Problems with Ripto’s Rage:
- Introduction:
Why I am not Biased by Nostalgia.
o
Why you might suspect that: Bias for the Past.
§ The first
game for PS1 I owned.
§ Played on
and off for twenty years.
o
Counterargument One: Games older to me than Spyro,
of which I am more critical:
§ Sonic the
Hedgehog 2.
§ Sonic C.D.
§ Wario Land.
§ King’s
Quest VII.
o
Counterargument Two: Games newer than Spyro 2,
for which my nostalgia is stronger and my admiration greater:
§ Jak and
Daxter trilogy.
§ Ratchet and
Clank trilogy.
§ Sly Cooper trilogy.
§ In all three
of these instances:
·
I finished the trilogy, whereas I never acquired Spyro
the Dragon: Year of the Dragon until I got Spyro: Reignited. My
sister didn’t even know that Year existed.
·
The success of the first sequel was what prompted me
to buy the third installment, and in two out of these three (Jak and Sly)
I ended up preferring the second to the first game, in spite of fond feelings
and intrigue for the first, personally and critically.
o Who I was
when I first played Spyro.
- Fewer
Worlds makes Backtracking Awkward.
o
The Ladder in Glimmer.
§ Moneybags
is right there. Greed is no excuse for the inconvenience.
§ Not much to
be found up there anyway.
§ The
Balloonist Routine: How distant ledges used to work alongside quotas.
· Why it
works, especially in Magic Crafters.
· The New
Alternative:
o
The Ladder in Autumn Plains.
o
The Vortexes.
§ Why can’t I
just fly? Compromising player agency when it’s not necessary to even implement
that skill here.
- Acquired
Abilities.
o
Swimming underwater with no need for an air supply:
no mean feat for a dragon who could not touch water in the first game.
o
Climbing, as discussed.
o
Head-smashing.
o
Abilities as Currency.
o
Perma-flame when you need it least.
- Temporary
abilities.
o
No faeries kissing you.
o
No arrows on the track.
o
Only one (obnoxious) combination, in Metropolis,
when you’re already tempted to leave.
o
Flying is less rewarding than in the Flying Levels.
o
Point System is demoralizing: kill count in a kid’s
game.
o
Idle springs.
- Getting a
Life:
o
Old Format:
§ Gnorcs are
Gems in disguise; gems have been stolen, as were the eggs abducted by the
thieves.
· Sense in
terms of lore.
· Sense in
terms of morality.
· Sense in
terms of design.
o
Kill Gnorcs, get gems, advance.
o
If a Gnorc has been killed already, it produces a
Life Token.
§ Enough Life
Tokens add up to a Life, like rings, coins, or wumpa fruit.
§ Life tokens
indicate Gnorcs that have already been killed, marking territory that has been
explored, like breadcrumbs or Ariadne’s thread. This relates to the presence of
gems and crates as pathways to new territories.
§ Lives may
also be found in cute chests with eyes. What’s inside? A Dragon-shaped Life. It
all makes complete sense.
§ Health can
be restored by devouring butterflies that are contained within the local fauna
and fungi.
o
New Format:
§ Enemies may
or may not be working for Ripto. In fact, several of them are simply combatants
in a conflict wherein Spyro plays as double-agent, taking ample casualties for
both sides in order to further his own objectives.
· Breeze
Harbour/Zephyr.
· Metropolis/Robotica
Farms.
§ When enemies
are killed, they release white balls of light, most presumably their Souls,
which appear to be pure (unlike the evil spirit who haunts the statues in
Colossus, who is distinctly dark and alters the colour of the statues it
inhabits). No sooner do they give up the ghost than these light spirits are
drawn into magic goalposts which harness the energy to fuel temporary power-ups
for Spyro to exploit once he meets his kill quota.
§ Lives are
only acquired by eating special butterflies, which most often appear in
bottles. Whereas the original Spyro RESCUED beautiful, magical creatures, this one
feeds them to his accomplice, not unlike Ripto does.
- Puzzles
become more obnoxiously childish and contrived, since they are no longer to be
discovered as natural outgrowths of the environment.
o
Haunted Towers: Perfect for an Open World.
§ How I
learned how to win.
§ Faeries,
Supercharge, and the Knight’s Gauntlet. (Analogous to High Caves from earlier.)
o
Idol Springs:
§ Boxes,
Tikis, and Shapes, oh my!!
§ Puzzles feel
less relevant to the “Real World” because they do not require the player to be
resourceful about the environment.
§ While some
of these devices warrant explanation, most of the explanations are as simple
as, in my own words: “this tiki lamp is a very picky pescatarian.”
