo-Kazooie — 15.Oct.08 @ 2:55 am