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The Good & Bad of ‘Spyro: Reignited Trilogy’ Requiring Downloads for Spyro 2 and 3

Thus far, everything that has come out concerning the Spyro: Reignited Trilogy has looked amazing. From the graphics to developer Toys For Bob listening to fan feedback, it seemed like this game can do no wrong…. But then a new caveat appeared. First spotted by Twitter user Wario64, we learned that the Reignited Trilogy would require “Content Download”. This phrase was later clarified a bit when the site stated “Games 2 and 3 require download via internet”.

Now at this point, there’s still a lot of things we need clarified. Are we talked about the FULL second and third games or are these simply patches? Publisher Activision told GameInformer,

“The global launch date of Spyro Reignited Trilogy is Sept. 21; and we’re excited for fans to play all three reignited games on that day,” Activision told us. “As with most games today, downloading an update after purchase is quite common. The language on packaging and on the web is to let players know the requirements for Spyro Reignited Trilogy.”

Some fans have stated that the wording of the above statement is strange; but here is how I read it. Activision is set on September 21st being the release date – aka Toys For Bob cannot push back the release date. That being said, Toys For Bob will still be working on fine tuning the second and third games up until the release date – thus a patch will be needed. There are two ways this news can be taken.

The Bad – It Has a Shelf-life:

It’s hard for some gamers to think this way, but having a digital copy of a video game doesn’t actually mean you “own it”. If your data gets corrupted or your system dies, the data goes with it and could be irretrievable once that game’s servers go down. On the other hand, when you own a game fully on-disc, it’s complete and playable forever as long as the disc is intact and you have something to play it on. The ultimate fear here is (1) players without internet access won’t be able to play the game and (2) say 20 years from now, you want to play Spyro: Reignited Trilogy with your kids. You find a copy online and unbox your old PS4; but because the servers that issued that ‘patch’ are no longer used, 2/3rd of this game are now unplayable. Meanwhile, the original 3 Spyro games for PS1 would still be playable and have lasted longer than their Remasters.

The Good & Bad of ‘Spyro: Reignited Trilogy’ Requiring Downloads for Spyro 2 and 3
Credit: Spyro Reignited Official Website

The Good – Better To Not Rush/ Patches Needed:

*Warning, I’m about to mention the thing that all Spyro fans would like to forget*

Just because it’s set to ‘release’ September 21st doesn’t mean Toys for Bob has until that date to finish the disc. Between printing, encoding, etc the Physical Copies would have to be ready to ship out a little sooner than that. So by having this patch, Toys For Bob has time to work on it a bit more up to that date. This means that they won’t have to rush to cram everything on the disk and say ‘oh well’ when/if bugs are discovered later on. In other words, this means we WON’T get another Spyro: Enter The Dragonfly….

If you were anything like me growing up, you were super excited when a 4th Spyro game was announced! So excited, you bought a PS2 for the sole purpose of playing Spyro: Enter The Dragonfly. And then you bought it and immediately discovered a game that was not only much smaller than was promised, but also had so many game shattering bugs, that enemies were no longer the difficulty curve for the game but rather the programing itself. Could a patch have saved Enter The Dragonfly? Probably not because the story was a little lackluster too, but it would have at least made the game playable! The point here is that the Reignited Trilogy is looking so amazing thus far, that I would hate for rushing/ cramming to cause problems for it. Patches could prevent this.

Overall Verdict – Delay The Game:

Both sides have their points, and the best compromise I can find is to DELAY the game at least for a few weeks. Though this is more a plea to Activision than Toys For Bob. Toys For Bob’s hands are tied and considering how they’ve responded to fan feedback in the past, I beleive they’d gladly listen. But Activision are the ones who get to approve/ deny any extension in release date.

So please Activision, extend the deadline. We Spyro fans want this to be everything – a game we play for decades to come and display in our collections. Make it so that when the game is released, everything is perfectly in place. Yes, we want to play it as soon as possible; but we also don’t want it to be buggy. Maybe release the digital download version as advertised but save the Physical Disc for when everything is added/ patched?

After all, this is a game that’s banking on nostalgia. And what’s more nostalgic than popping in a disc for a completed game and NOT needing the internet to play. Now if you want to release DLC and new content later, that is TOTALLY fine! Just let the advertised “trilogy” be released as a “trilogy”.