The Enter the Dragonfly Investigation – Part II: Interview with Joel Goodsell

(This article was originally published on October 1, 2018 in the now-defunct Facebook page. Facts and opinions expressed in these words may differ currently.)

Last time, on May of that year, I’ve started this series of interviews called the Enter the Dragonfly Investigation, which was meant to uncover the mystery of what have led to the final release of the infamous eponymous title from the Spyro the Dragon franchise we know today.

To those who somehow don’t know and forgot about Enter the Dragonfly and to keep it short, this fourth entry in the mainline Spyro series was first released in November 2002 on the PlayStation 2 and Nintendo GameCube and would’ve been the transition of Spyro towards the next generation of consoles and should advance the usual production value that has been set with the original games by Insomniac. There was huge expectations… and it sadly didn’t deliver.

We already had the insight of Warren Davis, who was credited as the project coordinator and senior engineer at Check Six Studios. And although it was more about the organization and the relations between the two development team, it brought out the spotlight on the involvement of a certain Joel Goodsell, who was said to be an integral part of the design process of Spyro: EtD, despite not being credited on the final game.

And now, for the first time ever, we’ll get to hear his perspective on the development of Spyro: Enter the Dragonfly, after his involvement was kept in mystery for 16 years.

1. To start off nicely, can you introduce yourself?

Joel Goodsell

I’m Joel Goodsell. I was the original Director on the game that became Spyro: Enter the Dragonfly. I began coding video games as an amateur in the early 80’s, got my first professional job designing games with Disney in the 90’s, where I was the lead level designer on Gargoyles for the Sega Genesis and lead designer for Toy Story 2 PS1/N64/PC. I was at Disney until I joined Check Six Studios.

2. At some point in your career, you joined the newly-founded Check Six Studios in California. Can you describe how the company was, from their values and philosophy to the working process?

Check Six and Equinox operated as two separate companies, cooperating, with both companies written into the contracts (as I recall). Equinox being the art half, and Check Six being the design and programming half. When I first joined, the two companies had separate spaces across town. Several months into the project we moved to a single space in Venice. Check Six itself was set up with a board of co-equal founders. If there was a values statement or philosophy, I do not recall.

3. How and when did you get involved with the Spyro project? Why did Universal Interactive approached your studio, or was it the opposite and instead it was Check Six who pitched to Universal?

Check Six and Equinox had already been working out a contract for Spyro with Universal when I was hired. There was already a basic tech demo that ran on a dev-kit off of an SGI – which even as limited as it was (you could run Spyro around a small Spyro-esque environment at about 7fps), was still months ahead of most other companies at the time. I believe they signed the contract either right before I started or just after. As for myself, I had put the word out that I was looking to leave Disney, and a producer friend with whom I’d worked with at Disney and now worked at Universal called me up and said that he had an opportunity that he felt I’d be perfect for. I first met with the people at Universal, then with the principals of Check Six and Equinox, who showed me the early demo, which impressed me, so I jumped on board.

4. Did you already have a personal connection with Spyro before you were working on this project? Have you played any of the original games on PSone?

I was a huge fan of the three previous Spyro’s – completing each and Spyro 3 twice. So, for me, directing a Spyro game was more than just a career opportunity, but also an opportunity to be involved in a favorite franchise, as well as take that franchise to the next level on the new PS2.

5. Was the initial plans for the Spyro project any different from what the final product ended up being? Were they any scrapped ideas and concepts?

Completely different. I felt – possibly naively – that Spyro needed a tone update going from the PS1 to the PS2. Thus, the first design that we delivered grew Spyro up to feel less like a kid, and more a teenager facing real adult dangers – much like the flavor of Harry Potter – still fun with whimsy, yet grown up and dangerous. The world itself reflected this, integrating steam-punk visuals into the design and art. The first story treatment had a serious boss and introspective ending – which Universal felt was too heavy, so we reverted to a more traditional Spyro-style ending and nemesis, adjusted the bad-guys to be a cute-but-misunderstood race of antagonist minions, relegated the steam-punk visuals to the bad-guy land. Universal signed off on this 122-page design, on schedule, and we began working on it. As a side note: Ember the Dragon first appeared here, in this early design.

Ember the Dragon, which first official appearance would be in A Hero’s Tail (2004)

A month or so into production, Universal decided they preferred a different direction and asked for a standard Spyro game design, specifically including a team up of Gnasty and Ripto. This is where Ricci became our primary creative contact at Universal. The story and design were re-written to focus on freeing captured baby dragonflies. We did bring along much of the plans and work for the existing worlds and characters to the new 90-page design. This design was delivered four months into production. This new design had a major enhancement delivered a few months later, making further adjustments per Universal request and defining every detail of every feature – it was 208 pages and delivered to Universal six months into production.

