Rare Director Talks About Bringing Back Beloved IP to Xbox One

[Salty Hippo]

Originally Posted by kinaibhlan

According to Wikipedia the producer/designer of Banjo Kazooie still works at Rare so here's hoping it is a success, I just hope they can get Grant Kirkhope as nobody can make catchy and fun music like him.

Gregg Mayles. He's the designer of both my favorite 2D and 3D platformers ever (DKC2 and B-K). Probably Rare's best asset in its history as far as designers go, and he's still there. I wish the man was given total freedom to make the Banjo-Threeie we've always wanted.

Originally Posted by DementedSun

I never understood the fans who say "So-and-so is no longer there, so all the future games will be BAD!"

There are other skilled folks instead of the ones you grew up with that could, and surely would, do Banjo justice. Look at how perfect Donkey Kong Country Returns is, and that's a whole different company.

My only worry about the new folks at Rare is the possibility that they might have been hired with KINECT in mind, for their "kinect skills". Remember that 2009 was the year when came along the decision to transform Rare into a Kinect-focused studio, and a lot of key people left in that year or shortly after, from David Wise and Grant Kirkhope to Chris Seavor and George Andreas. I have serious doubts whether today's Rare has what it takes to make a great core game. And the fact that they outsourced KI in the first place and didn't even consider giving Season 2 to Rare didn't alleviate any of those doubts.

I know a fighting game in today's industry needs the right developers to succeed. It needs people who understand fighting games and the FGC, so the decision to not use Rare for KI is understandable. It would be understandable even if Rare still had all of its original KI staff, because let's be honest, the classic KIs are far from being well balanced fighting games. I wish I could believe there was a team over there capable of making a GREAT platformer or FPS, but I just can't because they don't give us any reason to believe so.

[Walecs]

Robin Beanland is still at Rare, though. He made an awesome score for Conker, he'd do a great one for Banjo-Kazooie for sure. Not as great as Kirkhope would do, but he'd still do a good job, I think.

[BanjoPL]

Originally Posted by Walecs

Robin Beanland is still at Rare, though. He made an awesome score for Conker, he'd do a great one for Banjo-Kazooie for sure. Not as great as Kirkhope would do, but he'd still do a good job, I think.

I can't imagine Banjo game without Grant's music...

[Breegullbeak]

I'm pretty sure Robin and Grant both worked on Nuts & Bolts before Grant left, but most of the music was actually done by Robin if I recall.

[Ty-chan]

Originally Posted by BanjoPL

I can't imagine Banjo game without Grant's music...

Revenge, Pilot, Nuts & Bolts.

N&B did have GK, but Beanland did much more work as stated by the G himself. He had to work more on TIP while Beanland handled N&B.

[qwertykins76]

Aside from Spiller's Harbour and Breegull Beach though, the music for Grunty's Revenge wasn't that well received. However, I think both of them -- Breegull Beach especially -- are passable Kirkhope songs. So it's possible, especially if Grant give's the composer some pointers, which I'm certain he did for Grunty's Revenge; all the songs still use the Devil's Interval.

[Ty-chan]

Originally Posted by qwertyo76

Aside from Spiller's Harbour and Breegull Beach though, the music for Grunty's Revenge wasn't that well received. However, I think both of them -- Breegull Beach especially -- are passable Kirkhope songs. So it's possible, especially if Grant give's the composer some pointers, which I'm certain he did for Grunty's Revenge; all the songs still use the Devil's Interval.

I never noticed Grant was fond of using augmented fifths... But I couldn't tell you any note or chord by ear.

Also I love the entire Revenge soundtrack... why haters b hatin

[qwertykins76]

Originally Posted by GoldenJiggies

I never noticed Grant was fond of using augmented fifths... But I couldn't tell you any note or chord by ear.

Neither can I. Nor could I tell you what the heck an augmented fifth is. But I've listened to and worked with Banjo-Kazooie music for so long that I didn't need the Guest Grumps special to figure out that almost every song in B-K and B-T starts on the C or G notes, and revolves around them.

Speaking of which, watch that if you haven't. That's where he says he uses the tritone. He talks about how since Banjo and Kazooie have sort of opposite personalities, he uses The Devil's Interval. (Scroll down here and look for a word wall that starts with "I'll talk about the overtone series, then!" This person explains it very nicely.)

Although, from the few songs I looked at from DK64, he uses it there too....

[Ty-chan]

An augmented fifth is the devil's interval qwertyoooooooo.

