How Spyro: A Realm Beyond Is Reviving a Beloved Game Series the Right Way

Spyro is back with a bunch of new skills. Toys for Bob Chief Creative Officer and Studio Head Paul Yan and Associate Creative Director Lou Studdert spoke to ComingSoon’s Tyler Treese about the studio’s approach to Spyro: A Realm Beyond. The first mainline Spyro game in nearly two decades, A Realm Beyond sees Spyro gain […] The post How Spyro: A Realm Beyond Is Reviving a Beloved Game Series the Right Way appeared first on ComingSoon.net - Movie Trailers, TV & Streaming News, and More.

Spyro is back with a bunch of new skills. Toys for Bob Chief Creative Officer and Studio Head Paul Yan and Associate Creative Director Lou Studdert spoke to ComingSoon’s Tyler Treese about the studio’s approach to Spyro: A Realm Beyond. The first mainline Spyro game in nearly two decades, A Realm Beyond sees Spyro gain new abilities and take on his most ambitious adventure yet. Published by Activision, it will release in 2027 for Nintendo Switch 2, PlayStation 5, Windows, and Xbox Series X|S.

“Take flight in a brand-new journey through a strange and wondrous realm. When Spyro finds himself stranded, his journey to discover a way home is interrupted by the arrival of a vicious invading force known as the Scavs. Spyro must make new allies and rise to protect this realm before it’s changed forever,” says the official description.”

Tyler Treese: I’m so excited for the new Spyro. A large part of my childhood was playing those classic games on PlayStation, so it’s so exciting to see him coming back with a new game. I’m sure that’s such a thrill for your studio too, because Skylanders was such a phenomenon, and Spyro was really the entry point and why it caught on at first. Then people were like, “Oh, these toys are also awesome,” and it became its own thing. So what does it mean for Toys for Bob as a studio to be doing a full-on Spyro game? He’s been so important to your 2010 and beyond output.

Paul Yan: He means the world to us. We love this character. It’s such an integral part of this modern era of who we are since the early 2000s. We feel a deep, deep connection with this character and the various incarnations, whether it’s in Skylanders or whether it’s in the Spyro Reignited Trilogy. Skylanders was its own beast. It’s a completely different universe and a different take on Spyro, a different cast, and an entirely different storyline. Reignited was kind of our return to his classic roots and getting familiar with why everyone fell in love with him in the first place. So to follow that up now with The Realm Beyond and continue on with that legacy, it means the world to us. Especially as we’ve more recently gone independent, this is absolutely our number one choice. This is the game that we want to make out of the gate.

Lou Studdert: Yeah, to echo that, it feels like a return home. It’s also one of those things where we’ve always had a kinship with Spyro, especially as a studio, just mentality-wise. We always say that Spyro and our studio are small but mighty. It’s been one of those rallying cries, that affinity for a character, but also just how we as a studio operate. So yeah, it’s really great coming home and hanging with our favorite purple dragon.

Paul, Toys for Bob previously did the Spyro Reignited Trilogy, like you mentioned, which remastered those classic games. Then you guys did Crash Bandicoot 4, which was also you taking an iconic series and revitalizing it for a modern audience. What were the biggest lessons the team learned that prepared you for making a new Spyro, which is going to be your most ambitious platforming test yet?

Yan: I think the biggest one is learning to do the homework, learning to get familiar and acquainted with what the fans really resonate with in the series. What is that core DNA? Trying to articulate that for ourselves, trying to understand the original intent for those classic games in that era, and then challenging ourselves to take what’s loved and bring new experiences to that core foundation of a very familiar and beloved character and all the experiences that come with that. I think that’s the one carry-through that we are refining and getting better at. We’ve absolutely carried that design mentality into The Realm Beyond.

Studdert: Yeah, I totally agree with that. You can see a direct line in the jumps from Reignited to Crash 4 to this, how we’re identifying the core of these characters, the core of these franchises, and evolving and pushing further and further.

Lou, I wanted to ask you about evolving a franchise that’s so beloved because that’s tricky. If you ask fans, they’re going to be very passionate, and they kind of just want the same things. But you also need to freshen it up and give this game a reason for existing beyond just nostalgia. How is it finding that right balance?

