Yooka-Laylee: Steve Mayles talk about Yooka and Laylee
Last week, Playtonic finally revealed the game they’ve been working on for the past few months: Yooka-Laylee, a 3D platformer and a spiritual successor to Banjo-Kazooie. On their official website, the developers published an interview of Steve Mayless, the man behind Yooka and Laylee.
In this interview, Steve Mayless explains that the characters were always meant to be called Yooka and Laylee, and it certainly wasn’t a coincidence that the word “Ukulele” could be split in two names like that. What’s more, those names were pretty appropriate: ‘’uku” means “a small brained person” in Hawaian, and “lele” means “to fly” or “to get off of a vehicle”.
For this game, the developers had a gameplay first approach, and ideas for movements and abilities for the characters came naturally at first. Of course, once they settled on the design, it all came out together nicely, and ideas grew naturally from there. For Yooka and Laylee, the developers have lots of moves and abilities based on their natural abilities: colour changing, tongue shooting, tail whipping, sonar blasting, etc.
Steve Mayless had no real problem with the design of Yooka and Laylee (as he was given free reign), and the whole process was rather similar to his previous creations. His initial idea was a tiger, but it was deemed too heroic: after all, his previous characters were always portrayed as reluctant heroes, as underdogs, so he tried to capture something similar for Yooka-Laylee.
The team spent a lot of time thinking about how Laylee would be attached to Yooka. They actually thought of giving Yooka a backpack, but in the end, they chose to adapt the crest on his head so he can carry Laylee there.
Next, Steve Mayless (for whom creating a dynamic was really important) talked about about the personality of the two characters:
– Yooka: the most senstive of the duo, a “good guy” players will be able to relate with;
– Laylee: rather highly strung and crazy, who provides the comic relief.
For Steve Mayless, the “spirit” of characters come from all the experience they go through in a game, but if they’re not appealing to begin with, there’s no potential for “spirit”. Talking about Yooka and Laylee, he’s really looking forward to fleshing out the world with interactions with the other characters.
Finally, he explains why Yooka is “naked”: that’s because nothing looked really good on him. He tried gloves, shoes, a hoody, trousers, knee pads and even leg warmers, but it didn’t work.
Yooka-Laylee (Wii U) will come out on Wii U.
Source: Playtonic