[JohnyT94]

Originally Posted by Andre

"It’s not about remaking something that we’ve loved fifteen years ago, ten years ago. It’s about looking where the industry is going, looking at what we can do that’s different, because we’re first party studio for Microsoft, and our job is to make great experiences that showcase our platform. If we can do that, and it fits an IP that we own and we’re very fond of, then of course, we look at that option."

That kind of quote does worry me a bit actually. I think the industry has this idea that people just don't want to play platformers anymore. Perhaps that's correct, but Mario is still incredibly popular, and there's a vacuum for a new great platformer on a next-gen console. If they got their shit together, and put out Banjo Threeie, I think it would be very well received. We'll see at E3, I guess.

This. I get the strong impression that Rare wants to 'showcase the platform' -- AKA kinect. Whatever franchise they bring back, it will involve voice commands and body gestures. Banjo is not coming back, and if it does, it'll be worse than Nuts & Bolts.

[Captin Banjo]

Originally Posted by JohnyT94

This. I get the strong impression that Rare wants to 'showcase the platform' -- AKA kinect. Whatever franchise they bring back, it will involve voice commands and body gestures. Banjo is not coming back, and if it does, it'll be worse than Nuts & Bolts.

Never give up hope.

I never gave up hope for a sequel to BattleFront and we are finally getting one.

Banjo-Kazooie won't die. The last true game in the series came out in the year 2000. 14 years later and people are still here asking questions. Where is our true successor? People want a true platform game.

Microsoft have become so complacent and arrogant that they think they can tell the consumer what they want. They can't. They learnt the hard way with the Xbox One DRM and soon enough, when Sony have sold 50 million more PS4s than Xbox Ones, some genius at Microsoft is going to scratch his head and remember Rare.

Rare and all it stands for. True innovation. Quality and excellence. IPs beloved by millions.

And Microsoft will finally bend to the will of it's customer.

[Salty Hippo]

Millions? I don't think Rare's fanbase is anywhere near that big. And that includes people who aren't necessarily fans of Rare, but do remember the IPs fondly. I doubt that number reaches even 500k.

Rare doesn't have lots of market recognition (in the eyes of the public). Never had. Not even in the Rareware era. It has always been a secretive company that did whatever the **** they wanted without caring too much about marketing their products or their company as a brand. The completely relied on Nintendo to publish their games, and that's why those games sold well. But even in that period, if you look at how well RARE's IPs did, you'll see that their numbers were never even close to games where the IP was owned by others (DKC, Goldeneye, DK64, DKR). The Banjos and Perfect Dark and KI and JFG all sit in the 1m-3m range at best, some not even reaching 1 million, like Conker and KI Gold.

Following the acquisition by Microsoft, it truly showed how obscure Rare was to the eye of the average consumer. How many copies did Ghoulies sell? Barely 100k? Conker flopped once again. Kameo and PDZ did decent numbers but only because they were launch titles. The first Piñata did ok, but TiP and N&B were disasters in the half-million mark.

Makes me wonder sometimes if Phil Spencer isn't telling the truth when he says the decision to pursuit Kinect was all Rare's. But even if it was I don't take the blame away from Microsoft, they've done a horrible, horrible job managing the studio and marketing these games. Never forget James Thomas openly criticizing the disparity in the split for marketing money for Gears and TiP. One was a well-estabilished IP that would sell millions anyway, the other was an IP that MS actually OWNED and that didn't really cater to Xbox's dudebro audience and needed all the marketing it could get.

That decade or so of mismanagement and failures led to the company and its IPs to be even more obscure today. We have a whole new generation of young players that have absolutely no clue what Banjo, Conker and Perfect Dark are. Microsoft and Rare know that. I doubt we'll ever see these games revived unless they come up with some stupid idea to attract a broader audience, like they tried with N&B. They'll never cater to us again. How many are we anyway, the true hardcore fans? A couple hundred? I see threads about Rare at GAF these days and they barely go longer than 1 or 2 pages. It's depressing.

[Beta64]

"...because we’re first party studio for Microsoft, and our job is to make great experiences that showcase our platform. If we can do that, and it fits an IP that we own and we’re very fond of, then of course, we look at that option."

So Microsoft doesn't let Rare do what they want unless it makes their console look good? Banjo-Kazooie would make ANY console look good... even Ouya. I wish Rareware could return in the same way as Telltale Games and Double Fine Productions did. Rare is basically going down the same road as LucasArts.