Interviews// Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts

Do you think you've got the balance right with the vehicle building? Some of it looks quite complex...

Elissa Miller: From playing it myself... when you work on a game, you think, “Oh, it's a really good idea”, but you're not sure how it's going to pan out. Obviously it can be quite complex at times, but I think that the way you progress through it is it spoon feeds you.

Neill Harrison: If you play it from the beginning, it's all accessible. You're only given a few components and you're given the tutorial and it's explained how to build. It's quite a while into the game before you have the ability to build complex things.


As a kid, I was one of those guys who'd get complicated Mechano or Lego and think, “Cool, I can build all sorts of cool stuff with this!” Then after half an hour I'd get bored and go back to banging action figure's heads into the wall. Will it still be fulfilling for that kind of person?

Neill Harrison: Yeah. As I say, you get given the blueprints by Humba, and there's actually the L.O.G.'s (Lord Of the Game) choice challenges, where you're given a vehicle to compete in. And you can buy blueprints if you don't want to build them. There's also sort of part-built chassis that are useful for younger kids either maybe don't want to be bothered building it or aren't able to but want to feel like they've built their vehicle. So, they'll maybe take their chassis and slip some wheels on, and off they go.


So, you wouldn't say you've gone as far as the creation being the core of the game?

Neill Harrison: Yeah, it is kind of the core of the game, but there are other ways to play it if you really don't want to.

Elissa Miller: But, because you've got the online element to it as well, so you can share stuff with your friends, it becomes quite addictive. You see a friend get a better score than you, then you want to get a better score than them... You just keep competing, and before you know it you've been spending seven hours on that one challenge.

Even myself, I wasn't sure... I love the idea of the game, but I wasn't sure how much time I would spend editing the vehicles. And, actually, just playing it the past week kind of solidly I've realised that I do really enjoy that part of it. Probably more so than using L.O.G.'s choice vehicles and stuff.