Dropping In On Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3+4 | Official Xbox Podcast

SPEAKER 1: Games in this podcast range from E-M.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Hello, and welcome to the Official Xbox Podcast, the only podcast coming to you from inside Xbox, or in this case, inside the El Rey Theater in Los Angeles, where we're about to see -- can you guess? Can you guess what it might be?

LINA MADRID: I don't think there's any kind of obvious hint anywhere.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: No. No mystery.

LINA MADRID: No. They've probably guessed by now. We're here to see Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3+4. I'm so excited. It comes out July 11, but we get a hands-on today, and we're going to be talking to some of the devs from Iron Galaxy Studios.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: You're a big fan of Tony Hawk. I mean, we all are, but you've got some really good memories, right?

LINA MADRID: Oh, yeah, definitely. I used to rent it from Blockbuster every single weekend, okay? I've studied the moves, had dreams of becoming a pro skater.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: How did that work out?

LINA MADRID: Well, I did the splits recently on a skateboard, so --

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: So great is what you're saying.

LINA MADRID: Yes, fantastic.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Well, look, now we're going to get to the part, my favorite part of the podcast. Lina is going to attempt a 900 live on the -- we're going to actually go ahead and play the game. Let's just go play it.

LINA MADRID: Yeah. [ Music ]

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: So Lina and I just got finished playing Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3+4, the remaster, for the very first time, and while I'd love to sit there for another couple of hours and maybe even get a combo that's up to 10, I mean, 100, obviously, we have the privilege of meeting the folks from Iron Galaxy who made the game. Kurt, Mike, thank you so much for joining us here on the official Xbox podcast. How does it feel to be at an event in the historic El Rey Theater celebrating the game that you're making?

KURT TILLMANNS: It's surreal. It's a huge honor to be here, absolutely.

MIKE ROSSI: Yeah, it's blowing my mind. This is quite the event.

LINA MADRID: So Kurt, you're the Game Director for Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3+4. Tell us a little bit about yourself and how it's been for the Iron Galaxy team to take the lead on remastering a classic that is pretty important to a whole generation of players.

KURT TILLMANNS: Yeah, it's a huge responsibility, obviously, to be remaking this game from the ground up for a whole new generation while also making sure that the original fans recognize these places that they have skated in for hundreds of hours, probably, that they love, some of the best games of all time.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: So Mike, you're the Design Manager at Iron Galaxy. I'd love to talk a little bit about the philosophy of remastering. What are the things that are absolutely sacrosanct and have to stay in? What are the things that didn't maybe age so well and modern gamers, modern audiences, expect a certain way of things working? So how do you tackle this? Where do you start? I'd love to hear just more about where you ended up.

MIKE ROSSI: Yeah, the first thing we looked at is, like you said, what were those core elements that made the original games what they are? And so right away, it was, obviously, the feel or what we've been calling "the Tony feel." That was this is great; 1 and 2 nailed it. They set the bar really high and great for us. That combined with the collision of the levels, the marriage between both how you control the skater and the actual collision in the world, those were the foundation that we were like, we can't touch this. This is great. We can only add on top of this. So from there, that's where we start trying to figure out, what can we adjust here? How can we -- what do we need to tweak with maybe adding a grind line here or adjusting how a gap is accomplishable there? Then also looking at what are the goals? What were the goals? How did the players enjoy them? What did they like about them? Bringing them in, maybe tweaking a little bit, modernizing what the topics are in it, or is the thin man still waiting for someone to help him?

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: How do you know if you got it right?

MIKE ROSSI: I mean, that's tough, and that's something we always are -- we're asking ourselves because this is a very iconic franchise, and so the bar and the expectation is, again, really high for that. So we definitely kept asking ourselves throughout the development of are we hitting it? Does this feel right? Especially with the new content that we've added, there's does this feel like this was always there and always fits within it?

KURT TILLMANNS: And the response, so far, from players has been great.

MIKE ROSSI: Yes. Yeah, and so, that's also helped us. We've been able to utilize both feedback internally and the feedback now that we're getting that we're finally able to show to folks like yourselves has been super-validating and awesome to hear. We've been, we've been wanting to show this for a while now to people, and it's so exciting to finally be able to get people's reactions and it be so positive.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Can we just back up a little bit, Kurt? Just talk about what's in the box? What is the full package, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3+4?

KURT TILLMANNS: Sure. Yeah, so you're going to have the classic parts from Tony Hawk 3. You're going to have many of the favorite parts from Tony Hawk 4. We are also, for the first time in over a decade, introducing brand-new parks into the Tony Hawk Pro Skater franchise. We are giving you the classic layouts that you remember and also a new way to play them. So the two-minute timer that you remember from Tony Hawk 3, that is also going to be available in the Tony Hawk 4 parks. For the people that don't like the sort of momentum and the pace of that timer, they can actually adjust the length of that up to 60 minutes. So if you're the type of player that wants to complete goals at your own pace, go for it. This is all about really taking those classic parks and making it recognizable and easy to pick up and play for the OG fans and also giving them something, a new way to experience them. That's one of the big things for us. We've also got cross-platform multiplayer.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Huge.

