Spyro Ashes

Explaining how Spyro Reignited botched the original games. Sister blog of conceptisms.

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PS1 texture comparison vs PS4. Look at those sexy lumps of clay.

According to the new game, if you jump into shallow water during the day, it will look like night time.

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PS1 level of detail vs PS4 level of detail.

Couldn’t even put two types of trees in, huh?

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The original level, Summer forest, has a very calm colour palette and actual textures, which is something the remaster really doesn’t like, so of course it had to make some changes. The colour palette is messed up, the original colours had a blueish tint to provide a sense of calm, the new one is way too yellow with all the contrasts ramped up for the kiddies.

The level of detail is completely inconsistent. You have walls with no texture but then you have the lesenes made of bricks and very detailed stairs where every pebble is shown. Some walls are textureless, some have a few bricks on them disappearing through a gradient, half of the grass is detailed, but then half of the grass is made of play-doh. I honestly thought that grass was unfinished, but no, it’s actually supposed to look like this. And then you have those plastic golden parts that don’t fit anywhere. Look at the platforms: the original is so simple and pleasant to look at. The new one has a textureless bottom part, a plastic golden ring around it, then a bunch of rocks (that of course look like they were thrown onto it rather than put in with any care), and of course, no mosaic present like in the original.

The architecture makes no sense. The new version has bizarre shallow pools of water on top of the platforms (because I guess putting detailed textures would be too much for the PS4 to handle) and waterfalls that are pouring directly onto the grass. Why would anyone have a waterfall flooding their garden? It’s ridiculous! Someone just slapped a random waterfall there because the level needed more detail and they didn’t think even for a bit if that makes any sense. There’s also a bunch of icepicks now just randomly standing around because I guess buttresses are way too architectural. The buttresses instead got replaced with lesenes because apparently that’s the only architectural element Reignited artists know of. And I have no idea what purpose those yellow dots on the walls of the castle serve. Oh right, it’s just the the laziest possible way to break up space.

Notice how claustrophobic the new game is. Everything seems more cramped.

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Left picture shows the seahorse when the area is dry. Right is when the seahorse is swimming after you get the water back in.

In the original PS1 game, the seahorse is on the ground looking sad and tired. In Reignited, it’s standing upright the entire time, exactly the same in both cases except the tail is bent. Would putting it in a different pose be too much work for our nextgen graphics?

Oh, and my god, is the lighting bad in the new game, as you can see from the two bottom screenshots.

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These pandas were so adorable in the original, so of course they had to be “fixed” for the remaster. Now they look like raccoons. And wear pants. Because I guess they have something to hide? (also somethingsomething Kung fu Panda). And instead of a wide head with a big nose and tiny eyes, almost like a bull terrier, we get a boring pear-shaped head with generic facial proportions. Why was it so difficult to just follow what the original did well, especially when they’re incapable of making a new design that’s appealing?

After what they did to Sheila I wouldn’t be surprised if those buckteeth were there for stereotypical reasons.

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Reignited catbat is just Garfield with bat wings and I’m so angry at how lazy that “reinterpretation” is.

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Funny how the limited lowpoly PS1 aesthetic managed to make Spyro and Crash so different from each other, with Crash being grainy and with more intense colours and textures, while Spyro is more dream-like and pastel with lighter texturing. Now they both look exactly the same. Chunky and with rocks looking like they’re made of clay, because textures are so last gen.

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I came across some concept art for Spyro Reignited on Artstation and this was in the description:

That moment when you understand that it is your style project and you have total freedom of creation. that was hard to understand and I was like "really?! I can draw in my style? the prophecy came true! elders were right!"

Your style project? Hey, sure, why would you try to be faithful to the original and respect its aesthetic? Yay, now the artists have a chance to play with their own style and it’s a guaranteed success because it’s piggybacking off the original that actually put effort into standing out with its aesthetic!

So much for “being faithful to the originals”. God I hate this “remaster” and the whole attitude surrounding it, the attitude that it’s now a playground for any artist to do as they wish because the original aesthetic is worthless just for being low-poly.

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sweetbutshylady3ug

replied to your photoset

“I sure am glad that game graphics can now portray characters with...”

I didn't even notice the facial expressions because I was looking at Ling Ling who is suposed to be a panda but looks like a dark blue raccoon. The pandas look awful especial ling ling.

I’m going to translate a Skype chat between me and a friend when we saw the pandas:

“Oof, jeez, ouch...your...your pandas...”

“W-what’s wrong, doctor?”

“They’ve been infected with a chronic case of toyforbobitis. There is no cure.”

“Oh...”

“We will let you see them one last time”  *sends link with the pandas*

“Is that how you’re going to say goodbye? With that face? TfB tried really hard, you know.”

“I don’t even know them anymore.”

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When you market your kids game that had guns removed for not being child friendly with drugged-up embarrassment known as Snoop Dogg. I wonder how his charges of gun possession by a convicted criminal play into this.

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is there anything you dont hate about the remaster?

I like a lot of the animation work. There are definite duds there as well (Spyro’s swimming animation now looks like he’s having a seizure, as opposed to the snake-like movements of the original), but stuff like his walking animation and the animations on the adult dragons are really great and I wish they were put to use in a proper remaster that deserved them.

Everything else is terrible or with significant issues. The animation is the only thing that I can say made the original better, not worse (for the most part).

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Here is another design that badly suffered from additional details added without any thought put into them. The original dragon statue was supposed to be a stylised representation of a dragon, any dragon, so it’s pretty abstract and undefined. In the new one, you can clearly see it has a specific face and it also has four horns, but in the original, four horns were characteristic of magic crafters. Also some of the dragons in the original walked on four legs, but in this version, none of them do except Spyro, which makes the statue seem even less connected to the actual dragons.

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Not mine, but does a pretty good job of explaining why this “remaster” sucks.

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sweetbutshylady3ug replied to your post “PS1: Cute PS4: Ugly PS1: Aww PS4: Eww PS1: Aww  PS4: I think I’m gonna...”

@spyro-ashes you forgot some characters like Sheila, the pandas, dragons. Some characters are too antrophormized (sheila, dragons from the 1st game) or irrecognizable (the pandas,)

This post was only about cute characters that were intentionally made to look ugly because the devs thought cutesy enemies are unacceptable. Almost every Reignited character has issues and Sheila is the poster child of them, but the changes were meant to make her more attractive so she doesn’t fit into those examples.

I hate the dragons both as independent designs and as redesigns, but they’re a pretty big topic since there’s so many of them.

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Why does Spike have those horrible proportions? Why is his torso only pecks? And the stupid bunny ears placed there solely for the sake of some silhouette. Horrible.

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When a friend and I were commenting on the designs of the yellow Shrek abominations in Reignited, I said it would’ve been neat if, had they been remastered properly, they had flushed ears as a bit of a creative addition to the design, because it’s so cold where they live and also for some tonal variation.

Turns out, that’s exactly what the original designs did.

Of course the new ones don’t do that, they might look a bit less plastic if they did.

(and come on, could they not have changed their idle pose from what the green ones in Idol Springs have, so they don’t look like they’re pinching their nipples now that their coats are gone?)

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Uh-oh, these characters have beady cartoon eyes, how are we supposed to do them in the generic modern toony style? I know, give them big black voids for eyes like they got possessed by a demon.

They also made the body top-heavy and changed the headwear from a childish pan for a helmet to a typical patched-together item from various pieces of trash that’s obligatory for cartoony insectoids. Why these devs feel the need to fix what isn’t broken is beyond me.