darkSpyro

https://twitter.com/FromHappyR...25657028452352/

Nicholas Kole (one of S:RT's character designers who re-designed Elora and Bianca, to name some) designed some female elder dragons for the remaster! Needless to say, they were scrapped, but how cool would that have been?

Nicholas went on to make a pretty good point regarding the absence of female dragons:
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It’s an unfortunate artifact of the 90s blindspot that the games have dads, youths, babies and eggs but not a single lady! Redesigning older games really throws some of the oddities and missed opportunities into sharp relief

I understand the need for faithfulness, though. Still, it would have been awesome for them to introduce some female dragons and really make the remaster their own. Those designs are sooo cute too! What do you think?

I mean, everyone was speculating the Gnasty's Loot statue would've FINALLY been a lady, if not an Ignitus cameo. It's really a striking lack of female dragons that ended up carrying over the entire series minus Skylanders(and even then it doesn't have a whole lot of them).

Female dragons always stuck out to me as one of those things that was always gonna be a case of "save it for the tentative Spyro 4", though I would have preferred seeing them in the remake over some of the other changes they made. They look good. B is probably my favourite.

It's a shame they haven't some female elder dragons -.-

Quote: Mouse

Needless to say, they were scrapped, but how cool would that have been?

Slight correction, but he said in the Twitter thread that he only drew these ladies a few days ago!

However, he seemingly implies that they did toss around the idea of changing some of the male dragons into female ones. I'd personally have liked it if they



But... c'est la vie. I hope if there's a Spyro 4 or even DLC for Reignited that they include some female dragons! I also think it'd be funny/interesting for worldbuilding if they tried to write an explanation for them not being there before.

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Confession: Dragon A specifically looks like she'd be pretty hot, if I'm to be completely honest. lmao

I mean, I'd hope so. She wouldn't be much of a dragon if she couldn't heat things up.

:V

Actually, there and there is being fair. We have: Ember, Cho Lei, Ms. Doubtfire, the Great Sea Dragon of legend, and a whopping 3 sidequest NPCs in Shadow Legacy. It's pretty bad, though I guess you can play devil's advocate and say the first half of Classic came out when characters defaulted to guys. LoS is just as bad with Cynder and nobody, plus Nina in ANY female character role - not even Pyra from the scrapped sideplot was female.

Skylanders I think gets away with it because there are plenty of female characters in many roles, though in dragons it stops at Spotlight.

I want that Ember is hating Cynder because she thinks Cynder want Spyro for herself. lol
Ember was always the Amy Rose of Spyro for me. I like both characters. xD

Technically, even the other female dragons that were made between Hero's Tail and Shadow Legacy are dubious on whether they count or if they've been wiped out; Reignited is clearly ignoring Shadow Legacy (SL started the whole "purple dragons are rare and special" thing while Reignited has like six of them at least), and while design-wise Hero's Tail was an influence, I don't think it's all that compatible either (for example, the way Tomas ended up the Dragon Elder leader essentially, when Reignited has him as just a kinda skittish bard and Nestor, Lindar or Argus (aka literally anyone else in the Artisan hub) fit better as a Dragon Elder leader).

I don't think they'd be wiped out or the dragon eggs would've been a FAR bigger deal rather than just Spyro dealing with the thief; I prefer Kole's interpretation that they left to do whatever in another homeworld and the male ones all decided to be silly and got themselves attacked by Gnasty. Considering it happens twice, it might even be a regular occurence to piss off villains and the female elders don't even bother checking on them anymore.

I think retconned would have been a better word for me to use there, I was referring to the established ones from later classic series games.

It be cool to see female elder dragons for future sequels.

I'm not even sure if TfB knows anything about past Insomniac title....
They have only talked about OT Spyro and Skylander Spyro and didn't mentioned GBA trilogy, SL, AHT, ETD and TLOS.
Even Sega acknowledge the bad/mediocre/decent Sonic titles (Sonic 06 in Sonic Generations) and doesn't wipe out characters which had their debut in that game.

I could be wrong, but I thought Spyro 1 confirmed that dragons are created in Beast Maker's magically rather than reproductively? I think that's what the original manual said... so that's their explanation for no females

Geez ... 90's video games were so anti female ...

they can be like some lizards that can change gender

Quote: XSparxX

Geez ... 90's video games were so anti female ...

pffffttt who cares? I was a young girl growing up in the 90s and i loved video games. At no point while playing spyro i thought to myself "huh where's muh female token?????? I can't play this!". I was too busy having fun instead of worrying about female representation

Yeah, I’m glad someone of the fairier sex said this before me, because I might have been biased due to being a male but never have I had the problem of which gender the various characters were and what was the ratio between males and females across the three games.

