Spyro: Year of the Dragon Documentary

[Music] it's gregg berger and the ripto and you brought a dragon the a Millar I hate dragons and of course hunter was always happy to give you prompts and clues but a lot of what he did was expositional if you think about it getting you from point A to point B and telling you which buttons to push and which triangles to hit etc etc etc so hunter actually fulfilled two functions as kind of a player guide but also as hunter for God's sake helping you get through the adventure I have only the happiest of memories of Spyro it goes all the way back and when they called me back for the reignited trilogy hey that was so much icing on a beautiful cake that I just put my heart and soul and tonsils back into it and that's the joy of doing it that's the joy of doing all of it before enter the dragonfly insomniac said their goodbyes to spiral with Year of the Dragon this final insomniac title cemented the trilogy into one of the most iconic game franchises in history but as it turns out the inner development story of the title has never been entirely known beginning in November of 1999 and wrapping up in mid September of 2000 year of the dragon had a total of 10 and a half months of development the entire process went smoothly for the most part but certainly had some bumps on the road as most games encountered during their production now let's begin by talking with the well-known and loved Brian or Gaea who still works insomniac to this day he listed all the levels he designed on the project to us which includes bamboo Terrace this level actually turns out to be the first level all's worked on for the game exclusively Brian later provided infer the design changed to fireworks factory particularly in the age of nine minigame he recalled that originally the ninjas took three hit points to kill but this was changed to warn in the final instead as they tripled the number of enemies this not only made the challenge faster and more engaging but the insane number of enemies in this area was actually quite impressive for the time we also learned the internal names for how the levels functioned from Brian as well as some early level names on top of one's already known such as kiled city for card spires and dry Gulch for Dino mines James Justin was a pretty important programmer on the title he actually helped a bunch of key features get into the game single-handedly James even informed us the Sheela side-scrolling minigame and sparks levels are on a list to be cut if insomniac didn't find a programmer to get him functional he also stated that sunrise spring in its respective levels were the ones that received high priority in the last month which is where tons of bugs were hammered out of existence this was done to ensure the game received fantastic reviews from the press and to give the part of the game that most people would play the best experience possible minigames and side areas were even allowed to have a handful of bugs if the main game was polished as could be evidently every hub world contains a mini-boss such as Bluto and seashell sure however when it came time for midnight mountains mini-boss to be implemented development time had run out dino mines features an extra portal leading to an unused area many have been aware of this area is exactly where the fourth and final mini boss who have taken place from what we can tell some type of large dinosaur would have fired projectiles toward Spyro and the structure of the battle would have been very similar to sleepyhead in spooky swamp a high-profile Universal employee named Mike Gollum worked on the entirety of the original crash and Spyro trilogy Zin the sound Department in fact he created hundreds of spires sound effects with his voice alone so let's look at a call we helped with them we'd work together and just develop stuff you know we use our sound library's record sounds we'd record our voices and sounds like all the works where it was all just us making sounds out of our own mouths it's pretty kind of really a lot of fun me and Chris and other people we would get in there too big bounce nobody kind of all one of them sound like it was sort of a family of creatures so there's a similarity to all of them you to begin game sounds so the sounds that are triggered by the action as you're playing and then there's little interstitials or little cutscenes that they have to that you do sounds for it I look back at those there's hardly even sounds in it because it's really not a lot going on in these videos they are with the artists early days of gaming we go home there was just an interesting period in in gaming you know it was early on you're working on Crash Bandicoot at this you know practically the same time there was just a lot of learning happening from the people making the game was from the people making the sounds it was all kind of a work in progress you know figure it out so it was quite interesting time to be at such a formative stage in the game industry and I didn't know it at the time but working on games that were gonna become classic game right you don't know that working on it's just a game and then it turns out that these were games being made by super talented super smart people I did all the sounds from a Spanish is mostly me but there was there were people at the on the Alma crash bandicoot dev team side studios who write worked with but I've missed