Skate Final Pre-Launch Preview
With Skate out next week, we chatted with producer Brian Lindley and took a look at the full version to get you details beyond the demo.
Teaching an Old Genre New Tricks
The core of Skate is its analog stick-driven trick system, which executes moves not with sequences of face buttons but largely with representative analog stick motions. While the demo shows off some fundamental moves like ollies, grinds, and manuals, every move in the game is actually available right from the start--it's simply a matter of having enough airtime and skill to pull them off. Unlike in the competing Tony Hawk series, your character does not have evolving stats over time.
Skate's physics system is fundamental to how the game plays. Unlike in most extreme sports games, even if you essentially land a trick, you might still buckle and bail if you hit the ground at too fast a speed and too sharp an angle--your skater's skeleton, which the game models, might not be able to support it.
Leaving Tony
As a long-time Tony player, I couldn't help but notice that Skate's mechanics seem almost diametrically opposed to those of Tony. I mentioned this to Lindley, but he insisted that the Black Box team behind the game was not explicitly shooting for that result.
"It wasn't really a conscious goal," he explained. "We wanted a game that skates well and has great physics, and some of the differences were borne out of that. It wasn't stated that, 'Tony Hawk does this, and we're going to do the exact opposite.'"
Though extremely impressive, Skate does also require somewhat more concentration and timing than many similar games. I asked Lindley whether it might be too difficult for some players. He responded that he found there to be sufficient tutorials throughout the levels. Even so, players who do a lot of damage to their in-game avatars will find a silver lining in the game's "Hall of Meat" that tracks severe bodily damage--it even has associated achievements on Xbox 360, such as "Skeleton," awarded for breaking every bone in the body three times.
"We wanted to make it fun even if you fail," said Lindley.
Oh, the Places You'll GoIf Skate's trick and character systems are drastically different from Tony Hawk's, the game's overall structure and story seem cut from the same cloth. Like in Neversoft's iconic series, your character starts out as an amateur-level skater who must work his way up through the ranks of skill and recognition.
The demo included a small local skate park from early in the game, but the full game includes locations such as pro skater Danny Way's personal skating Mega Compound as well as the X-Games Stadium. Over the course of the single-player game, the player is invited to such locations, at which point they can be accessed at any time. The X-Games Stadium is a large indoor venue with plenty of huge ramps and half-pipes, while Way's Mega Compound is an impressive custom-built outdoor skate park that seems directly integrated into its Hawaiian surroundings.
Lindley promises that the size of Skate's connected open world is unheard of for the genre, taking a full 15 minutes to skate straight from one end to the other. "We actually compare it to Grand Theft Auto: Vice City in terms of size," he said. "That's something you can't get a sense of from the [demo's] tiny skate park."
The Ollie Heard 'Round the World
Skate will feature online multiplayer for up to six simultaneous skaters on Xbox Live, and up to four on PlayStation Network. Though I wasn't able to try it out firsthand, Lindley listed off some of the game's online features. The game includes simple online free skating with other players, as well as racing-oriented modes and challenge modes.
Gametypes such as a skate trick version of HORSE, an old standby from Tony Hawk, are included along with more indirectly competitive modes like Own the Spots. Throughout Skate, players can set high trick scores at landmarks and interesting skating-conducive bits of the world. Players' high scores at these spots will be tracked via an online leaderboard, allowing them to attempt to genuinely lay claim to particular locales.
Taking Care of BusinessOne of the most impressive parts of Skate, as illustrated most effectively by its recent demo, is the complex physics-driven animation blending that takes place throughout and allows its building block-like trick system to work. Lindley pointed to this as a particularly challenging part of development and one that was crucial to the game. He noted that, at any given time, there are some 50 to 60 animations being blended to produce the final effect, and that animation system ties into the physics of the player's skeleton and board.
Another interesting development choice for Skate is its low-positioned camera, which is much nearer the street than in most games. When asked about this aspect, Lindley cited both the team's central development aesthetic for the game as well as more practical considerations.
"We really want you to focus on the legs and the board," he said. "We're also really big on skating authenticity. That's driven a lot of things about this game."
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EA Black Box's Skate is set to ship for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 on September 11, 2007.