- Flying
Levels stop when you find secret areas, even if you do not want them do stop.
- Our “Villain”
has a Reason to Rage.
o
All we know about Ripto is that he was accidentally
transplanted from another world and that he decided to take refuge in Avalar, a
home already to diverse species that often butt heads with one another, both
figuratively and literally.
§ While Ripto
ostensibly expressed a desire for conquest, (“Say hello to your new king.”)
this is forgivable for two reasons:
· A “King” is
distinct from a “Tyrant”. The Dragons Themselves inhabited a Dragon KINGDOM,
implying a certain regality whose splendor:
a.
Justifies the expulsion of Gnasty’s Minions in the
first game, and
b.
Makes Avalar’s technocratic, multicultural mishmash
of a battlefield pale in comparison: a World less worth fighting for, except as
a means by which to return to Dragon Shores, where, inexplicably, the Gnorcs have
either taken over or been turned into slaves. (Weren’t they gems just a
minute ago?)
Ripto, apparently a displaced
monarch, may be qualified to rule, but who stops him? Elora, because this
threatens her power.
· Elora’s
version of the events is the only account we have, and she has shown signs of
bossiness and bias already, especially towards Spyro, Hunter, and Moneybags.
o
When Elora demands that the Portal in Winter Tundra be
deactivated, Ripto loses his path home.
§ What would
Spyro have done? Just as Ripto does: plow ahead into the New World, lighting
things on fire and occupying territory. Ripto’s conquest is nothing more than
the same strategy that made the original game so engaging.
§ This also
explains why the wealth of orbs that the Professor was using for his
experiments has been displaced. It wasn’t the villain who stole it, unlike in
the original game; it was Elora’s doing.
§ Considering
that Ripto only has two henchmen at this time, one of whom is too slow-witted
to understand the command “Go through the Portal”, there is no reason
why the faeries couldn’t just store the orbs in one safe place, such as, say:
· Glimmer, a
mining colony, parts of which can only be reached by climbing or flight. (This
makes me wonder how Gulp got INTO his Overlook to begin with.)
· Colossus, a
Buddhist Temple in the Mountains, far out of reach of giant dinosaur creatures.
· Behind a
forcefield in Hurricos, past a series of propellers that cannot possibly hold
the weight of Ripto’s minions.
· Aquaria Towers,
an underwater city. (Can Ripto or his minions swim underwater? They don’t look
it, though they’re not dragons.)
· Fracture Hills,
behind several feet of rock that can only be opened by Satyrs versed in the ancient
art of bagpipe music, whose song can make even the Earthshapers dance on demand.
· Zephyr, in
a military barracks.
· Breeze
Harbour, on a flying ship, perhaps?
· Scorch,
where doors can only be opened by using a Superflame attack.
· Shady
Oasis, behind a grate that can only be opened by eating magic fruit and being a
hippopotamus.
· In a secret
ice cave in Winter Tundra, or perhaps the Magma Cone.
· Behind one
of several cracked walls in Autumn Plains.
· In literally
any flying level.
· Agent Zero’s
Hideout. (Under supervision.)
· Metropolis.
Enough said.
o
Ripto only conquers Autumn Plains after Crush is
killed in his own dungeon and Ripto and Gulp are forced to flee Summer Forest.
o
When Gulp, Ripto’s trusty steed and last surviving
ally, is killed, he avenges the death of his minions by bombing the Portal that
brought him here in the first place, devoting his remaining efforts to the
development of mechanical surrogates for his fallen allies.
o
Ripto is simply the scapegoat.
§ When Gulp
is killed, Elora and the faeries reward Spyro by turning Gulp’s Overlook (Gulp’s
home and the setting for his demise) into a suntan parlour, crediting Spyro
with bringing peace to Avalar while blaming Ripto for creating trouble between
rival sects.
§ Presumably,
two such warring sects are the Breeze Builders and the Blobpeople in Zephyr,
who MUST be manipulated to reach this stage in order to acquire their
Talismans, though no further Talismans appear afterwards.
§ There is
absolutely no evidence that Ripto inspired such bitter rivalries. Judging by
how quickly the professor tends to operate, how slowly Ripto moves in taking
new territory, and how advanced the arms race is between the birds and the blobs,
it would appear that they had been at war far longer.
o Why does
Ripto hate dragons? They do have a way of killing his friends and allying with
any cute faun who works against him (and not just Elora, as we observe in
Fracture Hills). This also explains why he tends to resent faeries and use them
to feed Gulp. [({Dm.R.G.)}]
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