Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts Developer Diaries

Hello, Banjo gamers.

This is the first in our series of Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts developer diaries. Unfortunately, the developers are a bit preoccupied with the game to keep a diary themselves, so the task has fallen to me, Rare’s lowly Community Manager. However, the Banjo team has opened their doors to me as if I were a real developer. I’ve duly spent a considerable amount of time playing the new game, all so that you can read this. It’s a hard life. Well, what to tell you that doesn’t contravene our watertight NDAs? Let’s have a stab, shall we?

Right now, everybody on the Banjo team is incredibly busy, which gives Barn D a Zen-like atmosphere of quiet concentration–that’s broken only when a goal is scored on one of the TVs showing Euro 2008. Leaving at midnight has been the norm since the May Showcase event and, after several weeks, people have begun to get fed up with take-away food. To ease the team’s collective bowels, a buffet was held on Tuesday evening, which I’m told was rather like being at a wedding reception.

E3 is just around the corner and demos need to be made… Building a demo is a distraction from the main task of polishing the game, but it’s vital nonetheless. Banjo is a big game and has been designed as such from the outset, so the only way for the Banjo code soldiers not to get daunted is to knuckle down and approach each challenge one bug at a time. However, this isn’t really reflected on people’s screens. I’ve yet to visit the Barn without being distracted by a fresh, bizarre bear-piloted contraption zooming across an odd, colourful landscape. The team can tell whenever I come into the barn because they can hear me shout “cool!” at either end of the corridor. Shaun built a pirate ship, which he’s rather pleased about.

Much of the work has been completed on multiplayer, so the team is squarely focused on the single player campaign. New components are going into the game as I type, giving you, the player, further powers to exploit. With so much “freedom” in the game (i.e. “stuff we really didn’t expect you to do”), a lot of tweaking obviously needs to be done, and game balancing is well under way.

You’ll be pleased to hear that Spiral Mountain itself is pretty much done. It’s still in its dilapidated state from the end of Tooie, only it’s sporting a fair few more polygons these days. Banjoland is also nearing completion, but that level’s sure to be a fan-favourite so I’ll refrain from divulging too much info. Personally, I’m looking forward to seeing the hi-res textures applied to Terrarium, a space-level built of interconnected tubes and chambers, as well as getting the chance to play in the CPU-themed world, which has been designed to be approached vertically rather than horizontally like most platformers.

Having read a lot of chatter about Banjo on several forums, people seem to have a lot of questions about what the thrust of the main campaign will feel like. I don’t want to spoil your surprise, but I’ll try and fill you in on some salient details.

Players of the previous two Banjo games will be familiar with the new game’s structure. It begins with a brief introduction that’s sure to raise wry smiles from those who enjoyed the intro to Conker, and serves as a big reward to the Banjo fans who’ve been on tenterhooks these past eight years. Expect the fourth wall to be broken—even Rare’s previous games aren’t safe from Kazooie’s biting wit!

Having set up the plot, Banjo and Kazooie are plunked into the grand hub-world, Showdown Town. Like all classic 3D platformers, the hub world has secret areas and multiple levels for you to explore. It already feels alive with many different animal NPCs wandering around, all of whom talk to you. My favourite is the rhino wearing an apron. Musical notes are scattered across the town—some glistening in plain view, others a bit trickier to grab. Physics are a huge part of what makes the new Banjo fun, and the aim is to make every object you encounter in the game behave as you’d expect—that is, if you happened to live in a surreal world where bears wear shorts and witches speak in rhyme.

But how does it feel to play? Like the other Banjo games, Nuts & Bolts emphasizes exploration. As soon as you arrive, you’ll be smacked in the face by how open the game is—just unlocking the first section could take a minute or an hour, depending on how much you want to muck around. Branching off the hub world are the various Challenge Worlds where you have to complete challenges and overcome obstacles in order to collect jiggies—the key component of any Banjo game.

The first thing that struck most players of the classic games was the size of the levels—they were much larger than many gamers had previously experienced. The same applies to Nuts & Bolts. When I dropped into Nutty Acres, I had the same feeling of awe I had upon entering Treasure Trove Cove for the first time.

It’s quickly apparent that, while running across the level is perfectly feasible, you’d be much better off getting from A to B by building a contraption in Mumbo’s Motors. Just like in the previous Banjo games, in which certain areas of each stage opened up only after you unlocked a teamwork move, aspects of each level are only be accessible after you have collected a particular part to attach to your contraption (for example, spiked tyres instead of the Talon Trot). As you progress, you’ll collect the parts you need to build flying contraptions—and at this point, the levels really open up. Your jaw will hit the floor the first time you soar into the sky and see the whole of Nutty Acres lying beneath you, especially after being daunted by its sheer size when you first entered the level on foot.

But you won’t be spending all your time in a vehicle within each Challenge World, just as you didn’t spend all your time using teamwork moves in the previous games. But after you’ve taken your first contraption out for a spin, you may fall in love with it as if it were another character in the game—except one that’s 100% personal to you. All of the contraptions have a very distinct Banjo feel, being a bit rough around the edges and slightly on the silly side. There are practically no limits to the contraptions you can build, but physics dictate which ones fly and which ones flop. You can check out how your creations handle on Mumbo’s Test-o-Track, and I’ve spent as much time building contraptions for laughs as for utility.

What really makes the game Banjo, though, is the familiar cast of characters and idiosyncratic dialogue. The script is in the hands of Rare’s master editor, the chap who is also responsible for Scribes. However, he really deserves his own diary entry so I’ll save details on how the story is shaping up for another time. There’s a lot I haven’t touched on—not least the graphical effects, the contraption editing tool and the musical score—so at least I won’t be short of topics for the next entry. Thanks for sitting through this one (unless you just skipped to the end, in which case you can bloomin’ well naff off).

Guh-huh!