Spyro the Dragon Review - Behind the Scenes (Patreon)

Hey all,

Sorry it's been so long, but today's the day I've uploaded the Spyro video here after being stuck in limbo for the longest of times... which is mainly what I'll be talking about for this BTS post.

And with that, let's go!

How the video came about:

This one is easy. The plan ALWAYS was to talk about Spyro this year. I had one big month of Crash videos last year, which thanks to the N Sane Trilogy ended up being the most topical and well-timed videos I've ever done... and even though nothing had been announced regarding any Spyro remakes, my plan from even back then was to do the Spyro videos this year.

Whether it's a good or bad thing that Activision did in fact announce the remake trilogy is yet to be seen. On the one hand, this video is now going to be more topical than it would have been without the announcement...

But at the same time, everyone and their mother are making videos about Spyro right now so there's also a good chance my video will get crushed by the sheer number of competing videos right now.

(Apologies to CRANTIME, as he was going to include my thumbnail in his own Spyro: A Heroes Tail video poking fun at this exact problem, but I didn't have it ready at the time!)

I am however late to the party thanks to my video burnout and going away on holiday not too long ago, so I've distanced myself from that for now.

Regardless of how long it's taken, I'd like to think I've still provided the usual am mount of quality when it comes to the footage, script and general animation work people expect of my videos these days :)

How the video changed during production:

Pretty much everything!

The end product with this video was actually the third complete and total rewrite of the script I did. Initially, the first script I'd written ended up going on for almost half an hour when read aloud, without including the intro.

Longer videos are all well and good, but I don;t think my visual presentation and general pacing would work very well for that length of time. It might seem a little "too much" for some people, let alone for myself when actually making the thing.

Secondly, the fact everyone else is doing Spyro videos and the fact this is a game that has already been done to death means I took liberties to cut back on some of the crap other people have already said before me, so I could focus more on the things I personally had to say.

This is why the first part of the review is just me talking about the use of the Insomniac games logo. I'm into that sort of thing, which most other people probably don't care about so I figured it was worth including for the sake of standing out.

Other than that, nothing too much changed once I settled on the final script as the vast majority of the video stayed as it was word-for-word after that.

I had this loose idea of somehow tying all of my videos this year together by having all of the Knack video take place inside my head after being knocked out at the end of my Portal video...

But then also having the PS4 missing, and poking fun at the continuity error. The more I think about it now I'm typing this out, the more I think I should have done that but whatever, too late now.

The intro did change, but mainly because the one I had was merely a placeholder.

It involved me throwing away a copy of The Legend of Spyro: A New Beginning... but as I've not even mentioned that game on this channel before now I figured it was silly to bring it up now.

The intro in the end product was just something I came up with while I was at home... listening to the soundtrack to The Mask.

That's where that jazzy music is from, if you didn't recognize it.

Fun Fact: APPARENTLY nobody actually owns the rights to the original score tot he film anymore for some reason. So using it isn't a problem.

Not that it would have been anyway, with the amount of sound effects I have layered over it...

Other trivia/info

The reason I don't actually wear the sunglasses in the video is because the idea to wear them only occurred to me AFTER i finished filming, and I had plenty of good takes.

But... hopefully you guys get the significance of them. Spyro wears his own shades in the final 100% ending cutscene, and I'm going to be doing that for all 3 games when I talk about them so I thought it'd be cool to wear some for this first thumbnail at least :)

(Shout-out to Myles for correctly guessing as soon as he saw the thumbnail!)

CONTINUITY ERROR: You'll notice I filmed my intro after everything else as you can see I have a copy of Agents of Mayhem on my shelf, but not in the rest of the video.

Prior to buying a physical copy I only ever had the digital copy that Deep Silver provided me for the review I did last year, so yeah.

I mean, it doesn't bother me as I've not got any narrative going on here. But that's why I've dropped it here in the trivia section! :)

Oh, and you guys may have noticed after I showed you the WIP thumbnail on Discord that it did slightly change again. Nothing huge, but I've reverted back to using my banner at the side instead of the border around the edges.

I like the consistency a little more this way, but I prefer the newer format of having a photo and a custom logo in the thumbnail so why not merge the ideas together!

That's a wrap!

I'm honestly so glad this video is out of the way. Don;t get me wrong I still want to talk about these games but for some reason I got so burnt out on this project.

Here it is in it's full timeline-y goodness. Just look at those sound effects at the start!

Hopefully Spyro 2 won't prove so bad when working on that, but between now and then I want to do a shorter video on a totally different game that I've barely spoke about on YouTube before.

I won't say what the game is to save backpedaling if it doesn't work out, but it's a very energetic game that's really inspired me to write.

So, until next time!

- Pete :)