The Development Team Behind a Highly Rated Game Were Pulled Away to Work on Call of Duty, Despite Their Success

Game news With 97%, it's one of the highest rated games of all time but Activision preferred that these devs work on Call of Duty

One of the best video games of all time

The Tony Hawk's Pro Skater video game license is undoubtedly at the top of skateboarding simulations, if not at the top of sports simulations or even video games altogether. The series, published in the early 2000s, attracted the press and the public, especially through its first four episodes. In September 2020, the first two resurfaced through a remake called Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1+2 commissioned by Activision (license holder) and developed by Vicarious Visions. It doesn't take much to light the flame among skateboard enthusiasts who are starting to make plans: “maybe a similar initiative will be carried out again with a 3+4?”

Something important since it was the third episode which was unanimously acclaimed. This is evidenced by the dithyrambic notes of the press placing Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 in the pantheon of video games with an average of 97/100. And the idea of ​​a “3+4” remake did exist on Activision’s side. In 2022, it's the professional skateboarder Tony Hawk himself who spoke about the abandonment of the project :

I mean, that was the original plan, even when THPS1+2 came out, we were going to do 3+4. Then Vicarious kind of got absorbed, they (Activision Blizzard, editor's note) looked for other developers and then it was over. They looked for a replacement, but had a hard time trusting them like they did with Vicarious. Activision Blizzard even asked them “if you were tasked with making THPS 3+4, what would you do?”, but none of the pitches submitted convinced them.

A case about which we can learn more since this weekend. The Youtube channel DidYouKnowGaming, mainly dedicated to telling stories about lost video games, was able to have new information regarding this project.

“The idea of ​​continuing and releasing 3+4 one way or another was on the table”

Two years after Tony Hawk's comments, it is a source close to the Vicarious Visions studios who provides insight into this matter:

We decided to add some handling features from the latest games to reflect how people remember the old Tony Hawk's Pro Skater games. The improvements Game 3 made seemed to seep into memories of the first two games. Eventually it became clear that we didn't have time to do more than 1+2, and the idea of ​​continuing and releasing 3+4 somehow was on the table.

Enough to support that this opus 3+4, or at least a remake of 3, existed in the form of ideas at Vicarious Vision and at Activision. An embryonic project which does not seem to have been retained following the absorption of VV by Blizzard. Is it to them that we partly owe the remake of Diablo 2 supporting Call of Duty? Something that is not uncommon within Activision Blizzard which seems to favor the reallocation of human resources. Jen O'Neal, former co-director of Blizzard, led the studio before resigning.

It's therefore difficult to have hope for a return to the boards of Tony Hawk's Pro Skater. But who knows? If it was the merger between Vicarious Visions and Blizzard that changed things, perhaps Activision's acquisition of Blizzard King Microsoft can in turn kick the anthill.