Universal’s reply to that second design was – and I’m paraphrasing because it’s been 15 years – “this is good, but it’s just a standard Spyro game design. What’s special about it?” By this time, we were far into production with somewhere between a third and half of the previous design’s assets and levels built, and already at the edge of the scope of what we could reasonably produce. Yet Check Six – and specifically myself – was contractually obligated to deliver a game design that Universal would legally sign off on and attach to the contract – regardless of whether that design was the one to actually ship. Ricci was already on-site and directing the game to be something close to the existing second design – so I was certain that any new design I delivered would never be read seriously and was more for satisfying the contractual requirement. So, I went for broke and wrote an epic Zelda-esque RPG-lite Spyro design. This design also involved a team up of Ripto and Gnasty, however with a deeper Zelda-like structure including a hub-town and surrounding open world field with changing seasons. A final version of this design (214 pages) was delivered and signed off on by Universal in Jan 2002. No feedback was received.

6. How did some of the new gameplay features came to be, such as the multiple breath abilites, the wing shield and the various vehicles?

The very first design had Fire, Ice and Lightning breath. The original games did a great job with forcing the player to change up charge vs. breath attacks with clear enemy visuals, and I wanted to continue deepening this aspect of the Spyro franchise.

Bubble Breath and the Wing Shield were added to the earliest versions of the second design. The Wing Shield to add some depth to Spyro’s defensive abilities and allow for further variation in enemy designs. The Bubble Breath was first added to facilitate the re-capturing baby Dragonflies storyline – and then expanded to function on enemies and objects.

Spyro 3 had vehicles, and we knew we needed to continue and build on that, so each design had a varying slate of vehicles. I believe each design had a submarine. I don’t recall what vehicles the final version of ETD shipped with.

7. It has been said that the original plot for the game involved Gnasty Gnorc and Ripto teaming up. Do you confirm this to be true? Can you tell about the original plans for the game’s story and cast of characters?

The second and third designs involved the Gnasty-Ripto team up. I had moved on before the decisions that resulted in the shipped ETD were made, so I can only speculate that this was simplified to reduce scope.

8. How much content was cut during development, and what did the original world / boss structure of the game look like before it was overhauled and cut down? Most specifically, do you know anything about the cut level “Enchanted Forest”?

As you could guess from the number of design iterations, the structure and number of levels and content changed from one iteration to the next. The very first design was – in hindsight – way over-scoped for the team and time we had, especially considering we were a new company tackling new hardware with a new engine. The scope of the original design was comparable to that of Spyro: Year of the Dragon.

Several of the shipped levels originated in the very first design: Dragon Fly Dojo, Cloud 9, Monkey Monastery, Thieves Den – though with less interesting names.

Luau Island, Crop Circle Country, Honey Marsh, and Jurassic Jungle were all present in the second design by those names, and were improved evolutions from less-interesting first-design-doc ideas as the design team started getting its wings.

Emerald Forest was also present in that second design as an evolution from a first-design level called “Pine Fresh Forest”. As I recall, it was inhabited by Scottish Porcupines wearing tartans, and was designed as a mid-game level of walkways and platforms between massive redwood trees high above the forest floor.

9. What was the team’s approach for bringing the low-poly characters and worlds of Spyro to the sixth generation of consoles?

All three companies involved knew that the visuals of a new Spyro on this new generation of console had to wow players. The original prototype Spyro character – running on the target platform – looked amazing – which helped Check Six/Equinox land the gig. Early in production, weather, and water and metal shaders looked amazing. A prototype hub had a real-time day-night cycle. All running on the PS2 early in production – but at a very low framerate. Tech features were cut, characters and art simplified, level designs were modified to take better advantage of occlusion and LOD’s, yet we continued to struggle with framerate. Most of Check Six’s tech team was on a different project – which was also struggling – so improvements to frame rate on the tech side were infrequent. Eventually the visuals were simplified to a less-than-impressive level for everyone involved, and even then framerate struggled.

10. Were they any assets used from the original Spyro games that preceded it on the PSone? Did the original developer Insomniac Games lend any resources to help develop the game?

No assets or code from the original Spyro trilogy were available to us. Normally, contracts involve an archive milestone, where after the game is complete, the developer delivers the code and assets to the publisher and/or license owner (Universal in this case). Universal either did not have this in their contract with Sony/Insomniac, or they were unaware of where the delivery might have been placed.

Our first prototype space was clearly very off metric and failed to feel very “Spyro”. So, to match the original metrics, we plugged in Spyro YTD, moved Spyro about, and measured level and character art in terms of “Spyro-lengths” and “Spyro-heights”. We figured the speed of his run with a stop-watch and measuring against texture repetition on walls. The original Monkey Monastery level was the first result of these measured metrics.

Eventually, well into production, we did manage to get ahold of the mesh for two Spyro YTD levels and measure them against our levels in production. We discovered that while we weren’t too far off, one of the surprises was that classic Spyro levels were flatter with less elevation than we had been making ours.

11. How was Check Six’s relationship with Equinoxe Digital Entertainment during development? What was the main conflict between the two companies that caused such a rift between them? What core reason or event caused such a splitting apart?

As I was not on the board of Check Six or one of the company executives, I was happily shielded from having to be involved on the business side.

12. How was your relationship with your employer Universal Interactive Studios, and most particulary with producer Ricci Rukavina?

