Rare explains Banjo's blocky look

The designers made a conscious effort to retain an angular look.

In a post over on the Xbox.com forums, Rare community manager George Kelion (under his XBL gamertag Monkeythumbz) has offered an insight into the "blocky" visual style seen in the developer's upcoming Xbox 360 video game Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts.

"Banjo's new look is meant to be self-referential," explained Kelion. "Videogames have developed their own visual language - from the pixels of 8-bit gaming, through the parallax backgrounds of 16-bit to the blocky, low-poly designs of 32 and 64 bit gaming. We reckon it's fun (and a little bit cool) to purposefully incorporate and celebrate these themes as an artistic endeavour."

Kelion also shared the thoughts of Steve Mayles, Banjo team's lead creative artist and brother of Gregg Mayles.

"We went down the normal route of adding more polygons, smoothing things off, but in the process lost some of the strong form of the N64 characters so we made a conscious effort to retain an angular look, even exaggerating it in places, that in turn echoes the angular, blocky construction of the vehicles," said Mayles.

So now you know why the game is blocky. We happen to like the style, but let us know what you think in the comments section below.