i had a thought that were pre rendered myself, but didnt think so because usually pre rendered cutscenes use nicer graphics (which is usually why they were pre rendered)
but how is spyro's cutscene model different than his in game one? is that for all the characters?

there was a thread on here awhile ago about Spyro's nose in Spyro 1. it's colored differently in the cutscenes. i can't remember if there were other differences.

in Spyro 3, you can compare them a bit here: http://youtu.be/luL-1ljItjc?t=5m3s

i had a thought that were pre rendered myself, but didnt think so because usually pre rendered cutscenes use nicer graphics (which is usually why they were pre rendered)
but how is spyro's cutscene model different than his in game one? is that for all the characters?

Many games make the models of characters in cutscenes higher quality than the out of cutscene ones, specifically because they can control the area that the cutscene takes place in, and also because performance matters less during a cutscene, as you're not actively controlling anything. I don't actually know how his cutscene model is different, it's just that attackfrog mentioned it, so I explained why they might make it different.