mostly mostly in charge now everybody seems to love the Aqua rocker I was actually one of the guys that I work with got a deeper voice if that one can be awesome but then you know that the Box sound a bug there's like a fruit chomps and a banker and comes out if I use my voice for 11n stuff so it's really cool you go through many many iterations sometimes to get the right one sometimes they change the animation or they change speed or something to get change the sound you're constantly constantly evolving until it's released the biggest thing about that was just trying to find a sound that would be convey the right feel while still being super super small you know they're kilobytes there there's no megabyte sounds a tiny ball sounds every bit of it was challenged video images to be there it's constantly a battle sound usually is sort of not at the top of that list right now that something you're gonna see gets priority for sure and music when it's made by Stewart Copeland is gonna get priority social fighting for Ruth to put your sounds whiskey and it was constantly a battle to get that get yourself in there that wasn't no man Spiro that was on oh gosh got war deed Empire Ratchet and Clank jak and daxter uncharted I stayed looking with Naughty Dog ins I'm left for a long long time as if they were my clients for many years and then you were cleared out with sunny studios that's where we've got Warren he worked on stuff for me as the business grew I kind of grew into a higher role for our team working on other games for like punchy just all kinds of stuff doesn't sync it doesn't seems I would say it was it was a good experience yeah fine desire game with your element is super hard so as much as it's fun to play the games it's much harder than chip Gillingham say to this video we think sounds to that video we'd send an audio files those audio files in game and then they play it sounds that I had we were inspired by the lightning I think the crash ones I had specifically fire out a big spiral a sport concept art was created for the Spyro trilogy by a few people expanding in numbers with each preceding title most designs are extremely faithful in translating from 2d to 3d thanks to Oliver Wade being responsible for most of the concept art models and animations although some interesting differences are present in the concept are with some being substantially different from their final in-game appearance [Music] [Music] speaking of Oliver Wade he also answers some questions for us that have been unknown for years on one note he told us that for riptos rage at laura was originally going to have four legs and be more of a center creature Elora was designed after actress Victoria quell her and named after insomniac level designer Caroline just scrambled up the letters of Caroline and you'll get a Laura he also told us that he really wanted sergeant bergdhal a debt pack but it was overruled by the higher-ups and SAAM niak probably for the batter additionally he spoke about how the design process for all the Spyro characters when he recalled that they were designed in roughly five minutes apiece with most of them only having one design rendition rarely were character designs rejected or tweaked if ever just because of the time constraints that year at the dragon had two characters labeled as Amish Dolphin rider and random dragon were to cut ideas from Spyro two and three aquaria towers originally had a whole gang of Amish characters with each having a unique occupation but since Oliver found this concept to be too weird even for Spyro standards it was replaced with seahorses and crabs however perhaps even more of note is the dragon it would have been a secondary NPC within bamboo Terrace according to Wade which means the entire concept for it was removed probably meaning the dragon would have been a one-off character in a minigame similar to Jack from charmed Ridge throughout each of the home worlds in the game unused dialogue can be uncovered ranging from an entirely cut professor interaction in evening lake to altered demo dialogue coming from Hunter even the enchanted towers NPCs have very different original dialogue that needs to be toned down thanks for freeing me why don't you come and visit me in my home world if you can charge toad boy into the lava and I think I can finish him off this is the most fun I've had since we chased King flippy on the manta ray now that you've mastered the basics let's see you do some stunts try using the X or triangle button to jump off ramps and turn in the air not too bad very post Neolithic wouldn't you say and now for my latest experiment blast sculpting I shall attempt to carve an image of you with a single explosive detonation thank you for offering to help spiral but surely even you wouldn't be able to defeat all those rhinox until the powerup is active thanks for freeing me why don't you come visit me in my home world if you charge into the lava boulders after I drop them they'll explode against anything they hit whenever you get low on health just toast a chicken or two and you'll soon be shipshape oh dear oh dear I've been trying to build a rocket to take you to midnight mountain but I appear to have misplaced my plans now I can't even remember where I was working don't worry about me I'm just gathering my thoughts let's see I was working on the plans some ninjas appeared and yeah yeah and then everything