Skate 4 is currently in production, and according to recent leaks that likely broke an NDA, playtesting has even started. Leakers talking on Twitter said that Skate 4’s "visuals are good," but the "new tricks and mechanics … feel kinda off." The whole point of playtesting is to make sure the mechanics feel good to the player, and we expect developer Full Circle to have ironed out those mechanics ahead of Skate 4’s eventual release.
However, it turns out that it wasn’t just Twitter posts describing the playtests that were breaking NDAs. Pre-alpha footage of Skate 4 has leaked online, and according to Eurogamer, EA is scrambling to get that footage scrubbed off the internet.
The footage was first leaked to the streaming site Odysee and has since been taken down, likely due to a copyright notice from EA, but the damage was already done. Industry insiders like Tom Henderson and Jeff Grubb have since circulated the footage online, making it almost impossible for EA to take it all down.
So we might as well talk about it. This is very clearly pre-alpha footage, and not just because the gameplay itself reads "pre-alpha." There are no textures, most of the UX has placeholder images, the player is just a faceless mannequin, and there’s an input guide on the right-hand side of the screen.
"This is Skate 4 pre-alpha footage," wrote Grubb on Twitter. "This is in line with what I've heard about where the game is at from multiple people. They're trying to get the feel right, which is probably the most important aspect of a Skate game."
The internal playtests likely looked a bit better than this, and Skate fans should expect the final product to look almost nothing like the pre-alpha footage you see above. That said, it seems like we’re still a long way from Skate 4’s release, which is expected sometime in 2023.
Source: Read Full Article