Remaking A Classic With Crash Bandicoot N.Sane Trilogy

With so many terms easily bandied about, it’s a little tricky to pin the tail on what Crash Bandicoot N.Sane Trilogy is. It’s not a reboot, that’s for certain, but remaster doesn’t quite fit, when those largely entail increasing resolutions and reusing existing assets. This fits the bill of a remake, as Vicarious Visions build the classic trilogy of platformers from the ground up using modern technology – they themselves call it a ‘remaster plus’. However you look at it, this is a massive nostalgia trip.

Explaining the reasoning behind such a lavish exercise in fan service, Producer Kara Massie said, “I think generally the impetus was just a cry from fans who’ve wanted Crash for years, ever since Shawn Layden wore that shirt at E3 a few years back, they’ve been like ‘Bring him back!’ Finally Sony and Activision just said ‘Let’s do it’. It made sense because it’s his 20th anniversary, we saw him a little bit in Skylanders Imaginators, he made a guest appearance in the Skylanders Academy TV show, so yeah, let’s bring him back now. It’s kind of timely.”

The graphics are colourful and vibrant, even in the more dismal environments – this makes sense when you consider that it uses the same engine as Skylanders Imaginators – but everything that was polygonal and simplistic before is now lavished with detail befitting the current crop of consoles. There’s a kind of goofiness to how Crash himself looks, similar to his cameo appearance in Skylanders last year, and that filters through to the rest of this somewhat nonsensical game world.

“Just as with any project, we did a ton of research at the beginning,” Kara explained. “Not only playing every single level over and over again, but there’s like 20 years of documentation. There’s original concept art, there’s original drawings of some of the levels, there’s even the live action TV spots!

“It’s really interesting to watch my character modellers work, and when they’re starting a character, they’re not just sitting there with the old one on one screen and theirs on another, they’re looking at all that stuff. Even how a character might progress through all the games in the franchise, to really dial into who that character is and what is their personality. Because of modern tech you can have all this extra detail, with fur and all that stuff, and that gives you a lot more opportunities to just add stuff. So we’ve got minor details that weren’t on the originals, like weight belts on certain characters, more details on their clothing, and so on.”

Dipping into a few levels from Warped – Double Header, The Time Twister, Orange Asphalt, if you were wondering – there’s so many new details and finery to spot. A step back to medieval times sees the level under a steady rainfall where it was previously just a bit murky, while the future levels are full of shiny reflective metals and neon lights. Having been built around the exact same level geometry as the originals, they play exactly the same, just with fancier graphics. There’s still the amusing looking enemies that feel like they’re ripped out of a 90s game (because they are), the clearly signposted attacks, the shortcuts and everything. Vicarious Visions have stuck with a mantra of faithfulness, but there’s plenty of leeway within that for adding little details here and there.

What changes they have made to the gameplay have been small. All of the quirks of the originals have been maintained, right down to the little tricks that speed runners can make use of, but they’re aware that these games might be a stepping on point for a new generation of Crash fan. It’s a minor point, but DDA – Dynamic Difficulty Adjustment – that was in the second and third games has been rolled back to the original and the racing sections of Warped. The difficulty isn’t diminished, but if you really get stuck, the game will give you a bit of a helping hand. Alongside this, the cinematics team have been brought in to add new intro and game over screens, there’s now hints on loading screens, and a few other more modern niceties.

“We definitely don’t want to fix what isn’t broken,” Kara said, “so it’s as tight and smooth and fast paced and joyful. One of the goals was to nail that. […] You have to treat it with a soft touch. The number one goal was that it has to feel like the originals and it has to honour the originals. There’s also just gameplay-wise, with the Komodo brothers, it’s like, “Oh, you can give them waist belts on their outfits, and that means you can see where the centre of the character is and that helps with the gameplay, where they didn’t have those in the originals.

“It’s also bringing our own years and years of experience in making games. Those little things help with gameplay, so let’s just put that in, and it’s only going to add to what’s there.”

As with any such compilation, I couldn’t resist but to ask Kara what her personal favourite from the trilogy was. “Honestly, it’s such a lame answer, I’m sorry!” she replied. “It just changes over time, and it’s usually whatever one we’re working on.

“The first one is challenging, it’s really challenging, so there’s a lot of this sense of accomplishment when you beat some of the really difficult levels, but I think for me I have a lot of fun in Warped. It’s the culmination of all the learning over the course of development, for us and for the original teams. It’s also really fun with the whole conceit of time travel, so there’s a huge variety of locations and songs. It’s just a rich game.”

Of course, with this remake, fans of the series might be hoping for more Crash in the future. New games might be nice, but I’m sure there’s some out there who would really just love to see Crash Team Racing given the same ‘remaster plus’ treatment, or a whole new entry.

“Again, that’s way above my pay grade; those are decisions that other people make. Personally I’d love to see Crash continue. I think there’s a lot of source material there, I think there’s a lot of demand there, so… yeah, we’ll see!”