I dunno if it has to be necessarily cartoony animals, but certainly character based, and ever since the Kinect Sports era, or even earlier with the avatars, Rare's focus has moved onto general experiences that the player can be a part of, regardless of who they're playing as. We're no longer playing as a specific character with their own specific story, personality, and attitude that we can journey alongside, but instead are crafting our own stories, personalities, and attitudes onto the avatar we're controlling and becoming directly, like, yeah, an avatar. We're still playing avatar games from Rare, except now we're pirates or fairy people or what have you. I think that's whats getting to old Rare fans, because it's not just Banjo and Conker, it's also Joanna Dark, Vela, Kameo, etc, several different art and playstyles, but they all felt signature "Rare" because of the characters.
And that has changed, and I agree, I don't think it's a bad thing either. Just trying to identify the pieces that feel missing for many fans. And this applies to the industry at large, even Nintendo doesn't seem to be on board the character driven games so much, at least not nearly like they used to.