KURT TILLMANNS: With cross-play across seven platforms, huge, and that's also extended to Create-A-Park. So, now players are going to be able to --

LINA MADRID: So excited.

KURT TILLMANNS: -- create, remix, and share their parks to the biggest audience that Create-A-Park has ever had.

LINA MADRID: Adding creativity in a whole new way, that's so exciting, and let me tell you, my mind was blown when I was playing these classic parks, but they got a whole facelift. They are -- they're still what I know and I love and I spent hours on, but they look so good. The details you put into that, I would love to know kind of like what, how you took advantage of new technology and then brought this game to a whole modern audience.

KURT TILLMANNS: We are able to now, with new technology, add so much more life and detail than we ever were before. There's so much motion, secondary motion. You can see the steam coming out of the vents. You can see characters walking around and having their own agendas and some are maybe aggressive and will knock you down. Some are maybe a little bit more passive, and it goes the other way. Yeah, all those things come together to make sure that these parks have more life in them than we've ever seen.

MIKE ROSSI: And more variation, too, like with the time of day. So you're like, okay, well what about this level at night or this level in the morning or bright sun or midday, those kinds of things, and so adding more variation into that as well.

KURT TILLMANNS: Like Mike alluded to before, with new technology and us being able to add more detail in the parks, we can ask interesting questions like, how would this park look like 20 years from now? And that allows us to grunge it up and make environments that maybe skate culture has been taking over, over the last 20 years, and now it's tagged up all over the place. That's just a level of detail that we couldn't have achieved before.

MIKE ROSSI: Or maybe nobody has come to this park since the last game and what happened during that time.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: So there's a bit of a meme when it comes to remasters where people look at it, and they're like, oh, this looks exactly like I remember it, but I will tell you, as we were just playing Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3+4, this looks much better than I remember it. You've done that good of a job, but visually, the level that really stood out for me is a new one, and that's Waterpark. Tell me all about it, where it came from, where all the secrets are, everything.

MIKE ROSSI: Well, I can't tell you all the secrets because then they wouldn't be secret, so I want to leave a little bit in there. One of the things with Waterpark that we asked the Level Design Team to think about is make this -- the mantra that we kept pushing was this should feel like it was left on the cutting room floor. This should not feel like something that's out of place, all new. It should be like this was actually on a hard drive, some unmarked hard drive that Activision handed us, and was like, hey, maybe there's some stuff on here you can use, and we found it and brought it up to modern. So that was the mantra that we kept turning to while we were working on the park.

KURT TILLMANNS: Yeah, from the beginning, our pillar for Waterpark was to try and think of a place that is one of these forbidden places that skaters love to go, but they're not usually allowed. That's just one of the types of Tony Hawk parks that you normally see in these places. So we started out looking out, googling and checking out YouTube videos, trying to find where are those places today? Where have they been going for the last 20 years? Waterparks, as it turns out, a lot of them abandoned, a lot of them skaters have snuck into. Even Tony Hawk has been allowed into a few of them to skate, and he's done the funnel. He's done the loop-the-loop in a waterpark before. So when we showed him the waterpark for the first time, he was like, hey, I've been there. I did that.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: With permission, of course.

KURT TILLMANNS: Of course.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: So the Tony Hawk's Pro Skater Series is known for both collectibles and Easter eggs, things that make you want to explore every inch of each park. I'm sure there's going to be some cool stuff. Actually, I would love to know, is it about preservation with the Easter eggs and things that people remember, or do you hide some cool stuff in here on your own?

KURT TILLMANNS: It's a bit of a mix. If you remember exactly how something worked, even if it was maybe a bug or it felt weird, it's going to probably be there in exactly the same way. So this is one of the interesting things that we ran into when talking about preservation. There are gaps that were in the original games that had bugs in them. They were just kind of set up a certain way, and it turns out you could do it in a way that the developer didn't necessarily intend. But that's not how players remember doing them, so we have a conversation internally. Well, are we going to fix it or are we going to recreate the bug? Most of the time, we just recreate the bug.

LINA MADRID: Nice.

MIKE ROSSI: There's also, aside from us doing little developer nods, there's also little nods to the community that you'll find in there, either with gaps that are named uniquely, or there's even some, there's a -- there's at least one Create-A-Park piece that is a favorite of mine that's a little nod to someone. So there's also those things like that scattered throughout the game.

LINA MADRID: Love that. Shifting a little bit. So the skateboarding scene is always growing and evolving. You have the new generation coming in, building off what the OGs laid down. I would love to know, for example, Japan. You have skaters coming from Japan who have such highly technical of a style.

KURT TILLMANNS: They're so good.

LINA MADRID: They're so good. Their movements are so clean whenever I see their stuff. So I would love to know kind of how you were able to accurately capture these new styles and incorporate it into the game.

KURT TILLMANNS: So a lot of what you're going to see the skaters do in the game, they're not necessarily things that skaters have done in real life, right? The Tony Hawk version of those tricks tends to be a bit more heightened, and we work closely with the skaters to make sure that it represents them the right way. So great example, you mentioned Japanese skaters, Yuto Horigome, his special trick is really based off of something he actually did. And we then sort of Tony Hawkify it and then make it something that he understands is like this heightened level of execution.