They get so specific on things. I talked to one friend, and he was like, “You’ve got to ask if the gems will be making the classic collecting sound.” They get so caught up on very small, specific things that mean so much to them.

Studdert: It’s very hard, and it’s a constant internal struggle. It’s one of those things where, over the course of our careers working on both Spyro and Crash, it’s finding a level of comfort in trusting yourself to identify the things that really, really matter the most. Especially since this is the first new Spyro game in almost 20 years, there’s been a lot of folks and a lot of generations of players who have just had those original experiences that they’ve lived with and cemented in their minds.

So some of that is the challenge that we’re up against. Some of that is our own challenge internally of figuring out how we want to push beyond that. Our design mentality is really to hone in on trying to identify what makes Spyro Spyro as a character and what makes Spyro Spyro as a franchise, and not to do that with a list of features, a list of every little individualized thing, or else you very, very quickly get into almost a level of fear toward any change.

Instead, what we do, and the thing that has worked for us, is ask: How do these games and these experiences make you feel? What are the things that resonate with the fan base? What are the things that resonate with us as designers, developers, and creatives? What are the things that float to the top when you think of a Spyro title?

Nothing against your friend, but it is not just a sound effect that makes the game. It’s going to be the grander things. It’s going to be the personality, the character. It’s going to be the fluidity of movement. It’s going to be the utilization of the environment to aid your exploration, where you can look around and wonder, “How do I get there?” and try to figure out a way to encounter the world.

It’s gems as a concept, right? You want to have gems as a core part and parcel of the Spyro game. But we need to make sure that we aren’t so beholden that we don’t realize there is a new roadway, a potential for Spyro to continue.

There is a very fine balance between self-reflective nostalgia, of just rehashing or bringing back the ’90s and hoping that it still connects with a grander audience other than the folks who are already committed, versus going so far that it’s unrecognizably the character that you fell in love with. So for us, it’s finding that balance. It’s working constantly and hanging out on a teeter-totter and making sure that we’ve got some level of balance there.

But it really does start with what we want to preserve as a character: personality, art style, tone, voice. One of the things that we really fell in love with making the Reignited Trilogy was unifying Spyro’s voice under the voice of Tom Kenny. So bringing Tom back to personify Spyro is kind of a big connective tissue there, because it really does carry that playful, rambunctious tone that we fell in love with.

It’s continuing forward. It’s those feelings of what it feels like to play the experience that we want to preserve. So again, constant struggle, constant balance, but that’s the joy of making games.

Yan: We’re fans of Spyro, too. Our goal, obviously, is to make an incredible new game for Spyro in The Realm Beyond. But broadly speaking, longer term, we want to see many, many games for Spyro past this point.

We don’t want Spyro as a character to be stuck in nostalgia. We would take the best parts of those classic experiences and use that as a foundation, whether it’s his personality or those experiences. But we’re going to say, “You know what? There’s not going to be a skateboarding experience or a hockey minigame. Those things can fall. It’s okay.”

I know those might be your favorite things, and that’s totally valid. But moving on and establishing a new future for him, we’re not going to build that into the core. We’re going to have to make some of those decisions, and hopefully we’ve got some openness with fans to come along with us for the ride.

But that’s our intention. We want a bright new future for Spyro in a modern era built on the foundations of things that we fell in love with in the past.

Paul, immediately the big selling point for this game is flight. He could glide in the past, and it’s a great idea to naturally have him flying around. But it’s also risky because any change is risky when it comes to core gameplay, and that seems to be a big change. How is it finding the right middle ground with flight and making that fun?

Yan: Super easy. No, I’m just kidding. It’s tremendously challenging.

Conceptually, I think as a fantasy of the dragon, you go, “Oh, that seems so obvious.” But when it comes down to it, the devil’s in the details of how we do that. One of our earliest tests was, flight would be incredible if we could just turn it on at any time.

When we were actually developing the Reignited Trilogy, we had a debug version of that where you could just infinitely fly in any of the levels. There was a little hint of some magic there, like there’s something that could be interesting here. These worlds are obviously not built for that type of flight, so we have to think about the space to build for that.

