Interviews

Neversoft’s Brian Bright Grinds Out a Look at Tony Hawk American Wasteland
By Michael Lafferty

“We always strive to keep things fresh. Fortunately the team here is full of great ideas.”

Remember the days when a child would take apart the metal-wheeled roller skates, nail the pieces to the front and rear sections of a piece of board and call it skateboarding?

Times have certainly changed. Skateboards are created in a world of bushings, bearings, grip tape, skid plates with decks, wheels and trucks. Instead of merely cruising down the streets, proficient boards take to half-pipes and perform incredible feats of athleticism in almost gravity-defying manner. And like any sport, skateboarding has its stars.

His name has breached the status of pop-culture superstar on several fronts. Not only has Tony Hawk become a byword in the skateboarding world, but his prowess and reputation have made a definite mark in the video game industry as well. 

With the release of the Tony Hawk Underground series (known as THUG), the games took players to different locations around the world, offered skateboarding that challenged and allowed players to compete against others in a variety of competitions. Great character customization, hot moves – the series had it all.

When THUG3 hit the store shelves, Neversoft sat back and considered the next move for the highly successful franchise. The result is Tony Hawk American Wasteland. The title integrates some new ideas but rather than take players around the world in a series of challenging objectives, it focuses on one location and builds the challenge from there.

Neversoft, and Activision, look to have the title releasing in mid-November for the GameCube, PlayStation 2, PSP, Xbox and Microsoft 360 machines. (Vicarious Visions will be developing the game for the Game Boy and Nintendo DS platforms.)

Brian Bright, the producer on Tony Hawk American Wasteland (or THAW for short) took time to chat with GameZone about this title.

Question: This time around the game seems to be more location specific rather than traversing the world. Why did you decide to center the game in one general location and what have you done to ensure that players will not become locked into a feeling of redundancy when it comes to the gaming environment? Why take the franchise in this direction rather than work on another THUG release?

Brian: ‘When THUG2 wrapped we knew we wanted to incorporate streaming into the next Hawk game. We also wanted to ground the game a bit more in reality and in doing so we needed to focus on one city in order to connect the different areas in a convincing manner. The decision to focus on Los Angeles just made sense. Skateboarding was born in Los Angeles, Neversoft is based in Los Angeles, and many of the pro skaters live in Los Angeles. Los Angeles is a very diverse city, with areas like East LA, which looks completely different from Beverly Hills. A streaming world completely changed the landscape for us and allowed us to create as diverse environments as any previous game in the franchise that are bigger and do not require any load times.

“The streaming world allowed us to take the game in a new direction and is an evolutionary step in the franchise.”

Q: The game description states that this is a game that will blend skateboarding and BMX. Is this a blending of the two, or will players make a choice whether they wish to skateboard or go the BMX route? How do these elements play out in terms of the mission arc of the game?

Brian: “American Wasteland is still primarily a skating game, however there are BMX bikes throughout the city that players can ride at any time and use to earn cash. There are also a few story arc missions that must be completed on the bike. The bike uses a revolutionary control scheme, which is totally different from skating and because of this players can decide how deep they want to get with the biking controls. I think it’s the perfect mix of the two.”

Q: It is also mentioned that the game will have a "plot-twisting story." Does this mean the game is story-driven, or does advancement still rely on skills demonstrated within the context of a story?

Brian: “I’d say both. American Wasteland has the deepest, richest story ever for a Tony Hawk game and players will have to rely on their skating \ biking \ graffiti skills to advance the story.”

Q: Will there be the create-a-skater or create-a-park options available, and if so, how will they differ from past Tony Hawk titles?

Brian: “With the streaming Los Angeles we decided to integrate create-a-modes into the city.  There are tattoo parlors, barber shops, skate shops, clothing stores, and accessory shops all over the city. Certain missions require players to alter their appearances in particular ways. The graffiti editor and trick editor are also tightly integrated in the city, as well as subsequent story missions. The park editor still exists outside of story mode, and we continue to support user uploading and downloading of parks from our online vaults.

“In the story there is a ‘Skate Ranch’ which you and your crew decide to make into the ultimate skate park. In doing so there are over 40 missions where you need to bring back pieces from the city to the ranch to create new lines to skate. These piece missions can be done in any order and the end result is a Skate Ranch that is an evolving representation of your progress in the game.”

Q: Tell us about the musical score for this game. The game pays homage to the "roots of skateboarding and 80’s punk style," so will that roll over to the musical score?

Brian: “American Wasteland has the most musical diversity of any game in the Tony Hawk series. We worked with Vagrant Records to put together a standalone CD soundtrack that has modern punk bands covering classic punk tunes. Bands like My Chemical Romance covering the Misfits, Alkaline Trio doing a T.S.O.L. track, Thrice playing a Minor Threat tune, etc. The 14 songs on the CD are tracks recorded for our game. The entire game soundtrack includes a wide range of electronic music, rap jams, funk, and rock & roll.”

Q: How disparate are the controls schemes for the two styles of the game - skateboarding and BMX?

Brian: “Skateboarding has not changed in its core player control mechanic. However, there are plenty of new moves that rock, like the Bert Slide, Rail Stalls, One-Footed Grinds and Vert Wallplant. The on-foot control shave changed drastically. We completely rewrote the camera code for walking and added loads of parkour style tricks. One of the first things players will notice when playing the game is how fluid it feels to be off the board. Running up a wall and flipping off of it into a natas spin is dual-shock nirvana.

“The BMX controls are completely analog. The left stick controls the rider’s weight distribution and is used for leaning, flipping, getting into a manual or wheelie, etc. The right stick is used to whip parts of the bike or player around, for example: tailwhips, barspins, decades and crankflips. The shoulder buttons are used for front and back brakes enabling players to do nose picks, tail taps and endos. The tricks are more freeform on the BMX allowing for maximum creativity.”

Q: Will the title feature online multiplayer support?

Brian: “PS2 will return with a full feature set of online options including a couple of additional game modes. The user vaults return, allowing players to upload and download skaters, tricks, parks, and graphics that have been created in the game.

“For the first time in franchise history, Tony Hawk’s American Wasteland is on Xbox Live. All multiplayer modes support up to eight players who can use the communicator head sets to talk trash to one another. Fun indeed.

“Not online, but another big new multiplayer game mode is Co-Op Classic mode. Players can play split screen classic mode, working together to get through all the classic mode levels (which are completely independent from the story mode levels).”

Q: When you set out to create a Tony Hawk title, what elements are paramount to have in the game? How much input does the skating community or gamers have in how you evolve the title?

Brian: “We always strive to keep thing fresh. Fortunately the team here is full of great ideas. Many of our programmers and artists are skaters and they bring a lot to the table from that perspective. We hired the best Tony Hawk player in the world on as a designer, and he provides us with the hardcore online community perspective. Our production team scours the message boards for feedback and we also play most of the new games that come out each month. This is the seventh game in the series and I think you’ll see that Neversoft is committed to keeping the game totally fresh.”