LINA MADRID: Yeah, accurate to the spirit.

KURT TILLMANNS: Exactly.

LINA MADRID: I love that. I have a friend who learned how to do a kickflip from Tony Hawk. So getting -- nailing that, the spirit of it.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: It was you. You're allowed to say it. It was you.

MIKE ROSSI: We actually heard a lot. We've heard similar stories from some of the pros now. It's like that's their introduction to skating was like watching the videos in the original Tony Hawk's games.

LINA MADRID: Of course, bringing back the legends, the icons that we love, but there's a whole new generation coming in. You have, like you mentioned, Yuto from Japan. You also have Rayssa from Brazil. I love. So kind of what was the process in selecting these skaters and representing this diverse group?

KURT TILLMANNS: Yeah, we start with the list of just our dream list of skaters. Honestly, it didn't change a whole lot from that, right? These skaters represent the best of the best in the world today. The highest level of skill. They represent the culture really well. Obviously, we've got an ace up our sleeves when it comes to this stuff, and that's Tony Hawk. He definitely keeps us in the know on who we should be keeping an eye on during the course of development.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: I think if he asked, you end up in the game.

MIKE ROSSI: Yeah, I think when Tony Hawk calls you, you should probably answer.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: One of my favorite skaters is the Doom Slayer. I don't know if you've seen this guy. It's actually really cool that in the Digital Deluxe Edition, the Doom Slayer and the Revenant are part of the game. Plus they have, I believe, a hoverboard, right, and some special abilities and everything. Can you talk about how that all came together?

KURT TILLMANNS: Sure. Yeah. So this is actually a bit of a callback to Tony Hawk Pro Skater 3, where Doom Slayer was one of the original secret skaters in that game. So when we were talking about cool things that we could add to the game, the Doom Slayer came up, and we know some people over at Bethesda. We got in contact with them and they were just absolutely fantastic to work with. I mean, you would have thought these guys were 15 years old when we told them about this opportunity. They were just so excited to be a part of this game, and it's something that we see over and over again. When people get the opportunity to work on something like this, no matter who you are, no matter what the opportunity is, it's a dream come true.

LINA MADRID: Yeah, so you talk about Doom Slayer, Doom, great music leading into the wonderful music of Tony Hawk. I feel like Tony Hawk honestly influenced the musical taste of just generations. I know it did for me. I can't think of Tony Hawk and not hear "Superman" by Goldfinger in the back of my head.

KURT TILLMANNS: Absolutely. Yep.

LINA MADRID: Right? Right. When "Kick, Push" came on, oh, my God. I was transported back in time. It was incredible. I would love to know what the process was in selecting the soundtrack and also kind of get a little more info on new tracks.

KURT TILLMANNS: Sure. Yeah. When we're selecting new tracks for a Tony Hawk game, we really have a lot of people that have different opinions about what should be in the soundtrack. As you can imagine, there's a lot of strong feelings about music that should go in these games. So we really start with a lot of different groups. We all make a list of our dream list of songs we want to bring back or see new songs that come in, and then we mash them all together and we all pick our favorites. It's a very collaborative, very -- it's a great process, and for Lupe's "Kick, Push" in particular, we are Chicago-based developers. Lupe's a Chicago artist. We are just incredibly excited that we're able to include it into the game and it fits with the game so well. We actually made sure that it's the first song players hear when they boot up the game.

LINA MADRID: And we can actually listen to the soundtrack right now on Spotify, right?

KURT TILLMANNS: Sure can.

LINA MADRID: That's what I'm going to listen to on the drive home for sure. I'm excited.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: I'm a huge Fontaines D.C. fan, so very glad to see them included on the list. Believe it or not, the clock is winding down, and you have to land this last trick in order to keep the combo going. Any last thoughts now that we have the date that's announced, July 11th, coming to, like you mentioned, seven platforms, but Xbox Play Anywhere, cross-play everywhere, Game Pass, all this type of stuff, and we're about to really celebrate with Tony Hawk's Pro Skater Fest. Any last thoughts for the audience?

KURT TILLMANNS: Just that the team has been working so hard to do right by the fans, bring them these classic parts just with the layout that they remember, and give them a new way to play it. They've been working so hard for a long time. I can't wait for everybody to get their hands on it.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Thank you so much.

KURT TILLMANNS: Thank you. [ Music ]

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Well, that about does it for this episode of the Official Xbox Podcast.

LINA MADRID: And don't forget, you can play the game on July 11th on Xbox Series X, S, Xbox One, Game Pass, and it's also Xbox Play Anywhere.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: And play it anywhere, I shall. Thanks so much to Iron Galaxy for joining us, and thanks to Tony Hawk for telling me that I can borrow the (inaudible) Throne.

LINA MADRID: What?

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: You want to help me get this in the trunk?

LINA MADRID: Did he actually say that? Okay. [ Music ]