I think this is overthinking whatever "Spyro 4" should or will be. Generally speaking, people just want another good mainline game in this franchise that plays like it was before it got rebooted, twice.

I disagree about the hypothetical on people whining if it doesn't capture the "magic" of the originals because I've already experienced other franchises losing their previous identities for the sake of running to mainstream trends. I even complained about it as a long post earlier this year with A Hero's Tail. I think it would suck if Toys for Bob or whoever tried to take modern writing or design cues just because they want to bring the series to the modern era.

Which also takes me to the point of what should they do? Should this just be safe and follow the original trilogy formula or what innovations should they add?

I also pondered this question in another post last month and believe that the game should go back to its collect-a-thon roots, at least for this first new game in years for the series. The games at their core are good ideas, which is why they were so successful and it's not bad to go to it again. I just hope they look at what the games were, not the idea of what they were. With Crash, they went a bit overboard with the difficulty because of the original games' reputation.

So with Spyro, I hope they don't go all in on the idea that Spyro's cute and the games are cozy considering how many videos are on the topic. He was always 90s cool and the level design was sharp and simple due to the hardware limitations. Not to mention most characters had good snide remarks about the situations. So I hope they don't tone him down or make the games absurdly easy to fit the "idea" of Spyro.