Ricci Rukavina

Initially the relationship with Universal was great. They seemed on-board with the initial idea of a re-invention, we were delivering character designs and tech demos running on the hardware that they were signing off on. In hindsight, I was naive about how quickly Universal signed off on the work and how few revision requests we were getting. And from my point of view, Universal was naïve about how serious Check Six’s staffing and engine performance issues were. Over time, the relationship grew tense – I would personally deliver builds to Universal’s office and show them off with technical flaws that they shouldn’t have had at that point in production. Yet instead of focusing on solving technical and staffing issues inhibiting production, Universal would discuss design adjustments. Ricci was assigned to the project during this phase, and eventually exclusively to the project. From my point of view, Ricci had limited developer-side design/direction experience and understanding of our technical and production issues. For my part, in hindsight, I lacked understanding of how to navigate Universal’s internal politics and the unsaid things they were looking for with milestone deliveries. Universal felt more comfortable with having Ricci on-site, which meant there were two directors on the project which wasn’t helping the team morale and was a drain on Check Six’s limited financial resources, so I bowed out. A year or so after Spyro shipped and we’d both moved on, Ricci caught up with me at E3 and we reconciled. Being on-site as the project director he’d seen how challenging the internal situation was, and I’d come to see that Ricci was a reasonably solid designer with a better head for publisher relationships than myself.

13. What experience and lessons did you learn from working on Spyro? What was the best and worst aspect about the development process?

Like all productions, I met a lot of great and talented people. I got to nurture a few fledgling careers. Being right under the owners, I learned how tough running a small startup tech company is – how so many decisions are the best of bad choices, how owners are often seen as the badguys even when they’re sincerely trying to make the decisions that will help team members most. I thought I’d eventually wanted to own and run my own company – Spyro changed my mind – I enjoy designing and directing games, running a company and managing business relationships is a skill all its own and should be entrusted to people with that talent.

14. Did the team already consider future plans during development, as in a direct sequel?

I’m sure we did early on, however, I have no recollection of specifics.

15. It’s clear that Enter the Dragonfly received mixed reception back when it was first released, and has gathered even more negative reception now. How do you feel about this?

I feel the criticism is fair. Spyro fans (including myself) deserved a better game than we were able to produce. Fortunately, Toys for Bob and Activision are doing a great service to fans with the Reignited Trilogy. If successful, I think it would be interesting for Toys for Bob to take on reworking the PS2 Spyro games, going beyond faithful conversions and upgrade them to the quality titles the fans deserved.

16. Enter the Dragonfly was the first and only game for both Check Six and Equinoxe before they closed down. Where they any other game projects you were working on at Check Six?

Screenshot of the canceled Aliens Colonial Marines PS2 project

Check Six also had a contract with Warner Brothers for an Alien Colonial Marines game being worked on simultaneously with Spyro. The game had some amazing lighting – on the order of what we see in Alien Isolation or Dead Space – way ahead of its time. Unfortunately, performance and production issues killed that title.

17. Do you have some of the original assets of Enter the Dragonfly that you could share to the fans, such as concept arts and design documents?

Somewhere – hopefully – on an archived disk, Activision should have every design and piece of art and concept art we delivered. They would have to approve releasing those as they own everything. I would love to see all of that make it into an article or museum at some point.

18. Ironically, for the past 11 years, you’ve been currently working at Insomniac Games who originally created Spyro the Dragon. Are your current colleagues aware of your efforts on Enter the Dragonfly?

Yes. It’s a dubious distinction that we chuckle over.

19. Just recently, the Spyro character has been revived with a upcoming remake of the original PSone trilogy called the Reignited Trilogy, and before that, he was one of the leading characters in the popular toys-to-life franchise, Skylanders. What are your thoughts on those later games?

Skylanders was a brilliant, bold, and forward-looking direction for Activision and Toys for Bob to take Spyro. I’d pass by desks at Insomniac and overhear Skylanders strategy being discussed. This was exactly the well-executed re-invention that the series needed. I got a chance to play the Reignited Trilogy at E3, it’s a faithful and gorgeous recreation that will bring you back to your childhood. I’m hoping it’s wildly successful and opens the door for TFB to pursue whole new Spyro opportunities, it would be fun to see where modern design sensibilities could take the little dragon.

20. As we mentioned the Reignited Trilogy, would you like Enter the Dragonfly to be remastered in the same fashion and in its completed form?

Per the above, I’d love to see TFB do a re-invention of the PS2 era Spyros, and make them greater than their original releases. However, I’d also love to see them take the whole of the Spyro franchise to new places – a Spyro-Zelda would be great.

21. Before we end up here, do you have something you would like to say to all the Spyro fans out there?

Pick up the Spyro Reignited Trilogy, you’ll love the nostalgia in gorgeous hi-res, and provide the support for the future of the Spyro franchise.

Well, this part of the investigation is now concluded. This took months of patience and discussions to get to this point and I personally think it is worth the wait.

I greatly thank Joel Goodsell for its participation, as we now know about some of the origins of the project and what could’ve been in its early design treatments.