Plus, can’t speak for all the 90’s games but I don’t think not having many female characters qualifies the classic Spyro trilogy as “anti-female”: if anything the majority of the female characters in it aren’t your sterotypical ones either, like Greta being a secret agent, Bianca being anything but a damsel in distress or even the Sorceress acting as the main antagonist in her game.
I simply considered the cast being cool for what they did, not for what they were.

Not to mention that several characters including enemies, especially from the second and third games, can hardly be indentified as belonging to a specific gender because it simply wasn’t important.
They were whimsical and dream-like, and that’s what mattered.

Speaking of the possibility of seeing female Elders in the future, I’d sure hope so even just for a matter of diversity!
What I really like about those dragonesses is that they could easily pass-off as males if it weren’t for certain key features in their designs, they aren’t sexualized or anything like that.
I was honestly hoping to see some females replacing the re-captured dragons in Gnorc Gnexus, and I admit it was pretty disappointing to see the same models again: seeing certain backgrounds completely altered ruined my immersion and “nostalgia effect” a lot more than how a couple new Elders with something original to say would have.

I mean, as a kid I certainly never had any problem with the elders all being dudes, but on the other hand when games DID include female characters they were hands down always my favourite. Coco and Cynder were hands down my favourite video game characters when I was a kid, largely because they were the only girls. I was absolutely ecstatic any time a level let me play as coco, even if it was just a vehicle one. I remember being super excited in Wrath of Cortex about actually being able to control her, not just in a car, and I went absolutely nuts when I found out you could play Cynder the entire game in DotD. 8 year old me woulda flipped out if they'd known about Coco being fully playable in the N. Sane Trilogy. Heck 20 year old me is still flipping out about that. So like yeah, most kids aren't gonna care that much if they're all dudes, but they absolutely DO notice when games do include female characters.

And tbh I don't think it woulda been That hard to make some of the elders female, I mean they're dragons, not mammals, it's not like they'd need giant dragon tiddies for people to know they're girls, just give em a female voice actor and ppl would guess. Honestly quite a few of the elders I genuinely thought could have been girls at first glance, if I hadn't known they were all dudes I would've probably assumed they were.

never really cared about the gender of the dragons tbh (shrugs) it just doesn't matter to me i guess.

granted, it'd be nice to see some female dregs in a future game/dlc.

Women aren't worthy of being dragons. Males are superior. /s

Hopefully they will make an appearance in the next game. I'd love to see them. I want Ember and Cynder to reappear too.

Quote: HeyitsHotDog

Women aren't worthy of being dragons. Males are superior. /s

What about nonbianary people? Genderfluid people? Do YoU rEaLiZe HoW mAnY pEoPlE aRe BeInG eXcLuDeD????

Quote: ThunderEgg

Quote: HeyitsHotDog

Women aren't worthy of being dragons. Males are superior. /s

What about nonbianary people? Genderfluid people? Do YoU rEaLiZe HoW mAnY pEoPlE aRe BeInG eXcLuDeD????

If they're not male, they're not human. /s

Quote: HeyitsHotDog

Quote: ThunderEgg

Quote: HeyitsHotDog

Women aren't worthy of being dragons. Males are superior. /s

What about nonbianary people? Genderfluid people? Do YoU rEaLiZe HoW mAnY pEoPlE aRe BeInG eXcLuDeD????

If they're not male, they're not human. /s

___oof___

A Hero’s Tail had some female dragons and a gay elder dragon. I’m kind of surprised that TFB didn’t take notes and haven’t added any females in the cutscenes I know that they’re trying to stay faithful , but this is a good kind of change heck they have changed things like jokes and weapons that people did like why won’t they do changes that people actually want ???...Toys for Bob themselves created female dragons that are very bad-azz for Skylanders ( Whirlwind, Spotlight , Echo and Flashwing look them up ) I would be happy if they got included in the next Spyro game and have their home worlds get explored that would be really nice. People also want to see Cynder , Ember and Flame it would be really nice to reintroduce them in a new timeline and build up on them.

I'm curious to see what they do next! If they make more games based off of the Spyro IP, I'd want to see more diversity, too. I mean they already did a good job of including all sorts of body types from thin to fat to muscular in RT, so I'd hope they'd be up to turning the diversity up to 11.

Give me a girl dragon! Give me a gay dragon! Give me a trans dragon! Give me a blind dragon! Give me a dragon in a wheelchair!

Give me a whole LBGT+ dragon community!
AHT was ahead of the times .

Uh... Magnus was a very poorly done stereotype and this is the same game with an incredibly sexist moment with Spyro and the mermaid(maybe count Ember if the Amy behavior isn't convincing). More like it was years behind the curve already.

OhHoho....

I remember that mermaid....

Honestly I was wondering this while playing the first remake.. I think it would be pretty cool to see some female dragons in a future game if they ever make an original!

Yes. But PLEASE don't make them all female stereotypes. I don't want them all to look like pin up models.

Quote: ThunderEgg

Yes. But PLEASE don't make them all female stereotypes. I don't want them all to look like pin up models.

