Have you wondered why Banjo looks so blocky in his newest game Banjo Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts, even though its appearing on XBox 360? A RARE community manager recently explained exactly why Banjo looks so "blocky".

I personally like the look. Probably more than I'd like it if Banjo didn't look so "blocky".

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."

"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,"

chaos via videogamer.com »