I chose to create a video essay for my writing sample to talk about the strengths and weaknesses of one of my favorite games, Spyro 2: Ripto's Rage (1999, PlayStation). As I was creating this video essay, my hard drive corrupted and I lost all of the recorded gameplay footage of the Spyro 2 playthrough that I was going to use as background footage. This unfortunate circumstance led me to rework how I was going to present the material written in the script below, and I remade what I had lost into the video linked on this page. All footage was recorded by me, other than sources that are listed in the description on YouTube. This essay was edited by me using Adobe Premiere.
The Spyro the Dragon video game franchise started with a trilogy of titles releasing on the PlayStation from 1998-2000. These games were developed during a period where developers were learning to adapt what they knew from different genres of 2D game design while making use of the 5th-generation home consoles' ability to render 3D spaces. Spyro the Dragon is an example of an adaptation of platformer game design, alongside titles like Super Mario 64, Banjo-Kazooie, Donkey Kong 64, and Crash Bandicoot, which are all considered part of the genre, 3D Platformer. Over time, as players began to get used to exploring environments in three dimensions, they began to focus on gathering collectibles and digesting a game's story through its environment, which superseded their original satisfaction of traversing a difficult obstacle course as they did in early 3D Platformers. Spyro 2 is a snapshot of the beginning of 3D platforming game designers' recognition of this trend and their choice to branch away from traditional reflexive platforming and towards the emphasis of design traits leading to the creation and eventual fatigue of the Collectathon game genre. Similar to its predecessor, Spyro 2's levels could be classified into four different categories: Speedway Levels, Boss Levels, Hub Worlds, and the focus of this analysis, Core Levels. Core Levels revolve around the collection of Talismans, Orbs, and Gems. Talismans are given as a gift to the player from the level's inhabitants and are acquired by resolving the level's story arc. Orbs can be obtained by completing side objectives hidden throughout the level. The most abundant collectible in each level, Gems, are used as currency to expand Spyro's pool of existing mechanics and to grant players passage through initially restricted parts of the world. Players collect these resources through the use of Spyro's three main mechanics: Charging, Flame Breath, and Gliding. Using strong and consistent visual language that reacts against these mechanics, the Spyro series' level design gives the player's actions impact and allows them to better identify situations where each mechanic is necessary. Shiny metal surfaces indicate flame resistance and must be charged, and conversely, large enemies require the use of fire breath and resist a charging attack. This analysis is focused on how Spyro 2 evolved from the foundations of Spyro 1's Core Level design, and how designers attempted to surpass its platforming roots by grounding the player's actions in the narratives of each level in hopes of creating a natural motivation for their exploration and completion. Spyro 2's Core Levels showcase a distinct shift from the original's level design towards a more selfless narrative, and in doing so, designers create a motivation in the player to restore peace as a visitor to these distinct lands with their own native people, unique architecture, main story arc, and smaller sub-arcs contained in Orb Challenges. These new levels use narrative as a tool to tie the progression of the player to the progression of a story arc within the level itself. In doing this, designers transformed a potentially stony experience for players--collecting Talismans, Orbs, and Gems--by imbuing a sense of purpose behind their collection which creates a stronger feeling for players of enacting meaningful change to the game's world. A Core Level typically begins and ends with a cutscene, initially serving as an introduction to the world's inhabitants and the principal problem that Spyro will be solving in order to restore peace to that world signified through the receiving its emblematic Talisman, and uses its ending cutscene as a way of reflecting this restoration to the player once they decide to return to the connecting Hub World. Spyro 2's Core Levels build on this emphasis of narrative-driven progression by evolving their design as players resolve their narrative arcs. The subaquarian metropolis--Aquaria Towers--incrementally fills with water as the player helps the native seahorses recover their stolen water supply, allowing the exploration of the ocean's floor above once the Talisman is collected. Aquaria Towers' evolution throughout its narrative arc mirrors the player's introduction and eventual fluency with controlling Spyro's swimming movement. Aquaria Towers begins by starting the player fully grounded and slowly increasing the proportion of swimming movement required until swimming is the only way players can navigate the level. Spyro 2's designers' choice to create levels that transform through gameplay allows players to focus their efforts on engaging with its side content in a fresh--yet still familiar--environment after collecting the level's talisman. Player-induced level evolution is a key tool that Spyro 2 uses to encourage the second arc of completion after players obtain a level's Talisman. Asking players to complete a level after resolving its story arc can disrupt a feeling of natural progression, which makes measures to open up a level's flow after resolving its story arc incredibly important to keep them interested. Spyro 2's designers contend with this challenge by changing a level's composition to a new state over the course of a player's journey towards the resolution of the level's narrative arc. Designers divide a level's form into two parts to suit both of its gameplay arcs: an arc of finishing a level by collecting a Talisman, and an arc of level completion. After players collect a level's Talisman, many levels open a new route between its beginning and end. These new shortcuts often take form as elevated paths accessible from where the player receives the level's Talisman, but inaccessible from the start. Spyro 2's level designers use these paths to pique a player's curiosity and encourage further exploration by intentionally composing the player's perspective as they reach the end of the level's first gameplay arc. The factors that motivate completion aren't solely restricted to changing a level's shape. Power-Up Gates in Spyro 2's Core Levels also add to this motivation and contribute to a level's player-induced evolution through its narrative's resolution. These gates temporarily grant players enhanced versions of Spyro's existing mechanics and make use of existing player knowledge of the mechanic's association with the level's visual language to allow players to understand their