The Legend of Spyro: Dawn of the Dragon is the third and final installment in The Legend of Spyro trilogy released October 21, 2008 in North America. Although Krome Studios developed the last two Legend of Spyro games, Etranges Libellules developed the console editions of Dawn of the Dragon, while Tantalus Media did the Nintendo DS version.
In this epic culmination, or "climax" game, Spyro, Sparx, and Cynder wake up in the future. In the final chapter of the trilogy, players find Spyro teaming up with Cynder to face and defeat Malefor, the Dark Master, hopefully saving the Dragon World from evil and darkness that is plaguing it.
This is the first Spyro game that a player can fly at any time they want (free-fly mode). The game also features a co-op (two player) play with Cynder, which introduces players to drop-in/drop-out with the cooperative feature. The co-op feature allows players to have the option of completing the game as either Spyro or Cynder, giving them more freedom to explore Spyro’s world in completely new ways. It was confirmed that Spyro retains his commandments of fire, electricity, earth, and ice, while Cynder controls poison, wind, shadow, and a bizarre element with the properties of fear, in addition to being faster but weaker. Along with the standard power ups that gems will bring, Spyro and Cynder can now both equip dragon armor in pieces that they find.