VideoGamer.com: This is what you're working on?
NB: What I'm personally working on at the moment is cool. I think it's a kind of game I love. Absolutely.
VideoGamer.com: Is it a gamer's game? When you look at Banjo and Viva Pinata.
NB: That's a difficult one to call. You see, I'm a gamer and I love this kind of game. So I'd say yes, but I know there are some that would definitely say no. It might be a cultural thing. If you were European or English and said is that a gamer's game, I'd say yes. If you were American I'd say no, I think, but maybe that's my take on America. I don't know.
VideoGamer.com: It's not an FPS then?
NB: You're fishing too much now (laughs). What I think is really interesting, really cool stuff. Seeing other people interested in it that I wouldn't have expected to have an interest in it. It won't be too long before you hear about it.
VideoGamer.com: Does the same thing apply to Perfect Dark then?
NB: Yeah, pretty much. The thing with us. These things don't go away forever. Everybody probably thought Banjo had, then of course Banjo comes along and it's not quite what anybody expected. We quite like doing that. It might be a new IP. It might be an existing IP. I guess part of our job within MGS, and it's the same for Lionhead, is, you've got to try and lead the innovation a bit and work with the hardware guys and work with Microsoft on where they're seeing holes in their portfolio or where they want to go with something. And they're really good because they actually continue and go "well, we kinda want something on this." Then the designers go and suck their teeth, cogitate for several weeks or a month or something, and come up with sometimes ludicrous ideas, and sometimes off kilter ideas, and everybody goes "actually, yeah". I think we have that luxury that we can do that. Everybody always thinks of Rare as that AAA gamer's game, Nintendo style. In reality what we've always been about is making very popular games. As games have got harder and longer to produce and much more costly to produce, that's become much more difficult. So of course what we do then is go off on these tangents and say "well, let's get Animal Crossing and cross it with some weird Mexican gardening simulator". I remember the first time I saw the original Viva Piņata. I literally, I'm not going to use web speak but you could walk out the barn with WTF written above your head in big letters. Then you actually play it and you're like "Can I have a look? Can I grab a build?" It was the same with Banjo.
VideoGamer.com: Does that mean that Rare going forward isn't going to be doing the typical hardcore games that you're known for?
NB: No it means that you're going to see both. I personally, looking at Banjo and having played it quite a lot. It's a gamer's game. It's a hardcore game. I reckon it is. The reason I say that is because the building gets so competitive in multiplayer it's insane. The first few hours you kind of wrestle with it a bit. The VP guys are going "somebody built a space shuttle the other week" and you think, how the hell did they build a space shuttle? And they go "well they used that and this and these work like that". So I can do that with them? I never thought I could do that. I ended up building what can only be described as a flying bed stead covered in guns. So get the jet engines, turn them on their sides like jet packs. Cover it in guns. One of my other mates built this thing that looked like an Apache gun ship. And flew like one as well. It's all physics based. I thought, come on, I must be able to build something else crazy. So I managed to be build this giant Katherine wheel out of jet engines. With Banjo sat in the middle of it it's very hard to control. It didn't last very long because it got smashed to pieces, but it was fast. It worked like a Katherine wheel but you could steer it around the levels.
And you think, what the hell are people in the community going to do with it. So in that way, loads of people say to me that they play Guitar Hero. They always think of Guitar Hero as a broad appeal game, but I always say Guitar Hero is a hardcore game. I think Banjo is going to be the same. It's got all the Banjo-ness that the hardcore will like and it'll probably be appealing to kids, but at it's heart, the online part of it and the competitive nature of building things is very very hardcore. It breeds that competitive nature from that bizarre set of almost Lego-like building blocks.
I reckon VP, it's not actually a hardcore game, but the hardcore love it. The amount of people that come to me and say VP is my dirty little gaming secret. If you're talking hardcore in terms of a PD style hardcore. You're going to see that kind of stuff. I'm not going to say what. That kind of stuff is never ever off the cards, any more than something with such broad appeal as UNO. That's not to say we have any LIVE Arcade card games in the works. For us it's just about what's a good game. What appeals to a lot of people? What are a lot of people going to fund fun? What are they going to get a lot of mileage out of? I guess that's one of the real key things for us at the moment? What's going to give people a lot of value for money by a lot of play time. They can still feel like they've completed it in eight hours but if they want to play it for 800 hours they still can. GTA I guess pioneered it with the sandbox thing. Banjo is sandboxy in another way. The stuff I'm getting excited about is sandboxy in a different way. So that seems to be a big thing at the moment. People love to customise things. It makes debugging it a nightmare. So, sorry to be vague.
Check back tomorrow for part three of our mammoth interview with Nick Burton, where he'll continue to talk at length about all things Rare.
Exclusive interview with Rare graphics god! Part two. - VideoGamer.com