gets fuzzy thanks for freeing me why don't you come visit me in my home world in December of 2019 an interesting press kit for year of the dragon popped up well it's not as spectacular as the original games kit this one contains some interestingly exclusive content such as a pair of Spyro chopsticks and also some press documents for those who may not be aware press kits and discs are given out before a game's release and typically contain art renders screenshots and even early gameplay videos for example are used as Spyro ones manual can be found in pure HD quality in the game's press kit when the game originally released anvil of music tracks weren't present this was later fixed in the greatest hits version which not only added the extra music they fixed some of the major glitches found in the original version even the speedway's had a glaring issue with collecting the eggs if the player didn't 100% the level on the first try collecting the leftover eggs became impossible but the reason why certain tracks were missing is quite simple a bug caused evening leaks track for example to place some rice springs instead it was an issue with the placement of music track values in the files but eight other tracks were not implemented in the original release due to time constraints after all music is composed towards the latter half of development for the most part so the fact that midnight mountains levels lack their respective themes in version 1.0 makes complete sense additionally the power release receives an updated version fixing major bugs but did not include the greatest hits content a fair amount of early pre-release clips have survived the test of time but that's not to say some haven't been lost due to non-existent preservation with that in mind tons and tons of changes big and small can be uncovered by analyzing the clip various egg models as well as textures were swapped around throughout development it's pretty crazy how insomniac couldn't settle on one specific look for the dragon eggs they weren't from being dark purple then later appearing as green within the heads-up display as well as releasing the same garden fragments which remain unused in the final game hmm - finally settling on their final design getting a phone call with insomniac spher official employee Craig stit was a go we certainly had an accomplished he was not only an artist on the entire Spyro trilogy but he was the sole reason Spira Jack and even exists in the first place because everyone's gone off of your corners more power noise towards new weeks just breaks up and tough back and we'll all pitch an idea and then we'll pick and then that's the gig next game insomniac would do so I think Ted came back with alien invasion game Alex hasty the programmer came back with off-road racing game I can't remember what Brian came back with and I came back with the idea of doing the game where you get to play the dragon most games were you were fighting the dragon or maybe you were right you never got to be the dragon the original game I pitched it was argued is a little bit older audience gonna be a little more realistic look and you would start out as a hat as a dragon in each level you would be an older bar to drag the more powerful dragon each love what you would become a bigger more powerful dragon so by the end you'd be this huge gargantuan dragon magic use the power proconsul dragon and mark Cerny who was our producer made two suggestions one if you keep the dragon the same egg sequels be easier and which is a good point and he pointed out also that by the time we had this game done and on the shelves the average age of the PlayStation user would be a couple years younger so instead of targeting like you know the 17 20 years old if we targeted like well 15 year olds nobody liked my little dragon I designed which is just as well because we brought in another guy Charles nipples who actually did the actual character design for spiral I'm disrupter insomniac first game they spent $10,000 or something like that for the ad the entire ad campaign which is basically a couple of print ads for a month or two Tony picked up Spyro and they spent I think ten million dollars on advertising or something ridiculous like that my primary job was physically building and texturing the worlds around them although I didn't design spire or build the model for him I actually did to the testers for Spyro just a little rounder the simplices was was just what is leaner and sleeker looking and I I agreed his design is better than mine I'm glad we went with his it just would have been nice to head up in mind all the other games I worked on and I not been they weren't in another way okay our in the case of Spyro if I hadn't been there there I've always loved dragons to me they are just the greatest creature I mean it's the combination of a trance or X with with wings and breathes fire I mean you've got the best of everything in a dragon and immediately everybody said yeah that's it because dragons can fly they can run they can flame they can jump they can do anything and they're cool spiral from the initial design was supposed to be able to swim now we didn't have any big swimming challenges in Spyro wine but we did have some water obstacles and some hitting rooms that you were supposed to swim out to it get to and then was we got really we got towards the end we realized that Alex the program with us