New Yooka-Laylee Trailer Features Shovel Knight
By Alexander Pan 25 September 2016
Playtonic Games releases a new trailer for the upcoming Banjo Kazooie spiritual successor Yooka-Laylee, revealing that the game will feature a surprise cameo from Shovel Knight.
Ever since Playtonic Games’ Yooka-Laylee became one of the fastest Kickstarter games to reach $1 million in crowd-funding, the project has received a significant amount of attention from the gaming community. Developed by former Rare Ware staff and touted as a spiritual successor to the beloved Banjo Kazooie, it remains to be seen whether Playtonic Games’ upcoming title will be able to capture the spirit of the aforementioned bear and bird title. But based on a new trailer, it appears that Yooka-Laylee has nailed that beloved Banjo Kazooie self-referential humor by incorporating a cameo of a certain shovel-wielding hero.
In a new Yooka-Laylee character trailer released during EGX 2016, it was revealed that the game will feature a surprise appearance from Shovel Knight, the hero of Yacht Club Games’ 2D side-scrolling platformer of the same name. The trailer depicts a short-but-funny exchange between Yooka, Laylee, and the shovel-wielding knight, highlighting some of Rare’s trademark irreverent sense of humor. Check out the new trailer right here:
In addition to a cameo from Shovel Knight, the trailer also features a number of NPC’s and major characters in the game, such as the main antagonist Captial B (who is fittingly a bee), the ability-teaching Trowzer, the arcade machine-guarding Rextro, the human/octopus ally Dr. Puzz, the male cannon with eyes Blasto, and the helpful wooden mine cart Kartos.
With so many characters, and with many more still to come, it appears that Playtonic Games is making good on its promise to make Yooka-Laylee bigger than Banjo-Kazooie, even if it meant taking an extra few months. But taking into account what has been revealed of the game’s characters (surprise cameos or otherwise), music, and environments, it makes some sense why Playtonic Games would choose to delay Yooka-Laylee in order to ensure that the game is as good as possible before release.
Based on our own E3 hands-on preview of Yooka-Laylee, Playtonic Games’ aim of capturing the spirit and aesthetic of Banjo-Kazooie has been nothing short of successful so far, and the inclusion of Shovel Knight only serves to bolster the final product. There is still a few months to wait before the game is finally released, but it appears that Yooka-Laylee is definitely living up to the hype as one of E3 2016’s – if not one of 2017’s – best indie games.
Yooka-Laylee is scheduled for release on March 2017 for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PC, and Wii U.
Source: Team 17 – YouTube (via GameSpot)
