IDEAS THAT CHANGE THE WORLD
Rayman Legends Retold is a complete remake of Rayman Legends, adding fully voiced cutscenes and a few on-rails shooting levels. Yet it remains essentially identical to the original released almost ten years ago. Retold’s main attraction is its animated sequences. The voices of Rayman and Murphy, David Gasman and Billy West respectively, reprise their Rayman 3 roles, and hearing them again is a delight. I enjoyed every exchange between Murphy, the Bubble Dreamer and the fairy Betilla in the dialogue between levels, as well as the animated sequences scattered throughout. The humour is fantastic; there is even a scene with the Magician that had me laughing out loud. It is all wonderfully eccentric and bizarre, exactly what I want from a Rayman story and something the first Legends lacked. I am very curious to see what Ubisoft has in store for the story and characters.
Rayman Legends Retold: a trip down memory lane
Although I still prefer the impeccable 2D animation, Rayman Legends Retold is nevertheless stunning. The lighting is absolutely incredible, making every level feel like a real place rather than just a backdrop. This brings us to something Ubisoft strongly emphasised during the presentation before the game began: immersion.
The gameplay of Origins and Legends encourages you to race through each level and enter a flow state, seamlessly chaining jumps, punches, wall jumps and more, even when you are playing that level for the first time. Retold is similar in this respect, but this extra layer genuinely changes how I perceive each level, making them much more memorable.
As I said, words fail me when describing what is happening visually; clearly, choosing 3D was deliberate and carefully implemented, with animations that perfectly imitate their 2D counterparts. Rayman’s large cartoon nose with visible pores is still strange, though.
The decision to change the graphics
Rayman Legends Retold is a complete 3D remake, built from scratch, of the original Legends, released over ten years ago on Xbox 360 and PS3 and later ported to other platforms. It features new voices and cutscenes, an expanded story, new levels and enemies, and brings back the original levels, including the musical ones, cooperative mode and minigames. The only difference is that the old levels look very different.
The remake uses Snowdrop, the same graphics engine as The Division 2 and Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora. Although Ubisoft calls it a 3D remake of Legends, it is more of a 2.5D remake of the original platformer. Character models and the game world are 3D, with extremely high-quality lighting and textures, but the action remains 2D platforming. You still jump over enemies, under obstacles and across ravines, trying to land precisely on platforms as in any good 2D platformer. The result is simply incredible.
The visual change is probably Rayman Legends Retold’s most controversial aspect. In my opinion, the game’s 3D graphics look fantastic during gameplay and even better in animated sequences. At times, I felt I was watching an unreleased Rayman film developed by Pixar or Sony Animation. I do not think Legends Retold looks better than the original game’s cartoon-like 2D style, because comparison is impossible. The two games pursue completely different styles, and anyone might prefer one over the other. For me, however, the 3D graphics are incredibly detailed without losing the charm and colours that made the original Legends a vibrant masterpiece of 2D platforming.
Ubisoft’s statements about Rayman Legends Retold
Interestingly, in a video shown before I played, Ubisoft made clear that it considers this remake the beginning of a new series of Rayman games. The work done by Ubisoft Milan and Ubisoft Montpellier on the remake, which took three years to develop, could easily be reused in a future Rayman adventure that has yet to be confirmed. We will see whether that happens.
Running, jumping, gliding, climbing and hitting enemies: everything feels fantastic in Rayman Legends Retold. The new animations and models do not get in the way of the game’s platforming action, so everything still feels fast, responsive and incredibly satisfying. Even playing through cloud streaming, the precision and fluidity of the controls allowed me to complete some of the included demo’s most difficult sections, though naturally I died quite a few times.
The game will be available for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series, Nintendo Switch 2 and PC through Ubisoft Store, Steam and Epic Games Store.
We know the story
Retold revisits the classic platformer, developed by Ubisoft Montpellier and Ubisoft Milan. Rayman Legends Retold is a new adventure in which Rayman, Globox, Barbara, Grand Minimus and Murphy set out to restore peace to the Glade of Dreams after a dark villain has spread chaos across all the realms.
“Rayman Legends Retold is our way of revisiting what makes Rayman so special and retelling that experience for a new generation of players,” said Brand Producer Loïc Gounon. “We wanted to preserve everything fans love, and Legends gave us the perfect foundation for expanding Rayman’s story, the logic of his world and the way every element is interconnected.”
Several editions of the game are available to preorder. Anyone preordering any edition will receive the Hoodlum Havoc pack, which includes two costumes for Rayman and Globox inspired by Rayman 3: Hoodlum Havoc.
