The Next Playtonic Games Protagonist

Prior to the launch of their debut effort, Yooka-Laylee, Playtonic Games outlined a plan to create a shared Universe across all of their forthcoming games. An overarching story of good vs. evil, spanning entirely different genres.

It has the potential to be revolutionary for publishers across the board. After all, Marvel has seen an incredible amount of success with their shared-universe movie project. Doesn’t it make sense for video game developers to get a piece of that pie? It allows the developers a method to keep popular characters alive without constantly giving them new games (so they can try new things), while making the eventual party cross-overs all the more appetizing.

Shared Universes in the world of gaming are seldom seen. Although a simplified version of the concept can be seen in Diddy Kong Racing, which obviously starred Diddy Kong, and pre-dated the releases of Banjo-Kazooie and Conker’s Pocket Tales.

As part of the planned shared universe, Gavin Price revealed in an interview with Game Informer that some of the non-playable characters found in Yooka-Laylee will receive starring roles in future games.

So this raises a question. Which characters from Yooka-Laylee are most likely to become future main-protagonists? Let’s take a look at three potentials!

Number Three: Rextro Sixtyfourus
I hesitated in putting Rextro on this list as he is technically a core member of the Yooka-Laylee cast. Rextro appears in every world in Yooka–Laylee, as well as the game’s hub world; Hivory Towers allowing Yooka and Laylee to play his arcade games if they have the collected the Play Token!

Rextro is a retro throwback, a dimwitted dinosaur with limited memory, left in the prehistoric Nintendo 64 era while all his friends left him behind to play ‘on a line’.

Rextro was designed with early Rare titles in mind, mainly from the N64 era, but creator Mark Stevenson also wanted to capture the era of SNES games such as Donkey Kong Country that he had previously worked on. He’d be the perfect character for Playtonic to use if they wanted to revisit their retro 2D Platforming glory days.

Number Two: Clara
Clara, the skeleton girl pops up a total of three times in Yooka–Laylee. She’s an adventurer, who explores the world with her friend potty mouth, a talking pot. She was designed by Kev Bayliss, who previously worked on games like Diddy Kong Racing, Killer Instinct and Star Fox Adventures.

She often finds herself getting into trouble. Whether she’s stuffed inside of potty mouth and on the cusp of being cooked and eaten, or just treasure hunting for precious artefacts. Her exploratory nature would allow for an easy transition into a plethora of different genres. However she puts me in mind of another explorer. Rare’s classic character: Sabreman.

Perhaps Playtonic should spiritually resurrect the cancelled Sabreman Stampede?

Number One: Schell
Schell pops up in Galleon Galaxy to ask Yooka and Laylee to help infiltrate and disarm a dangerous Blamphibians weapon by destroying some shields. Upon completing their task, Schell begins to tell Yooka and Laylee of her plans to launch an attack on the Blamphibians home world…. That sounds like the seeds of a plot if I’ve ever heard one!

Schell, who wears an armoured space suit has a character design that is almost certainly influenced by forgotten Rare classic: Jet Force Gemini. Which just happens to be the first game that Gavin Price, the founder of Playtonic Games worked on while he was at Rare.

As the game’s only seemingly human character, she could also easily step into Joanna Dark’s shoes for a 1st Person shooter. After all, Playtonic have confirmed in prior interviews that fans have requested them to spiritually revive other Rare gems!

Which Yooka-Laylee characters would you like to see in the drivers seat of a future game? Let us know in the comments!