Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts

Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts is the next game in the series, taking place eight years after the events on Banjo-Tooie. It is currently in development and is expected to be released in 25 November, 2008. It was announced at Microsoft's X06 in 2006 at Barcelona, Spain. Before the name was announced, the game was commonly called Banjo-Threeie.

Plot
Set eight years after Banjo-Tooie, the plot of the game involves Banjo and Gruntilda competing to determine the true owner of Spiral Mountain. Banjo wishes to preserve his home while Gruntilda hatches an urban development scheme to replace the vegetated area with towers and malls. A new character named Lord of Games (also known as LOG) attempts to settle the conflict between the two by devising a series of worlds and challenges. LOG transports the other characters to Showdown Town, his headquarters, and starts the contest. The winner would be set to own Spiral Mountain; the loser must endure eternal hardship at LOG's video game factory. While Banjo and Kazooie seek to win by completing the challenges, Grunty uses her powers and abilities to try and stop the duo. An army of mechanical Gruntbots also assist the witch in her goal.

Other plots
On April 1, 2008, Rare released five possible plots with plot 4 being correct. The plots were:

Plot One
Banjo and Grunty team up against a new threat, falling in love in the process. Sexy post-transformation Grunty makes a return and proves irresistible to our heroic bear, much to Kazooie's disgust. Can the mismatched trio defeat their fire-breathing foe?

Plot Two
Kazooie is abducted by aliens and Banjo heads out to search the cosmos. Partway through his low-gravity exploits, he discovers who's taken her... and it's a familiar face from the Rare archives who has been 'turned to the green side' by Grunty.

Plot Three
Banjo and Kazooie travel back through time in pursuit of the witch's giant T.I.T.Grunty drives her Time Interfering Truck back to before the bear and bird met. The duo must reintroduce themselves and relearn everything they know in a completely new way!

Plot Five
War comes to Spiral Mountain, and Banjo becomes a reluctant leader. Ever seen a Jinjo Tank? Or Grunty's Grappling Grenadier Grunts? You will when you take on our innovative RTS-platformer hybrid campaign.

Plot Two's story resembles Super Mario Galaxy's plot, and Plot Three is very similar to Grunty's Revenge, while Plot Five is a nod to Halo Wars and Conker's Bad Fur Day.

Gameplay
The game is not a traditional third-person action and platform game like the previous entries in the series, but instead utilizes vehicles to transport Banjo and Kazooie around the levels. According to Mayles about 20 percent of the game retains traditional platforming elements. There are however no conventional "moves" for Banjo and Kazooie to use.

Vehicles

Vehicles play a prominent role in the game. The player can build them from over 1,600 different components available, such as body panels, engines, wheels, wings, propellers, fuel and weapons. It is also specified that vehicle presets from these parts would be available.[5] "Banjoprints" of these machines and their statistics have been revealed. They include the Banjo 4x4, Banjo Boat, Banjo Copter and Banjo Plane. Gruntilda also operates a vehicle called the Grunty Coco-Carrier.[7] The vehicles can be built in many shapes, as demonstrated in a video where one was constructed to resemble an 8-bit Mario sprite that was later blasted apart.

Items

The original teaser trailer showed several gameplay elements from the previous games that will be included in the upcoming game, including music notes, honeycombs, and puzzle pieces ("Jiggys"). The Jiggys are among several golden objects that are collected to progress in the Banjo-Kazooie games and will once again be used in Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts. In an edition of Scribes, Rare said that "the player will determine the difficulty level by how they approach the Jiggy tasks", hinting at what the game would offer.[8] It was later specified that the challenge level of these tasks depends on how the player builds the vehicles. Other items include honeycomb pieces, which are used to refill Banjo and Kazooie's health gauges in the games. Musical notes can be collected in Banjo-Kazooie to unlock note doors, and in Banjo-Tooie were used to unlock new moves for Banjo and Kazooie. For Nuts & Bolts it has been stated that the notes will be used as a currency to buy parts for the vehicles, with gold, silver, and copper notes worth different amounts. A new item, tentatively called "Mumbo's magic wrench" was also revealed. It plays a significant role, as it is used to both build and move objects via a yellow beam fired from the device. The wrench is also stated to be used by Kazooie as a primary weapon for on-foot gameplay, sending enemies magic and electric bolts, and other not yet revealed features.

