More Articles on Tony Hawk's Project 8
Neversoft Outlines Sixaxis SupportProject 8 Soundtrack UnveiledTony Hawk's Project 8 - First Look
Tony Hawk's Project 8 - First Look Mini Preview
Chris Leyton
25/05/2006
Neversoft finally throws everything out of the window and starts again...
Unveiled at E3'06, Tony Hawk's Project 8 for the Playstation3 and Xbox 360 (along with current-gen versions), should hopefully mark the true innovation that the series has been desperate for since the release of Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2 back in 2000.
The game follows the search for the top eight amateur skaters in the world, beginning in the home town of the player's character. Precise details on this element of the game haven't been revealed by Neversoft or Activision, however, the game appears to place less significance on a plotline compared to more recent efforts such as the THUG series, hopefully putting all of the focus on the actual gameplay.
Set within vast, streaming, free-roaming environments, Project 8 promises a new goal system which divides challenges into different categories AM, PRO and SICK. Part of the challenge comes from impressing the local population, thanks to the heavily reworked AI system that brings the environment to life with more skaters and pedestrians, along with objectives such as performing tricks to feature in a skate videos or photo-shoots.
Neversoft promise that eight years worth of code has been literally thrown out of the window with Project 8, starting from the ground up and being replaced with an all-new game engine, a new renderer, new physics engine and new animation system.
Alongside "innovation", Neversoft highlighted "precision" as being a key component to the game, an aspect that was demonstrated with several close shots of the board in action. Dynamic cloth brings the character models to life in a convincing manner, whilst the animation of the tricks and the motion of the board is the biggest change since the series was first introduced back in 1999.
Whereas previous Tony Hawk titles have used a blend of motion-capture animation and hand animation, Neversoft will employ the former exclusively throughout Project 8. The overall system employs animation trees and blending techniques to ensure up to 20 different sequences naturally flow into one another at once, a technique that was immediately evident in the sublime delights of the demonstration. Neversoft want players to know how a grind is being performed by the wobble in the player's animation rather then looking at a gauge; if the final game is anything as meticulous as the E3 demonstration then Neversoft should successfully achieve this goal. Although most of the focus is on the animation, Neversoft are ensuring other visual aspects do not suffer, with professional skater likenesses being incorporated into the game via 20 mega-pixel pictures. An abundance of obligatory next-generation visual tricks were also evident during the demonstration, such as blooming and depth-of-field effects, ensuring this at least makes up for some of the disappointment of seeing Tony Hawk's American Wasteland on the Xbox 360.
Although the demonstration was designed to impress rather then being a good example of the game at work, it easily managed to achieve the former. The dynamic camera focussed on the board, slowing down the action, applying a visual filter and capturing the stunts in all their new found glory - it even made plain skating look fun.
Activision and TreyArch may be wheeling out Tony Hawk's once again; however, Project 8 shows signs of some real innovation and will hopefully place the emphasis onto the actual gameplay, where the series has always excelled.
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