Everything we learned from the Spyro Reignited demo | E3 2018

Spyro: Reignited Trilogy is one of the year’s most anticipated games, at least if you were a PlayStation gamer in the late nineties.

Spyro: Reignited Trilogy is one of the year’s most anticipated games, at least if you were a PlayStation gamer in the late nineties.

The game is a remaster of the original Spyro trilogy, bringing the most beloved games of the series bang up to date. From the trailer and initial screenshots to the snippets it looks like Toys for Bob, the studio behind the Skylanders series, are creating an incredibly faithful tribute to the original games.

The game is playable for the very first time at E3 this week—but that means fans who aren’t at the show won’t get to see these levels. Or so we thought, as YouTube Gaming’s livestream yesterday featured an extensive playthrough of the levels and discussion about the game with Toys for Bob’s chief creative officer Paul Yan.

The two levels at the show are Toasty and Treetops. We get to see a little of the gameplay of each, though they can’t play Treetops to its conclusion. This is the first time Spyro Reignited Trilogy gameplay has been seen outside of controlled trailer snippets.

So what did we learn from this first glimpse at the childhood favorite?

Dragons have personalities

In the first game, Spyro the Dragon, the aim of the game was to rescue all the dragons that had been turned into statues. They came in various shapes and colors and would always have a message for Spyro—from something relevant to the plot to a simple “thanks, Spyro!”

Well, in Reignited the dragons have been given even more personality. They all have props, and characters.

The first dragon we see is Nevin from Toasty, the only dragon in the first boss level. He’s a painter! In Treetops we see Isaak with a staff and a gem—it’s not a paintbrush but it’s still cool. The dragons had such limited characters originally that this is a real treat. Part of the fun in going around freeing them now will be seeing what that dragon is up to.

There’s nothing really similar to this in the second game, but maybe the dragon hatchlings in the final game will have been given the same treatment.

The levels that should be dark are actually dark

One of the big things that’s instantly noticeable on Treetops is how dark parts of the level are. Lighting effects were pretty limited in the original games, but with HD technology that’s one of the big upgrades. Obviously the game looks gorgeous overall, but this is something really apparent.

In the initial interior parts of Treetops, battling the enemies is a little trickier when you can’t entirely see where they are coming from. How much Spyro’s flame attack lights up these areas is really something. It always did a bit, but it’s on a whole new level here.

The effect of the flame attack is one of the biggest areas of improvement. You can see in Toasty that when you do a flame attack on grass, it actually scorches the grass underneath. Now that is attention to detail.

Tree Tops is still difficult as heck

As presenter Kyle Bosman plays through the levels, he beats Toasty pretty easily. He should do, right? It’s the first boss level of the game and it’s not particularly far into the story.

Then he moves on to Treetops, and it’s a different story. Treetops is one of the most infamously tricky levels in the first game, and is on the fourth world Beast Makers. Its series of speed ramps and jumps have to be hit just right in order to get all the gems and secrets in the level.

Bosman struggles pretty damn hard. He tries to get to that last far away platform on the big ramp where the thief disappears off—but as we all know, you need to hit a combination of ramps to get to that.

The excitement is only going to build

When you see how faithfully the game has been recreated, it’s hard to be anything but excited about this game. Real care has gone into this and it’s paid off—it looks and sounds amazing. The original soundtrack has been reworked in a way that brings it right up to date but still hits all the right notes of nostalgia.

When it comes to the visuals, there are improvements. As well as the dragons, other NPCs and enemies have been added to and modified to make them look even better. Modern technology has been used well to bring the game up to date. But fundamentally you still look at it and see the original game.

Spyro Reignited Trilogy is coming Sept. 21 for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.