Spyro: A Realm Beyond — flying demands active input, not autopilot

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Spyro: A Realm Beyond introduces the ability to fly around freely as the titular purple dragon , but the devs at Toys for Bob want you to know that they've not made a "flight simulator," because "we want active decision-making."

Speaking on a new episode of the Kinda Funny Games podcast , associate creative director Louis "Lou" Studdert confirms that flying isn't just some sort of passive ability that you can use with zero thought – you'll have to put the effort in, pushing buttons, to guide Spyro around the sky.

"We wanted to make sure that it is active. It is decision-making. It is pressing buttons. It is almost, you know, that platforming feel of evaluating a play space and figuring out how to continue," Studdert says.

Pointing to some gameplay footage, Studdert explains that Spyro can dive downwards "to pick up speed," as well as "use his flame breath, spit a fireball at distance to ignite a campfire to create a wind updraft to give him quicker lift," before the player presses a button "to flap his wings to push on his momentum and keep his speed up." Spyro can also activate "sky rings" for a boost in the air.

"It's really about evaluating the play space," he continues. "It's looking [at] what you can interact with and connecting all of those to sustain your momentum and to keep going."

Toys for Bob studio head Paul Yan chimes in: "It's super important for us that the player is able to say, 'Look at that thing off in the distance. How do I get there? And then how do I leverage the environments around me and my abilities in order to do that?' Because what we don't want is for it to be a flight simulator where we say, 'OK, here's the destination, hit in the GPS, we're going to coast and get there.' There's no fun in that."

Yan reiterates that there's "no autopilot" option for Spyro's flight because "we want active decision-making." He explains: "Platforming as a term in this flight space is a little bit different than platforming like jumping on the ground, but similarly, we want that kind of decision-making to happen in that space."

Spyro: A Realm Beyond is set to release early next year, and Yan previously told us that the devs "want not just one new game, but many new games. We hope that this is the first of many." With that in mind, hopefully we won't be waiting another 18 years for the next all-new one.

"Going independent meant taking a massive, massive risk": How Toys for Bob split off from Activision and Xbox to help guide Spyro to A Realm Beyond.