In order for us to be good game designers we have to analyse
games taking into consideration what’s good and what could be improved,; not
just on style but elements as well.
Spyro The Dragon
he first game of the series released in 1998 and started off
where a sinister force known as Gnasty Gnorc was trapping dragons in a crystal statue,
however a young purple dragon (Spyro) wasn’t around to get captured. Instead
the protagonist finds out what happened to his friends and family before
leaving his homeland in order to free his brethren, along with his best buddy
Sparxs who indicates Spyro’s health. However as he travels to distant realms
via a balloons along the way, Spyro rescues other dragon who help him out in
his quest until he faced up against the antagonist who started this dilemma in
the first place.
The image shows Spyro hanging around with the Dragon Elders
and sheep. As you see they all share a simplistic style
During gameplay the whole screen features your adventure and
doesn’t contain any HUD elements like health bars, gem bars or move selections.
Instead your health depends on Sparks colour yellow being really good and red
being horrible. In order to increase your life you defeat random enemies or
sheep, which release a tiny butterfly for Sparks to eat. With the Gems they
only appear in the corner of the screen once you’ve obtained one or a certain
number (like Rupees in Legend Of Zelda) also there’s no attacks that you have
to select, instead you press different combinations on the Play Station
controllers.
In this image Spyro is performing a slight hover going
towards the gems in the background. In the top left hand corner shows the
number of gems collected and will disappear shortly, the basket to the right
also holds gems and at the bottom you can slightly see Sparx’s head and wings.
When the game starts loading there’s different animations of
Spyro doing certain activities like riding the balloon to a different realm, or
sometimes him flying to a realm that’s close to the homeland. Yet at the bottom
of the screen you’ll see a golden treasure chest that opens and counts all the
gems you’ve obtained from the land you’ve just left before giving a final
amount as the loading screen ends; ultimately keeping you entertained and concentrated
for the next part.
When playing the game you control Spyro and are able to move
around on four legs, breathe fire and slightly fly/ hover for a short period of
time. At certain points it’s necessary to head butt, ram into different
objects/ enemies, swim to gain more gems, other times you’re required to hop
into a cannon of some sort and shoot down battle tanks, cannons and floating
ships. The perspective is third person allowing you to easily see your
opponents coming and work out a simple attack plan, unless you’re in a cannon
then it automatically changes to first person (taking on an element of
first-person shooter). With camera movement it does let you have a look from
Spyro’s view across the land by holding down either R or L on your controller
and moving around with the direction buttons (not the analogue stick just yet)
Now the visual style at this point uses extremely bright and
simple colours, granted that the graphics weren’t the best at this stage.
Besides that you were able to distinguish the differences between the cell-shaded
models. Reasons for the visual style being bright, flamboyant and taking on a
cartoon-like appearance is because the game’s target audience was based around
children more than teenagers and adults, due to a lot of simple designed
characters that were based on real animals or imagination, plus you have the
plain colours that don’t really include shadowing enabling young minds to
comprehend not only the game play- but the story as well since the script
doesn’t include massive paragraphs, complex words/ sentences. Another point
would be when you kill an enemy there’s no blood or gore they just disappear
into smoke, and the bosses are frightfully fearful either.
An image of Spyro, the main protagonist, as he was in the
first six games of the series.
Spyro The Dragon: Dawn of the Dragon
Spyro combating one of the game’s enemy species
Dawn of the Dragon is the final game to the Spyro franchise
and also the last prequel. The story begins at the end of the last Spyro game
(Eternal Night) where we see Spyro and Cynder (one of Spyro’s newest team
members, who he saves during the A New Beginning game) broken from their
crystal prison by enemies who chain them together and serve them up to a fiery
demon in order to see a ‘pleasurable’ battle. Luckily the dragons manage to
escape and flee to a different place in their world by the help of a more
mature Hunter (another ally), and of course a cowardice Sparks. Again Spyro
races against time fighting for the lands freedom and settling wars, aiding the
heroes and proving his worth and fealty to others. We also see the four
elemental dragons, which are introduced in the New Beginning game, and meet one
of the series’ most villainous antagonists: Malefor. Your main objective in
this game is to defeat him by overcoming your own darkness thanks to the
prophecy of the: Purple Dragon.
The four elemental dragons, Ignitus, the fire dragon, being
the eldest, is the leader and Spyro’s main mentor giving a farther like figure
to the purple dragon.
Compared to the older Spyro titles this game’s features are
based on a new target audience and have accommodated this really well. Reasons
for this could be Sierra and Activision Blizzard have tried to pull in a
teenage/ adult audience for more money instead of depending on the children on
the other hand, I believe that the developers have added an adult theme to
Spyro purely and simply for the audience who have grown up with the series
since they were little, as though to say that whilst they’ve grown up so have
Spyro and continue to gain their praise and money.
So what is different then?
The perspective is exactly the same being third person and
first person when shooting, same with the camera movement only instead of
direction keys you use the analogue stick instead. However one of the best
features in my opinion, is the game actually lets you stay in flight mode and
allows you to fly like a normal dragon, second is that you can also play as
Cynder and use her four element breaths (air, darkness, fear and poison) or
stay as Spyro who now breathes (fire, electric, earth and ice) enabling two
people to engage in the game. Sparks however doesn’t show your health in the
prequels and is only shown during cut scenes than gameplay.
In the game you work closely with Cynder to activate
latches, switches and during combat being able to switch from one dragon to the
next. Even though you don’t collect gems for money, you collect them for health
or magic (red for health and green for magic) by smashing the shards, as an
added feature there are RPG elements in this game. If you collect blue crystals
you can upgrade the power of each elemental breath for both dragons and when
taking on side-quests you can find bits of armor lying around which you can place
on the protagonists and mix and match the designs.
During cut scenes as well as gameplay you’re able to view
your chosen armour for Cynder and Spyro, as this image proves just that.
On the HUD, health and magic bars and pictures of the
characters are displayed in the top corners, Spyro’s being the left and
Cynder’s the right, for inventory menu press ‘Start’ and for upgrading your
elements press ‘Select’. When loading up
the game notice how the backdrop is black with a golden loading bar in the
centre and above is the percentage of how much the game has loaded; again in
matching gold giving another adult-like feel to the product.
Finally visual styles, in the first 6 Spyro games the main
characters were built on a cartoon based design with very bright colours and
little detail, thus aimed at a younger target audience. In the last three Spyro
games they’ve added darker tones, introducing rendering techniques, developing
a balance between lightning and shadows on the models giving an overall
realistic appearance. Even though some of the characters are again based on
animals they as well share a realistic touch. For example the enemies look more
terrifying, gruesome and are varied around the dragon plains ranging from
vicious looking baboons to malicious skeletons, even the guardians that protect
Malefor hold an impending doom and Malefor himself looks like an older, evil
version of Spyro as they’re both purple dragons from the prophecy.
Spyro’s initial appearance set in the first six games, down
below is the newer version of Spyro found in the prequels. Here you can see the
difference between the two styles.
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