Yeah, Gaul is very dead. I've never seen such a firm character death, to be honest. There is no way he could survive being turned to stone and then blasted apart by dark magic. And let's not forget that a mountain fell on the scattered bits that were left. Yeah, he's dead.

BUT! That doesn't mean his spirit couldn't cause trouble, or that he couldn't appear in flashbacks.

ooo zombie resurrection.

Ignitus: The prophecy says purple dragon. That's you kid!

Spyro: But...I'm too young to die! You're bigger!

Ignitus: Yeah, but I'm not purple. Now go face off against the monster that brought down all four of us Guardians. Try not to die or something. Oh, and get some milk on the way back.

That's brilliant. You should write the script for the LOS games.

Of course it's true they are all old farts.

Even though we've all seen Ignitus open up a can of whoop a55 on multiple occasions 

I think Vivendi was just too lazy to think of any real reason for a storyline about Spyro.

I think it's mainly because Spyro (aka the purple dragon) is a legend among the dragon kind.
And in war times, such legends can bring hope back to the scarred masses (aka the other dragons).
So allthough he's not very big - the shere belief in his powers from the others, is enough to assure them about him, saving the world all on his own.

I would've woken his behind up and said "Go do it your dang self, I was out all last night killing off the last of the baddies until the sun came up on ya'll orders, and now you want me to just stop what I was doing to go do your bidding? Uh uh, that ain't gonna fly with this dragon. I's needs my beauty sleep too, fool!" *curls up and sleeps*

Shooot, them people be working Spyro to hard nowadays. They should make a game where he goes on vacation, a looooong vacation, and leaves the world saving up to Hunter, Shiela, Sgt. Byrd and the others while he kicks it back at a resort or something.

Ignitus implies that he's just too old (and depressed >D) to be doing this sort of thing and the other Guardians at first needed to be rescued by somebody and were too recently out of captivity to have any strength to fight with. In the end, Ignitus said something about passing the torch onto the younger generation.

In the old Spyro games, it did make sense for the little guy to be saving the world. In ANB it's just funny, really funny, that little Spyro, who didn't even know he was a dragon until recently, has to do everything while the dragons who are five times his size just sit around. See, this is why you shouldn't rely so much on prophecy.

Ignitus: The prophecy says purple dragon. That's you kid!

Spyro: But...I'm too young to die! You're bigger!

Ignitus: Yeah, but I'm not purple. Now go face off against the monster that brought down all four of us Guardians. Try not to die or something. Oh, and get some milk on the way back.

may spyroboy be with you!