he wasn't in that time program swimming and so we all of a sudden had to come but we already had most of the world with with water that you know you spiral was supposed to swim it's also we had to come up with a way to make water dangerous but not dangerous it was this kind of clootie thing where it swim for a little while then I got shot she or something like that the skies and spyro were a new technique that Peter Hastings team up with to try and save memory you actually built the mop disguise on this on polygons each vertex each point had a color value and so I remember Ted price did the first one and he asked me if I could try one and then everyone really liked mine so I kinda at first I thought I got stuck doing this guy's exact they were a pain in the butt to do eventually they tools got a little better to build them and they got to be really fun so then I started having I really enjoy doing this guy so I ended up doing all this guy's for all three spirals but the world I didn't forget about a third of the world breeds in the three games in to I think almost all the worlds or mine I know I did but it's done and I get that the boss round and I may have done some of the sparks need Browns think I did I speak maybe sergeant Birds base law suite I definitely possibly in that balance I went on vacation before we actually shipped the game because at that point we were like I'm locked down making changes and listen really have to take vacation short yeah because I came back and went to play it I was pissed yeah the worst part is they didn't it took the world with them they didn't take the island out we were in the final final person of the game I'm not sure Brian Hastings when the lead programs is the one that pulled that and I'm not sure why we see was working because when I left it was all been finished it's the final polishing this early remembered which areas I had worked on just go run into a room or climbed up on something or go pass something that you remember having a certain set of textures that were just really problematic or a certain build new geometry that just did wanna work Oh region or I thought this was sort of spiral ones might want to imagine craft room room there was a cave and I remember just protect trying to get a texture in there for the rock pattern it didn't look like wallpaper so you couldn't see the repetitive repetitiveness stem in the textures so he's running through this room and I just remembered it's like oh yeah this texture took forever it arrived in Spyro 2 summer forest there was this very complicated spiral staircase that went up to some someone and I've worked or worked could not you know finally got the staircase the geometry on spiral staircase this is very and even in real world history and then it was doubly so given that the program spiral had to be able to wear enough to kind of automatically not yeah and then had them finally had it worse than a gun comes designers decide to not have that before it out visually it made that little part of the garden is very cluttered so I was glad to see it go it just a second it's been all the time to be afford just a little spiral staircase that went up to something I think was kind of back behind where you started there's a couple spots where you see my son's name is Brian stone with the wife carved as pearls letters and then the funny thing there was Oliver came up to me he goes hey my son's name is Brian and spelled with the Y but I also have a daughter named Brenda yeah you know I don't want to tell my son - his name is carved in there you know if my daughter's name so could you put R into someplace and so then that was towards the end so he actually there it says brinda winter tundra I ain't get that door top of the door it's terrific that one's not so elaborate I literally just kind of broke bread the top this is a pretty well-known little Easter Egg is there was a guy named Dan was one of our animators and somehow it ended up as a mascot Sprint's off T dependence and somewhere way back with somebody stole his driver's license scanned in the photograph and so there's Dan's face is hidden all over in the spiral caves really it was kind of the mascot for the company that was a nightmare level to build because it had to be very precise because the everything had to be lined up just right ramps and the skies and that was the fun Sky News but I does want first times I've really tried to do more than just clouds this guy's that one actually has like the trees in the distance and once again it's not painted it's not a texture it's a strange little system of building stuff out of polygons ski lows that last that's one of my favorites I've also got a thing for foam skeleton so that was yeah I'm sorry I love dragon telephones and so that one this skeleton dragons so it's like the perfect offer the level designs they literally just it was literally just curves and and and blocky shapes on and da end and dimensions the first lizard the master originally just drawn a graph paper by hand they really worried just blocky shapes and sometimes the depth information is the room were very critical and with Swift's of paths and hallway the big one was elevation of different floors and platforms is all very critical but what those platforms were and what the world looked like was completely left to the artists spyro was originally green I've got the videotape and we realized two