The second part of it too is, we realized that if flight is a new thing, we need to make sure that it is an extension of his kit, not just, “Oh, now this is the only way that you travel around.” Because the core of what we fell in love with with Spyro is the fluidity of his movement. That includes running around, charging, finding these nice lines, jumping at the right time, and then gliding to points.

We want flight to be an extension of that. So now it’s a larger part of that kit and that active decision-making as you’re going through a space that is purposely built for this expanded kit. That’s how we kind of think about it.

Then there’s a ton of wrestling that happens internally as we debate about what’s the degree of length and glide and flap and all of that. It’s very, very challenging. Sometimes we move one step forward, two steps back every day as we’re testing things out.

But at the core of it, we’re all holding hands, aligned to say that, yes, it makes a ton of sense fantasy-wise and as the next step in his capabilities. But make sure that it is an extension of that core kit that we all fell in love with.

Studdert: I would also add, flight isn’t the only thing that is that kind of extension. One of the things we showed in the teaser is Spyro’s flame breath is now actually changing. We show him actually spitting fireballs at a distance.

The original games were very much a cone of a flamethrower in front of Spyro. As we built out the movement for Spyro, we realized we needed to allow him to engage and interact with the environment at larger distances to make up for that speed and that travel.

One of the things that we showed off is how Spyro can launch fireballs at range to ignite the environment, to create an updraft, to get lift with the flight. That posed a number of different challenges as well. How are we interacting with the world compared to how we did previously?

You still have flame breath, but now you also have range. We’ve tried to make sure that everything this character can do now is in service of exploring this vaster scale and traversing through it in a new way.

I really like that all of his skills feel like him maturing as a dragon and building off what he could do. That’s a really smart choice from you guys. I was curious, with the enhanced flight, I know the flight and Speedway levels are always a prickly issue with the fans. Does that mean those are gone now, or will we have more flying-based levels?

Lou Studdert: As we kind of started this, we looked at those original games a lot when we were building Reignited. We really had that feeling of, this game is peanut butter levels and jelly levels, right? You’re going back and forth.

For us, it’s a grand unification. It is removing the bifurcated nature of those original games to have Spyro’s kit always be enabled with flight. There is no separation between areas where you can fly and areas where you can’t in the way that the original games were.

That was really the start of it. Why can I only fly for 90 seconds in Sunny Flight or something like that when the rest of the time I’m doing this?

For us, it’s, “I’m a dragon.” Let’s amplify that feeling of being a dragon and make it cohesive and make sure that you have the utility. So it is something where it is always present.

Paul, you mentioned that when you were doing Reignited, you had the flight mode on in your dev tools, and the levels aren’t really designed for that. So how is flight changing up the levels? Is there going to be more verticality to the stages? Are they going to be larger in size? What can we expect from these new abilities and how they’ll impact the levels?

Paul Yan: Yes and yes. I think you nailed the two big foundational pieces.

Once you get the ability to take off into flight at a moment’s notice, the needs for the vastness of the world suddenly grow tremendously. You also find that, as you’re able to climb, the verticality of it is super, super interesting.

So it motivates us to build worlds that are a lot taller so that you can dive off these big cliffs and have these big swooping moments, but also have these new challenges of looking up at these big high points and saying, “How do I get up there?”

“Oh, well, if I run over here or take that jump over there, if I take advantage of that, if I fly over here…”

That becomes a new, interesting wrinkle to the way that Spyro troubleshoots, how he figures out and solves his way through exploration.

Lou, I was curious, since the levels are larger, how important is exploration when it comes to the game? Are you finding different things to do in the levels? How are we going to be interacting with this world you’ve created? Because it sounds so fun to explore and fly through.

Studdert: Sure. Specifically, the game structure, we’ll have more to share in the coming months. But exploration is a key tenet to what makes a Spyro game a Spyro game.

We want to make sure that you are scouring these environments for things that you need or want and want to collect. Obviously, gems are an absolutely foundational part of that.

For us, it’s building a play space. The order of operations for us as designers and developers is: make this character fun to control. Then build areas and spaces where it’s fun to use those ways to control in that space. Then go, “Cool, now how can we populate that space with things that really make you want to explore and use that cool movement and find your way around it?”