Toys for bob made lots of female characters and most of them aren’t female stereotype so don’t worry about that. I’m a lot more worried about the story of future titles, because their writing isn’t really the most exciting and they try to hard to be too family friendly and I kind of don’t like that.

Now that you mention it, true about their female design choices.

Also, true about the story thing. Skylanders was meant to appeal to a broader audience of younger kids, so I think that might have affected the storytelling. Plus, Activision pumped one of those out a year for a long time, so the rushing didn't help the story at all. I would hope TFB tries to put more emphasis on the artistic side of gaming rather than the money side. It's unclear to me what they'll do, though. As far as I can tell from Wikipedia, they haven't handled and IP that was originally their own for a long time, so I'm doubtful they'll prioritize art over money. (Here's the article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toys_for_Bob).

But we'll see. RT was guaranteed to sell (and is a remake!), so TFB was obviously able to focus more time on things like character design with this last game, meaning they were able to prioritize art and storytelling a little more, so maybe whatever they develop next will be the same way.

Quote: KingMed

A Hero’s Tail had some female dragons and a gay elder dragon. I’m kind of surprised that TFB didn’t take notes and haven’t added any females in the cutscenes I know that they’re trying to stay faithful , but this is a good kind of change heck they have changed things like jokes and weapons that people did like why won’t they do changes that people actually want ???...Toys for Bob themselves created female dragons that are very bad-azz for Skylanders ( Whirlwind, Spotlight , Echo and Flashwing look them up ) I would be happy if they got included in the next Spyro game and have their home worlds get explored that would be really nice. People also want to see Cynder , Ember and Flame it would be really nice to reintroduce them in a new timeline and build up on them.

That gay dragon you speak of liiikely wasnt gay. He really was just a stereotype for laughs.

Quote: HeyitsHotDog

Quote: KingMed

A Hero’s Tail had some female dragons and a gay elder dragon. I’m kind of surprised that TFB didn’t take notes and haven’t added any females in the cutscenes I know that they’re trying to stay faithful , but this is a good kind of change heck they have changed things like jokes and weapons that people did like why won’t they do changes that people actually want ???...Toys for Bob themselves created female dragons that are very bad-azz for Skylanders ( Whirlwind, Spotlight , Echo and Flashwing look them up ) I would be happy if they got included in the next Spyro game and have their home worlds get explored that would be really nice. People also want to see Cynder , Ember and Flame it would be really nice to reintroduce them in a new timeline and build up on them.

That gay dragon you speak of liiikely wasnt gay. He really was just a stereotype for laughs.

Unfortunately, he's the only gay coded Spyro icon we have so far... At least that I can think of off of the top of my head. Who knows. HC time: maybe all of the dragons are gay and it's just normal, so they don't talk about it.

I always thought it was kinda weird that all the dragons were guys, although I don't mind that they didn't change that for the remake, since especially with Spyro 1 they were really, really faithful to the original game in most ways, so idc really. Spyro 2 and 3 were always better about female characters, with Bianca and Sheila and Elora and Zoe all being major protagonists, the Sorceress being the third game's major antagonist, plenty of NPCs being female, lots of the baby dragons in 3 having obvious female names, etc.

I remember watching an LPer once suggest that maybe the dragons in Spyro 1 are like dwarves, where the women aren't seen out as much and if/when they are they look basically the same as male dragons, so maybe some of the dragons in Spyro 1 are actually "biologically female" LOL. I don't really hold that as my own belief but it's a fun suggestion, huh?

I hope we see more female dragons though, personally, in DLC and/or future games. Especially because I loved both Ember and Cynder so much. I think incorporating them into future Spyro games or even just DLC would be really really cool and I'd love to see more elder dragon women and stuff as well.

One of the artists actually suggested female dragons and was turned down. But that might be more of a side effect of the development time preventing extra content, I don't think the intention was 'no fans will be mad if there is a girl'. Again, there are the secrets in Spyro 1 that were teased but went nowhere so far.

I think that could also be due to how they wanted to keep a certain balance between their personal touches and the original elements.
It’s a very... Odd and debatable balance, but still.

I wouldn’t be surprised if we saw female Elders as soon as with the potential DLC.

Female dragons should have their own realm with Ember as the Princess in that realm. It would be funny if they are hating the male dragons. >D

Quote: Drek95

I think that could also be due to how they wanted to keep a certain balance between their personal touches and the original elements.
It’s a very... Odd and debatable balance, but still.

I wouldn’t be surprised if we saw female Elders as soon as with the potential DLC.

I agree. I have mixed feelings about the 'balance' they've been playing around with for their added personal touches -- maybe keep all the original dragons, but ADD ten or twenty female dragons mixed in? Might clutter some levels, but it'd add extra checkpoints.

i hope they add Machinists and Aquifiers as DLC.

I hope they notice how terrible the decision to screw the idea of female dragon elders is!