things one most of the time he's gonna be running around on grass so it's gonna be a little hard to see and to is there was two or three other platforming games with green characters there was gex the gecko there was croc the crocodile we said back that down and did like I'm gonna have it done eight or ten different colors of spiral and just did these short little bursts of a video I recorded and we all need to send out via we just all watched it picked the one we liked yet it organs it hasn't aged well but it's really cool to watch because Eva you look really good black but you lost open details you look really good this dark kind of grip red visually just at Darren's tweet the colors until I got where I liked them at the time we were working with Universal Studios and they were our publisher at Universal was very difficult to work with and so we wanted to get away to Universal but we left Universal Universal owned the property rights to spiral so if we left Universal we had to leave Spyro with Universal been up to me excitement really did didn't want to leave spiral probably would have stayed but definitely a good thing we left so we had no intention it has his name be Pete but by the time we got where he is a real name we've been calling Pete for a year year and a half one of the early ideas that we liked or some of us liked was spyro the dragon and had too much you know negative you know pyromaniac connotation and Brian Hastings pitched spiral and no one liked it and a few months later someone it's only pitch to spiral in there Royce yes and so whoever is it got the Sony got the credit Brian was like hey I've actually got a shirt right here that says we had our Dame's you know put on the pockets and I had Pete put on my just because that's again I've never seen anybody comment on it's something that drove me nuts and I'm angry at myself for having screwed up on it if you go back to the original Tetris for Spyro himself his weeks if you picture a batwing or it gladly it's kind of this you know it you know Pete you know inverted V shape and then there's the little spying the little bony structure that comes down that's literally on a bat swing it's the wings on a bat literally it's dangerous they're just really long skinny fingers with tissue stuff but the way I drew it it's basically those those little little stress I have in the wrong places there's yeah it's hard to explain visually but it drove me nuts cuz it wasn't till after I'm playing the game like oh crap those wings literally it's literally the same exact texture it just applied slightly different to the polygon it's just wear those little struts come out of the main arm of the wig or were raw I select for you unused textures even exist some being early demo versions or entirely cut ideas in the final game this includes removed doors and strange golden egg fragments some models actually go completely unused such as an odd-looking egg and even a cut enemy during the cutscene entitled hunters tussle at the far left edge of the screen a peculiar model for me seen with a brief animation [Music] in actuality this is a cut enemy from spyro 2 known as mr. Festus which can also be seen in spyro 2 Sephora's mortis this character was not only brought back in year of the Dragon for this cameo but the enemy has even seen being referenced in ratchet Clank three's insomniac Museum Oliver Wade recalls designing modeling and animating mr. Festus on riptos rage and even what level he would have been in mr. Pfister would have been an enemy in cloud temples as he would have started out as a statue and then broken free much like the other enemies although his hand would have remained in stone form which is how he would have attacked Spyro by hammering down at the ground with his large stone fist so that mystery has now been solved fans have picked up on the fact that before each boss in year at the dragon a charming cutscene plays however there's no cutscene before the final battle with the sorceress you'd think that this cutscene would be one of the most important in the game but unfortunately no cutscene seems to have ever been planned for the sorceress possibly due to time constraints after all the huge level count year at the dragon possessed exceeded riptos rage by a far margin Jeff sites was credited as engineering and co-producing a good handful of the first batch of songs created for the Spyro trilogy he's even worked with Stewart Copeland well before and after spire to this day you could say he helped create the tone and feel of music that has become a staple for Spyro being brought on riptos rage by Mike Golan and continuing for year at the dragon Brian Watkins recorded voice actors such as Tom Kenny and Pamela Hayden he even created some iconic sound effects for the titles thankfully his memory of his work for the game is as fresh as ever he is a fantastic phone call with Brian that offers a unique perspective to a role that never gets much appreciation initially I was hired just to record the voiceover and it was actually pretty much the first time that Warner Brothers had worked on a video game thanks to my dalam he came to me I was the AVR mixer on what they called ATR stage 2 in those days and it was actually in a scoring stage and it just had a series of Bobo's put in the corner the actual ATR booth are where the equipment was where I was was actually the drum booth for the scoring