function instinctually. Super and Ice Flame upgrade flame breath, flight upgrades gliding, bounce upgrades jumping, and Super Charge upgrades charging. Power-Up Gates activate only after the player defeats a certain number of enemies--typically happening as they reach the end of a level--which contributes to a level's feeling of evolution through the first arc of its gameplay. These gates expand the level's existing flow by opening up player movement and aiding completion of Orb Challenges and Gem collection just as the aforementioned short-cuts do. Levels like Colossus and Mystic Marsh change their paths of possible flow by using power-up gates to bounce players high in the air, seamlessly bridging the gap between the level's start and end. Likewise, Fracture Hills allows players to use Super Charge to create tunnels between areas of the level which opens up free navigation of the level permanently. Unfortunately, not all levels are designed in a way that supports the inherent backtracking that is necessary for Spyro 2's emphasis on completion. Linear levels such as Cloud Temples, Zephyr, and Sunny Beach require players to move back and forth on one unchanging track, which makes the trek back to complete a level's side content less appealing and causes its design to feel at odds with the amount of content that it presents. In an interview, Ted Price--founder and president of Insomniac Games--said they wanted to create a "much, much bigger game than Spyro 1 in terms of the gameplay". Price argued that Orb Challenges gave Spyro 2 a new "addictive" quality and gave the game "much greater depth and creates more variety than Spyro 1 ever had". Orb Challenges and post-Talisman gameplay in Spyro 2's Core Levels showcase the beginning of the series' level design transformation from strict platforming with rigid objectives to narrative-driven collection and spatial evolution emphasizing exploration and specifically, completion. Broadly, this transformation mirrors the transformation of the 3D Platforming genre to what is known today as a Collectathon. However, these changes to Spyro's original gameplay loop redirect player flow in ways that can disrupt their natural gameplay habits. For example, Spyro 2's pacing is sequenced in such a way that requires players to backtrack to previous Core Levels whose narrative arc has already been completed after unlocking the ability to climb and perform a head-bash. Backtracking in video games is not an inherent flaw; when used properly, backtracking can improve a player's comprehension of a game's spaces and how they interlock with one another. However, these two movement abilities lack a level of impact with the level itself, which frames their role of content restriction in a way that feels cheap, and at times, like intentional padding. Spyro 2's additional content begins to feel bland when comparing these abilities with the level of impact that unlocking the first mechanic--swimming--has on future and previous levels' designs. The process of unlocking climbing and head-bashing break up Spyro 2's pacing in such a lackluster way that it creates a sense of repetition in the Core Levels that require backtracking. When designers chose to restrict the completion of these Core Levels until players backtracked to them, they reduced the motivation of their narrative arcs and the spectacle of their transformation. A primary objective of Spyro 2's designers was adding variety, but by creating a means to access that variety that gets in the way of the intended player experience at times makes Spyro 2's breadth of content feel bland. When Spyro 2's level design is incongruous with the additional content that it touts, it loses the advantage built through its narrative motivation, and completion begins to feel like a chore. This sentiment grows when players make their way towards the end of the game. As Spyro 2 comes to a close, backtracking becomes more frequent, and Orb Challenges become increasingly similar, but where its design flaws become the most evident is in the Core Levels of the final Hub World. In these final levels, Talismans are no longer given to the player when resolving their narratives and instead are replaced with Orbs. When designers chose to interchange narrative-driven collectibles with additional content rewards, these levels begin to give off a feeling that their purpose is to quickly increase a player's Orb count to allow access to the final boss fight. An exchange like this removes the player's connection between the narrative of these levels and their progression, which dilutes one of the greatest strengths of Spyro 2, creating feelings of purpose to motivate the exploration of its levels. When looking forward, we can see how Spyro 2's shift in its design towards content diversification and saturation led to the design choices of its successor, Spyro 3: Year of the Dragon. In Spyro 3, the division of each level's arc of resolution and completion is lost due to a change in its game design toward one story-driven collectible, Dragon Eggs. Spyro 3's lack of a narrative-driven objective in each Core Level turns all objectives in a Core Level into a sort of Orb Challenge, losing the importance of a level's story arc through the equivalence of its narrative rewards and side-mission rewards. When we couple that decision with adding four new playable characters, each requiring players to backtrack to levels to make use of them, Spyro 3 descends further into a pit of offering a lot of variety but not enough substance to support that variety, making its levels feel less distinct and memorable. Collectathons of this era shared in these design trends which built consumer fatigue of the genre, driving players to desire compelling gameplay, intentional atmosphere, and unique mechanics to make completion not only satisfying, but purposeful. Subsequent Collectathon games like Super Mario Sunshine and Luigi's Mansion, in part, show this successful redirection of Collectathon game design towards relying on the why behind collecting rather than the collecting itself. Spyro 2's Core Levels capture the strong platforming foundations carried over from its predecessor, but it is in their growth from those foundational tenets that showcase the unique traits that began new foundational tenets of exploration-driven collecting games. Spyro 2 evokes the strength of these differences with its evolving level design that carries purpose through its narrative, leading to more contextually embodied levels than platformers that came before it. However, cracks begin to form as the sequel shows a conflation of content quantity with content quality. Spyro 2's level design reflects the next step in the evolution of an existing genre and shows traits of what would eventually cause the next stage in its evolution. Its unique role as a transition point between two genres makes its study important to understand the development of 3D Platformers, and also to understand how the strengths and weaknesses of a game's level design create genre conventions and change video game history.