Spyro 2 Review - Behind the Scenes (Patreon)

I'm back pretty soon after my last video with Spyro 2 today and as ususal I've got what was happening behind the curtians to here to tell you!

How the video came about:

I mean, this one's pretty obvious as I was going to do this after the first game anyway so instead I can go into why it happened this quickly!

Basically, while Bulletstorm was ready and fully completed by the time I went away at the end of last month, I spent the week leading up to my flight over there playing Spyro 2. By the time I left I had already finished the first world fully, so when I got back home I spent around 3 afternoons just playing it to finish the rest to 100%.

Honestly, the break away from everything left me feeling re-energized for making videos again. Making this video for Spyro 2 was so much more enjoyable compared to the utter burnout that I was facing during the production of the first game's video. So this was fun!

How the video changed during production:

While I pretty much already knew what I was going to say before I even started playing the game... Turns out that was WAY too much, so I ended up doing a second version of the script to trim away a lot of unnecessary paragraphs and sections that honestly didn't need to be there in hindsight.

It's just as well I did this as the initial script would have made the video around 40 minutes long, which I outright refused to do. There's no need for it so why do it!

One hiccup I did encounter was this weird problem trying to get Spyro 2 to work on my PS3. I have both versions of the game available to use. Gateway to Glimmer from my physical copy, and Ripto's Rage from the PSN Store download version.

Gateway to Glimmer worked fie during gameplay, but the cutscenes were all jumpy and full of distorted audio. Ripto's Rage had perfect cutscenes, but the gameplay would constantly slow down for some reason.

Very strange indeed, and because Spryo 2 doesn't have any form of level select code, my options were to either play through the entire game TWICE... or ask for some help.

So a friend of mine, and fellow game reviewer Square Eyed Jak helped me out by sending across his footage of the cut scenes. He's a good guy who runs a great channel so I'd honestly recommend checking his videos out some time if you haven't already!

(Fortunately I know for a fact Spyro 3 has a level select cheat code so hopefully if this problem happens again next time it'll be easier to sort out on my end!)

Another small change which was mainly to cut down the length of the video was a segment going over the infamous Double Jump Glitch.

You can see me use it a couple of times throughout the video and the plan was originally to use that glitch to do a friendly parody of Boundary Break, complete with a custom Petronious logo to match that channels logo.

It would have been in good taste as I'm a big fan of that channel, but yeah... the video was starting to become too long as it was, so I cut that segment out.

Another thing that changed and will likely become a more permanent change for the entire channel is the way I've handled transitions. I used to use a lot of swipe transitions, which were fine... but when used in close proximity to one another it could be a little too visually chaotic.

So as you can see with Spyro 2 I'm now using more standardized cuts when moving from one bit of gameplay to another... with the exception of when moving on to discuss another game. This was I can still use that swipe transition I like... but it's less frequent and has more of a purpose now, to help show I'm switching out one game for the other.

I like the end result and think it'll be how I do things from now on.

Other Trivia & Info:

Here's something you may have missed...

While I don't consider my videos to have any narrative, I like the idea of connecting videos together... so the plan from the start was to have all three of these Spyro videos lead directly into one another!

At the end of Spyro 1, Petronious falls down onto the ground. And now, Spyro 2 begins with him waking up and seeing how the shelves have moved around...!

It's nothing huge but it's something I wanted to do... and the same will happen with Spyro 3, as next time I'll start the video off with Petronious grabbing the game from the shelf and doing something stupid, I'm sure.

Since the Reignited Trilogy has been delayed I actually have plenty of time to add an extra layer to this idea of connecting the videos together once all 3 videos are out of the way... but more on that next time!

That's a wrap!

Once I finished the game I worked on the scripts, which after the second version of it took maybe 3 days. The editing in total took around 3 weeks or so!

Hopefully people like what I've done here, and I'd like to think I've had my fair share of original ways of wording my thoughts for this one. I'm particularly happy with explaining my thoughts on the hierarchy of collectibles found throughout Spyro 2.

I don't usually hear people discuss why the collectibles are so much more fun to collect this time around, so I figured I'd be one of the people to do it!

Anyway, that's pretty much it for today. My plan from here on is to play through and record everything for Spyro 3 and pretty much jump straight into that for my next project. I know the Reignited Trilogy has been delayed, but I do have other video plans in place for October in particular. 

So, there's no point hanging onto Spyro for too long as he'll be back on my channel again soon enough!

Thanks for watching/reading, and thanks for your support!

- Pete :)