What's been the reaction to the game outside of Rare so far?
Mayles: People have grasped it a lot quicker than we thought. We thought there might be some kind of, 'This isn't Banjo any more, what's going on?' But this hasn't proved to be the case. People can see what we've done and how we're trying to approach the platform genre in a slightly different way.
The traditional Banjo game was like, 'here's a character, we'll give you some moves but they're fixed abilities, and you use those fixed abilities to try and discover the solution to a designed problem.'
[In the new game] we're giving you a load of abilities, and you're able to combine those abilities however you feel will solve the problem. So rather than it being a case of trying to find the designer's way of doing it, maybe you can find your own way of doing it. I guess that, in a nutshell, is really what the game is, just having the freedom of trying to find your own way of doing things rather than what we tell you.
How do you think the Banjo hardcore will react to the changes?
Mayles: I think the generation of players that have played Banjo before are probably going to be shocked to start with. They're probably going to look at it and say, 'Hang on a sec, this isn't the Banjo I was expecting. What have you done? You've ruined it!'
But then hopefully, in a very short space of time, they'll be able to see what we've done and like it. You're never going to be able to change people's opinions of the old games and how they felt at the time. Obviously you're going to get a certain amount of rose-tinted glasses looking back on the old game being this wonderful masterpiece and nothing was ever wrong with it.
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