darkSpyro

What do you love about this game? It gets **** on alot, with glitches and those GOD FORSAKEN "SOUL VS SOULESS" POSTS ON /V/, but whats your favourite thing about it? For me its probably how cool it was to buy this game, and experience all 3 games as one large entity, it was so godamn fun. Whats yours?

While Spyro 3 generally has noticeably worse animation than the other two games due to having Sanzaru rush the game (not their fault though really), they do deserve credit for what they did with Moneybags. In Spyro 3, he has unique animations for most conversations with him. Like he'll do little hand gestures specific to the individual conversation or make particular faces. It even extends to both his answers to the "Yes" or "No" responses you give when he asks you to pay him. He doesn't do this in Spyro 2.

And in general, the animation in the game is just very praiseworthy, especially on Spyro himself. He's one of the best animated cartoon game characters I've ever seen.

Also I just generally love how Spyro controls

Also the fauns in Fracture Hills are better than the original game. Like it's hypocritical for me to say since I generally think they should have kept designs and voices of NPCs more similar to their originals, but those are the exception, lol. I think their new designs are adorable and I love the variety of accents they have.

As a self-proclaimed artist, I appreciate the effort they put into making each dragon unique in Spyro 1. Don't get me wrong, I like the original designs, too. I just also feel like it was a massive undertaking to re-do EVERY dragon with unique animations and appearances.

I never got why they redesigned all of them, it seemed like a bit of a waste honestly. I would of loved to see whats behind that door instead...

Hope I’m not too late to express my love for these remakes.
Think I can sum up what I absolutely adored about the Reignited Trilogy in three points:

1) The variety: I was amazed by how TfB managed to take all the Elders from the first game and give them a completely unique look but to stop there would be quite reductive.
That was a welcomed suprise indeed, as I originally thought they would have created around 10 unique dragon models and then play around with colors, animations and accessories to fill the cast, but both Toys for Bob and Sanzaru and whoever else worked on the project went the extra mile for it.
This trilogy offers and absurd amounts of unique assets in terms of models, musics, sound and visual effects and textures which are rarelly reused throught the three titles (unlike with the N. Sane Trilogy where just like in the original games many themes and models repeat themselves multiple times).
I know we should have expected no less given the source material but it’s still amazing to just stop and look at how much time was invested to give every character and location a very distinct look and personality (regardless if it works or not).

2) The non-realistic lighting: one of the aspects which worried me the most when we first heard about the possibility of Spyro remakes being in development was how they would have handled the lighting.
Nowadays the realistic and dynamic global lighting tends to offer little to no chances for more artistic and atmospheric choices (not to mention it usually dulls the majority of the colors a lot and often feels more intrusive than it should be), and Insomniac proved to be a master in handling both the general and the local one, especially in places where there were no actual light sources.
The vertex lighting greately helped setting the whimsical and enchanted mood we all know and love and I was frankly shocked to see it returning for the remakes (V.V. handled that aspect well with Crash too, but I think TfB managed to provide a better outcome): I doubt it’s absolutely faithful to the originals both in terms of placement and colors, but it’s sprinkled here and there to the point where I think it captures the classic atmosphere wonderfully.

Some examples I remember fondly are the bright purple small closed room right behind the first cannon in Zephyr and basically the entirety of Magic Crafters and Metropolis, which are full of yellow, orange and pink lamps and gems.
There usually is a source for the various types of lighting in the remakes, but that doesn’t weaken the result.

3) TfB’s touches: one thing I was absolutely adamant about since the first rumors was how much I wanted the remakes to stay as faithful to the original games as possible.
From the models, to the music (which I initially believed should have just been the old tracks) to the colors I just wanted everything to be recreated 1:1 with better textures, polygons and effects.
Nothing less but also nothing more.
I knew those games very well and was sure any small change would have impacted my experience negatively, as I would have constantly compared it with the original material without even thinking about doing it.

It was clear from the very first screenshots, however, that the team had a quite different idea of how the trilogy would have been treated: a still faithful but creative reinterpretation with lots of artistic liberties.
It took me quite a while to accept that idea, as I’ve had my clear vision of a potential remake for year, until one day one single image changed everything: it was one of the first artworks posted by TfB’s Facebook page, the one depicting the small cavity you fall into when you go inside the hollowed tree in Mysty Bog.
I was blown away by the fact that if was full of carvings, vegetation, mushrooms and even a small pond of water and yet it had the exact same shape it had on the PlayStation.
Following that, I realized I could have been in for something truly special and turned out I was right: I spent the entire game wondering how they would have reimagined that area or character and had this constant expression which was a mix of happiness and amazement.

Visiting Dark Hollow (which I thought would have looked like the early build we saw of it) and being greeted with all those intense colors and warm lights, exploring the lush new Zephyr and reaching the breathtaking crystal rocks of Midnight Mountain are all experiences I will never forget and probably wouldn’t have happened if the developers chose a different approach.
It was simply magical.

There are many, many, many other small things which made me love the remakes, but those were those “WOAH” ones which made me think I was dreaming because certainly a game that beautiful couldn’t really exist.

I love how each dragon in the first one look different