stage I was on that stage and that's where we started recording the characters for spiral dragon have you seen any giant the chickens and I did but then after we recorded the voice I came to be later on he knew I was doing a game sound design he asked me if I wanted to help create sound effects for the game and so I did that for a few days not not much the most memorable sound are never making was the bellow and then a myriad of other sounds that I can't remember I just remember having fun making something for that fellow I think I did some kind of reward sounds where you know I use like sounds of a cash register closing I vaguely remember making room for exams the reason why I remember Spyro just it's just because it was the first game that I ever recorded voice over for also the one of the founders of insomniac was on the stage almost every day his name was Brian I did remember working with the girl with the Simpsons boys cuz I was so blown away by her aunt and her talent and at the time she was pretty darn cute she was young I remember I was married at the time but I remember bought dang wish I was single when I worked on it I actually had to go into Mike's and worked in Mike's room along with Jackie Amano chick now I got a really funny story for you ice goal was to make a sound every 60 seconds you had 60 seconds to make a sound and he felt that you should be able to make 50 to 60 sounds per hour and that was the goal so what happened was I was sitting with Jackie and one of the sounds on the list was the bellow and so we loaded that animation into Pro Tools and I played and I was like wow this is this is a really cool thing like can you take like five minutes and work on this thing and she was like take as long as you want this is really important to Brian and Mike walked in he was hurted and it sounded really complicated right it was a more complicated sound than what was mostly being produced for the game and Mike was like how long did that take you to do and Jackie said I think it took us 10 minutes because that's too long that's too long what I did is on that fellow is I think we made it a loop cuz didn't just go up and down all the time it never stopped I think I made a loop sound that lasted maybe a second a half or two seconds and you know - Mike I spent way too much time on it because I spent five minutes on today a sound like that I'd probably spend like you know thirty minutes on to make it perfection you would probably make a beginning a middle and end and you would probably have variations on it because you know they would want it to evolve some of the player came back to it or went to another one it would sound slightly different and that's just a difference in games now we have more space believe me there wasn't a lot of thought put towards it because you didn't have time to put a lot of thought towards you just had to go really fast I remember thinking god you know this could really use another couple minutes I'm a perfectionist when it comes to sound I'd like I'd like to think that's part of the reason why I'm successful is that you know I I want to make sure that things sound interesting or powerful or you know have layers that players glom on to and feel connected to that whatever they're doing or using in a game I always find that so satisfying in the last Call of Duty game Modern Warfare I did all the reload sounds for the weapons that was one of the things that you know people commented on I remember recording in the summertime for two and then I remember recording again in the winter time for three now I may not have done all of three and I may not have done all of two but I remember specifically doing Pamela Hayden I mean we've recorded dialogue as early as three years before the release date oh he was so nice he came in and we started talking I didn't realize he was I I'm not a big animation love you know and so he started making voices and I recognized right away because at the time I had a three and a four year old and so you know we watch Spongebob religiously and I go oh my god I go you're Spongebob and he goes yeah oh my god my kids and I we watch that show over and over and you know and he started you know doing all those voices I can't tell you what a nice guy he is I just you know because some some actors can have like an attitude or you know be a little bit off-putting or maybe just you know don't really want you in their space and Tom just like he just totally embraced me and and it was I just loved him I thought he was just a wonderful wonderful human being the universal Vivendi was not known for being very good at producing games they relied heavily on on hiring you know outside developers and not really putting a hand on you know just really watching production and the money and so they didn't they didn't really want to be involved in in creative decisions so obviously that one they didn't like where it was going and they just said just remake spyro spyro you know the thing is though is that by this time game development has gone so far so to go back and redo an old game is so easy it's so easy if you're just gonna remaster a game you're just gonna bring it up to the spec so it plays well and it runs well on a new console and you're gonna make new sounds and that's not hard to recreate and they cheap doubt again and look they still make money originally instead of the yaks in bamboo Terrace a tiger