Toys for Bob dev says the team tried to capture 'the feeling that we fell in love with' when developing Spyro: A Realm Beyond instead of worrying about features first | Tech Radar
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Toys for Bob dev says the team tried to capture 'the feeling that we fell in love with' when developing Spyro: A Realm Beyond instead of worrying about features first
Toys for Bob studio head hints at more Spyro games after A Real Beyond
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Toys for Bob wanted to recapture the feeling from playing previous games when developing Spyro: A Realm Beyond
It wanted to focus on "the feeling that we fell in love with" rather than worrying about a list of features
Chief creative officer and Studio Head, Paul Yan, says, "If you stick too much to nostalgia, it feels like you're rehashing"
Toys for Bob focused on recapturing how the team felt from playing previous games when making Spyro: A Realm Beyond, rather than worrying about a list of features to include.
That's according to Studio Head, Paul Yan, who told Tech Radar Gaming in an interview at Summer Game Fest that the groundwork of the game was built on what the team loves about the series.
When asked if there are any core features from previous games that the team avoided or tried to modernize, Yan said "everything's going to get touched," but when it worked on a new title "one of the things that we try and do is really hunker down and try and isolate how that franchise makes us feel, not specific feature lists, not comparison of parts, but the feeling that we fell in love with."
"We also look into the fan community," he added, "we look to just outside communication, our own communication, and we start isolating and figuring what that means, like what are the fantasies we want, so when we say, you know, a zen-like kind of exploration with a fluidity of movement that is more important to us to identify that as essential to feeling like Spyro than saying, 'Oh, his charge moves x number of units over x number of time', or things that happen."
"So we build that kind of knowledge and ingrain and canonify those feelings, and that's where we build from, and then throughout development we will have those conversations of are we changing them or touching that, is that new, are we keeping, are we not.
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"But at the same time, the tip of the spear is the feelings that we want to preserve, and we want to amplify more than any specific feature institute."
Yan also said that there is a challenge to balancing nostalgia when making a new game, "versus how much do you branch out," explaining that both can be bad in some cases.
"If you stick too much to nostalgia, it feels like you're rehashing," Yan said. "'Why did we even bother doing this?' [...] Then you go on the other extreme, and you change everything, and now it's like 'I don't even recognize this character'. So we're very proud of the fact that through the process of this, we've been very thoughtful about it, and trying to talk about the tone and the core, and making sure that we're referencing all the fan feedback, and all the feelings, and the insights that have come from the Reignited Trilogy, so we feel confident that that base has given us a lot of information informed our own gun instincts about what Spyro is, and then our vision for Spyro is that this is just one of many games for the future.
"We would love to see more in this franchise. Hopefully, you know, around Beyond sets him up on a really strong footing."
Spyro: A Realm Beyond launches in Spring 2027 for Play Station 5, Xbox Series X, Series S, Nintendo Switch 2, and PC.
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Demi is a freelance games journalist who helps cover gaming news at Tech Radar. She's been a games writer for five years and has written for outlets such as Game Spot, NME, and Games Radar, covering news, features, and reviews. Outside of writing, she plays a lot of RPGs and talks far too much about Star Wars on X.
Rob Dwiar Managing Editor, Tech Radar Gaming and Streaming
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