Abilities

Various abilities from Banjo-Kazooie and Banjo-Tooie will not be at Banjo and Kazooie's disposal for Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts. This approach was first mentioned in the December 20 of Rare's Scribes column, which stated, "Banjo and Kazooie haven't got many of the abilities that they used in previous games".[8] The ability introduced in Banjo-Tooie to split up Banjo and Kazooie as separate playable characters will be unavailable in Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts. A previous Scribes mentioned that they "thought about using two different controllers" to account for the new moves and all the old moves as well, but that a simpler system had been used for the game. It was eventually revealed that the approach involves using vehicles instead of the previous attack moves. According to Rare, the in-game explanation is that the older abilities were taken away by Gruntilda.[9]

The player can disembark from a vehicle and explore the environment in a manner similar to that of the previous games. In a screenshot, Banjo and Kazooie are seen walking on a tightrope crossing a river.

Multiplayer

The idea of multiplayer options was first discussed at the Rare Witch Project, where Mayles said that there would be multiplayer capability in the game unlike that found in Banjo-Tooie. He also noted that there would not be any first-person shooter sections in the traditional action-adventure game. It was later revealed that multiplayer will be purely vehicle-based where players will be able to take their custom built vehicles to Xbox Live and compete in online races and activities.[6] An announcement stated that the game features a co-operative mode and offline multiplayer options.

Features

 * Multiplayer has been confirmed to be a part of the new game. But it has been stated that it will not be the same as Banjo-Tooie's multiplayer. It was later revealed that multiplayer would focus on vehicle gameplay such as races and other challenges.
 * Vehicles are expected to be a major part of the game. There have been many screenshots released displaying images including blueprints. Some vehicles are:
 * Banjo 4x4 (4 wheel drive)
 * Banjo plane
 * Grunty Coco-Carrier
 * Banjo Copter
 * Banjo Boat
 * Transformations have been confirmed and will this time be performed by Mumbo Jumbo along with his other role.
 * Minimaps and a world map have been included in many screenshots and videos.

Returning Characters
A "small" number of characters have been announced.
 * Banjo
 * Kazooie
 * Gruntilda
 * Mumbo Jumbo
 * Humba Wumba
 * Jolly Roger
 * Bottles
 * Blubber
 * Jinjos
 * Weldar
 * Tiptup
 * Clanker
 * Loggo
 * Mr. Vile
 * Mr. Patch
 * "The snowman from Freezeezy Peak". It is unknown if this is Sir Slush or the huge snowman.
 * Tooty, the Spiral Mountain vegetables, Jamjars or Brentilda
 * Klungo
 * Mr. Fit
 * Boggy
 * Soggy
 * Groggy
 * Moggy
 * Golden Goliath
 * Weldar
 * George Ice Cube
 * Mildred Ice Cube
 * Gobi
 * Dingpot

New Characters

 * Pikelet
 * Trophy Thomas
 * Lord of the Games (LOG)
 * Piddles

Worlds & Levels
Many levels have been introduced in BK:N&B, many new, while some old levels from previous games being redesigned in a whole new way.

Rare has announced that there will be 6 new levels (not including the hub world and SM) featuring 15 challenges. The new levels will now be inside artificially created spheres that will appear to be a dome while inside the world. Like the other console games, the levels can be accesed from the hub world and themed music will play when neared.
 * Showdown Town - the new hub world
 * Nutty Acres - an open artificial grassland level
 * Jiggoseum - a level that will be themed around sports
 * Banjo Land - a museum of all levels from the first 2 games
 * Terrarium - a space-themed level
 * (name unannounced) - a level with polystyrene buildings and inflatable sheep
 * (name unannounced) - a computer-themed level

Trailers
The Teaser and Official trailers. UaKtkOWu5fQ OzPigWbB2kI

For more videos on Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts, please see the Nuts & Bolts playlist on our YouTube channel here.

Screenshots
15 screenshots were scheduled to be shown at Microsoft's annual Gamer's Day but were leaked early and are shown below. The last five are "banjoprints" (blueprints) for new vehicles.