Saturday, December 21, 2019

Dragon Daddies - Spyro the Dragon (PS4) - Part 2

The adventure continues! Fresh from our training in the Peace Keepers world, we collect treasure, defeated egg-stealing thieves, and more importantly...

...rescue hot dragon daddies.



Since we completed all of the Beast Makers world in this update, this seems like a good time to talk about the amount of extra detail that the team at Toys for Bob added to this game in the Reignited Trilogy.

Looking at the Reignited Trilogy's version of the world, the level feels like a real swamp. There are trees and canopies in the background, with little details like stumps and small amounts of grass protruding from the water in the background. Further, while the water itself doesn't look sanitary, and I wouldn't want to be in it or drink from it, it has a quality reminiscent of real world swamps.



Even before I took another look at what the original version of this home world looked like again, it was obvious that a lot of work went into bringing in into HD. Seeing it again, what I forgot to what extent the level looked... almost barren. And this isn't a knock on Insomniac, because this was just the reality of working on old consoles, where memory was such a massive consideration that the exactly location data was stored on the disc had to be planned out. They did everything they could with the resources allotted.

But one can just see how all of the details that needed to be painted in by the player's imagination are how here, in plain sight. There are a ton of examples throughout the rest of the game, and the trilogy, but this is the most obvious and immediately apparent one.

The artists, animators, and modelers working on this project should be absolutely proud of themselves for what they were able to achieve.

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