would have been an enemy in the level sadly the main reason it was cut was due to technical reasons Brian Argyle recalls that the Tigers turning animation looked quite rough and unnatural because making four-legged characters rotate back in the day on Spyro was very difficult for the team luckily they soon had it figured out with the AK one of Sony villas early designs features our fountain and a balcony sticking out of the room with the portal to the skateboarding area it's possible that because the player can glide over to that section without completing the level first this would have motivated its removal it's also been suggested that it may have just been removed to make the first level simpler and design areas in games are often entirely removed by developers for similarly small reasons sheila's sunny villa section also contained a removed rhinock enemy that's only ever been seen in a screen shot and actually in one of the cutscenes in the final game for some reason none sees icy feet minigame featured a different enemy as well with less clothing than the one in the final game there's even a set of animation frames in the game's second demo which appear to reflect this rhinox design considering that six different demos were released to the public throughout 2000 changes can be seen all throughout some things that would change or as simple as hunter skating shorts being read in the demo there's also larger aspects like early textures and dialogue which are changed for spyro 2 most of the demos included early versions of the music for sunny beach in Skelly's Badlands which lacks some of the crucial instrumentation in the final versions this is the exact same case for year at the Dragons early footage with both bamboo Terrace and Sergeant Birds themes lacking and even adding some instruments which are missing in the final version [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] contacting voice actors was also a priority of ours funnily enough even though the voice actor of moneybags and Bentley wasn't brought back for the reignited trilogy he can still do his voices perfectly to this day let's take a look at a quick call we hope with him the way they work these games as each actor works separately half the time you don't even know who they are you come in and there is a drawing or maybe two or three drawings of the characters and then there is maybe a one or two paragraph description of the character and as you are absorbing all this you try to pick up a voice for the character and then you try to reproduce that voice if you are successful and they like what you're doing you perhaps have a job there was a time in my career not really involved in games before animation where I actually had a little cassette player that I would carry around with me and it had all my characters on them on this one particular tape so just before I went in to do a session I would sit in my car in the parking lot and listen to that tape a couple of times and make sure I have the voice locked down usually they are smart enough especially if a lot of time has passed since they last worked with you they'll bring a reference recording and they'll say would you like to hear a reference on this character you said yes absolutely I remember the name moneybags she was a very elegant character and that's why I did that thing was billing in the slithy Toves did gyre and gimble in the wave all mimsy were the borogroves and the mome Raths outgrabe apparently I was down in here and I was doing some sort of a cockney accent I've done a while yet he would ever cut me accent must've made sense to us at the time but when it comes to games you work alone I mean sometimes of a bit be aligned in the script and I'll say there's a director why am i saying this and they'll look at me and say I haven't got a clue sort of have to guess and folks who play these games play them over and over and make the voices get drilled into their brain and come obsessed with it but for me it was just one three or four hours session out of thousands no the only thing I seem to recall is that I I think I did several sessions for spyro but these long periods of time would go by between them to the point where almost forgotten I even did it and then my agent would called and they would say well they need you again really oh okay that's nice I seem to recall it was a few people would show up fella and a lady it's kind of wonderful with voiceovers there's so many different areas and sometimes when one area dries out but the other one becomes very productive ladies and gentlemen welcome to the fifth tannin museum dedicated to Hill valleys number one citizen and America's greatest living folk hero the one and only Biff Tannen

Channel: Mr. FO1

Views: 9,504

Keywords: Spyro, Spyro 3, Insomniac Games, Universal, Development, Game Dev, Game Development, Spyro The Dragon, Spyro Year of the Dragon, Documentary, Developers, Behind The Scenes, Ted Price, Craig Stitt, Oliver Wade, Spyro YoTD, Cut Content, Unused, Beta, Hwd405

Id: vllOwIr8V24

Length: 45min 22sec (2722 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 20 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/[deleted]]

This was great, because we finally confirmed what everybody knew to be a cop out. Insomniac didn't leave Spyro because 'he didn't have hands', they left because they hated working with Universal! Thank you so much Craig Stitt!