- Toys for Bob says Spyro: A Realm Beyond is designed to be "accessible" and "approachable"
- The game won't be as "hardcore" as Crash Bandicoot 4: It's About Time
- The studio says Spyro has always been more about "discovery and exploration"
Toys for Bob wants Spyro: A Realm Beyond to be an "approachable" new entry in the series, for both long-time fans and new players.
In a press Q&A at Summer Game Fest (SGF) that TechRadar Gaming attended, associate creative director Lou Studdard was asked about Crash Bandicoot 4: It's About Time, designing a difficulty level that stayed true to the long-time series, and if the studio was also conscious of doing the same for A Realm Beyond.
In response, Studdard said that Toys for Bob was focused on designing the upcoming Spyro game as a more approachable entry for the broader audience, with less of the "hardcore" mechanics players would typically find in Crash Bandicoot.
"For Spyro: A Realm Beyond, we are very much focused on making it an accessible adventure, and so that means really focusing in on those difficulty levels, as well as just the general notion of how you play the game," Studdard said. "Spyro definitely is less of a hardcore, or precision-based game; Crash is definitely much more in that line of thing.
"For us, for Spyro, we have had a very focused effort on making sure that it is an accessible, approachable entry, and that goes, hand in hand with the audience that we want to serve, we want this to be something where this could be someone's first Spyro game, and fall in love with our favorite little purple dragon, and be along for the ride from there."
Toys for Bob Chief Creative Officer and Studio Head, Paul Yan, echoed the same sentiment, saying Spyro has always been a very approachable experience.
Both Yan and Studdard agreed that Crash Bandicoot is more about "hard checks" and executing perfectly timed jumps, with Studdard explaining that "precision execution based platforming" was what the team used to build, but not for the new Spyro game.
For the Spyro games, Yan added, it's more about "discovery and exploration" and is more "relaxing" to play, so the team wanted to "preserve its tonal core" for A Realm Beyond.
"I will say that taking flight and moving in a three-dimensional space, as opposed to on the ground, is just inherently more complex than running on the ground, right?" Yan said. "So we spend a lot of effort to make that as approachable as possible. It will be a little bit more complex, just navigating through the air, where we're doing everything that we can to make sure that it is an approachable experience, and that it is engaging and you're making interesting decisions while you're up in the sky."
Spyro: A Realm Beyond launches in Spring 2027 for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X, Series S, Nintendo Switch 2, and PC.
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