It’s this order of operations of build the character, build the space, and then find the ways to utilize all those fun areas. How do we get you to want to go to the highest point? How do we get you to want to explore every nook and cranny?

Part of that has been in the core loop of the game and also just how we develop and how we look at these spaces. The only thing I can touch on right now, though, is that gems in some form will be making a return. So obviously, you’ll want to be on the lookout for that.

Yan: We want you to feel great feeling lost and curious to explore. We want you to find every little nook and cranny in this world and be motivated and satisfied by doing that. That’s a core part of the Spyro experience for me, and I think that’s something that we carry forward in this one.

I love that attitude because in something like Breath of the Wild or Elden Ring, even if I was so far from what I was intending to do, I was still finding an interesting part of the world. It didn’t matter if I was completely lost. I was still having a blast. So I think you guys have the right mindset there for sure.

I would love to hear both of your opinions on this. Platformers are still so beloved, but they’re not as front and center as they were in the ’90s and before, when every system had that platformer mascot. Mario games are still an event. Astro Bot just got Game of the Year awards. Where do you feel the genre is right now? Do you feel like there’s a real opportunity for new mechanics and to really freshen up the genre? Because we don’t see it as much of a focus as somebody like me, who has that nostalgia, would like it to be.

Studdert: I love that you touched on Astro Bot. I love that you touched on this resurgence that we’re seeing. We’re feeling that in the fan response and also outside of fans, just the recognition of Spyro as well.

I think there’s this combination where the tonality of these types of games really is resonating with folks right now, which is a really refreshing thing to see. It’s a breath of fresh air for gamers. I think it’s awesome. But I also think platformers are so foundational in what video games are. It’s just fun to control a character in unique spaces. That’s what drives me. Those are the games that I like to play.

I would also say one of the great things is the indie scene for platformers has been continuing. As far as mechanics go, there are so many cool things coming out and so many people exploring different things and using the foundation of platformers in unique ways.

That’s not something that’s new. That’s continuous because I think platformers are so foundational in the video game space. For us, it’s just great to see folks get excited about this genre that means so much to so many of us.

I think there’s absolutely an open runway to find ways to really innovate and have fun with it. For us, obviously, utilizing flight incorporated into exploration is kind of our big swing at that. But in the grand scheme of platformers, I just think it’s such a robust genre. I love that it’s resonating again.

Yan: Yeah, we love to see it. Astro Bot was one. Rayman is coming back. We love to see it.

For us, we’re fans of not just platformers, but really games that are joyful and character-focused, that don’t have this tight requirement of reflecting reality, that are completely whimsical and fantastic. Those are games that really speak to my heart.

So the more that those grow in popularity and there are more options in that way, I just look out and say, “Great, there’s more people like us. That’s awesome.”

Lou, Tom Kenny is coming back, which is so exciting. That means it’s the same Spyro that we knew and loved. How important is it to have payoff for the longtime fans and throw in some callbacks and Easter eggs into this experience, while also telling your own new story here and moving the plot forward?

Studdert: Yeah, I think you hit the nail on the head again. For us, it’s been this balance of, we want to acknowledge, we want to reinforce, and we want to hold dear those original games and that original personality of Spyro.

But at the same time, it can’t just be inward-looking and self-reflexive and just staring back at the past. We wanted to see what it felt like to take that character that we’ve all had experiences with and put that character in a new situation.

For fans, there are absolutely callbacks and references. But at the same time, from the get-go, we made a conscious decision to say that this should be a welcoming entry point for new players. We want to introduce them to a character that we fell in love with and not feel like they had to have a level of recognition or homework. We think Spyro as a character is just wonderful to be around and to experience and to have that time with.

So we designed this narratively, mechanically, and from the get-go as, this could be anyone’s first Spyro game. For fans who know and love the franchise, there’s absolutely stuff in there that will bring a smile to their faces and memories back. But at the same time, it is not a requirement for new players. We want them to feel welcome, and context will be given for them.

Thanks to Toys for Bob for taking the time to talk about Spyro: A Realm Beyond.

The post How Spyro: A Realm Beyond Is Reviving a Beloved Game Series the Right Way appeared first on ComingSoon.net - Movie Trailers, TV & Streaming News, and More.