See The Hilariously Rough Skate 4 Trailer
For a game not ready to play, it looks pretty good.
This article is more than 2 years old
The fans and newcomers of the Skate skateboarding sim franchise didn’t have plenty to look forward to for the past decade, since the release of 2010’s Skate 3, until two months ago, when an information leak revealed that Skate 4 (now titled skate.) is in active development. Despite previously revealing the game, EA tried hiding the facts and removing leaked information, but it was too late; the cat was out of the bag. Now, the game’s developer Full Circle released a pre-alpha trailer for the upcoming Skate 4. You can check out the trailer below:
Admittedly, Full Circle stated that the trailer footage is put together using various prototypes of the game, or as they have put it, the pre-pre-pre-alpha versions of Skate 4. According to a report published by IGN, the trailer is noticeably transparent about the game’s development process, granting fans of the franchise a glimpse of various characters traversing the in-game world. Of course, they also included all the interesting bugs and unnatural positions the skaters found themselves when said errors occurred.
However, there are also segments of the trailer in which Skate 4 looks pretty polished, showcasing what might be in store in the future. Luckily, in most cases, the finished product doesn’t look anything like the pre-alpha trailer. It usually looks, feels, and plays a lot better. But on the other hand, this is developed under Electronic Arts publishing, and comparing the latest Battlefield 2042 game with its trailer; we’d say that EA is still a couple of promises short — like delivering a working game.
Hopefully, that won’t be the case with the upcoming Skate 4. Full Circle made the fans feel appreciated by taking their feedback into account. The game’s pre-pre-pre-alpha trailer showcases a variety of comments the developers took into account, allegedly confirming some unprecedented features within the franchise, like the introduction of non-binary characters. And while this might be a novelty for the Skate franchise, it certainly isn’t anything new when it comes to Electronic Arts, which recently introduced customizable pronouns in its The Sims games.
There are other novelties as well; it seems that free-funning (parkour) also made it to the game, though to the extent that won’t overshadow the skating element of the game, leaving parkour enthusiasts with Mirror’s Edge gaming titles and perhaps one of the better entries in the Assassin’s Creed gaming franchise. Besides the aforementioned customization options and free-running, the ability to climb up skate sports and cross-platform play is also some of the mentioned features, though we’re still not sure about the Skate 4 cross-gen play.
Given that Skate 4’s timeline isn’t discernable from the trailer and its current pre-pre-pre-alpha state, it’s entirely reasonable to expect the game to arrive in very late 2022, but more probably sometime in 2023. This means that developers may forego cross-gen play due to Sony’s plan to stop releasing PS4 games by 2025. Unfortunately, we can’t state anything for sure, given the scarcity of details surrounding the game, but we know it will also release on PC, which is the franchise’s first on the platform.
